The woes of an aspiring entrepreneur and starving college student...
- Thread starter TheAwp
- Start date
This is hardly the case, it is more like some robbers knocked on the door and asked to borrow $4k of equipment and the OP foolishly went ahead with it.
It is the OP's fault 100%, he didn't get robbed he just didn't secure his business with common sense.
Actually, I started in IM in 2002.0o0o
Reminds me how you got crowned king of WF / DP...- comparing yourself bro? at least OP didnt do this to start of LOLOLOL
I am no ones king and I have no use for a kingdom. If you read my posts you would understand that.
That one post (5 mins?) made me $900 over the last 4 years. My last advertiser dropped off a few weeks ago. I have made less than 25 posts since @ DP, when I sold my sigs I had already quit posting there.
One of my first posts on WF was flogging Bookmarking Demon through Clickbank. That was after I had already done a million in sales in IM as a part-timer by 2006.
There is no shame in my hustle. Anyone who has worked with or been trained by me knows this.
One day, I might monetize my sig here. Doubtless, guys like you will claim this is proof that I am not a "baller".
I would rather people think I am not a baller than a baller. Assume I am poor, and you're doing better than me if that makes you feel good about yourself. It doesn't bother me one bit.
I have never pretended to be a baller, or represented myself as a baller. I never talk my personal money in public, it is base and gauche, and it makes one a target.
My arguments never derive from my claims to success or fortune, although I would guess, I have done better than 95% of the people posting on WF regularly. In the SEO sphere, I am pretty sure that is 99.5%
Whether I am a peasant or a billionaire doesn't change the fact that the OP is not going to get his money back, and he made a dumb move shipping that much product outside the country. It's an expensive lesson, but if he learns not to trust people, including couriers, the card processors, or anyone who sounds too good to be true (including his teachers and government) then maybe in the long run it is a cheap lesson.
Yea, I'm actually canceling my service with my credit card processor - using PayPal as my "processor" on my website, not that this is any safer but lesson learned - I'm going to back away from my website and shift to amazon.
I was able to secure a 6k line of credit and pay off the debt. I am now paying to get UPCs for all my products so that I can sell on amazon. I'm ready to move on.
It wasn't that obvious, because he did it.
You never ship outside country paid by CC unless you can afford to eat the loss.
The CC processors will never come down on your side in any dispute.
The signature from couriers is simply a feel good mechanism.
There are people in this world who will take advantage of you.
I'd report it to the police and let them get on with it, beef up my security to stop it happening again, and quickly assess whether it was likely to be easy to get my shit back.
If it was, I'd get it back, otherwise I'd let it go.
all I know is Guerilla is a mad hustler....
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA8xiDlW-x8&feature=related]Jay Z - I'm A Hustler Baby - YouTube[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i82-s_FuJE&feature=related]Cassidy Ft Mary J. Blige - I'm A Hustla (video).mp4 - YouTube[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA8xiDlW-x8&feature=related]Jay Z - I'm A Hustler Baby - YouTube[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i82-s_FuJE&feature=related]Cassidy Ft Mary J. Blige - I'm A Hustla (video).mp4 - YouTube[/ame]
I am not for or against anyone on this forum and I am for sure not defending G as even him and me have had our differences in the past.
However, I can't lets this be said as is.
I wrote out a long post and decided to say fuck it and just wanted to say this, a $10 sig post sell or a $50 blog commenting service is nothing to laugh at.. That $10 sig post or $50 blog comment service can easily turn into a $70k a year revenue stream pretty easily ( trust me on this
).I did over a million dollars in revenue in six months once and I still do over 6 figures a year in what I do now. However, I still peddle things that look "non baller" everyday on this forum and a lot of people have honestly ragged on me about it. Fuck, I even still have a day job! ( although, I look at it and treat it like one of my micro business's because its not what you think of as a day job )
When you have multiple income streams and multiple people helping you/working for you ( like VA's ), you can run several micro business's that together earn 7-10x more then the average American family per year while still spending maybe 40-60 hours a week on them total. To me, thats baller.
I don't have to sell blog comments or Dirty Sanchez's ( which sold out btw ) just like G prob doesn't have to sell sig posts, but true hustle is what it is and every dollar counts to the hustler.
Think of it this way, if someone came to you and said they would give you $900 for something you had to do almost 0 work for, would you do it? If the answer is yes, then your a hustler. If the answer is no, then you not. Forget about scale, costs, or what your earning now in relation to it.
