i loved Josh much more when he was still Josh.

Now that he went ‘ethical’, he reminds me on the scanners we used to sell from the brand Trust. One customer came in and asked me: do i buy the Trust scanner or do I buy the Sony scanner? Our answer was: can you realy trust a product that needs to call itself ‘Trust’?

But i won’t be surpirised that Ethical IM is now earning more than Josh was, (he could answer that question better though…), anyway’s his child is growing, so bills need to be paid

I didn’t try EIM hot niche spy yet, the $1 price tag is too high compared to what already exists in the market (and there goes Michelle talkng about $37 or $97

This discussion still going…ahahaha . In your reply to my comment you mentioned this guys website: EthicalIm.com and he has an interesting product called “hot niche spy”. The Ultimate Internet Marketing Multi-Tool? WOW..but someone had already invented this and its called wordtracker.com. What he created is just another site with a tool that already exists in the market. Josh Spaulding is the owner of “hot niche spy” and he charges $27/month for a service that wordtracker provides at a cost of $59.00 a month. Now, if Josh system works exactly or better than word tracker then I will be incline to subscribe to his system to save me some money. Josh service can save me a few bucks a month and it will allow to do the same thing that word tracker does, keyword research.

I’m not sure if Josh has coaching sessions but has good content and a nice product that could generate a good stream of income if he was to market the product using google adwords which he hasn’t done.

Keep up the the interesting posts Michelle!

Part of the sale pitch of the heavily overpriced seminars is exactly what you mention: people are only comitted to succeed when they pay a huge amount of money.

Fine: so I signed up to 2 IM seminars, took all the action there was to take in record time, as I can go a bit faster than the newbees and could say: so i took action, now why is there still no money? No answer as the usual ” you didn’t take action” was out of the picture.

Then the property seminar using the same pitch and adding the ‘I want to help people”. So one girl on the free introduction-salespitch seminar had negative cashflow, no money and really needed help. Did the ‘guru’ take her in? No. Hmmm, not too difficult to teach a person to stretch the loan so it covers the rental income, but nope, not even that.

I agree: teaching family members for free what you are doing doesn’t work well either, but family isn’t your customer base, unless you follow Robert Allen’s ‘secrets’.

That said: you can’t simply generalize and have a 1 answer that works for all.

I do agree with Michelle: bills need to be paid, it’s up to everyone if they can sleep with the prices they set and the possible harm their product causes. If the product has no side effects and it gives the customer a good ROI or money back guarantee, then you can pay the bills and sleep in peace

Surely I’m just stating the obvious and wasting time here. I think this is something people either get or don’t, no convincing them. This soul is tired of trying to open eyes, I think I might just go on my merry way Jerry.

I bought a program that gives you good software and training for getting paperback books published cheaply on Amazon. The guy that sold the program now has me on his list and he promotes at least 2 webinars a month for other peoples products. These are expensive products and have nothing to do with each other or his publishing program.

He just does it and gets a cut by using his list(which I’m on) to build interest in the webinar and then gets a healthy cut from any sales.

I contacted him to let him know I was totally burned out on his constant emails for webinars promoting the greatest products on earth. I then asked him if it bothered him that those of us that bought his publishing program were diverted and distracted by all of these “wonderful offers”. He said he was sorry that I didn’t like his marketing methods and would take me off his list.

The bottom line here is that this guy thinks what he’s doing is just fine and this is his “business model”. Personally I would feel a sense of guilt. Again it’s just plain right/wrong. Maybe it’s comes down to I couldn’t sleep well doing business this way where someone else sleeps like a baby.

Thanks Michelle. You have a lot of soul girl!

I don’t feel guilty for benefiting from a capitalistic society at all. I feel disturbed by greed and weak justifications for greed.

To be honest, I don’t think I’m getting far here. I’m hijacking people’s time to try to wake them up to the fact that there is more than one place to shop so to speak. I’m screwing with the market, I’m trying to highlight that there are competitors out there whose value equation is mind blowingly better than what the usual suspects offer. Of course that might mean that the Internet lifestyle dream isn’t so dreamy and that’s not what people want to hear. It kind of feels like we’re in a bit of a virtual stupor, like we’re still in the record store buying vinyl or CDs and aspiring to one day have our own CD in that same store and charge $29.95 for it too. I think I’m at the point where raining on everyone’s parade just isn’t useful, it falls mostly on deaf ears. I wonder how I can redirect my page rank four to a site where I’m more productive. I think I’ll Google that today.

Thanks for joining in the discussion Ruth.

Thanks for stopping by.

Yes, greed is the motive for a lot of what is done in society. I’m not saying that people should not be paid for what they earn, but clearly there are tons of examples in this industry and others that simply ride of the premise “I can charge this much because I can.”

I’ve always been baffled by the way Amazon and other online retailers tried to justify charging practically the same amount for an ebook as they do for a hardback. Really? Looks like they’re catching on to the fact that we’re not stupid. It’s the other people in the chain that are getting desperate and trying to maintain a hold on their piece of the pie.

That being said, value certainly has its place in the way we price things. But even that has been distorted by greed to a large degree. Often times the value is determined by the creator and not by the audience.

Now I’m not sure how I feel about the pricing issues you mentioned, but I think I have to agree a lot with Forest. I was also going to mention the fact that eBooks generally sell far fewer copies than those paper books that are far cheaper.

I don’t know Michelle, but it seems like you are kind of struggling with our whole capitalist society. I, too, struggle very much with it and sometimes feel guilty for even benefiting from it at all. After all, no matter how you look at it, there is always someone who loses out and always someone who takes advantage of that fact, even if indirectly. As much as I don’t want to be a part of it, I also don’t NOT want to be a part of it. I don’t have any answers but it’s good to at least be exploring the ideas here. Maybe I’m getting too deep into this but that’s the feeling I get from your post.

For example studying a harvard degree online or actually at harvard costs about the same because you are theoretically paying for the information not the surroundings.

i agree with you totally but I think you have to think about the quality and accept that a high price (especially if the info helps you earn more than the book) is ultimately what matters not how it’s delivered.

Also projected sales vs profits helps what you price it at. The photoshop book probably sold 20 or 30 thousand so it’s relative price and profit can be kept low. If it was a limited run special book it could have sold at $300. Ebooks often don’t have the reach and backing of a publisher so are more exclusive and in essence need a higher profit margin.

Don’t feel bad about your price points, you need to make a living. Your 1000′s of writing hours need to be paid for somehow!

Marketers who give shite high priced products should be lined up and made to make monkey noises live on camera for our entertainment to pay back for their sins.