Snake Oil Salesmen

By Author: Maurine Dodge
Total Articles: 2
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More years ago than I care to admit at this point, there was a product that came on the market called Zoom. It was touted as being an energy pill, and thinking I needed more energy, I gave it a try.

Now when I say more years ago than I care to admit, I am referring to the fact it might make me seem old, and who wants to do that? There is another factor with how many years ago it was, as I was young and impressionable, and had not yet learned to read labels with a magnifying glass to insure I was not getting a pig in a poke.

It took about a month of using this miracle pill to have it raise my blood pressure to stroke range. This is probably where I began to give closer scrutiny to labels and ingredients. Knowing that the only thing different was this miracle pill, I grabbed the bottle and started reading.

The only active ingredient was �guarana�, which is actually a misnomer since the correct name would have been guaranine, which is the pure caffeine from a guarana berry. I think it said something like �pure guarana� or 100% pure guarana. It doesn�t really matter ...
... now since I looked up guarana and found out I had been taking mega doses of pure caffeine and at that point was also a big coffee drinker.

I cut out all caffeine and sugar for three months at which time I found I again had low normal blood pressure. I remember thinking to myself I would NEVER be a snake oil salesman.

Well, if you want to change your life, you first have to change your mind. Snake oil is a traditional medicine among the Chinese as it is effective in the treatment of joint pain. As I get older, I have a lot of that but that is another story. There was this guy from Nebraska named Joseph Myers who was pretty enterprising back in the 1880�s who learned from the Indians he was helping to harvest their medicine plant that they made a tonic from it to treat everything from bee stings to bites from rabid dogs and rattlesnakes, wounds of all sorts, fevers and just about anything that ailed them.

Joe started making up his own version of the plant tonic adding a good amount of whiskey and started peddling it across the American west. It was a cure all for all that ailed you, a miracle in a bottle. He became known as the snake oil salesman.

Since then the term snake oil salesman has come to mean someone selling you something worthless. Bogus cures, and those selling you anything that turns out to be fake, fraudulent or ineffective.

I started thinking about network marketing and realized by the current standards, most (not all now) internet marketers are modern day snake oil salesmen. (using the current usage of the term as bogus that is)

If you have ever joined a network marketing group and found that you were expected to �fake it til you make it� and you stuck with it, you too are a snake oil salesman.

Now, I am a snake oil salesman, but I use the term in it�s archaic sense. You remember I said I would NEVER be a snake oil salesman? Well, I had to change my mind when I came across a business that the plan was so good, the products good enough to be patented, and a compensation plan the likes of which I had not come across before.

The Indians would not have bothered to produce their tonic had it not worked for some if not all their ailments. Today the trend is back to natural foods, natural tonics, holistic and homeopathic treatments because they work. Frequently better than the things they concoct in test tubes and chemical plants. Perhaps it is time to go back to the origins and reclaim the term Snake Oil as a good thing.

I read online that no one had used snake oil or snake oil salesman to market their homeopathic or other cures so I was somewhat taken aback when I tried to register either of them as a domain. They were both taken. One came up with a blank page that said index of parent directory, so it is I suppose something in the works, and the other was a parked domain not being used. (Do you suppose they owe me for raising the value of that domain?)

I did manage to register snakeoilsaleswoman.com but don�t bother going there yet as I have not had a chance to get anything up and running as of this writing. I will no doubt need to go into the history of the term, and how it is the goal of the site to reclaim the origins of the term and make it a symbol for honor and ethical online business practices.