Am I Wrong or Do You Do This Too?

It depends (largely on what the product is I'm looking at). For me, it would be a signal, but it wouldn't necessarily be the only thing that would turn me on or off the product.

I don't know what Flowplayer is, but I don't read sites with cheap Wordpress themes.

This. There is no magic pill to making money online. It's about hard work, persistence, and never giving up.

JohnMcCabe, I couldn't of said it better myself. I think there are a lot of people who make good money online using free products like:

1. YouTube
2. Wordpress
3. (GKT) Google Keyword Tool
4. Spinner Chief
5. Cam Studio
6. Open Office

These products are free and people are making plenty of money utilizing them.
I think you have to take everything into account to make an assessment rather than a blanket statement that if you use a free version of a product then they have to be a scammer.

Yep, this is another classic example of a logical fallacy.

Would you take finacial advice from someone that brought his lunch in a brown paper bag every day for decades and parked 4 blocks away from his office to save on parking lot costs? I hope so, because I just described JP Morgan.

Actually, YOU made the assumption that that was my assumption. If you re-read what I wrote, I didn't even imply that.

My implication was more one of character and incongruity.

agree and it brings back that rule lol. do the opposite of what most folks are doing. one of the key ways to make money is to learn to save. one other thing I would add to the thread is rather than looking at the person whether they are a guru or not pay attention to what the person is saying.

true story. around two months ago a friend approached me with zeeker rewards. i go and look at the site and after glancing and reading a little I couldn't figure what they actually sold and figured something was wrong with it, because for years everyone thought it was a great company. Zeek it appears has now been down and is said to be a ponzi scheme.

While I haven't heard back yet from my friend I suspect that it's not good for him, because he was going into other ventures with parts of his earnings.

I wouldn't even take alexa as written stone either, but I would look at the results and investigate further.

It depends on what they sell. You, me, everyone has a movie going on in their head about everything they do. If reality and the script they've got for their internal movie are too far apart, they don't buy.

You should know what kind of expectations your target market has, then create a sale process that fits them, the movie in their heads.

If the sales page includes, as it often happens, a nice car in the background, or a mansion, etc., then I expect no free versions of anything.

If the sales page is about how the product will save me time and money, about how it will make me lose weight, or get a date, etc., I have no such expectations (I have a different set).

To the person above who said this is ridiculous: would you take advice on losing weight from a 650 lb person? Would you take advice on how to dress from the teenager with his belt an inch above the knees? Would you give your hard earned money to a financial investor who wears his pants in that fashion + an old baseball cap (visor on the side) and smelling like he hasn't taken a bath in a week?

It just so happens that in this particular case, your expectations and reality match.

I guess I didn't "get the memo", lol.

I don't consider myself a "guru" by any means, but I could easily buy the commercial version of Flowplayer for all of my sites if I wanted. But what would be the point? Seriously, who cares if the "Flowplayer" logo briefly appears while the video is loading?

But then again I don't make income claims on any of my sites, so I could give a rats azz if someone thinks I'm not "legit" simply because I don't use the commercial version of Flowplayer. :rolleyes:

Not to mention... I can't even count how many sales pages I've seen from respected, well-known marketers, where there is a YouTube video embedded in the sales page. Does that mean they're not "legit" because they use a free service to host their videos?

Just because you could spend money on something doesn't necessarily mean that you should!

Fine. Split test with the ones you pay for.

Sure it is possible I am missing out on something. I only apply this rule to people in the "make money" niches. But I'm going to stand by my position. If you're claiming to make $1,000s a day and can't bother to pay $99 to remove the Flowplayer watermark from your video player, either you're lying about your income or you're a freakin' cheapskate and I don't want to do business with you.

I've used Gimp. If you're going to try to convince me it is more effective than Photoshop, you're wasting your time. Gimp sucks.

The free tool doesn't bother me. If that is good enough for the purpose, why pay.

What I pay attention to is the promises. If a guy promises riches, I run away. If a guy says just press the button, I run away. If it was that easy, we would buy all of congress these buttons and in a matter of days, the deficit will be gone.

I like to associate with people who talk logically and don't shy away from disclosing the fact that success takes time and effort.

Exactly! (per post #28 above)

I agree, but if they truly and genuinely want to help someone they sometimes do share their secrets.

Andrew

Hi Bruce,

My experiences have taught me to pay attention, also to take note of my observations about a person/website/business, but ultimately to try not to pre-judge the value of what is within based on those appearances/observations/first impressions.

We naturally make some logical assumptions (EG cheapskates aren't successful) but there are other universal rules at work which have a kind of reverse logic at their core, which ultimately can make logical assumptions become illogical, when the big picture is viewed.

For example, although the general odds suggest that overall we are likely to be better off learning from more 'successful' people, it's also true that there may be more to learn from someone who turns $100 into £10k than someone who turns 100K into £10m - especially if we are also starting out with $100.

Another example of this - if a golden nugget of information is to be found on a universally impressive looking website and a similarly golden nugget is to be found on a horrible looking website, the latter nugget may eventually be worth more to someone because the masses think like yourself and assume that the latter nugget has less value due to the look of the website it is found on, therefore there are less people utilising the nugget on the latter one which may give it more value to the person that implements the nugget.

I don't know much about flow player, but one person has suggested that the paid version doesn't offer many benefits to the purchaser, therefore it may not be a good business decision to invest in the paid version - so by only viewing websites using the paid version we could be limiting ourselves to only soaking up knowledge derived from those who make poor business decisons.

Therefore I prefer my policy - pay attention, make note of things, but try not to pre-judge - instead (as much as possible) try to evaluate information without too much bias and decide if the information is good based on the content itself - BUT with the prior observations kept in mind.

False dichotomy - we could both do 'this' and both be wrong.

I'm saying I'd never see the content.

I have to agree, I am afraid that you got this wrong...

You probably won't make money of the people who know the difference between free/paid version of flow player anyway...

I think that will count for less than 10% of the people who buy online marketing products, besides, if the product its good enough you can put the video on youtube and embed it into a blogspot and no one will care.

But that being said, if you can and care about this stuff just go with the paid version to for 2 main reasons:

1. Avoid this sort of things
2. A small percentage might click away on the player logo...

Yes, I agree with your statement

I understand that.

First, depending on price, one or two lost sales because of this issue would have paid for the player.

Perhaps because my roots are in software development but I just feel it's a matter of giving back to the community that helped you prosper. I don't think that's a waste of money.

In my main membership site, I bought JW Player, S2 Member Pro and Custom Community Pro. The free versions of each of these were perfectly adequate and most of my members will never know the difference. But I do.

Look, I didn't start this thread to start a fight. I simply wanted to point out that things like that matter to me and affect my buying decisions, and they do to others who've posted here.

You can do what you want with the information.