Poetry "Contests" - My Favorite Scam

One of the many scams perpetrated on the internet has old roots. Remember "Draw Inky?" This used to be an advertisement in many magazines years ago and still exists. A person who believes they have drawing talent, copies the drawing in free-hand and submits it to the address given. Years ago, this was done by mail. The company offered a "prize" of $1,000 to those who could successfully draw the cartoon figure. And most anyone with a hand was able to manage to "draw Inky."

A few weeks would go by and then that person would receive notification in the mail. They didn't win, but had extreme artistic talent and were encouraged to enter a correspondence art school, tuition of which amounted to thousands of dollars. This was a very long-running scam and I'm certain that many people were bilked out of their hard earned money while believing they had "talent."

Although there were many variations to the "prey on someone who thinks they have talent and exploit them" scam, another one making a prominent debut on the internet is the "poetry contest" scam.

Just for fun, I entered such a contest. I made up a few words that amounted to garbage that even a five year old wouldn't write, and submitted my "poem" via e-mail. Low and behold, I won! I won the prize; I was going to have my "poem" published in a book with my name on it. I was going to be a published poet.

In addition to the fact that I would never, ever want anyone to know I even wrote such a "poem," much less put my name to it, I was fortunately intelligent enough to see through the scam. Yes, they were going to publish my poem. In a "vanity publishing" book. And it was only going to cost me $500 hard-earned, American dollars to do so.

The irony was that had they offered me $500 for the poem, I would have turned it down, unless they put someone else's name on it.