For example, there is a very healthy trade that exists for bootleg audio tapes. This group is devoted to trading bootleg audio and video tapes. Nevertheless, the ambiguous legality of bootleg tapes forecloses the use of an escrow service, and using a COD service does not address the main concern of participants in this market: the quality of the tape. An even more difficult situation has been created by the emergence of free email services, which give anyone a free email address on demand (such sites support themselves through advertising revenue). Spreading warnings about the scams that are out there is much more important. Let’s talk about what you need to think about as you figure out how to sell a service strategically. Once you’ve brainstormed the products or services that you’d like to sell online, you’ll need to see if there’s a market for those products. This has the advantage that traders in this market all have a chance to view the complaints. This makes it very easy to manufacture an email address that can be tossed aside after taking advantage of someone. Thus, it is not surprising that individuals take advantage of these extraordinarily low distribution costs to air their grievances.

And the extremely low information distribution costs meant that the lists could be made available to an unlimited number of individuals. The Internet has radically reduced the costs of distributing information to a global audience. It is important to note that reputations serve as both a source of information and as a potential source of sanctions (Yamagishi and Yamagishi 1994). For the person deciding whether to enter into a transaction, the partner’s reputation is a source of information that can reduce uncertainty and guide the decision of whether to trust the partner. By leveraging a sales automation platform for your service business, you can increase your exposure to more potential customers, and convert more customer leads into sales. If the interactions have taken place via a Usenet newsgroup or a web site, one is cautioned to always test the other person’s email address to insure it is a valid address and that the potential trading partner responds.

As a matter of course, one is advised to ask for a person’s full name, address, and phone number, and to not trade with anyone who withholds this information. When a person signs up for an AOL email account, he or she establishes a parent account that cannot be changed and is tied to the user’s personal information and credit card number. Given the everyday challenges of one’s work and personal schedule, the first piece of advice some people give is to show a little patience and not expect the goods or funds to arrive immediately. Because Usenet posting are automatically deleted after a period of time, the information can be lost even to someone who tries to go over all the messages posted since one’s last visit. As helpful as this information is, it certainly does not eliminate bad trades, whether the issue is tapes or funds that never arrived, or receiving a tape of poorer quality than was advertised. Drawing from the group’s Frequently Asked Questions file (Kuhn 1997), bootlegs are defined as “recordings that have not been released by an artist’s main record label. They could be live recordings, studio outtakes, rehearsals, or just jams.” The focus of the group is on the trading of tapes for tapes, although sales also occur.

The ambiguous legal status of these tapes precludes the use of these services. Some of the methods you can try is to use search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Because Google is undoubtedly the most popular search engine in the world – eating up a huge 79.77% of market share. So, there’s a starving market right? A complete marketing cycle from A to Z can be achieved with online marketing offering the opportunity to create an initial brand awareness right through to customer purchases. Because digital marketing has so many options and strategies associated with it, you can get creative and experiment with a variety of marketing tactics on a budget. Several observers recommend calling the other party, both to confirm the phone number and perhaps to also get a better sense of the person with whom one will trade. In one case, I came across a web site in which the person had uploaded scanned images of bad checks, complete with the accused person’s name, address, phone number, and email address. Most commonly, a person is added to a blacklist solely on the weight of a single person’s report, without any further fact-finding.