Live data from Hacker News

“Single?” Lawn Signs Conquer the American Landscape

themetricsystem.rjmetrics.com

11–20 of 30 posts

Re: “Single?” Lawn Signs Conquer the American Landscape

#11
post #4

These signs are basically physical spam. They're also popular with the kind of scammers who buy old people's houses for cash, and 1-800-GOT-JUNK. I yank them out whenever I find them.

1-800-GOT-JUNK isn't a scam -- it's a real, hugely successul business.

Re: “Single?” Lawn Signs Conquer the American Landscape

#12
post #6

I wonder how much of the company's secrecy is a reaction to the expected illegality of placing these lawn signs. I see them frequently on municipal or state property, and I'm sure they are frequently removed by public works crews. If cities could easily find the person responsible and bring littering/vandalism/whatever fines against the parent company, this business model would be nonviable. I suspect the system of s…

I doubt it would be difficult to track these people down if they were doing something illegal. There are a number of strategies:

Sign up with your information, when they start asking you for money, serve them with papers.

Lookup the Whois record; if it's a proxy, subpoena them. Repeat until you have the real company.

etc, etc.

Re: “Single?” Lawn Signs Conquer the American Landscape

#13
post #6

I wonder how much of the company's secrecy is a reaction to the expected illegality of placing these lawn signs. I see them frequently on municipal or state property, and I'm sure they are frequently removed by public works crews. If cities could easily find the person responsible and bring littering/vandalism/whatever fines against the parent company, this business model would be nonviable. I suspect the system of s…

I doubt it would be difficult to track these people down if they were doing something illegal. There are a number of strategies: Sign up with your information, when they start asking you for money, serve them with papers. Lookup the Whois record; if it's a proxy, subpoena them. Repeat until you have the real company. etc, etc.

They probably are doing a lot of little illegal somethings. The issue is that each violation is minor and each "victim" has no idea of the scope of the operation -- so it's natural to just throw away the sign. This is the sort of pathology that has prompted the creation of class action lawsuits and the national do-not-call registry.

Re: “Single?” Lawn Signs Conquer the American Landscape

#14
post #11
post #4

These signs are basically physical spam. They're also popular with the kind of scammers who buy old people's houses for cash, and 1-800-GOT-JUNK. I yank them out whenever I find them.

1-800-GOT-JUNK isn't a scam -- it's a real, hugely successul business.

True. The link is http://www.1800gotjunk.com/us_en/

Re: “Single?” Lawn Signs Conquer the American Landscape

#18
It's crossover affiliate marketing, and I've done it before. Pretty decent margins.

One example: you've got companies that do zip and email submits for $1-2 a lead, and their incentive is a free $500 gas card. So make a website that redirects to the offer and print out stickers or other physical media with the offer and the site. Then pay someone to go around to gas stations and put the stickers on the gas pump handles.

Post reply on HN