A couple weeks ago my buddy called to say he got free tickets to a seminar about how to make money online using eBay, Yahoo, Google, MSN, etc. He asked me if I wanted to go. I told him yes, that I love I love these free Get Rich seminars. A day or two later, I got the same free tickets. Since my buddy had RSVP for the both of us, I didn’t bother.
Yesterday was the day of the seminar. I got out of work at 5pm, and the seminar was at 6pm across town. They were going to serve us free dinner, but that was after a 90 minute seminar. Seeing that I wouldn’t be eating until at least 7:30, and probably more likely 8pm, I grabbed a chicken sandwich at McDonalds, and got on the road.
I arrived at the airport Holiday Inn a little after 5:30, and found the check in line for the Internet Marketing Conference. But there was no sign of my buddy. People kept coming. Part of me was thinking that my buddy has possibly checked in, and was inside already. But I was kind of doubting that he we do that. I overheard a guy tell another guy behind the table that there were only 4 chairs left inside. It seemed that they were trying to find more chairs. Finally at close to 6pm, a guy came out, appologised, and said the room was full. He said we would still get our free gifts (a day planner), and they would give us money for the dinner. About this time my buddy showed up and asked what was going on. I quietly told him what the deal was.
They took us into another small room, and the guy gave us an overview of what they would have gone over in the other seminar. They represented a place called Stores Online (or StoresOnline ?). The people in the other room were part of the “preview team”. The main purpose of this free seminar was to tell us about another all-day seminar that cost only $20 (us and a guest). At the all-day seminar, they tell us how about how to set up a website, and marketing on the internet. They would also teach us about drop shipping, and affiliate marketing, etc. They would cover 8 different techniques that we could use. There would be a 15-20 minute personal consultation to find out what kind of store we would like to set up. Then apparently they would invite us to buy a website for $2700 (or $2800 programmed?). Apparently this $2700 is an annual fee. Ouch!
Frankly, I can buy prebuilt websites on eBay for a fraction of that. The problem with generic stores like these, is they are too much like the other generic stores. Since they are so much alike, they get lost in the search engines. I can and have built my own websites and don’t pay $2700 a year.
Anyway, they gave us our free organizers, and $10 each to cover dinner. We managed to get out of there around 6:30pm. I went home, and checked my own websites to see how much money I made. :)

Posted by Rob in Getting Rich on September 16th, 2006 | 16 Comments