by Trevor

I want to tell you a true story.

I went to a car auction yesterday. I walked past the auctioneer and he made a funny joke about wouldn’t wanna make the big guy upset with me or anything. My head spun around looking for that big guy that the auctioneer was discussing publicly on his mic.

I did a double take as I realized, hey its me.

About an hour later, a 2004 Chev Impala came down the line of cars and I heard from across the large auction area that it was going for 1600. I quickly shouldered my way thru 2 lanes of cars and people to see it.

By the time I got there, a lot of people had arrived there already and the bid started moving quickly upward from 1800 dollars.

I walked around it quickly and before I had done that, the price was 2000.

I looked at the odometer reading and the price popped to 2,100 dollars.

Pausing 2 seconds in indecision allowed the price to move smoothly to 2200. I put up my hand and it – the price went to 2300.

Finally I was noticed and the fast talking auctioneer set the price at 2,350 dollars. Then the strangest thing happened, everyone looked at me and there was silence. The bidding simply stopped.

The talkative auctioneer tried for the next 30 seconds but no one would place another bid on the car. Finally, he made some joke about big arms and frightened competition and the bidding was stopped.

So, I bought this medium mileage 2004 Impala, worth about 5-7,000 for a just 2,350 dollars.

So size does matter sometimes.

And how is this related to Internet marketing

I was laughingly discussing this with a friend of mine and he said that would not have happened if the auction took place online. He sure was right. As an online marketer, seller or buyer, you can do nearly anything in your pajamas. Online you can’t be intimidated by someone’s physical presence, their bad perfume, aggressive stance or any of those other aspects.

Picking up a niche market that you believe in, googling it, getting a domain name and using a content managment system like Joomla or Wordpress to quickly put up a site, then actively marketing that in similar discussion boards and other blogs is — in one runaway sentence **all you need to do**

Running an online business from home is like a dream job. Demanding, sometimes frustrating but definitely worth the reward for the 5% who figure out how to make it work.

With an internet business, to get out of bed or not is entirely your choice. Find a nice park, on a sunny summer’s day- get out your laptop and work as you watch your children play..

And this is my favorite – Get yourself out on a comfortable beach chair somewhere warm, bring your business laptop and try not to let your Attention Deficit Syndrome get the better as the barely clad bodies get between you and your uhmmm, errhh computer screen.

P.S. I am strongly advocating that you attempt to grow a business that enables you to work online however it might be a very serious mistake so I am also saying never buy a car at an internet auction. The cameras that are focused on the cars, do not allow you to smell the exhaust fumes, see the color of the white exhaust fumes or see minute scratches that might run the entire length of the vehicle. I and many others have stood there and watched peers stop bidding on a car while the online folks continued to run up the price several thousands of pounds past the point that it should have.

About the Author:
For marketing advice galore and a few more interesting marketing stories be sure you check Trevor Weir’s excellent online marketing site complete with hundreds of easy to watch videos.