Give up your individuality for a free t-shirt?

Give up your individuality for a free t-shirt? EyeEarn.com ripped off an idea I had years ago, in fact there are probably a few who thought of it before I did. Essentially the idea I had was called Punk Ads, it was at punkads.tv which has long since disappeared. The point is I was already one step ahead of the game way back then, the difference between my t-shirt ‘billboard’ idea and EyeEarn’s is the power of chance opportunities and the world media - if you can manage to “borrow it” for a while. I’ll explain my alternative process once I’ve got you clued up on EyeEarn and why their idea will never work.

First of all the site is “powered by” SFI international, an enormous affiliate system that I never wanted to pay to find out exactly what they do or sell, simply because I don’t pay any company to provide me an income, only a service. It’s something I learned a long long time ago, if you can buy say some information that had the potential to make others rich, then it maybe worth the price, but here’s the basic rule. If part or even all of your monthly fees contribute to yours or someone else’s back-pocket then it’s MLM (multi level marketing). Recruiting recruiters to earn yourself an income is a bad idea and it all comes down to probabilities.

The guy who starts a successful MLM company is guaranteed success, perhaps a few of his friends as well, the rest will be lucky if they ever make that money back. It’s just a matter of confidence rather than choice, as with franchises, you have to weigh up the outlay for the letterheads, stickers, equipment, leads, but at least you should have a real product to sell, even if you do end up paying over the odds for wholesale prices. Sometimes a name can help, McDonalds and most fast food companies offer franchises, I’m not condoning junk food, I’m only pointing out that you do get a lease on a real building full of equipment and staff, a high street or mall location, and of course an extremely famous logo to pull the punters in. For all that expect to pay tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands for an established city centre giant.

For those seeking to do it for less, for say twenty or thirty dollars/pounds a month, you can expect a ’special website’ which is at best a redirected dynamic URL or if you’re very lucky one of thousands of poorly ranked subdomains), a referral url, and usually a whole heap of useless and outdated ‘business guides’. Essentially you can get most of what an MLM company provides bar the branding for next to nothing. I have always accused those who want to simply join a ‘downline’ to recruit others who in turn will sell products for them as a little naive. The general rule of thumb is that if you go into an ‘opportunity’ with this attitude then so will most of your recruits. The number one concern for any franchise or MLM program must be the product, its quality, and of course its usefulness to the wider public, specifically the target consumer market.

So what’s the big hoo hah about EyeEarn.com? T-shirts, yes pre-printed t-shirts stamped with their snazzy logo

The point is that every member of this MLM opportunity will be wearing the same design

and I do believe that most of them will be rather surprised at the negative reactions they

will receive along their merry travels. Why? Mainly apathy I’d say, once you over expose a

market to a mediocre idea, the consumers begin to ignore and even ridicule the product

and all those who promote it. Remember Kleeneze? You probably don’t. In the early nineties I was receiving junk mail

and even junk snail mail from so many of their members desperate for me to join and ’share their success’. The only problem was that most were too embarrassed to come out and say what they actually sold, you can’t talk the talk and then hand over some shoddy samples of badly packaged, inferior cleaning products, not when you’ve just spouted a string of superlatives, and mentioned revolutionary at least once in your pitch. The same goes for natural remedies, beauty products, clothing, anything that these companies think the desperate networker will fall for, mainly because most of them never even take a look at the merchandise.

Would you like to live in a world wear every single person on the planet wore advertisements? I know people inadvertently do by wearing say Nike shoes for instance, however they bought the shoes because of the cachet attached to the name (hmm perhaps this isn’t the best example lol). They may even appreciate the quality of the product (hmm, definitely need to think of a better example). The point is they don’t want to work for Nike, they just go to a shop or a mall online and buy a pair of Nikes. They don’t want to recruit others to sell Nikes for them until they can get a free pair of overstock shoes that Nike couldn’t sell anyway. They definitely don’t want to go door to door telling people about the wonders of Nike Shoes. Anyway, people for the most part hate selling and especially to their friends and families. If you were stopped every five minutes on the street by passers-by interested in your Eye Earn T-Shirt opportunity (in your dreams) you’ll find that the vast majority will lose interest the minute they realise they have to pay to join. Secondly those with common sense will just look up the term ‘Eye Earn’ on Google and leave the affiliate out of the loop (another big reason not to fall for MLM). Thirdly those who do sign up will earn you a pittance in commission, the bulk of the money heading to the top of your chain, and besides your downliner will most likely want to recruit rather than sell, just like you.

So, MLM sucks and so does Eye Earn, no sane person will want to wear the same design everyday, talk to every stranger who asks, and most won’t have the chance to, because the general public are far more cynical than MLM companies like SFI like to make out. Essentially it’s a recession, it’s the 21st Century, people are getting poorer, people are more savvy, blame the years of chain letters and money games for the downfall of the gullible network recruit. They plainly do not exist these days, or rather not in the same numbers as they have, most people can spot a con a mile off now. The intelligent consumer wants a bargain, they want quality, they want originality. If you can create a product that embodies all of that, you will go much further on your own than at the bottom of a chain of networkers.

People network anyway, they have FaceBook and MySpace, they speed date and socialize with work colleagues, viral marketing does exist and it does work, but for want of a better word, ‘it has to be cool’. I’d be embarrassed to recommend anything to anyone if I didn’t use it myself, if I didn’t absolutely love it, and if it wasn’t original, new and made common sense I’d know I’d be greeted with disdain or even incredulity. Ever seen the film “The Truman Show” with Jim Carrey? There is a marvellous clip in the movie, the premise being a man’s whole life is secretly broadcast as a 24 hour TV show), whereby his actress (unbeknownst to Truman Burbank - the leading character) is yet again advertising products from her kitchen shelves. Truman questions her behaviour, she persists with the pitch, he comes to the conclusion that she is either insane or part of some vast conspiracy, which in fact happens to be true. Sounds familiar? If you want to pass the bulk of your profits, identity, friends and family, and general goodwill of those around you, then please do replace your wardrobe with a stack of network marketing t-shirts. If not then try creating your own business and rely on the quality of your products or service to create a true viral marketing campaign, i.e good old fashioned word of mouth.

So what was PunkAds.tv? It basically depended upon the rise of reality shows and the increase in numbers and interaction of studio audiences. The TV cameras focus more and more on the studio audience these days, and it got me thinking, how could I chav a little of that enormous international coverage for a wide range of cool clients looking for cheap alternatives to TV advertising.

Punk Ads was about hijacking popular TV programmes and displaying ads on t-shirts. Legally I couldn’t find any problems with the idea, and the system seemed simple. Put up a list of production companies and TV networks looking for studio audiences (it’s free you know), build an army of Punk Adders, and reward them with prizes for getting an advert shown in a prime-time audience schedule. I had to test the system before I could approach advertisers, mainly independent fashion and music labels as it turned out, yet I came across a real stumbling block, how to verify their appearance and a clear shot of their t-shirt on the show in question. It never got any further back then, of course this was five years before the existence of YouTube, it really should work now. However my sights have turned away to focus on what I do best, which is design.

If Punk Ads had worked, I’d have paid the successful Adder half of the earnings, no downline, no recruitment fees. If I had more revenue I’d have supplied the t-shirts free, the more you print the cheaper it gets. Imagine what EyeEarn.com are paying for their t-shirts, if they are printing them themselves it could be a matter of pennies each.

Buy a t-shirt because you like it, not because you think it might make you money!