Car Auction Intimidation. Related to online marketing at all ?

So here is an odd and seemingly unrelated story.

I went to a car auction last week. As I walked past the auctioneer he made an odd joke about not wanting to make the big guy upset or anything. My head spun around looking for the big guy that the auctioneer mentioned on his mic.

I blushed as I realized, gosh 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.

When I finally got there, a few hordes of people had already descended on it and the bid started moving briskly upward from eighteen hundred dollars.

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

I looked in the window at the odometer and the price went to 2100.

I paused 2 seconds to make a quick decision and the price went to 2200. I started putting up my hand and the darn price went to 2300.

The busy auctioneer noticed my hand up, set the price at 2350, everyone looked at me and the bidding simply stopped.

The funny auctioneer tried for the next half minute but no one would place another bid on the car. Finally, he made some joke about big arms and stopped the bid.

So, I got this medium mileage 2004 Impala, worth about 6,000 for a mere 2350.

Guess sometimes size does matter.

And so what has this to do with 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.

To auction or not to auction. To buy or not to buy. The decision is entirely yours. To succeed or not is the difference between watching that game on TV for a few minutes more or getting yourself to an online site where you can research how is it is to make money online and exactly what steps you need to do that.

In truth, if you hit godaddy with all of their multiple upsells ( don’t get me started… ) you would, in truth, have everything you need for the infrastructure.

With an online business, to get out of bed or not is not your boss’s decisions. You can work with your computer on your lap, snuggled up nice and warm under your blankets while others are fighting snow drifts trying to get to work…

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 ever buy a vehicle at an online auction. The cameras that are focused on the cars, don’t allow one to smell the exhaust fumes, see the color of the blue exhaust fumes or see minute scratches that might run the entire length of the cars. 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 hundred of pounds past the point that it should have.