While I can't speak from first hand experience, I have an open ear sometimes. There are these developers who just made an awesome webapp or something. It's rea

While I can't speak from first hand experience, I have an open ear sometimes. There are these developers who just made an awesome webapp or something. It's really great but there is a problem. Noone knows about it. But they have a solution for that problem. They buy some "promotion". It's articles in newsletters or outright spam directed at their target audience. I cannot tell you exactly who their target audience is but I can tell you who it is not. It's not you, me or most readers on hackernews. It's less tech savyy people with more decision power. Old people. Their site is made for old people. And they don't care about you and me or any other passer-by who won't pay a dime. They care about conversion rates and that is what they monitor all day long. It's a bit like in those scam-emails. They are so obvious that anybody with half a brain will click delete. But those who do reply, oh boy, they are so ready to be milked off by that nigerian prince.