Scaring users into buying the product
Before we start let me tell you that this is just an idea and not only it has not been tested I am also not too sure about the legal side of things. On the other hand I can see this working very well and you will get to do some good possibly.
The warez market is absolutely massive. You can upload a torrent of the most recent TV show and within hours it would be downloaded by thousands of people. There are a number of marketing techniques abusing this potentially massive traffic however I doubt anyone has ever thought about doing what I am about to tell you.
First of all you need to fake a popular application. You can tell what people are downloading by browsing a few torrent sites. Pick one with an affiliate program so that each time you would sell a copy of this software for them, you would get a percentage of the sale in commission. Once you have a target make sure your fake application is approximately the right size compared to original. Now here is the trick… Your fake application needs to scare the crap out of the person who downloads it. For example you can have your application display a huge warning up the top something along the lines of: “You have been caught downloading an illegal copy of our software”. Create a little animation that will look like it is sending some information somewhere. Then have a little popup say:”Your IP home address has been logged. You have 14 days -insert timer here- to buy a legal copy of our product -insert your affiliate link- before your details get forwarded to our legal team and your local authorities. -insert DMCA notice here-.
All you need now is to create a torrent and upload it to some torrent websites. You can even upload this fake software to Rapidshare and spread the link across all those Rapidshare link forums. Sit back and wait for sales to roll in. Obviously some people won’t care but other should be so scared they will go ahead and buy a legal copy via your affiliate link in order to stay out of legal trouble.
Once again this is just another crazy idea of mine and you should make sure what you are doing is legal if you do decide to give this a try. I assume the software company will only shake your hand for this and you will get to punish a few of those evil pirates. You will need some basic programming knowledge in order to create this application however it should not be hard at all.
March 16th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
BRILLIANT.. and its not SOO bad because you are taking advantage of people who are using pirated software anyways.
I LOVE IT!
March 17th, 2009 at 4:27 am
brilliant idea mate, if yo go ahead with it, be sure to post your results ,
cheers
March 17th, 2009 at 5:22 am
Simply brilliant.
I have heard another german company using this same tactic on illegal MP3 downloader, sending them letters to these people and wanted them to send $100-$500 in compensation if not, their names will be send to the respective department.
March 17th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Hmmm, that sure is a hard-core sales technique. Prompting an emotionally driven response like this will definitely get you some clicks. Keep us posted, I would love to see the stats on this one.
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:59 pm
This idea shows a real ignorance of how the torrent community works. The first downloaders will be using proxy servers or software to hide their IP’s, then they will comment on the lameness of the torrent and the uploader and the torrent will die. It will happen every time. Don’t believe me? Then try it. Today. Don’t wait.
Fail
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:42 pm
And you Scott show a real marketing ignorance. Have you ever heard about PPI? There are forums dedicated to pay per install marketing and most of these guys push all the traffic via torrents. In fact I have been making sales the same way myself.
Statistically speaking over 90% of all torrent users download directly without ever using a proxy. Besides, as you probably know there aren’t that many proxies out there that are 100% anonymous. (Actually, how many average users even know their own IP address?)
Yes, they will comment but by the time people notice, you will already have hundreds of uploads. Even then some people don’t pay attention to the comments and download anyway.
Finally, I was not just talking about torrents. Rapidshare distribution works even better.
Owned!
March 25th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
@Scott
Why would it matter if they visited the torrent site with a proxy? When the application is executed it would just call the computers actual IP. People read comments, but that doesn’t mean you can’t spoof your IP and fill up the first page with fake comments and discussion.
March 29th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
All tactics are used these days, but you just have to be ahead of it to catch them
-Mike
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:37 am
Scott, it seems that Ilia has outflanked you on this one! Good point you raised though, and I enjoyed the ensueing discussion very much.
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Now that is a great idea.I guess people get what the expect and as far as sales is concerned,people tend to be aggressive in their approach to make ends meet.
April 5th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
It’s a horrible idea – but it’s not a new one. Spyware remover programs have been using it for years. But it’s no longer scaring as many people into buying the software, because who wants to buy a product that has been ‘forced’ on you. Plus, for most affiliate products they will bann you for this type of tactic.
April 30th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
This is a great idea, although not necessarily new. You could even have a very small executable and then a fake .dll or .cab that is really just plain text of a few thousand lines to increase the file size to what you need to look legit. If you really wanted to get crafty, you could even setup drone seeders to go with the fake + comments.
July 3rd, 2009 at 5:13 am
Great idea,man shared…thanks a lot…I get it ….