Many times when we buy items we tend to look at just the immediate price tag of a product which lures us to spend money as we think it is such a great deal. Today I took a casual gander on Ebay as there is this electric toothbrush I was potentially interested in and how I thought this would give me an idea on a price comparison if I was to buy it from a store.

When I first did a search I found a listing for the item for about $99 with a $25 shipping rate which didn’t seem too bad considering the item was about $180 normally at retail stores.

I then saw another listing that indicated it was $81.50 and thought that was even better. However, I then looked at the shipping rate and was stunned.

As you can see, the seller was charging a shipping fee of $75.73. Granted the shipping service is different, but that is still a substantial amount. So while it looked better at first, in the end it would be way more.

I knew a person once who said he simply sold these dishes on Ebay at a loss and instead just hiked up the shipping fee which made him a lot of profit in the end. As he mentioned, for some reason people simply just focused on the price of the item itself.

Just like all those hidden charges on specific services, you really have to be aware of what you are really paying in the end.

I had a fun opportunity to be on a film set recently and a lot of people were participating as either a casual hobby or side engagement to their regular life I guess you can say. Now the people that were there obviously didn’t know anything about each other.

Now what was interesting was that after mingling around with others there was this one group of people that were talking to each other and one person mentioned he needed a photographer. It just happened that one person in the group was a professional photographer. The person then expressed quite loudly in a humorous way on how that’s why you should always be nice to everyone as you never know who you could be talking to.

The funny thing too was that I encountered a similar situation where I was talking to a lady who happened to be a teacher and she was struggling with Internet related matters as she couldn’t figure out what to do. Again, it just so happens that I know a lot about those types of things and she was delighted to go home and put her new found knowledge in action.

It’s kind of too coincidental in some ways too huh? But in general, never pre-judge people and treat others well as that person you are talking to could easily be the help that you are looking for either presently or in the future. Especially from a business perspective, it can’t hurt to have more connections.

Looks like I am going to have a lot of fun over the next few weeks when it comes to online activities. For one thing, I got an e-mail recently that there should be some test ads showing up next week as a result of the Forbes agreement and so it will be interesting to see how that turns out.

It was interesting as the message seemed to focus on the possibilities of this great collaboration from a financial point of view when really I am kind of more excited of the opportunities it can create content/experience wise. I already some ideas in place on how if it really takes off there are great ways that I could leverage that to create better things as well to help others too.

There might be something else coming up where I’m sure all my long time readers will love. Let’s see how it goes.

I had to shop for a new backpack the other day as my old one has lasted for almost a decade and a half. I was just browsing around a department store and saw some interesting ones and as always I always debate about the prices as I want to get the best value for the dollar.

Some of them were in the $50 range which I thought was way too much for something that I would simply throw some items in on occasion. A comment was then made on how there was another store that sold backpacks for about $10 which should do the job and another person then automatically disregarded that and mentioned how the quality must be very bad.

The first thing that came to my mind was how price doesn’t necessarily correlate with the quality of a product. From a business point of view, in many cases you are paying for all of the marketing and overhead costs of getting that product in-front of you.

For example, if there was only one apple tree in the area and one guy has to drive twenty miles whereas another person just has to walk one block to do the same business offering the same product then odds are the last guy can sell the same product for less as his overhead is almost nothing.

I did end up just getting the $10 one and it seems fine for my needs.

What a bizarre read this was. I was just passed this story that you can read at http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/10/coffee.dung/ which is about the world’s most expensive coffee apparently at a $100 a shot.

So apparently the beans of the coffee literally passes through the digestive system of an Indonesian jungle cat and is then collected from its feces. Because of that, the company charges a lot of money for the coffee. It is done for charity too, so it’s not all bad.

That just made me think from a business point of view on how it doesn’t matter how crazy an item or product may be as people can justify the price tag in so many ways as long as it is rare or exclusive in some way. It’s kind of like that typical saying on how if you have something unique then people have to go to you for that product or service.

I don’t drink coffee personally and so I guess that saves me from even imagining how that thing tastes.