The term "darknet" appeared long before the TOR network popularization and similar ones. The term was first used to refer to any isolated, "hidden networks" and was frequently applied to a torrents variety. Early studies associated the main darknet dangers with copyright violation and illegal content distribution.
Technologies do not stand still and almost any business has begun to migrate into the Internet. At the current moment, absolutely everything can be bought and sold on the Internet. The darknet was no exception. Illegal businesses began to actively migrate into the darknet. The strongest impetus for this trend was given by the Silkroad marketplace, which quickly gained popularity. It has to be highlighted that the governments of all countries are actively trying to fight crime on the dark web. However, they have to coexist with it, since the problems of crime on the Internet cannot be solved. For example, the problem of illegal content distribution on the Internet has not been completely resolved. Nevertheless, using pirated content has eventually become simply indecent. The self-consciousness of people has changed in terms of respect for the right of ownership of another's labor. Services that distribute music, video, software provide everything you need for a relatively small fee and save you from possible problems with the law. Protection of property rights, providing legitimate alternatives at a moderate cost, shaping the opinion in a society that it is necessary to respect a work of others, who did their job. This compromise was accepted by all. At the same time, in the broadest sense of the word, the Darknet remains the best place for an anonymous exchange of information.
If at the dawn of the formation of the Darknet, its potential illegal use was described only by the illegal distribution of content, then with the development of technology, the digitalization of society, the Darknet has become the personification of almost any illegal activity on the network. This is due to the fact that the technologies of decentralized networks protect against state surveillance in the network.
The drug business isn't become an exception and is also actively migrates into the Internet every year, but very slowly. In this article, I will try to answer the question why the drug business refuses to accept the darknet as the best sales and marketing tool.
Criminal groups engaged in the drugs production and sales are inherently different from any other business only in that they are illegal. All other rules and laws of the market are applicable to the drug business (supply and demand rules, competition, logistics and so on). If we were considering the tailoring and selling clothes business, we would understand that some parts of this business cannot be transferred online. For instance, someone must receive sewing materials, sew, deliver clothes and much more.The Internet serves as a place of sales and marketing for such a business. The same applies to the drug business, someone has to receive reagents for syntheses, manufacture finished products, transport, deliver to the final consumer. Therefore, when we are talking about drug trafficking on-line, we also mean marketing and sales.
It would seem that there are no problems selling forbidden substances on the darknet. There are a lot of darknet markets where this happens every day quite successfully and for a very long time. With a deeper study of the issue, we will see that the number of sales on all existing darknet markets is very small. Silkroad, which made a lot of noise at the time, had an average of 1500 transactions per day and these are not just drugs. This figure seems ridiculous against the background of knowledge about the real total scale of the drug market. Any other darknet markets have approximately the same sales figures.
The darknet sellers have no demand. If marketplaces had a high demand, street dealers selling would be quickly disappeared as a vestige.
Understanding the population's demand for psychoactive substances purchases as colossal, and the demand for these goods on the darknet as minimal (according to our estimates, the darknet accounts for no more than 2% of drug sales), we can make an unambiguous conclusion that in its current form, the darknet sales format does not meet the needs of the end consumer.
As you know, if you start a business, you have to clearly understand who is the consumer of your goods and services. You have to identify problem spheres and solve these issues better than competitors. Then you will become a successful businessman.
What are darknet markets aimed at?
Any darknet market cannot 100% claim that it is focused exclusively on buyers and sellers of psychoactive substances. For DNMs (darknet market), sales transactions of psychoactive substances are just one of the areas of their work along with the sale of credit card data, pirated software, stolen databases and etc. Market operators implement a familiar model of transactions - sales of digital goods and sales of physical goods, where a delivery of physical goods is carried out by postal services. We accurately refer to drugs as physical goods, respectively, a delivery of such goods is carried out by postal services, which takes a lot of time.
Does this satisfy the needs of the end user?
Definitely not. Consumers of psychoactive substances are often not ready to wait until their goods are delivered. Reasoning on this topic, I propose to categorize the end drug users and identify the following categories:
1. Those who are in dire need. We can include heavy drug users like heroin in this category. As a rule, their need for a next dose can be assessed as acute.
2. Those who are in need in a moment. This category includes users of light drugs, stimulants, euphoretics. Such consumers purchase substances for the company, for parties, occasionally, not systematically, according to their current mood.
3. Researchers. This category includes just those, who like to purchase substances on darknet. They purchase goods for the future or take new designer drugs for tests or for a tick that they got new experience. The researchers category is the smallest, though the most progressive.
