51–57 of 57 posts
Five hours a day at $10/hr for two years could have earned him $30,000 (5x10x600, i'm sure he was bartering during weekends too) His car only worths $15,000.
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Seems like a legitimate tactic to me.
Only if he obtained their services by trading something to them that started from the paperclip.
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> Arbitrage is exploiting mispricings of the same item in different markets. There seem to be narrower and wider definitions of arbitrage. Some narrow definitions require arbitrage to be risk-free. Some wider definition accommodate things like statistical arbitrage ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_arbitrage ), which is far from certain and doesn't even use the same items, but just items with correlated pric…
True. A broader definition is probably 'exploiting price differentials of correlated assets'. Market is irrelevant, and both 'same item' and 'different but correlated items' are both subsets. And 'mispricing' presumes there's a true value, which may or may not be case.
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Yes, for a kid, this was probably an extremely valuable use of his time, and he seems to have had fun doing it. He probably learned more than he would have working a retail or service job, even if he made less money per hour. My parents are antique dealers, and my grandmother was a junk dealer who owned a thrift store. I grew up going to flea markets and garage sales, and my first business was started when I was twel…
Would you talk about what makes you good at sales?
I love what I sell. And I won't try to sell something I don't love, no matter what it is. If I don't love it, I'm not in the right business, and I'll quit. My current product is one I've been working with for over a dozen years, I've written a (published) book about it, and answered thousands of questions on mailing lists and forums. My appreciation of the product I currently sell runs very deep.
I hate wasting people's time. I hate wasting my time more than anything. So, I qualify people immediately. With my current product, I'll ask, "Do you do any system administration?" and follow up with, "What kind of things do you do?" If the answers don't match what my products do exactly (UNIX/Linux not Windows, website-oriented stuff not desktop or enterprise, etc.), I send them on their way. I'll recommend something else or shrug my shoulders and wish them luck. I won't try to figure out some way to sell them something they don't need. There are millions of people out there who will be well-served by my products...I don't need everyone I meet to buy to make me rich.
I get satisfaction from the whole process, not just the money. I enjoy helping people scratch exactly the right itch. This applies to anything you'd want to sell. At the end of last year, I decided to move into a motorhome and travel the country for a year or two...this meant downsizing dramatically, so I sold thousands of dollars worth of stuff I'd collected over a couple of decades of collecting. Guitars, synths, bikes, antiques, books, furniture, etc. I spent way more time than the money justified to make sure my ads were incredibly descriptive, the photos clear and numerous, and that the person buying knew exactly what they were getting. Some items were only selling for $50...and I probably spent an hour or more on every item I sold, once everything is tallied up. My hourly rate for contract work five years ago was $125/hour, and I wouldn't work for anywhere near that little today...but the process of selling is fun. Coming back to only selling stuff I love and believe in, I took everything I didn't consider awesome to Goodwill or threw it away. I won't sell something that isn't worth talking to someone enthusiastically about. I also like to know a lot about the stuff I sell. A friend asked me to sell some luxury goods she wanted to get rid of at the same time (they were in my closet when I was doing the purge), but I just couldn't do it...I don't know luxury goods and I don't care anything about them. I could never be a luxury goods salesman, no matter how much money was involved.
Of course, the big thing is just practice. I was raised in a world where all the stuff surrounding me, no matter how nice, had a price and was for sale (my mom rotates stuff through her house, so things come and go). I've spent a few hundred weekends at flea markets and garage sales...you can't help but get a feel for negotiation and sales in that environment.
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Yes, for a kid, this was probably an extremely valuable use of his time, and he seems to have had fun doing it. He probably learned more than he would have working a retail or service job, even if he made less money per hour. My parents are antique dealers, and my grandmother was a junk dealer who owned a thrift store. I grew up going to flea markets and garage sales, and my first business was started when I was twel…
Perhaps it would have been even better for the guy, if he had traded in person?
That said, I suspect he did deal in person quite a bit, even if the meeting was made on craigslist. I've sold tons of stuff on craigslist, and there's often a bit of back and forth, either on the phone or when the person comes to look at the item. All things are negotiable.
Five hours a day at $10/hr for two years could have earned him $30,000 (5x10x600, i'm sure he was bartering during weekends too) His car only worths $15,000.
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He's a businessman, but whether or not he's good is a question for debate. Most people working the same hours have a higher income. Do the math, if the Porsche trade represents all of his "income" from bartering he made $3.6 an hour, if it represents half of his income then he made minimum wage. It's interesting, and somewhat novel, but hardly astounding or terribly impressive.
He's demonstrated being a pretty poor businessman. He's traded down, knowingly, on multiple occasions, and furthermore declined trades of businesses, which generate income, for cars, which depreciate.
And besides, we can't necessarily exclude the possibility that he negotiated a little cashish on the side while trading down.