Why do you buy and not try?

Hi Tim,

I think the answer to your question depends on where someone is in their "online career" and how much "hype" is in the sales letter vs how good (or bad) the product turns out to be.

Also, IMHO, people who are new to IM tend to buy a lot of products looking for the ones that fit their personality or skills or that they think will bring in the bucks quickly. There is no "one size fits all" business model in IM.

I built my first website in 1998 and have bought a lot of products over the years, most of which I never acted on because they didn't fit my personality or I didn't think I could do what they were telling me to do or the information was pure crap.

I have, however, acted on many of the products I purchased and most of them didn't work out for me. Some did, but most didn't.

For example, last year I got into the whole "offline gold" business model. I bought several ebooks and I even bought the "Make 10k in a Weekend" product (at full price).

I took massive action, joined the local Chamber of Commerce, got a partner to work with me on the weekend seminars, scheduled and promoted our first seminar for local offline businesses. Not one person signed up for the seminar!

I attended countless COC meetings, mixers & luncheons, and talked to countless local business people. Not one of them was remotely interested in either attending our seminar, nor having anyone help them get and retain more customers through their website.

They certainly didn't beg me to help them or fall all over themselves, desperate to talk to me when they heard what I do for a living like the "offline gold" gurus said they would.

And, I wasn't pushy about it either, the only time I talked about what I do for a living was when someone asked me or when I did a "30 second elevator speech" at some networking meeting. Most people would just say "Oh, that's nice." when I told them what I do.

I did have several conversations with people where I'd ask them what type of advertising they did to get customers. Most would say, "oh, we have a yellow pages ad." and I would ask them if they have a website and most did but they had no idea if they got any customers from it.

During one of my "elevator speeches" I actually asked a room full of people at a networking group to raise their hand if they had a website for their business. Everyone in the room raised their hand.

Then I asked them to raise their hand if they knew how many customers they got from their website last month. Not one person raised their hand. They looked at me like I had 2 heads.

That's when I'd had enough and went back to what I was doing before, quietly making a living online.

Tamara