ad scam aimed at reptile webmasters?

I recently had a company in Las Vegas contacted me saying they had some friends looking to buy Leopard Geckos and were having a hard time finding them... hard to think that is possible. He told me the companies name was I-frame. Anyways, he went into a speel about advertising on the major search engines through keywords similar to AOL keywords.
What they never told me is that for this to work the user must download their product onto their computer. BTW, did I mention it was only $1900 for six months and 2 keywords? I got a bit confused when they called the 2nd time and told me that the keyword "geckos" was still open... yet the before it was taken. The 3rd time they called me they through out a well known name and said he just bought the rights to "geckos." He talked me through a demo on my computer. I later searched on Yahoo for the comany name but couldn't come up with anything... how are people supposed to sign up to use the service? I have since found out that I-frame is nothing more than a scroll bar within a page... such as the area you type in your messages. Unfortunately I erased everything possible in case of a virus... or cookies... or worse.

I will try to repost if they contact me again and put up their company name. I just wanted to get this up to hopefully save someone from wasting money, but it's your choice what to do with this info!

Gene Jenkins

These systems work when the end user installs "scumware" or "shareware". This is a program that will install itself when you go to a certain webpage or sometimes as part of another program (such as a toolbar extension for your browser or smiley program for your email system). The program then will deliver this companies pages (the terms they sell) when you type in search terms in search engines (instead of the real results).

While not a scam it is marginally effective as a marketing technique and their salesmen are usually lower level used car salesmen in mannerisms.

I-frame is a technical term in web page programming. But the company probably adopted it as a "catchy" phrase that sounded high tech. They probably have many shell companies to handle the flack for poor performance (just close shop and open a new DBA).

There are more leopard geckos for sale in Vegas then you can shake a stick at. He just used it as a sales intro to keep you talking to him. I have never heard of the place. I would pass on whatever he is trying to pitch to you.

Hi there,

I got the same call from a guy claiming he had a client that was having a hard time finding a blue panther. Then he went into the whole sales pitch about the I-Frame product.

This isn't a scam, but a service they are trying to sell. What they claim is that whenever somebody types in the keyword "gecko" in their favorite search engine, such as google or yahoo, your website will appear at the top of the list. But theres a catch. The person that seaches the keyword "gecko" must have their program installed on their computer in order for this to work.

How many people have this installed on their computer? They claim that 15.7 million people have it installed, which sounds like a very big number. But in reality, this is a very small fraction of the total count of internet users. Combine this with the fact that the herp market is an even smaller percentage, and you can see that this is fairly inefficient attempt at internet marketing.

Another downfall of the I-Frame is that it is not compatible with every single web browser.

I can't say for sure that this type of internet marketing does not work. But if you do the math, it just does not seem very effective. The odds are against you.

But anyways, this is not a scam. I have to admit that those salesmen were pretty slick in their pitch. I declined their service and opted for something that reaches a broader range of internet users.

Vincent
Screameleons
http://www.screameleons.com

Well, maybe a scam wasn't the correct term, but close. The reason I say this is because what their claim was 15 million something users... extremely doable I agree. What they said was 15 million I-frame users, thats the scam part of it. I am using an I-frame right now by typing this message into an Inline frame. Yes it sounds great and like you said, how many people actually have their program installed on their computer? It wasn't out right lying but it was telling partial truths, and in my book thats worse.
Gene Jenkins