Here is a business formula that (shudder) apparently, or so I was told by somebody I have reason to believe, made a "Fast Freddy" type a lot of money.
- Establish a website selling digital cameras and related equipment.
- Advertise major brand name cameras, popular models, at impossibly low prices.
- Price crawler websites will find those prices and feature that website.
- Develop bundles with cases and batteries and other add-ons that make the sale profitable, despite the low price of the key item.
- Make your website not work right when people try to order only the impossibly low-cost item by itself. Make it work fine when they order the item along with higher-margin add-ons.
- Train telephone answerers to simply hang up on callers trying to order just the impossibly low-price item.
- Change your business name and website name every three or four months when the bad customer feedback catches up with you.
A few years ago I taught a University of Oregon undergraduate working his way through school doing website programming. He had done most of it for the same business, although the business; legal entity changed every three months.
I met him walking by a couple years later. The "Fast Freddy" had sold his business for several million dollars.
Do you really want me to name names? I could. 🙂 I always go to http://www.resellerratings.com to get feedback on any company I do business with. (I don't mean to spam your blog, and feel free to edit that out.)
Being a software developer there is always the lure to do the wrong thing for fast money. I had one instructor at a certification course who made us all pledge "I promise to use my powers only for good, never for evil." That is an ethos I have always held, but apparently not everyone is so conscientious.