Home Based Business Opportunities - Start By Firing Bad Clients at Hello
I typically find it more than a bit perplexing how many people contact me with this sort of email (always worded slightly differently than this - but with the same message).
I am almost broke because I just purchased a competing product to yours for 3 times the money. Actually two of them. Great stuff. But they are getting me nowhere.
I want to rank for home based business opportunity (nevermind that I know nothing about that market, am too lazy to learn about it, am nearly bankrupt and earning nothing from home based business, ie: I have no authority or credibility on any level) and need to make $20,000 in the next 3 months but have not made a cent yet.
I have been on the web for nearly a month. I am frustrated by this stuff. Where is the easy money at? Can you show me how to make lots of money while doing nothing? I don't really value your opinion and I was too cheap to buy your product (figuring that it was just the same as everything else on the market), but I thought I would send you a two page email asking you to set up my business model for me. Although I would never help you, and if you are a sucker and help people like me you would be miserable day in and day out and then eventually bankrupt, I think you should help me. I have no foresight to see the value of the market or how you could help, but be a decent human being.
Do the right thing Aaron!
Invariably, the right thing to do is ignore that email. Label it as trash or spam or put it in some experimental folder for when you may want to later compile a rant. It is really all that email is good for.
If they are a paying customer you might want to give them a bit of a nudge in the right direction (they probably deserve a shot if they already paid you), but usually it is just better to give them a refund than to engage in an ongoing conversation with someone like that.
You need a certain mindset to do well. Placing blame and/or expecting free personalized in depth help is typically not going to get you very far.
If you take on clients that are like that you are just as good off sawing off your arm and sticking it up your rear end, because you are throwing half of your productivity out the window trying to help someone who will be a pain in the ass that never intends to appreciate or help you in any way.
If people do not see value in what you do then there is no point doing it for them.
Comments
Its not just these kind of guys, but also people that have "real" (offline) businesses, and then expect the web to be somehow different. You would think that people with real world business experience would wouldn't submit so easily to this kind of thinking, but they do, in droves. Thank god they have something to fall back on.
Highly entertaining post. I agree with bigsteveman that the average perception of businesses towards the web is mind boggling as they would never apply the same approach to the non-virtual biz space.
It's always amusing to hear persons claim they have a right to a top 10 position while in real life their business doesn't go beyond the border of their own town.
I love the people who say they were not 100% satisfied with my book, but would be if I did their SEO as part of the book price.
Idiots.
If you don't trust me and feel I burned you by offering limited value in my product why would it make any sense to extend that business partnership?
Is it that they are just lazy and want thousands of dollars thrown at them for nothing?
I am half tempted to stop selling the ebook all together or maybe increase the price a few hundred percent to have lower exposure to people at the lower end of the business ethics ladder.
Testify!
Hear hear!
Absolutely! It constantly amazes me how certain clients expect the world, and want it given to them for free.
How did you log into my inbox to read the e-mails I've been getting?!?
ha! Oh - the employer I work for targets realtors - one of the bastions of primadonnas in the world. One time I helped a client troubleshoot her email - going from webmail to Outlook. After about a half hour of troubleshooting, I told her to click send/receive. Finally all things worked. Yet she had the audacity to explode on me saying why didnt we have explicit instructions to click "send/receive"
My opinion - if you have no respect for 1) that I just spent all that time solving something you didn't know how to solve and 2) you have no respect for your lack of technology knowledge to appreciate the epiphany I just provided, you have no business being in business or making any money.
People force you to give an inch and then think they can seize a mile....I would have loved to fire this client.
I have no problem giving people a point in the right direction. What annoys me more is when someone wants 5 star treatment for a 3 figure price.
Gold rush.
This person isn't new, they been around for centuries... whether buying a map to the secret spot in the river or an abandoned mine, answering an ad in the back of a magazine, or jotting a phone number down from a tacked up sign on a telephone pole or stuck in the ground along the side of the road or sitting in some seminar in some hotel meeting room... they will be there.
The thought that there is some easy, magic solution to riches or success is intoxicating, especially to those who would rather not lift a finger in the first place... the fact that they actually took the effort to email, write, or call is nothing short of a miracle in itself.
The web however has lifted this thought to new proportions. Ironically, in an arena where anyone and everyone can publish... which is still one of the most incredible benefits of this medium... and one should probably question anything and everything they read more than ever, most people are more than happy to take anything and everything as gospel. We, who are working long and hard trying to make an honest living, are probably the real fools and idiots. There has probably never been an easier time than right now to pave the way in get-rich-quick. Damn you conscience!
Suddenly everyone sees the web as their easy ticket to riches. Get a website and you are set. They feel cheated by all those who have made millions off the web... millions that should rightfully be theirs. How easily they right off all those who also lost millions on the web. And of course, it is the moral obligation of those of us who have the magic answers to help these people. Nevermind that there are no magic answers. The real question though, is why is it that most people believe that anyone who suppossively has these magic answers would be sitting at home reading emails, taking calls, and doing whatever else it is they do to help every other poor schmuck to achieve the same success, rather than going traveling the world, or simply taking a few hours out of their day to go to the movies? Ah, the life of successful and easy independence.
I am almost broke .........
Created/Invented load of crap! Shame on you SEOBook.
I always thought you were Aaron Wall, Quadzilla? Hmm, I will have to look into this, who is Quadzilla if he is not Aaron Wall?
Take on this client? ...what client? The guy's a smart ass moron and needs his ass kicked from here to Kalamazoo!
He says he's broke, he insults you, readily says he wouldn't do spit for you and then asks you to do everything for him so he can make 20 large on your dime. Are you nuts?
Why are you people even discussing this loser?
...if I didn't know better, his MO sounds like George Bush. If you don't know how to respond appropriately, post his email addy and let me.
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"I always thought you were Aaron Wall, Quadzilla? Hmm, I will have to look into this, who is Quadzilla if he is not Aaron Wall?"
He's one of "those" living inside a box that only pops out occasionally to salute his executioners and pledge allegiance to the murdering gang of thugs who orchestrated 911.
In essence, Quadzilla's gonna be wondering what happened when he's sitting in an internment camp with his W sticker in hand.
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LOL... You've got to love it Aaron... with great knowledge comes great power... If I end up getting a bunch of emails or requests for something in particular I'll throw together a tutorial... otherwise it goes into the morbid gbox for when I write my memoirs :-)
Love the blog Aaron....
And would you PM me when you find the secret answer to millions overnight? Thanks in advance!
NeO
One recent experience: an email asking for a paid phone consultation to help choose between two courses.
My email reply states slightly less bluntly than this: you don't need to pay for a consultation. One of your proposals is possibly right, the other is definitely wrong, and in any case all the info you need is in my book.
Another go: he asks again to pay for a phone consultation to help make the choice.
My reply: no need. it's not only in my book, available from Amazon, but it is even in the free extract you can download. And there's no decision: one of your proposals is right, the other wrong, and I've advised in the previous email which and why.
I wonder what will be in my inbox tomorrow. Is it possible he wants to pay to convince me my advice is wrong?
There are people waiting to be taken. But not by me.
I'm not buying any of this crap. I know theres a secret to easy riches, and I'll use all my energies to get someone to tell me what it is....even if i have to work at it for the rest of my life.
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