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I made $100K from a dick joke

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Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#91

Post by therealdrag0 »

probably_wrong wrote: post #21

I don't have a great opinion of marketing in general and therefore I'm often unconvinced with arguments like "marketing is about fulfilling a customer's needs" or "adding efficiency to the market". Therefore I feel vindicated when a moderately-upvoted post says the quiet part out loud, namely, "Yeah, we made a fake post and just lied to everyone on the internet. I'm not sorry, because not only was it popular - it bec…

Seems like a no harm no foul sort of situation.

If people on an entertainment site and entertained by the viral marketing, and they order a product knowing what it is and get the product they ordered, then what is the problem exactly?

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#92

Post by throw5959 »

stef25 wrote: post #58
dakiol wrote: post #12

Perhaps I missed it, but at what point the author sets an LLC or something similar? For me, that’s the main blocker: in Europe it costs money to start a business, some paperwork and taxes is involved, even if you don’t make a single sale. Also, for selling online you kinda have to show in your website your “business id” (or tax id or similar)… otherwise how do people know you are a legit business? For example, I’m no…

Not sure if it's still the case now but you could perfectly open a Stripe account in the EU without the need for any business documents.

That doesn't make it legal to operate. In every EU country you need to register to legally conduct business activity. It used to be an expensive and long hassle but nowadays it's simple and quick, usually online and cheap.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#93

Post by defrost »

bdndndndbve wrote: post #14
defrost wrote: post #3

As featured in the The Ballad of the Malheur Patriots (Song of the Oregon Wildlife Refuge Standoff) @3:25 The perfect treat to storm a building surrounded by ducks . . .

Bundy apologists in the wild? Insane.

Who, the downvoters?

There was a lot of up/down votes on that comment .. clearly some laughed and others cried.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#94

Post by rgovostes »

oaththrowaway wrote: post #19

I sold a laptop on eBay once long, long ago. Someone did the "Buy it now" option but never paid. I'm trying to remember the exact situation (probably more than 10 years ago), but I had exchanged messages with him several times and he always had an excuse to not pay. Then I noticed he was selling the exact same model of laptop so it was easy for me to realize that he had just "bought" my laptop to remove the listing s…

Just remember eBay has almost no way to report scam listings, hacked seller accounts, obviously fraudulent buyers, etc. They don’t want to clean up their act. Caveat emptor.

Two executives were recently imprisoned over harassing a journalist, to give you an idea of the corporate culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#95

Post by potato3732842 »

seattle_spring wrote: post #77
cozzyd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if he was trying to resell your laptop and wasn't going to pay until he got an order for your laptop

That’s what I was thinking too. There are whole subreddits setup to work this kind of hustle. These people see nothing wrong with what they do, even going so far as to claim that they’re doing a service to the world. In my eyes, they’re bottom-feeding scum no better than scalpers, car salespeople, or MLM huns.

"Pure" flippers and drop shippers who do none of the value adding work of buying large lots and retailing them, holding things over time, etc are both a worthless drag on the economy and a great argument against equivalent financial products.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#96

Post by potato3732842 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #45
gosub100 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They cleaned up their act substantially in the past 3-4 years. There are still scammers, of course, but they seem to be taking action that favors buyers as well. I just don't see how they can protect everyone from all the various scams. If they accept all the risk, it will be exploited by scammers.

It was always fairly pro-buyer, but it's moved so much more in that direction it's somewhat hazardous to use as a seller. For a lot of stuff, as a seller, I'll just trade-in or use random hobbyist forum buy&sell sections which ad-hoc reputation systems.

That's the point. They want to drive off amateurs who are trying to liquidate dads old tools in favor of the guys who are doing that stuff in professional volumes and the professional dealers and importers who are buying lots of stuff and breaking them up for retail sale and "real businesses" who run an eBay store alongside their other ecommerce stuff. They were pretty transparent about their motives IIRC.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#97

Post by potato3732842 »

woleium wrote: post #70
steveBK123 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eBay I think had their growth capped once you had Etsy, Amazon FBA, and other options on the field. Your average normie has no interest in the hassle of selling their used stuff (which has, if anything, got harder in my 25ish years using eBay), nor of buying random used staff from anonymous individual sellers. Etsy covers the arts & crafts coded goods (though much is now China dropship). Amazon allows the big merchan…

Amazon fulfillment, That’s the killer. Why bother with another marketplace when vertically integrated Amazon does it all

Because you're a used dealer or a dealer of something that is on the large end of what you can send in "normal" mail. Tires come to mind, even on Amazon very few of them are actually FBA.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#98

Post by potato3732842 »

toast0 wrote: post #69
lotsofpulp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eBay is interesting. It has consistently high profit margins, but no upward movement in revenue or profit, which peaked over a decade ago, and its returns heavily lag SP500. I’m guessing investors don’t see much opportunity for growth in the online auction business to make it worth dumping a bunch of money just to take market share from eBay.

From my perspective, eBay has a solid niche of older items, and they tried to break into the buy new items market too, but the hassles of selling mean for the most part only scalpers sell new items on eBay. Although there's some niches where it's not unusual: new auto parts seem common, I guess it's easier for a dealer parts counter to run an eBay store than otherwise.

I find that for a lot of "cheap junk from China" gets cheaper when you eBay it directly from China and cut out the cost of the Amazon middle man.

Recently I bought a chainsaw tool on eBay from China as I didn't want to buy a 6-pack for $10. I was able to buy a couple for about $0.20 more per unit. Sure, higher unit price and they'll be here slower but it's several $6ish saved.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#99

Post by [deleted] »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #91
probably_wrong wrote: post #21

I don't have a great opinion of marketing in general and therefore I'm often unconvinced with arguments like "marketing is about fulfilling a customer's needs" or "adding efficiency to the market". Therefore I feel vindicated when a moderately-upvoted post says the quiet part out loud, namely, "Yeah, we made a fake post and just lied to everyone on the internet. I'm not sorry, because not only was it popular - it bec…

Seems like a no harm no foul sort of situation. If people on an entertainment site and entertained by the viral marketing, and they order a product knowing what it is and get the product they ordered, then what is the problem exactly?

[deleted]

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#100

Post by bemmu »

vachina wrote: post #56
_1tem wrote: post #9

Sometimes I think about the years of hard work that I put into building a SaaS business and wondered whether I should've just done something silly like this instead.

There’s only so many low hanging fruits to exploit (by a LUCKY few). Keep working on your business.

Media likes to all cover some random silly hot story periodically, and they constantly need new ones.

So I’d say it’s actually not limited, although being the one they happen to cover this week would need some luck for sure.

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