I just got a dollar back in change today that had the website WheresGeorge.com stamped on it. I just checked out the website and it has an Alexa ranking of 28,000!!! I'm sure many people were referred to the website by the bills they got with the website name stamped on it. Is this type of marketing even legal? It sounds really interesting since 1 dollar bills will stay in circulation for a very long time due to their lack of security of features.
Read this part of the site: http://www.wheresgeorge.com/faq.php. They are protected because they aren't the ones marking the bills, the users are. If you marked the bills yourself to advertise your site you risk legal troubles.
Yeah, advertising on money would not be legal. However, this is not really advertising in a sense, its just so people can track where a dollar bill has been.
I got one of these bills twice but never bothered to go on the site. Seems like they are doing extremely well. The idea is ingenius. Now how can I make a variation of that? lol
I find that very hard to believe. Because of the business model, it would be very hard to prove that it was them. Especially if they went to some measures to not leave any fingerprints on the bills.
I have been a member and marking bills with www.wheresgeorge.com since '99. It isn't marketing. It is just interesting to see where and when my bills are found. From my understanding, as long as the bill is not made useless by the markings then it is OK. But I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. Tom
In India, writing anything or making any kind of mark on a currency note is illegal. I guess it's the same in other countries too.