Obviously, the first two categories of consumers make up the dealer's income. However, the first category consumers do not want to purchase substances on the darknet since they need to get the product here and now. In addition, the second category consumers purchase substances based on their emotional state, since they also want to get the product here and now. They won't purchase substances on the darknet if there are other alternatives.
If a client is always right in a usual business, the drug business rarely agrees with this axiom. Therefore, when we are thinking about sales and marketing on the dark web, we have to also take into account interests of sellers.
With all the repressions that are aimed at the drug business, a number of representatives of this stratum of the population does not get smaller from year to year. Not every seller earns millions and not every seller has his own production, laboratories, but everyone pursues the goal of getting maximum profit. To achieve this goal, representatives of the drug business unite in groups and cartels in order to increase the controlled territory and, as a result, increase sales. The lack of a civilized approach to the organization of drug trafficking and wars for influence on the market has rightly led to the fact that the laws of drug trafficking have become harsh and bloody in nature. Therefore, the whole essence of marketing and sales was reduced to banal total control in a certain territory and wars for new territories, which negatively affected the competition and purity of sold substances, stagnation in the invention and popularization of new psychoactive substances. As the result, we can see that the long-outdated euphoretic MDMA is still the most popular substance in many countries according to Google trends, despite the fact that mephedrone surpasses MDMA by several orders of magnitude in all indicators of euphoric and toxicity. In addition, mephedrone synthesis is easy and well scaled.
Besides, any seller should strive to adapt to the legal system of a country in which he works and not disclose his identity.
Representatives of the drug business in the darknet adhere to other laws and regulations, competing with other sellers with the quality of goods, assortment and provided service quality. However, as mentioned above, the drug demand in the darknet is too low since the target audience of end users is small. At the same time, the darknet perfectly solves the problem of preserving the seller anonymity and is the best tool of countering the law enforcement (LE) system of any country.
So, if these reasonings are correct, then in order to increase the demand in the darknet for drug purchasing, it is necessary to resolve following problems:
1. Provide an opportunity for local sellers to migrate into the darknet while maintaining an own client base.
2. Provide tools for instant drug delivery at a request of buyers, if the goods are in stock. The buyer should not spend more than 4-6 hours (and even less is better) from the desire to purchase a drug until receiving it.
3. Provide an opportunity for the end user to see the entire range of products in the desired location for him.
Research of the best practices.
Exploring the improvement of drug sales on the Internet, we were able to find truly inspiring projects in their scale and implementation. A certain experience of some countries really says that the drug business can almost completely migrate towards the darknet in order to carry out all sales and marketing activities because it successfully solves three problems, which are listed above.
Sale of substances with help of dead drops. Best practices.
There are two forms of selling substances by dead drops. In the first option, a buyer contacts with a seller and requests to send a product to him with a dead drop, pays for the product and waits until the seller sends him a dead drop data.
In the second option, a seller packs a products in advance at his discretion and makes dead drops in places convenient for him in such a way that a random person could not find them. After that, the seller forms a showcase of his goods, indicating only the area, packaging and substance. Initially, this data does not allow a stranger to find a dead drop, even with a strong desire. To purchase a product, an end user searches by the product name, substance and packaging. Then selecting a seller, he have to pay for a product and, only after that, he will get the exact location and description of the dead drop. Before a stuff purchasing, a buyer is only sure of what substance and what amount of it will he buy as well as location is somewhere near with him where his desired drugs are hidden.
After the drug purchase, the buyer sets off at the specified coordinates and takes his order. All manipulations takes no more than a few hours. Thus, such scheme satisfies the needs of all three above-defined categories of buyers, satisfies the needs of local sellers, since they can simply give their client a link to their store, which works 24/7, even when the seller is sleeping or taking a rest.
The digitalization of society is inevitable, just like the digitalization of the drug business in terms of sales and marketing. At this point in time, the described method of selling substances with pre-made dead drops is the evolution culmination of online drug sales, which can change the picture of the entire drug traffic in the world. It is obvious that the world's largest drug groups and cartels are thus able to control not only the substances production and logistics to wholesale distributors, but also to control sales of their products around the world, thereby multiplying their incomes. Any newcomer in the drug business will be able to compete with global cartels at a local level and easily scale own business to other regions.
Of course, the drug business has many other problems, such as reagents obtaining and finished products manufacturing. If you face these problems, then the BB Forum will help you resolve them. It is safer to organize hundreds of laboratories around the world, produce and sell substances locally, than to have one megalab and send 10 tons of methamphetamine, the confiscation of which will hit your pocket and business hard.
