kainzero Wrote:a lot of sales tactics often use "just $x a day," "just 5 easy payments of $x!" in order to minimize the initial shock. a lot of our expenditures aren't calculated daily but in lump sums so you need to look at the total cost.

When I was in college, occasionally a bunch of people would stand in front of our campus and ambush passers-by, signing them up to sponsor starving children in some third world country.

One day one of these people got me in his clutches and asked me if I would spend $30 a month to sponsor a child. I told him I didn't have that kind of money, to which he said, "Or look at it this way. That's $7.50 a week. That's like one less sandwich at Starbucks."

I told him, "Look, buddy. I'm a college student with no income. I only eat about 12 meals a week, most of which consist of one large slice of pizza. Are you asking me to take that down to 10 meals a week?" and walked away.

kainzero Wrote:a lot of sales tactics often use "just $x a day," "just 5 easy payments of $x!" in order to minimize the initial shock.

Yeah, that's true. It is a shady sales tactic.

However, when making a consumer decision I think it's useful to look at in on a monthly or weekly basis because you can compare it to other things. For example I find it's better to buy SS daily than meet with a private teacher only twice a month.

For me it's already a given that learning Japanese is expensive. I've already wasted tons of money on it. So at this point it's not about if I will spend tons more money, but who I will end up giving it to.

I think it's great if you have the money and this is what you've always been looking for, however

-The "GO GO GO RUSH INTO THIS DECISION BEFORE THE PRICE GOES UP" sales tactic, bundled with being unable to go from daily to monthly, i.e. "you can try it out for cheap but if you like it that will just make things more expensive" are pretty dirty/unethical sales practices.
-I dislike that the blog is being spammed up with silver spoon
-I think a lot of people don't realize the value of their money. As someone who's saving up every last penny to fund my college education in england, seeing someone say spending 2$/5$ for an email with some content he didn't create is not a lot of money kind of makes me die inside

On the other hand:

-If people are making a conscious decision, as opposed to an impulse buy (which I think he's kind of trying to get by raising the prices thus creating an atmosphere of urgency), and do feel they have the money and that the couple of links to content are worth it for them, I don't see anything inherently wrong with charging what I personally find to be too much money for what you get.
-The blog itself is still free and ultimately useful to me
-Just because I'm in a bad financial situation doesn't mean others shouldn't be able to do what they want with their money. I still do insist you consider how much money this really is compared to what you are getting, and if there is not a better way to spend this money (like say, buying actual content with it)

All in all I guess I don't have a problem with the product, nor the price (I think it's too high but people know what they are spending, there's no hidden costs). I do however think it's not okay that he's rushing people into buying the product.

This was my extremely redundant opinion, thank you all.

tokyostyle Wrote:Yeah, that's true. It is a shady sales tactic.

However, when making a consumer decision I think it's useful to look at in on a monthly or weekly basis because you can compare it to other things. For example I find it's better to buy SS daily than meet with a private teacher only twice a month.

It's not a shady sales tactic, it's just a sales tactic. You can even use it to your own benefit.

In order to eat at one of the premier restaurants in LA, I saved up and put aside $50 a month ($1.75 a day!) for 8 months.

I'm not debating the value of SS since all that's been need to be said has already been said. I'm just saying that $5 a day can actually become a significant amount of money that you shouldn't downplay once you look at the big picture.

well the difference being that every day you pay something you also get something, so I don't think it's quite comparable.

At the same time you're buying a few links to youtube and other stuff, so the question is "is it really worth giving this guy 2$ every day to send me an email with a few links?"

and I guess for some people that answer is yes. If your time is really valuable and you'd rather not spend it looking for media but enjoying media, why not. Since the effort in attaining your own media isn't that big though I am guessing for most people that answer is still no

What is a shady sales tactic, IMO, is raising the price thus not really giving people the time to consider it rationally

kind of off-topic but i think the first page of this thread is really funny... everyone sounds so doe-eyed and green. lol

So, in summary:

For any service:

1. How much time would it take YOU to do what you could pay SOMEONE ELSE to do?
2. How much is your time worth to you?
3. Math

Also:
1. Some people make bad decisions.
2. People who sell things, use psychology to make people more likely to buy things.

Kyosys Wrote:well the difference being that every day you pay something you also get something, so I don't think it's quite comparable.

the frequency that you receive something isn't as important as the value of the that thing... the frequency is irrelevant.




i like jhenson's post, lol.

Why don't the SS people go create a Google Group or something instead of hijacking this thread?

travis Wrote:Why don't the SS people go create a Google Group or something instead of hijacking this thread?

Do I miss the irony in your comment? We all can get along pretty well without such comments ... Nobody should leave this forum, not the SS members, and no one else ... *kopfschüttel*

Nagareboshi Wrote:

travis Wrote:Why don't the SS people go create a Google Group or something instead of hijacking this thread?

Do I miss the irony in your comment? We all can get along pretty well without such comments ... Nobody should leave this forum, not the SS members, and no one else ... *kopfschüttel*

Obviously not, otherwise the other SS thread wouldn't have been closed. Note the thread title: AJATT, about his "method" of sentence mining, immersion and whatever else he came up with, not SS which is just some subscription mailing list. Create an SS thread again then if you still want to talk about it, but this is the same crap again that was repeated for 20 odd pages last time.

travis Wrote:

Nagareboshi Wrote:

travis Wrote:Why don't the SS people go create a Google Group or something instead of hijacking this thread?

