I saw something very interesting today as there was this E-Book that dealt with how to make money online with various affiliate programs out there. It wasn’t too expensive as it was about $25 and so in that sense it is along the same price of other books you would buy at a store.
Now the interesting thing was that for this E-Book, in an effort to hype it up to make people buy it, the site had all these external links to news sources about people making millions online, how people create a work at home business with the Internet and so fourth. Some of these 3rd party news site, which are definitely well known sources, had commenter boxes and people were leaving comments such as “Does this really work?” or “I can’t afford risking to lose money. Can anyone tell me if this is real?”.
I never read that particular E-Book myself, but despite that I thought it was just kind of interesting how people don’t have that same high level of skepticism when it comes to say a finance book on how to save money. When you think about it, the situation is almost the same thing. Basically, that book is pitching you that it has answers/solutions for your needs/questions and hence you should buy it. However, in these cases though the majority of people would tend to be more lenient and don’t really see it as a risk as oppose to the other scenario.
I usually don’t prefer to spend money to simply learn things through say a book. Instead, I would rather spend the money to do something pro-active and get hands on experience to learn if possible. Example, if that book costs $25 and the sole intent was to teach me about marketing programs online, I would instead research ways on how I can simply spend $25 or less to say create a site and start testing out various programs (And don’t tell me there is no way cause you could technically do it for free these days).
Or like with a book to save money, if it costs $25 I would probably rather see if there is say a place I could join that would allow me to meet more people that are successful in managing their money too to try and get some new knowledge. In either case I guess you can consider both of them a risk as the book could possibly not teach me anything new or the event could have been a bomb.
I usually prefer the word “Invest” rather than “Risk” too as it gives you a better perspective on whether or not something is worth it for you. So for myself, when it comes to investing money to gain knowledge, for reference and learning different ways of doing things I don’t mind buying say a book for it. But for things that are completely new to me I would rather get hands on experience when spending money to aid me in acquiring that new knowledge.
