For many years I belonged to a networking group. It consisted of other self employed business owners and we met once a week.
This gave us the opportunity to seriously get to know one another and refer each other our clients knowing full well, that the other business would take care of our referrals like family.
This was a VERY good thing! There was accountability and business prospered because after all, we are always looking for a good business to service our needs. We took care of one another, business was done right.
There was never a commission or referral fee, we simply took care of one another. My group was actually the biggest in the city, and only one professional category per person was accepted into the group.
Enter the new millennium and online marketing. It now became world wide sales. Local business had to move online in someway in order to survive. Now all of a sudden it was about the “deal” and the cheapest price, instead of taking care of one another.
Commissions are being paid to people that “send them business!” This practice has almost totally killed small business people. Everyone I talk to now a days is looking to save sales tax and shipping. I mean really? They even wanna stiff their own city?
We are no longer taking care of local people. The mom and pop shop. We are supporting HUGE corporations! For many years I’ve still been trying to support local small business, however this has become a runaway train.
Even when I go into a local store, and they do not have what I’m looking for, I’m told by the snot nosed kid “hey man we can order it for you”… I’ve even tried educating those kids and tell them I’m trying to save their job, and they all look at me with that deer in the headlights expression; “hey man this isn’t my real job” I’m going school!
I wanna look back at them some more and tell them that when they get out of school broke and in debt they’ll be competing against thousands of others for even less jobs… but I quickly got tired of this as well.
So! Just the other day I was watching the Today Show. Something I seldom do… And what do you think I see? But a “sales segment, showing lots of products” with a statement that if you use the QR Code on the screen NBC will receive an affiliate fee. This will not increase your price or quality, but NBC gets to make a little to show you these things!
SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!! Now a big huge conglomerate corporation is doing this as well?!
I must say that since Covid 19 I’ve been shopping more online myself. Amazon has really made it easy. I can even try on clothes before I buy in the comfort of my own home. And? A lot of times I get my orders within 24 hours! Sometimes the same day! Not to mention I no longer have to drive all over town, just to be told “we can order it for you”… Guess what? I can do the same thing.
So now I’ll even start using Affiliate Links for products I believe in. It costs the consumer nothing in the way of price. As I’ve pointed out it costs much more, but its a runaway train. I give away a lot of free information on my websites all the time. To receive a bit to help is appreciated.