Today, I received a “Dear Photographer” e-mail which proclaimed that I’m being considered for “free” inclusion in the next edition of a prestigious “Who’s Who” book. Supposedly, I’m one of the top, most distinguished photographers in North America. Being included in this book will mark my high level of achievement.
Yeah, right.
For fun, I visited this company’s web site:
• It’s a generic template web site.
• It uses only cheap, anonymous, stock pictures.
• The “About Us” page has no names, no pictures, no real information at all.
• No pictures of its books. It says the current edition was published last year.
First impression of the web site: Looks cheap. What are they hiding? Smells like a scam.
Conclusion: No way I’d trust this company with anything.
Action: Good bye.
Cheap stock pictures scream “we’re cheap,” “we’re not serious,” “we’re hiding something.” When a business uses cheap pictures, it fools no one but themselves. Cheap pictures, or no pictures at all, scare customers away.
Cheap pictures cause a company to lose credibility and money. Quality photography earns trust and helps make sales.
By the way, from a further web search:
• A promotional video from this company, located on a free site, claims to show samples of “excellence in photography” by some of its “elite” member photographers. All the photos are cheap, bland, anonymous stock photos.
• It uses a free blog site for its “press releases” which supposedly announce each new person accepted into its “Who’s Who”. Every release uses the same template and contains only generic information. Web searches on some of the names used in the releases turned up nothing.
• This company actually uses the phrase “not a scam” as a search engine keyword.
Appearances are not deceiving:
It appears their scam is: after you’ve supplied lots of personal information, you will indeed be added for free to its “prestigious registry” (aka its mailing list) which is sold to other marketing companies. The company will also pressure you into buying an annual membership and several copies of the book, (pay in advance, no refunds).
The books will be sent “later in the year”… Then oops, not enough people bought memberships so the book might be cancelled. But if you send them some extra money, you can help get the book done on time … Then sorry, not enough people sent in extra money so the book has been cancelled … But you really should buy just one more annual membership because next year’s book …
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Added February 5th: Just got another similar e-mail. Apparently “industry experts” have selected me because I’m a “distinguished professional.” Must be my lucky day.
This company seems to be a different operation than the one mentioned above. However, it also uses a cheap template web site with cheap, bland stock pictures. If you tineye the images, all the pictures track back to iStockphoto, a cheap stock photo site, where you can see how cheap the pictures are.
This particular Who’s Who site lists some real, high-profile, celebrity names as members! Only if you click to another page, scroll to the bottom and then read the extra tiny fine print, do you see that it says these celebrities are not really members.
The scam here is more-or-less the same as above. It sells annual memberships for many hundreds of dollars with no refunds. This company says its Who’s Who book will be published “sometime next year.”
