Feb
17

The World is Actually Older Than the Internet

One of the things that I find the most annoying on the Internet today, is disinformation, and those that still believe anything they read, which usually just helps spread the confusion.

We are currently selling a shirt on our main website https://supershirtguy.com/ that Europeans have been wearing, for at least 14 years. I am actually selling the ones made by the original manufacturer.

So here I am putting this particular shirt on the Internet, and I find Three people all claiming they are the artist that has drawn it, and are all selling them on American websites, as the original.

Now I have to say here that I was recently spoken about on one of these Massive huge shirt company websites,  I don’t know if any of them are part of the company or not, and to be honest most of them didn’t like my selection of shirts, but that is fine, they are only made for cool people to wear anyhow.

Some though accused us of plagiarizing the art used on the shirt.

So to them I would like to say this.

First of all we only buy and resell the shirts we have nothing to do with the design right now.

Second of all your websites claim on the design is less than 5 years old, and this company I believe has been around for over 2 decades, and had this particular design over a decade already.

Third I am actually pretty sure They are the largest t-shirt store in the world, yours might be the biggest in America, but who knows you may even buy from these people for all I know.

Forth of all, The world is older than the Internet. Believe it or not being the first to stake claim to a picture you place on the Internet does not actually mean it didn’t exist before.

Nov
17

Whats the price? – Rant

I have been looking all day for a promotional pen manufacturer that will ship to me for a reasonable price, I find tons of pens, but no pricing.  I have wasted about three hours on this and am just giving up for now. So I thought I would rant a bit about having price tags on stuff.

In my career in sales, I have sold inexpensive items such as $5 portable radios, and $3 headphones,  I have also sold $100,000 Cadillac , and top end home theatre systems sometimes costing more than $60 000,

I have seen all kinds of sleaze and greed in my time, and the worst of it is when you put a high commission salesperson with a product with no price tag.

Often a $70 item suddenly becomes $300, or a $500 suddenly becomes $2000, and believe it or not people don’t know any better and actually buy these things.  Sure they usually know the price of the main item, but not all the little extras they try and sell you after. The guy ripping them off will lower the price until they buy anyhow, or “switch products” to get in their price range,  and judge how much they will sell it for by how much trust they feel they have from the customer.

Anyhow, here I am trying to buy pens online, and there are no prices, whats the secret? Do you expect me to draw you a bank cheque? I’m sorry I cant buy for “secret prices” how do you even put a secret price on the pay slip for me to sign?

If everything has price tags my days and everyone else’s will just be that more efficient, and the guys that rip you off not only wont be able to rip people off anymore, but when they go shopping themselves they wont get ripped off either.

There should be a law that all items without a price tags  are free.

Oct
21

The Man and his stupid copywrite laws.

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OK, I know we have to protect the logos and hard creative work done by others, but I am faced with a situation currently on both my personal and business side that is making me wonder exactly what the logic is of these silly decisions.

First off the music industry.

I happen to love music, I am a big fan of all kinds of music and have a large CD collection of over 2000 CDs, as well as DVD videos of many of my favorite bands.

I used to be able to see all these bands on MTV and enjoy their videos and music, as well as listen to them in my car as I drove. This is my problem. I can’t hear the music of my favorite bands anymore, not legally anyhow. Radio stations back home have these programming directors that may or not play it. It seems at least in Canada these days we just don’t get the DJs that play whole albums anymore, it’s no longer up to them, I hear the US is the same way these days, not sure about the rest of the world.

The programing directors at the radio stations now decide based on the highest profitability of the radio station which songs will be played, instead of the music loving DJs of old, that just played what they wanted. The same thing has happened to MTV, its all about profit now, which is fine for them I guess, but I may not like what is popular and now I cant hear the music I like.

So what do I do? If I want to hear, or “try out” some music, I do what most people do,  search the Internet for what I want to her. Very recently I searched for some songs from Nickleback. Even though they are one of the biggest rock bands in the world today, and I happen to like them. I search and I search but I cant find the official video. Ones that were put up by fans yesterday are gone today due to copy write laws.

Why on earth do these big bands no longer want their videos to be played. OK I know Nickleback and most other large bands have official stations on YouTube, and on their official website, however they don’t display all the videos, and I cant hear all the songs. Often the Websites are not as easy to use as Google and YouTube . If the songs I want are there somewhere, I cant be bothered to find them, after five minutes I just give up forever.