It's OK to not be a hustler if its not your thing. However, don't knock someone that is.
If you looked at Steve Jobs without knowing him, you would have thought he was a fucking bum the way he dressed, but he was more baller then all of WF combined. He was even such a fucking tight ass, he never licensed his car and opted to renew his lease ( yes a lease ) EVERY six months on the exact same model Mercedes so he wouldn't have to get a license plate on his car and pay for tags because of a loophole in California law that enabled him to do so. The guy was a fucking hustler, but on the outside looked ( and sometimes acted ) like a bum and was more baller then any of us could be.
This is something that I don't understand - when your at that level of richness surely acting that way is counter-intuitive? The opportunity cost of renewing a lease each year surely outweighs the money saved from not paying for tags.
What's the point of having all that money if you never actually use it for anything? I understand some people get off on being a tight ass, I am fairly thrifty myself but I do so because I want to work LESS.
This is not directed at guerilla or eliquid, just ranting in general.
There must be some way to protect yourself from this type of fraud though - a lot of companies/drop shippers ship internationally. Are they susceptible to this same scam?
What's the difference between shipping internally and externally? Couldn't the same scam be pulled in the US?
Not trying to get into an argument in case that wasn't clear - I'm interested because I want to set up more eCommerce stuff and have never ran into these issues.
Opportunity cost is subjective.
I suspect Steve was a closet libertarian and hated having to get a state license.
When you're really wealthy, you can afford to do things other people cannot.
The money is a byproduct of success. Steve Jobs didn't work for money. He worked for immortality.
There is a point, they say it is around $70k a year, where people are basically flat on the ambition scale. Once they make about that much money, they lose their drive and their hustle diminishes.
That's MOST people.
The people who push beyond are driven by something more than money.
Yes.
In the US, you can call domestic law enforcement. Internationally, what are you going to do, get Interpol involved over a small theft?
You gotta remember, law enforcement's primary job is to maintain the state, not to protect your stuff or retrieve it from people who steal. The system isn't about restitution. Less so when it's the cops in another country you are not a "citizen" of, and so they are less inclined to worry about your bullshit because the issue is outside their jurisdiction.
I lost about 1/3 of my orders to the US from Canada due to fraud. In the end, I probably took a small loss on servicing the US. I wouldn't advise shipping from out of country unless the sticker price isn't so big if you lose a few orders you are going to go bankrupt.
I do SEM in an extremely competitive vertical ( education ) for a lead gen company.
When you can work from anywhere, on your own time mostly, and your salary/success is not tied to some bullshit measurement like how much time you clocked in at work, and you get a % of revenue generated + salary, its almost your own micro business in a sense. I even get to outsource a lot of my work as well ( marketing and development stuff )
Do you have a boss/someone to report to? Sure, we all do at some level. However, the trade off of having certain things off my mind like fully paid for benefits I don't have to keep up with, not having to manage the entire process and intricacies of running your own business, the the leverage and scale of having 100+ co-workers help in your success anytime you need it, and the social aspect of having people you can relate to while at work ( when I go in ) is pretty nice.
Doing all this alone when I ran my own was kinda of a headache for me. Having to keep up with shit I didn't know about and didn't care about when it came to running a business, the forever alone solitude of not having anyone around me that just didn't understand IM or the online community in general in real life because I lived in bum fuck, the always having to do more administrative work then marketing work, all ended up killing me in terms of me enjoying what I do.
It was almost a weight lifted off me when I was able to relinquish those burdens to someone else.
I like doing what I do now.. not having to hire and fire people, not running to the accountant every quarter, not keeping up with my payroll and benefits, not having to chase down payments from clients or affiliate networks, not having anyone to talk to face to face about our industry, etc.
Maybe I did it wrong on my own, but I am in a better place now. I do maybe 90% of what I enjoy now when I want to, instead of 90% BS of running a business alone by myself like I use to. End the end, isn't this what most of us strive for.. to do what we love, when we want/how we want? Instead of a entrepreneur, I became Intrapreneur
I still have clients and my own side shit I do, but those are on my own terms and not "have to" items every day that end up being a headache.
When I went full time, I then found out that all the people hanging out on Skype all day that I thought were full time and perpetrated like they were full time, were actually college kids online between classes, and half of them actually still lived at home with their parents.
^ That shit was a real reality check for me. Faking is a huge problem in such an ego-driven business culture.
^ That shit was a real reality check for me. Faking is a huge problem in such an ego-driven business culture.