Woot makes bargain-hunting fun again

We have a regular feature in CR called "Selling It," where we highlight the "goofs, glitches & gotchas" of the marketing world. Some are misleading ads, some are bizarre typos, and some are scratch-your-head oddities that you couldn't make up if you tried. At least I couldn't. But the copywriters at Woot manage to come up with insane marketing pitches on a daily basis. The site's concept is so simple as to be utterly mundane: Woot is basically a liquidator that sells one product each day until it's sold out. Some days the product for sale is actually useful, like the 4GB pocket USB drive sold last week. Sometimes, it's a random "Bag O' Crap" (yes, that's exactly what it's called). And sometimes it's a 10-pack of outdated computer keyboards, as the site featured earlier today. Regardless of the product for sale, Woot manages to pitch it in a way that is both refreshingly honest and laugh-out-loud funny. Take today's keyboard pitch:

Right now you’re probably wondering, “What in the name of Christopher Sholes would I want with ten Kensington 64362 Keyboards?” We’ll grant that it’s a legitimate question. Unless you’re running some sort of rest home for retired PCs, your household’s need for PS/2 keyboards probably maxes out at one (maybe two or three, if you’re prone to destroying your computer peripherals in fits of Bag O’ Crap-induced rage). So we understand why you’d wonder.

But here’s an even better question: what are we supposed to do with hundreds of these Godforsaken things? If ten seems useless and excessive, what about five hundred? A thousand? And every one takes up crucial warehouse space that could be occupied by more exciting electronic gizmahickeys. We know we don’t want them. But you people are weird, so maybe you might.

Where else would you find a sales pitch that insults both seller and customer — and invokes the memory of typewriter pioneer Christopher Sholes (yes, I had to look it up on Wikipedia, too). The best part: Woot sold all of its keyboards, at a bargain-basement price of $17.99 (that's right: $17.99 for ten keyboards). Presumably, some were sold to other liquidators, who will mark the price up to $4.00 a keyboard and make a profit (if they're actually able to sell them). And some were likely sold to distributors who resell older PCs to consumers in the developing world. But it's a safe bet that at least some were sold to buyers who were taken in by the marketing copy and laughed so hard that they couldn't resist clicking on the "I want one" button. And the owners of Woot are, no doubt, laughing all the way to the bank.

— Marc Perton