Basically to make a long story short, I used to listen to the music and then buy it. Now I can no longer listen to the music, so of course I am not going to spend my $20 to see if they have any talent left.

Music Company, Epic Fail.

Second of all Mickey Mouse

OK do we all know who Mickey is? I would say yes but barely, Disney is so famous with their protecting of copy write laws, I swear I am afraid just mentioning them here will end me up in court.

Now I loved Disney as a kid, and loved going to their movies, I made sure I saw every one ever made until about 10 years ago. Then I just kind of forgot about them. Though I sill watch their films with my son from time to time.

Anyhow here I am in Asia, and people tend to ignore copy write laws here, everyone is free to print a mickey mouse shirt, and sell it on a street corner for 5 dollars, people buy them cheap and wear them. On my ninety minute walk today I was met with his cute little face no less that four times. They have little mickey logos on polo shirts, he is on bags and hats etc. People like him, he advertises Disney, and they are doing it for free.

Back home no one wears mickey, its not that he isn’t cute, but the local Disney store from where I lived was about a 45 minute drive, and the shirts are $30 each. Why bother ?

I forget all about Mickey back home, good job copy write lawyers.

Epic Fail Disney (wonder if I will get sued now)

Third of all beer t-shirts.

OK lots of people love beer, and lots of people travel and would love to have a beer shirt from places they have been. But beer companies want to be the only ones selling their shirts. The shirts on most of the official beer company sites are quite expensive, say about $30 plus shipping. So I would assume generally the people don’t buy them.

I used to sell a particular beer shirt on my website and was forced to take it down. I had outranked their official site on the Google Searches and I guess they didn’t like that. By the way I had surfed there official clothing site four times or so and had found it very difficult to find the actual shirts, it was painful to look for them through all the graphics, not to mention I had checked there Internet traffic numbers and they just didn’t get that many people. Basically a really bad site with lots of good graphics.

Why on earth don’t they want people to run around with their beer logos on their chest? I mean they spend millions if not billions on beer ads, billboards and event sponsorship. When did these guys decide that free advertising was a bad thing?

Beer Company, Epic Fail

This is a common pattern in current international big business, they so busy protecting their copy writes they have forgotten all about maximizing profits. They don’t even realize they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Way to go big business, when I go get my beer tonight I will forget to get one from your company, I wont have a new CD to listen to as I drink it, and my son wont be bugging me to watch a Disney film or go to Disneyland tomorrow. I hope you have somehow made enough profit elsewhere to make up for a world that is no longer craving your items, and that you somehow survive  in the future as more and more people forget you exist.

Oct
19

Losing the Rat Race? Switch lanes.

I used to run pretty hard in the rat race. at the age of 18, back in 1992 I was making sixty thousand United States Dollars a year, and that went up a little bit over the next 4 years, but I never reached $70 000. I was working 70 hours a week, most of my friends at the time were in University, making nothing, or almost nothing.

I was making more money than the people I worked with, and all my friends. I had won the Rat Race that was in my lane (Place and Time).

I used to teach English privately in Japan back in 1999 for $120 US Dollars per hour, tax free. That was my highest hourly wage ever.

Now I am not sure what you have made before or are making now, that is irrelevant. I have a brother that would not be able to live on a measly $70 000 a year, he has friends that spend that in a month, believe it or not. He is not winning his current rat race and is still driven to make more money.

The Rat Race

Happiness Is Just Around The Corner

The rat race is all relative to the people around you and your surroundings. I am currently living in third world Asia, and my measly income of approximately $1000 US a month, puts me in good standings with my neighbors, and friends here. Most of them make similar or less.

With my thousand dollar a month income, I have enough money to rent a decent sized two bedroom, two bathroom house, pay for my son’s private school, run the air conditioners 24 hours a day if I wish, surf the Internet, watch satellite television, take air conditioned taxis to see movies in the cinema at least once a week, eat out 2 times a day and every second day get a two hour traditional massage.

Back home the massages alone would be over $1500 dollars a month in Canada, and I dare say they likely wouldn’t be as good.

Life is pretty good here on a thousand dollars a month. Wouldn’t you say?

Back home making $70 000 a year I was unable to do all that. So if you look at me back home making $70 000 a year or look at me now making just under $12 000 a year. I am actually living a much better life now on the $12 000.

Which would you choose, the making more than your friends scenario where you are still forced to budget to make ends meet? Or the lesser income in a country where you get a lot more for your money?

Basically, if you are sick of the rat race, consider switching lanes. What are you really after in life anyhow?

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