Join BB Forum because professional participants of the drug business community and those who want to become them gather there. The best buyers are also with us and we are the ones who will provide a solution to all problems described in this article.
Technologies do not stand still and almost any business has begun to migrate into the Internet. At the current moment, absolutely everything can be bought and sold on the Internet. The darknet was no exception. Illegal businesses began to actively migrate into the darknet. The strongest impetus for this trend was given by the Silkroad marketplace, which quickly gained popularity. It has to be highlighted that the governments of all countries are actively trying to fight crime on the dark web. However, they have to coexist with it, since the problems of crime on the Internet cannot be solved. For example, the problem of illegal content distribution on the Internet has not been completely resolved. Nevertheless, using pirated content has eventually become simply indecent. The self-consciousness of people has changed in terms of respect for the right of ownership of another's labor. Services that distribute music, video, software provide everything you need for a relatively small fee and save you from possible problems with the law. Protection of property rights, providing legitimate alternatives at a moderate cost, shaping the opinion in a society that it is necessary to respect a work of others, who did their job. This compromise was accepted by all. At the same time, in the broadest sense of the word, the Darknet remains the best place for an anonymous exchange of information.
If at the dawn of the formation of the Darknet, its potential illegal use was described only by the illegal distribution of content, then with the development of technology, the digitalization of society, the Darknet has become the personification of almost any illegal activity on the network. This is due to the fact that the technologies of decentralized networks protect against state surveillance in the network.
The drug business isn't become an exception and is also actively migrates into the Internet every year, but very slowly. In this article, I will try to answer the question why the drug business refuses to accept the darknet as the best sales and marketing tool.
Criminal groups engaged in the drugs production and sales are inherently different from any other business only in that they are illegal. All other rules and laws of the market are applicable to the drug business (supply and demand rules, competition, logistics and so on). If we were considering the tailoring and selling clothes business, we would understand that some parts of this business cannot be transferred online. For instance, someone must receive sewing materials, sew, deliver clothes and much more.The Internet serves as a place of sales and marketing for such a business. The same applies to the drug business, someone has to receive reagents for syntheses, manufacture finished products, transport, deliver to the final consumer. Therefore, when we are talking about drug trafficking on-line, we also mean marketing and sales.
It would seem that there are no problems selling forbidden substances on the darknet. There are a lot of darknet markets where this happens every day quite successfully and for a very long time. With a deeper study of the issue, we will see that the number of sales on all existing darknet markets is very small. Silkroad, which made a lot of noise at the time, had an average of 1500 transactions per day and these are not just drugs. This figure seems ridiculous against the background of knowledge about the real total scale of the drug market. Any other darknet markets have approximately the same sales figures.
The darknet sellers have no demand. If marketplaces had a high demand, street dealers selling would be quickly disappeared as a vestige.
Understanding the population's demand for psychoactive substances purchases as colossal, and the demand for these goods on the darknet as minimal (according to our estimates, the darknet accounts for no more than 2% of drug sales), we can make an unambiguous conclusion that in its current form, the darknet sales format does not meet the needs of the end consumer.
As you know, if you start a business, you have to clearly understand who is the consumer of your goods and services. You have to identify problem spheres and solve these issues better than competitors. Then you will become a successful businessman.
What are darknet markets aimed at?
Any darknet market cannot 100% claim that it is focused exclusively on buyers and sellers of psychoactive substances. For DNMs (darknet market), sales transactions of psychoactive substances are just one of the areas of their work along with the sale of credit card data, pirated software, stolen databases and etc. Market operators implement a familiar model of transactions - sales of digital goods and sales of physical goods, where a delivery of physical goods is carried out by postal services. We accurately refer to drugs as physical goods, respectively, a delivery of such goods is carried out by postal services, which takes a lot of time.
Does this satisfy the needs of the end user?
Definitely not. Consumers of psychoactive substances are often not ready to wait until their goods are delivered. Reasoning on this topic, I propose to categorize the end drug users and identify the following categories:
1. Those who are in dire need. We can include heavy drug users like heroin in this category. As a rule, their need for a next dose can be assessed as acute.
2. Those who are in need in a moment. This category includes users of light drugs, stimulants, euphoretics. Such consumers purchase substances for the company, for parties, occasionally, not systematically, according to their current mood.
3. Researchers. This category includes just those, who like to purchase substances on darknet. They purchase goods for the future or take new designer drugs for tests or for a tick that they got new experience. The researchers category is the smallest, though the most progressive.
