INTRODUCTION TO STOOGENET™

In any dynamic industry, that which we know NOW, is completely irrelevant!

Entertaining Lessons On How NOT To Do Business On The Internet

A COMPENDIUM OF INTERNET MARKETING HORROR STORIES

Utilization of the Internet as a vehicle for commerce is so new and evolving so rapidly that missteps and errors of judgment are inevitably going to occur to anyone who dares "push the envelope". However, it is difficult to imagine others topping the mistakes we have already made in starting up NETLAUNCH™. Based on these errors, our contribution to the advancement of Internet Marketing is StoogeNet.com.

StoogeNet serves the following purposes:

1. to provide a forum where learning from the mistakes of others can be obtained;
2. to offer entertainment value in the form of amusing anecdotes from other netizens; and
3. to promote the tenet that admitting mistakes early and emphatically is part of the netiquette of professional Internet marketers. While we certainly plan on poking fun at ourselves, we also hope to help advance the cause of Internet marketing.

StoogeNet will be updated frequently. The StoogeNet site will basically be content and text oriented,however, we will continue to provide intriguing opening graphics. To those that have commented that our opening graphics could only come from warped minds, our response is ; "you have no idea".

Here are our three biggest boners (so far). Can you top them?

• After spending $22,000 to develop qualified leads for our web site development service, we mailed our prospects a demonstration diskette infected with a computer virus - this made a terrific impression, as you might imagine. However we did learn one lesson from this fiasco; if you want to get past secretaries and other gatekeepers, just tell them that you are calling about a computer virus you've dropped onto their boss's computer. It's amazing how quickly calls get through using this technique.
  
• Using the following text as the first line of our home page, "Welcome to ....". Due to spiders and bots grabbing this truly compelling call to action, this line of copy still appears at some search engines as the description of our site. We do occasionally get hits from surfers coming to our home page hoping for a bizarre experience due to the seeing this description at a search engine- the IP addresses in our log activity reports are pretty funky.
  
• Getting in bed with an underfunded and/or inexperienced partner - in our case, a telephone company wishing to go public on the media hype of the Internet. We thought the following copy sounded pretty persuasive, "we don't claim to be as reliable as a telephone company, WE ARE a telephone company". However, as we have since learned, understanding the intricacies of TCP/IP and being able to talk a "newbie" through getting connected is a whole new ball game. Being an expert at telephone switching technology certainly does not qualify oneself as an Internet expert - guess who dropped the virus on us!

Having a successful track record in marketing at Procter &Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, SmithKline Beecham, and H.J.Heinz, as well as enjoying great success in publishing (our firm Schellmark is the largest continuously operated publisher of postcards in the United States), we thought extending ourexpertise to Internet Marketing would be a cake walk... Boy were we ever WRONG!

Stay tuned...

Bill & Randy-- The head stooges at StoogeNet.com

Use SCHELLMARKpostcards to economically promote your web site. Custom or openstock available. Over a 1,000 images and 4,000,000 cards currently in stock. Postcards - the only thing we really know how to do (so far). Or go to Golfclubs.com and see what we're up to in 2008!

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