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You get what you pay for. (May 2005)
I once made my living selling full time on ebay.
And while it sounds simple it really is as hard, if not harder, than a normal
job.
If you work for yourself you don't get paid on a regular basis; I forgot how
many times I lay in my bed at night wishing I got a regular pay check, even if
that pay check was less than what I was currently getting!
Each morning I woke up and filled out the mornings orders, then answered any
emails that needed responding too. Then it was time to do research - this took
up nearly 50% of the working day.
Why do so much research?
Because I needed to stay ahead of my competitors, if not then they would catch
up to me and take away my market share.
The one thing I noticed when researching is that I got what I pay for, and that
rule still applies today.
We'll start with free
advice
You really do get what you pay for here.
Ask an open ended question on a forum board (e.g "What is the best way to do
this?") then you will get 101 different answers; of which 10 will be
accurate.
Another method of asking questions on ebay is to ask ebay directly - this would
be the worst thing you could do as they 'cut and paste' the answers,
and I'm convinced that a computer reads the email and tries to answer it. The
answers I have received to my own questions have been so wrong as to make my
head spin.
What I find offensive about this is that each month I receive a large bill from
ebay (which I pay straight away), so you would think that they would have
better customer service for paying customers - but I digress.
Cheap advice
I have bought a lot of ebooks off ebay for around the $1 - $10 mark. And most
of these have snippets of advice that is worth the price of the ebook, but they
also include a lot of waffle (It's not BS information, the writer is simply
trying to fill out a 20-30 page ebook so it looks like you are getting your
moneys worth).
Rarely have I bought an ebook at this price and been disappointed, but nothing
has ever really stood out from the crowd.
Medium(?)
advice
Medium is the wrong word to use, but if I think of a better term then I will
come back and edit this blog :)
Ebooks around the $10 - $50 mark are the ones I refer to here.
Because of the price I can't afford to purchase each ebook I see at this price;
but the one's I have bought are usually worth it - the writer has several
points to make and knows their stuff.
I notice with these ebooks that the writer has gone out of their way to show
their credentials throughout the sale; this may include screenshots of
payments, screenshots of search engine rankings.
My biggest mistake was not buying a particular ebook valued at $30 that showed
how this person got a number 1 ranking on google. The writer gave out the term
he was number 1 for and if you searched in google (which I did) his website was
number 1 AND number 2!
I think I saved it in my 'watched list' but didn't do anything for a long time
and it disappeared!
I search for the ebook regularly but so far I have come up empty handed :(
Expensive
advice
This is for ebooks or courses over $50.
The best purchase I ever made was from a marketing course, it cost me $600 (at
the time I only had $800 in my credit card, but I took a chance).
The sales letter was very impressive so I thought I would give it a go.
And it was the best purchase I ever
made!
I'm currently reading the whole thing for a third time (I read it once a year)
and each time I congratulate myself on buying it.
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