Do I miss the irony in your comment? We all can get along pretty well without such comments ... Nobody should leave this forum, not the SS members, and no one else ... *kopfschüttel*

Obviously not, otherwise the other SS thread wouldn't have been closed. Note the thread title: AJATT, about his "method" of sentence mining, immersion and whatever else he came up with, not SS which is just some subscription mailing list. Create an SS thread again then if you still want to talk about it, but this is the same crap again that was repeated for 20 odd pages last time.

There are fights in a forum from time to time, but people fight and people reunite, it happens all the time. There is no need for anyone to leave, or anyone to suggest people should leave, simply because there was a heated discussion going on.

kainzero Wrote:

Kyosys Wrote:well the difference being that every day you pay something you also get something, so I don't think it's quite comparable.

the frequency that you receive something isn't as important as the value of the that thing... the frequency is irrelevant.




i like jhenson's post, lol.

I agree completely, but the value of a small portion you receive in one day is what you need to compare to the price you pay for that. It's not about frequency. If you stay a long time you get a lot of links, if you stay a short time you get a small amount of links. Either way, you know how much you pay for one of those portions, it's not about frequency.

I definitely agree with some things Khatz is doing with this, but telling you how much it costs a day isn't one of them, since you also get a portion, i.e. a product once a day.

Kyosys Wrote:I agree completely, but the value of a small portion you receive in one day is what you need to compare to the price you pay for that. It's not about frequency. If you stay a long time you get a lot of links, if you stay a short time you get a small amount of links. Either way, you know how much you pay for one of those portions, it's not about frequency.

You aren't paying for the links. The links are an extra freebie. The main content doesn't have many content links. I don't think you really understand what the service provides. The emails you get sent are irrelevant and can be completely ignored.

v SS is not an email service. It's a web-based service.

Say you want to clone the SS service.

Is there a free tool you can use where people can sign up to receive a series of X emails, one per day (or a frequency you select)? It should send the Nth email on the Nth day of their subscription regardless of when they signed up.

kainzero Wrote:It's not a shady sales tactic, it's just a sales tactic.

Doing a google search for: 'sales-tactic "a day"' (remove single quotes), the first two hits both have "sneaky sales tactics" in the title. The second is "How To Defend Against 7 Sneaky Sales Tactics" on doyoudaveramsey.com.

doyoudaveramsey.com Wrote:5. Sales Tactic: Breaking down payments. To overcome the “I can’t afford it” objection, a salesman may break down a figure into daily amounts to minimize the appearance of the overall cost.

Also on the same list is "3. Sales Tactic: Limited Offer," also discussed here as a shady tactic.

Personally, I think all sales techniques are inherently somewhat shady. They are attempts to manipulate people into making a purchase when they would not normally do so. But rather than just offer my opinion here I'm attempting to inject something that resembles objectivity. Objectively, I think the above quote is evidence that both of these sales tactics can be termed "sneaky".

IMHO: I think SS could be worthwhile to someone who has lots of $$ and little time, but not having seen the service I cannot say for sure whether that impression is correct. Is it actually just a set of links? How good are they? If they were all as good as the link to the apple ad that uses そっくり from Katsuo (http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid148257), then I'd probably sign up myself. :-)

Really, without knowing the answers to the above questions, it is really hard to judge if it is a worthwhile service.

My ￥2

CJ

cjon256 Wrote:

kainzero Wrote:It's not a shady sales tactic, it's just a sales tactic.

Doing a google search for: 'sales-tactic "a day"' (remove single quotes), the first two hits both have "sneaky sales tactics" in the title. The second is "How To Defend Against 7 Sneaky Sales Tactics" on doyoudaveramsey.com.

doyoudaveramsey.com Wrote:5. Sales Tactic: Breaking down payments. To overcome the “I can’t afford it” objection, a salesman may break down a figure into daily amounts to minimize the appearance of the overall cost.

Also on the same list is "3. Sales Tactic: Limited Offer," also discussed here as a shady tactic.

Personally, I think all sales techniques are inherently somewhat shady. They are attempts to manipulate people into making a purchase when they would not normally do so. But rather than just offer my opinion here I'm attempting to inject something that resembles objectivity. Objectively, I think the above quote is evidence that both of these sales tactics can be termed "sneaky".

IMHO: I think SS could be worthwhile to someone who has lots of $$ and little time, but not having seen the service I cannot say for sure whether that impression is correct. Is it actually just a set of links? How good are they? If they were all as good as the link to the apple ad that uses そっくり from Katsuo (http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid148257), then I'd probably sign up myself. :-)

Really, without knowing the answers to the above questions, it is really hard to judge if it is a worthwhile service.

My ￥2

CJ

this thread is using ajatt to wage a proxy war against the academic discipline of marketing. 反ajatt is arguing against some of the basic principles of capitalism.

maybe you hippies ought to be learning korean, not japanese ;D