If they are that dumb then I’d tack on an extra 8 hours to “fix” the issue.
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For extra fun, update in front of them and then have them tell you that you’re “too technical”.
(Last week someone missed some of my comments on a spreadsheet because they were visually looking for the little red triangles, and not just clicking the “next comment” button. If you don’t know how to do something, cool[ish], but don’t make me the bad guy for knowing it, especially when it’s right on the damn toolbar.)
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Meatwall in progress. Yet again.
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There are times I’ve put $2 or $5 in an accessible pocket, promising it to the first non-aggressive panhandler I see. There are times I just go tunnel vision and refuse to acknowledge anyone. There are times I’m two blocks down the street and the plight of someone I passed fills me with enough emotion to go back.
I don’t care if people are using some small amount of cash to buy alcohol or marijuana. They could be self-medicating something the local community hasn’t been able to provide better help for, and entertainment options for the poor are limited. If I’m not currently actively working to provide healthier options for them, a few bucks is at least something.
When I needed it, I was still too proud to beg for cash but sometimes people gave me something anyway. Bought a cheap hot burger that was a welcome relief from my diet at the time, and a cheap pair of gloves that might have saved my fingers from frostbite. I was a transient and in some denial about the seriousness of my situation so no local charity could have helped me.
FWIW those small acts during my time of need have made me a much more generous person when I became re-established. The small amount of cash and time I received has multiplied significantly. Maybe not everyone in a bad situation will be able to get out of it, but for those who can the rewards might be huge. Beats buying lottery tickets, anyway.
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When I lived in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, there was always a row of 6-10 panhandlers along the wall of the building I’d pass on my way to the bus every day. They were low-key, just “spare change?” kinda people. I got in the habit of keeping a pocketful of change, dimes or quarters, and giving one to each on most mornings when I’d remember. It was a very crappy neighborhood and after a few weeks of doing that, the panhandlers physically stopped me from being mugged several times. It was a pretty good investment, turned out.
The panhandlers where I live now are almost all either obvious college students or guys ‘selling’ the Spare Change News, and I don’t give them anything beyond buying the paper here and there.
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Thought they were dead by generations?
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Yes - I got the movie wrong! Still pissed.
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Well you should go to paramount and tell them,
The line must be drawn herre this far no further.
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The first thing we do, let’s kill all the… no, not the lawyers. I’m willing to give them a free pass today.
I’m after:
- Webinar software where you have to sign up ahead of time, because limited spaces
- Said software claims it is multi-platform, but only mentions WIndoze and Mac. Except before I read that I click on the link on my Android phone, and oh look! it works there too.
- Despite claiming to be platform-independent, does not let me log in from Ubuntu.
- Once logged out (of my phone), does not let me log back in again.
And most importantly: does not have a test “room” where I can find out all this crap before the webinar starts.
It was free, so I suppose I should stop whining soon, but I booked time in my work calendar to make sure I could attend, dammit. There might be a recording later, but fuck.
And the thing is, I would say this is true for at least 50% of webinar software out there. So people are supposed to just sign up and cross their fingers? Fuck that. Make it fucking work.
The funny bit: this particular service (Webinarninja) brags about how they’re easier to use than Google Hangouts. You know, Hangouts – which really is platform-independent.
ETA: I received a link to the recorded version of the webinar. Apparently 500 people signed up for 100 spaces. Which begs the question: why not set a limit on signing up? Why did I have to sign up two weeks early only to find out it was really about who could afford to book time off work early enough to sign up to the webinar?
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Taking a class in something mind-stretching. The best thing I ever did was to take some writers’ classes. Met a great bunch of people. Thank you, George, wherever you are.
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And also the question why limit the virtual ‘spaces’, given that it’s the internet. Surely that didn’t come from the fire marshal measuring the size and exits of their web venue… There are technical limits on group video chat (everyone in simultaneous all-way video/audio streams) but webinars are just one stream broadcasting to everyone else.
Why even have signups? Or webinar software? Why not just use scheduled live streams with the streamer picking questions from the scrolling side chat the way they do on Twitch and Youtube? They can handle thousands of viewers with no software to install and no nonsense about signups and limits.
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Because that’s how you collect the emails.
In e-biz, they say if you have 5000 emails on your list, you can make a million dollars.
Once you have the emails, you can advertise directly to people who have expressed an interest, over and over again, virtually free.
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Agreed – in fact, I know from the replay that was part of the webinar!
I’d argue that for this case it backfired. The webinar was informative, but also a promotion for a paid course.
After fighting with the webinar site only to discover that “attendee already in meeting” is also the error message for “meeting full”, I’m not so interested in paying money to be frustrated.
I’ve been burned once before – I signed up for a course where the Linux version of the courseware didn’t work. So I would Skype in for the audio only, while everyone else got to share screens etc. No system requirements were available for me to check ahead of time. The other attendees were conference call newbies and, well, kinda ableist (given that for the purposes of the course I was working blind).
