Posted on 5th Apr 2010 @ 11:55 PM

Discount Supplements

There are many supplements on the market some of which are discounted to wholesale supplements prices.  The sports supplement market is becoming increasingly more competitive day by day and although this is great news for the consumer, it is bad news for the long established supplement companies.

With competition comes price war and this is something that has become a regular occurrence online with most supplement companies.  One of the most irritating outcomes in this process is the black hat tactics that some longer established companies whom have larger overheads deploy in order to prevent a repeat purchase with the new aggresive discount supplement stores.

The most common black hat tactic is search engine URL manipulation which is often started with a blog post or a post on some high ranking steroid forum, the threads are often very similar such as “I bought some really cheap supplements 6 month ago and paid x amount and I still have not received a thing, really cheap but avoid anyone else bought from this store?” although this makes me laugh, it can have some detrimental effect if a not to frequent online shopper should read such bull, but the majority of online consumers nowadays will know that one phone call to their bank would have any funds paid back into their account under the distance selling regulations and charge back rules.

This tactic is common and rife in an industry that is struggling to cope with such discount price aggression and unless you are an expensive supplement retailer or one who plays by the RRP manufacturing rules then you will become subject to such tactics. 

The steroid forums are owned by rival supplement retail stores or manufacturers who post rave reviews about themselves or their own product, this also demonstrates a high level of irresponsibility towards consumers and breeds distrust throughout the entire supplement industry.

I was once asked to advertise and write articles for a popular UK steroid forum to which I declined, as I do not promote or endorse a discussion board that manufactures content on what a consumer should use, or promote and big up a brand or product just because they are “board sponsors” nor do I want to be party to a discussion board that promote and push a steroid culture to teenagers “it is just completely downright irresponsible”. 

You will often see the following comment after the slate of a discount supplement retailer “stick with a reputable board sponsor” what makes them reputable exactly? Because they say so!

Consumers often ask me why this kind of activity takes place, because it is so blatantly obvious that the content within it is manufactured by some disgruntled competitor, and my answer is “only the morons who do it will know”. 

The fact of the matter is if these so called business men (which is in fact a compliment) have enough time to write reviews about discount supplement retailers, then they are not focussing enough attention on their own stores or internal operations, it is in my opinion a stupid tactic that has the complete opposite effect to what they are trying to achieve, and actually encourages the readers to go visit and buy a product just to experience the service for themselves, after all I would take a £20 punt on seeing if the store who was £10 cheaper than everyone else was in fact the real deal, wouldn't you?.

However Social media is thankfully killing this tactic off and all the self manufactured bull that exists on them, there is no way of telling who is who within these steroid forums, profiles with names such as “bench machine” and women who resemble "pre op transsexuals" and who are no strangers to a Mach 3 razor is not the kind of social media forums I would want to frequent, but each to their own I suppose. 

My advice is, if you see an online store being slated on any steroid based forum or un moderated review platform, then visit the actual store and see if they have a social media presence, one you trust like Face Book, twitter, My Space etc and see how many real life fans they have.  If they have in excess of 100 then they are more than likely to be highly genuine, if they have 500 fans and above you can rest assured that the online store has a loyal following.

Visit the face book fan page and read the fan reviews, see how often the deals have been updated and how many of the fans are commenting on the deals and this will give you the piece of mind you need that the store in question is in fact very genuine.

Do not under any circumstances believe anything you read on first glance within open review platforms or steroid forums because I can guarantee you that the content you are reading is manufactured and has been placed on line for search engine manipulation purposes only, and done so by rival retailers, who have no business acumen left in their tool box, and who cannot discount brand name supplement prices to compete.

Instead of writing digital manure they should cut back and give you the consumer what you really want, and that is Discount supplements.