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I made $100K from a dick joke

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Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#171

Post by sandworm101 »

jenscow wrote: post #169
sandworm101 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> buying large lots and retailing them, holding things over time, etc are both a worthless drag on the economy... Like grocery stores? Department stores? Costco? Buying in bulk and selling smaller lots to consumers over time is the definition of retail sales. If you want to eliminate middlemen and buy only from manufacturers, you better first know/learn chinese, japanese, french, german and spanish. And get a forkli…

> who do none of the value adding work of buying large lots and retailing the ... I think they're saying that is the value added work, which they don't do.

I dont think so. We might not like dealing with them, but even the most horrible of middlemen still provide liquidity to a market. Amazon got its start as a middleman for books, and was hated for what it did to the retail bookshops, but it did inject liquidity to the betterment of consumers.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#172

Post by johnisgood »

walrus01 wrote: post #38
wiseowise wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sending this to a woman we worked with that he had a grudge against for some reason or another Sometimes I wonder what the hell is going on in people's head.

The profane joke in the bag of dicks made me think which head he was thinking with.

I'm not sure it had any sexual relevance, so that does not make sense to me.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#173

Post by steveBK123 »

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #151
steveBK123 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

imo it's slightly more pro-buyer than it was a couple of years ago. If only because unreasonable buyers have killed off most of the value of having 100% positive feedback. Remember losing it a few years ago when an obvious scammer tried to bully me into a partial refund for an item he had already resold at a 50% markup.

Yes I have a 25+ year old account with 100% feedback, but I don't think it matters nearly as much anymore. Also clearly some subset of buyers understands they can abuse high feedback sellers who want to maintain their feedback rating.

In a way I like the more conversational forum buy & sell system where I have feedback, but also each purchase starts with a DM. I usually can suss out from a few DMs if a buyer is going to be a tire kicker wasting my time, or a perfectionist who will be a pain to sell to. In either case I let those buyers pass and wait for someone worth doing business with.

On eBay you have no choice in who your buyer is.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#174

Post by razakel »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #154
nosioptar wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I ordered from amazon, I repeatedly declined prime. My bank called me the next day about a suspicious charge for a year of prime. I had to cancel my card and get a new one. The banker told me they'd had dozens of similar problems where amazon was charging people for stuff they never ordered. When I got the package a few days later, the $150+ set of cello strings I ordered, sold and shipped by amazon, were c…

Amazon is the American version of Temu, Aliexpress, etc nowadays; I wouldn't use it for anything but their own products (Kindle). For specialist items like the cello strings you mentioned, music shops are thankfully still a thing, both online/webshops as irl ones. I'd go there instead. Same with books.

It's borderline impossible for the high street to compete on fungible goods like art supplies and books. The only real value in those shops is knowledgeable and passionate staff who share your interests.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#175

Post by nickjj »

giarc wrote: post #118
nickjj wrote: post #27

That reminds me of the toilet paper calculator during peak covid. He put up a site in about half an hour and it ended up getting coverage on TV which led to ~10 million visitors and it making $5,000 a day in ads for a while. The core logic of the app is 6 lines of JavaScript to take a few inputs and do basic math on them. I ended up chatting with the creator on how he built and hosted it back in 2020: https://running…

Listened today. Nice work, I really like these kind of stories (small time internet success stories). I don't know if your podcast has others, as it seems like you're mostly focused on the tech stack of sites. Some of my favourite HN posts are the common "What's your tech side hustle?" posts. I love hearing the stories of people making a bit of side cash on small little sites. Some examples I can think of (however, b…

Thanks. If I had to estimate, I'd say about 2/3rds of the episodes are solo developers putting up some type of site (SAAS app, selling a product, etc.).

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#176

Post by Fnoord »

alias_neo wrote: post #157
varsketiz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those in europe - check out vinted.com

My wife uses Vinted (UK) for selling hers and the kids clothes, usually single-to-double digit values at most (or she uses Oleo to just give it away). It works _fairly_ well from what I've heard, but she does have the occasional issue with people complaining about things and sending them back for obtuse reasons, often hardly worth it because the value was so low, the cost of the shipping there and back eclipsed the v…

My wife is also on Vinted. We use it also for young children clothing. It is great if you use cheap shipping options, and combine items.

For old computer stuff, I gave away quite some stuff to people driving to Ukraine. This then goes to kids or their cause.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#177

Post by purple_turtle »

j_4 wrote: post #86
LtdJorge wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wth? That's a great system you guys have.

On paper, yeah. Sadly the threshold is very low, and you get hit with a brutal regressive tax immediately after you pass it (obligatory lump-sum social security tax).

Oh, I am not claiming that overall system is friendly. I am paying some absurd taxes myself.

But at least "I want to test run a business idea at tiny scale, without violating law" is solved.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#178

Post by pbhjpbhj »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #112
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…

>I'm often unconvinced with arguments like "marketing is about fulfilling a customer's needs" or "adding efficiency to the market". This product is actually an ideal case for marketing, because most people weren't aware that a product like this existed. The best ads notify you about something you genuinely want to buy. What you're really complaining about is astroturfing , not marketing. The more dubious sort of mark…

I mean Coca-Cola is junk food, it's unhealthy and we know it is. They advertise to maintain the illusion that it leads to success and happiness. They can't afford for scientific understanding to win over the brainwashing of 'brand advertising'as that would be the death knell for the company (or 99% of it).

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#179

Post by ilaksh »

BeetleB wrote: post #76
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…

I listen to How I Built This . It's not unusual to do this. Especially when they're trying to get a retailer to carry their items. They'll create fake buzz. Stuff like getting all your friends to go to a store asking "Do you carry X?" soon after you've pitched X to the store is a method that's worked for over a century.

Maybe that's why I'm not rich? Because I am honest?

I think this culture of normalizing lying means that more and more humans are just garbage. Because being able to trust someone is telling the truth is just a fundamental part of integrity. Without integrity we have.. well I guess the world we live in.. dangerous, full of trash. Everything is bullshit.

I hope the machines take over soon.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#180

Post by amelius »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #112
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…

>I'm often unconvinced with arguments like "marketing is about fulfilling a customer's needs" or "adding efficiency to the market". This product is actually an ideal case for marketing, because most people weren't aware that a product like this existed. The best ads notify you about something you genuinely want to buy. What you're really complaining about is astroturfing , not marketing. The more dubious sort of mark…

> Acme won the auction because it was able to bid more. It was able to bid more because it has better lifetime value per customer, i.e. it does a better job of satisfying customer needs.

This is obviously not true. What if they are backed by investors? And there are a gazillion other reasons why they could spend more on that ad ...

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