Hurry!  Hurry!  Get in at the Top!

How many times have you received an email with a subject line like that? I hope your first reaction is to delete it! 

 As a rule of thumb, if you have to get in at the top, it's because it's probably not going to go anywhere. It has an awful or horribly overpriced product, a hopeless commission structure (usually one that pays out FAR too much to survive), and is designed only to make its owners a whack of cash in a big hurry.

 "Hurry! Hurry!" That's the cry of the huckster trying to grab your cash BEFORE you do your due diligence. 

 "Hurry! Hurry!" Did you notice the date at the top of the page? You only have 23 hours, 9 minutes and 34 seconds to "get in at the top!" 

 Guess what? If you come back a week from now, you'll only have 23 hours, 9 minutes and 34 seconds to "get in at the top!" These hype artists use a simple java script to create a sense of urgency in the hope that you'll shell out your money before you take the time to check them out. 

 Good companies will still be good a year from now. There are billions of people in the world; that's a HUGE market! If the product is good, competitively priced, and tied to a reasonable, workable compensation plan, it will stay good for a long, long time. 

 Be reasonable and use reason when choosing a business. Do not let your emotions rule! The BEST rule to begin with in making any choice is to sleep on it. 

 Beware of those who say you have to "strike while the iron's hot." YOU may be the one who is about to be struck... with another dent in your bank account and another unworkable, worthless, soon-to-disappear "business" opportunity. 

Rambling and Ranting - First Pitch

Well, here we are again! My email inbox is overflowing again - how come the good guys get sp@m warnings for one email and these guys dump on me over and over again and nobody's even slowing them down? 

I think they should change their attack and say, let all email through with real return addresses and real people checking their email. Hey - how hard can it be? 

At LEAST 50% of the junk would disappear instantly if all the ISPs just used a filter that autodumped email with phony reply-to and from addresses! 

They're pinging all the time - how hard is it to ping back on every email and trash the ones that bounce? Am I missing something here?? Is there one good programmer out there? 

 And further, create a little algorithm that checks for contact information in every email coming through - if there's no contact info in the email - TRASH IT!! How hard it that? Now we've dumped 75-90% of sp@m without breaking into a sweat. 

But no - the dumb boneheads take the lazy approach and string up the people who DO use real addresses and real contact info, because they're easy to find. And what do we get instead? A WHOLE LOT MORE anonymous garbage in our inbox! Go figure!!