Copyright 2005 Richard Grady
I warn you now, I am in 'rant-mode' for
this article! :-)
It all started earlier in the week when
a colleague posted a message on my forum
relating to a refund request that he had
received. In a nutshell, his customer had
purchased an eBook (a technical eBook -
nothing to do with Internet marketing etc)
for £9 (about $15) and then complained
that he had already found much of the information
contained within on my colleague's website
and within his forum. Because of this, he
felt that his eBook purchase was not value
for money and requested a refund. The buyer
actually stated that the main reason for
asking for a refund was that there was simply
too much free information on the website!!!
I was somewhat stunned that someone could
justify this in their mind, after all one
way or another, my colleague's website had
provided the answers to his questions so
why did he resent making a small payment
for this assistance?
Of course, the customer was refunded and
I forgot all about the incident...... for
about 5 hours when.......
....an entirely different person emailed
me with an almost identical request!!!
They too stated that they had purchased
one of my products and found that although
it was 'nice' to have the information packaged
into one place, 'some' of the content was
covered in the past posts of my forum and
my archived newsletters. Urm, well, yes
I hold my hands up, some of the content
matter has been discussed on the forum or
covered in old newsletters but do you really
want to go searching through over 35,000
forum posts or 3 years of newsletters to
find the information you are looking for
(especially when not all of it is even there!)?
And again, regardless of how you found the
information, I have still answered your
questions so do I not deserve to be rewarded
for that in some small way? (We are not
talking big money here believe me!)
It then occurred to me that this happens
in the offline world as well....
I have a friend who owns a computer repair
shop - this means that he earns his living
by fixing computers for people. It may seem
like I have just stated the obvious but
it seems that a large percentage of the
population thinks that he makes his living
by standing behind his counter dishing out
free technical advice to anyone that cares
to enter the shop.
Seriously, I was in the shop the other
day and there was a constant stream of people
coming in and starting a conversation with
the phrase...
"Can I just ask you a quick question.....?"
When someone says this, it basically means
'Can I have some free advice?' and for the
record, there is no such thing as a 'quick
question' when it comes to computers!
Now of course, some of my friends freebie
seekers will eventually turn into paying
customers when they realize that they can't
fix their computers themselves but the majority
won't and when you are being paid for your
time (or not), it is not good business sense
to stand around giving free advice all day.
So much so that he is now looking at ways
of charging for those 'quick questions'
and why not?
Going back to the online situation, people
have always liked something for nothing
and that's fine. This is exactly why I set
up the forum and my wholesale search engines
and why I write this newsletter and in fairness,
many people that use these services go on
to make purchases from me. But there is
something wrong with someone's logic chip
if they can justify complaining in the manner
described above. How do they think that
businesses can operate if they give everything
away for free?
Would the customers above have preferred
to have had to pay for access to our websites/forums/
newsletters in the first place? Would they
feel that this was better value than getting
the opportunity to find their answers first
for nothing? No, I don't think they would.
I am not saying don't take advantage of
the free information that is available online
(or indeed offline) but just be aware that
in most cases, the person providing the
information is not doing it for fun. If,
at some point, you decide to spend a small
amount of money with them then think twice
about whether it is right to ask for a refund
of less than £10 because you 'could'
have found the answers by spending a day
searching the sellers forum.
Remember that the vast majority of information
products (and indeed real-world books) contain
information that can be found for free IF
you were prepared to spend the time researching
the subject....
About the Author
Richard Grady has been helping people earn
online since 1998. eBay sellers find wholesalers
for free at: http://www.wholesale118.co.uk
(UK) & http://www.thewholesaletrader.com
(US). |