I actually really love on-line learning, so I guess it bothers me a lot when people don’t plan or test thoroughly.
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Get $200 from each of them?
I don’t buy that, especially because their spending patterns will be a scale free distribution. The bulk will buy nothing. In order to make your million, you will need a few big spenders spending in the tens of thousands. Not even sure how you’d pull that off unless you’re selling something really expensive
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80/20 rule. 80 percent of your profits come from 20 percent of your customers. Usually these businesses are set up with a funnel, where there is a very low ticket impulse buy type of item that most everyone on the list has purchased. By making a single purchase - often a loss leader or break even product after the advertising - these people have shown a willingness to spend money on this company and had an experience of going through a sale, so they can see that the company is reliable. Then, there is a high value offer that is affordably priced - say, an e-learning course for $59 that is packed with a lot of great information the customers are interested in. Only a percentage of the list will purchase this. It’s another opportunity for the business to create a relationship with customers who are showing an interest. Finally, there is a very high ticket item - a business conference, one on one mentoring by videoconference, an exclusive mastermind program, a structured comprehensive course showing how to make your website really sell at a profit - and that might be several thousand dollars. Maybe 20% of the list buys into this, or 5%, but really that’s like any business. There’s some customer who visits the hardware store every week and follows all their sales, and then there’s me who walks in just when I need a hammer.
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This makes sense. This works out to a thousand people spending $800 each on average, and the rest chipping in $50 each on average. It still sounds pretty daunting though. It’s not insignificant money at all, and all of these people would have already spent money. The list is all paying customers and no looky-loos, even if most of the customers won’t be repeat customers. If you have 5000 people who have given you money, or would at least would be willing to give you money, wouldn’t the hard part pretty much be done already?
That being said, I’d gladly pay $60 or so for an online course, assuming I’m sure I’d get something of value from it. If someone else was footing the bill, I’d probably pay even more.
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People charge a lot for the online courses when there is ongoing support. For example, I just paid $1200 for a course from Amy Porterfield on creating online courses designed to sell. I create online courses for my day job, but I don’t have to sell them. And it’s a lot of work to create one. So, it was very helpful to have a course that teaches the way to make sure the course has a market in advance of doing all the work, and also how to do all the sales pages. In her course, she has tech support from all the different vendors that support the hosting, etc. She’s in every week on Live answering questions. I have connected with other people who are also making courses in similar areas, who will Beta test for me, or who will promote my course to their Facebook groups. So far I’ve been involved about a year into her program. It’s useful to have people come in who follow her system and are making money and reporting that back.
There are other people who charge $3000, $5000 for online courses. Or, they host a conference.
I’d definitely buy from Amy Porterfield again. It is a good program. She’s very professional. The networking is valuable to a business. I can write these things off on my taxes.
So, in conclusion, if people are into you, they will spend over and over again, or refer people to you.
I really like this business model. Most people give away a lot of content for free and do a lot of educating as they work to build a business, so, yes, there’s a path to make money, but also, you just get to be a nice person teaching people stuff, you have a platform.
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The more successful people make a lot of money off affiliate sales, too. If you have 5000 people on your list who are really engaged and trust you, and you promote someone else’s course or product, you might get $3, 400 for each person you refer. These people have tight networks.
They also have automated systems set up to constantly bring in new people through Facebook ads, Google Ads that feed into their automated online courses with automated emails pushing out to engage the new people and get them into the high ticket offers.
It takes time to set it all up; it’s a ton of work, but there is a certain point where you have momentum with it and it all kind of feeds itself and there’s a steady stream of income.
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Depends on the niche and who’s paying. A price that would be ridiculous to a person paying out of pocket, when viewed as a tax-deductible business expense that could result in a competitive advantage potentially leading to landing multiple $100k+ contracts, and can be listed as “professional development benefits” when hiring - that market can pay a lot.
I forgot that I had seen some of that in the past - although I was more familiar with ones where hype men were getting rich quick selling snake oil solutions that were obsolete by the time they finished recording the videos. They had the salesman patter down. You got full sets of DVDs, access to exclusive areas of their website, weekly updates via email, and discounts at a convention. “But wait, there’s more! If you call now…” 
Companies looking for that competitive edge bought into it at a price of thousands. (Interestingly, their stuff was worthwhile in a totally unexpected way. After watching it, we decided to drop that line of business entirely instead of trying to get better at it and pursue other things that turned out to be much more profitable and the company did much better in the long run.)
But as @ChickieD describes, there are some that provide legitimate business value and aim at that justified company expense budget, and that’s a very different price point from selling to people studying something for personal interest or even their own personal career.
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Very late I notice this, and add “people who drive manuals because they think this somehow gives them added status as drivers, but I get stuck behind them at the lights while they fiddle with that antiquated machinery.”
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