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I made $100K from a dick joke

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Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#71

Post by paulryanrogers »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #51
oaththrowaway wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just makes me more cynical about everything I see posted. Marketers ruin everything eventually

>Marketers ruin everything eventually You need to follow that chain of thought a little further. The unfortunate weak spot in a capitalist economy is that it's basically a Darwinistic system where the fittest survive, and "fit" means willing to do anything to make a dollar. Morals therefore become a weakness, and those who are guided by morals will be stomped out by those who don't really care. The guardrails are mad…

IMO there is a tension between tolerating gray areas and stomping out the faintest shadow with prejudice. In the long term societies with no trust or accountability will fall to those with higher trust and cohesion because the latter can be more efficient.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#72

Post by more_corn »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #59
_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.

OPs story is like winning the lottery. The rest of us have to get up and work 80 hour weeks building our business. The latter is more fulfilling and longer lived in my opinion.

But there’s an important lesson here. The structure is the same as a successful serious business. Build something people actually want to buy, build it so you can fulfill it cheaper than cost. Get a little ahead of yourself (but not a lot)

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#73

Post by gosub100 »

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.

FWIW I don't hear of nearly any of the horror stories I used to. From my recollection, 2011 was about the peak of it, where buyers were claiming to never get their stuff, getting liberal refunds at the expense of the sellers. Sellers were getting their accounts locked by Paypal, sometimes with tens-of-thousands of dollars at stake, only to get it back 6 months later if they begged and screamed.

I opened a seller account in about 2020 to unload some server gear and almost got scammed, but I googled the buyers name and saw he was accused of fraud by several other people. I re-routed the package and although I didn't get reimbursed for that fee, ebay made me right and paypal (I think) gave me a small credit. They even had a phone call with me which seemed like they actually investigated it (I dont remember many details, it was 1 transaction 5 years ago).

There's just no way that any online auction can control fraud. I was on ebay yesterday as a buyer, looking for a tape backup drive. The seller clearly had been burned and (bitterly) warned that the sale was final, because previously he had sold a working drive which was parted out, replaced with broken parts (heads) and returned as defective. there's no way a third party can protect against it because either way the fraudster wins. 1) sell a bad drive, claim it was good, but accuse the buyer of fraud. Or 2) buy a good drive, swap it out with bad parts and return it. how could anyone (like ebay) solve this problem?

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#74

Post by snowwrestler »

kgilpin wrote: post #39
anonu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cant believe ebay hasnt been disrupted yet...

In my kids’ generation (college aged) they all use Facebook Marketplace.

It’s astounding how bad FB Marketplace search is, though. For very popular things, it’s fine. For browsing and “huh, that’s interesting,” it’s fine.

But if I am looking for something specific, it is an incredible failure. It’s so bad I suspect they intentionally don’t want it to work well. That is, I think they only want to optimize for low-effort social buying, not picky people who know exactly what they want.

For this reason I have bought way more stuff off eBay than FB Marketplace recently.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#75

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

You don’t have to set up a corporate form to do business like this in the U.S. You can just start selling things and as long as you properly report your taxable income, you’re fine.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#76

Post by BeetleB »

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.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#77

Post by seattle_spring »

cozzyd wrote: post #31
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…

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.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#78

Post by bashmelek »

_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.

It is still inspiring for someone like me who wouldn’t even know where to start for something like this—-that is can be done by an individual nobody.The author knew a few important things, but more, did their research, asked questions, and pushed forward. I myself would love to move beyond web apps to a physical product.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#79

Post by lalalali »

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.

…or financial assets arbitrage! (Not /s)

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#80

Post by [deleted] »

edanm wrote: post #68
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 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". I mean, on some level, everything is marketing. People don't like marketing when it's fraudulent and morally suspect, which of course makes sense - I don't like tech when it's morally suspect, either! But literally every…

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