Obviously, the first two categories of consumers make up the dealer's income. However, the first category consumers do not want to purchase substances on the darknet since they need to get the product here and now. In addition, the second category consumers purchase substances based on their emotional state, since they also want to get the product here and now. They won't purchase substances on the darknet if there are other alternatives.
If a client is always right in a usual business, the drug business rarely agrees with this axiom. Therefore, when we are thinking about sales and marketing on the dark web, we have to also take into account interests of sellers.
With all the repressions that are aimed at the drug business, a number of representatives of this stratum of the population does not get smaller from year to year. Not every seller earns millions and not every seller has his own production, laboratories, but everyone pursues the goal of getting maximum profit. To achieve this goal, representatives of the drug business unite in groups and cartels in order to increase the controlled territory and, as a result, increase sales. The lack of a civilized approach to the organization of drug trafficking and wars for influence on the market has rightly led to the fact that the laws of drug trafficking have become harsh and bloody in nature. Therefore, the whole essence of marketing and sales was reduced to banal total control in a certain territory and wars for new territories, which negatively affected the competition and purity of sold substances, stagnation in the invention and popularization of new psychoactive substances. As the result, we can see that the long-outdated euphoretic MDMA is still the most popular substance in many countries according to Google trends, despite the fact that mephedrone surpasses MDMA by several orders of magnitude in all indicators of euphoric and toxicity. In addition, mephedrone synthesis is easy and well scaled.
Besides, any seller should strive to adapt to the legal system of a country in which he works and not disclose his identity.
Representatives of the drug business in the darknet adhere to other laws and regulations, competing with other sellers with the quality of goods, assortment and provided service quality. However, as mentioned above, the drug demand in the darknet is too low since the target audience of end users is small. At the same time, the darknet perfectly solves the problem of preserving the seller anonymity and is the best tool of countering the law enforcement (LE) system of any country.
So, if these reasonings are correct, then in order to increase the demand in the darknet for drug purchasing, it is necessary to resolve following problems:
1. Provide an opportunity for local sellers to migrate into the darknet while maintaining an own client base.
2. Provide tools for instant drug delivery at a request of buyers, if the goods are in stock. The buyer should not spend more than 4-6 hours (and even less is better) from the desire to purchase a drug until receiving it.
3. Provide an opportunity for the end user to see the entire range of products in the desired location for him.
Research of the best practices.
Exploring the improvement of drug sales on the Internet, we were able to find truly inspiring projects in their scale and implementation. A certain experience of some countries really says that the drug business can almost completely migrate towards the darknet in order to carry out all sales and marketing activities because it successfully solves three problems, which are listed above.
Sale of substances with help of dead drops. Best practices.
There are two forms of selling substances by dead drops. In the first option, a buyer contacts with a seller and requests to send a product to him with a dead drop, pays for the product and waits until the seller sends him a dead drop data.
In the second option, a seller packs a products in advance at his discretion and makes dead drops in places convenient for him in such a way that a random person could not find them. After that, the seller forms a showcase of his goods, indicating only the area, packaging and substance. Initially, this data does not allow a stranger to find a dead drop, even with a strong desire. To purchase a product, an end user searches by the product name, substance and packaging. Then selecting a seller, he have to pay for a product and, only after that, he will get the exact location and description of the dead drop. Before a stuff purchasing, a buyer is only sure of what substance and what amount of it will he buy as well as location is somewhere near with him where his desired drugs are hidden.
After the drug purchase, the buyer sets off at the specified coordinates and takes his order. All manipulations takes no more than a few hours. Thus, such scheme satisfies the needs of all three above-defined categories of buyers, satisfies the needs of local sellers, since they can simply give their client a link to their store, which works 24/7, even when the seller is sleeping or taking a rest.
The digitalization of society is inevitable, just like the digitalization of the drug business in terms of sales and marketing. At this point in time, the described method of selling substances with pre-made dead drops is the evolution culmination of online drug sales, which can change the picture of the entire drug traffic in the world. It is obvious that the world's largest drug groups and cartels are thus able to control not only the substances production and logistics to wholesale distributors, but also to control sales of their products around the world, thereby multiplying their incomes. Any newcomer in the drug business will be able to compete with global cartels at a local level and easily scale own business to other regions.
Of course, the drug business has many other problems, such as reagents obtaining and finished products manufacturing. If you face these problems, then the BB Forum will help you resolve them. It is safer to organize hundreds of laboratories around the world, produce and sell substances locally, than to have one megalab and send 10 tons of methamphetamine, the confiscation of which will hit your pocket and business hard.
Join BB Forum because professional participants of the drug business community and those who want to become them gather there. The best buyers are also with us and we are the ones who will provide a solution to all problems described in this article.
