So here is an odd and some may say 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!

A while later, a late model GM Impala came up for auction and I heard from across the auction floor that it was going for 1600 dollars. I made my way around groups of unmoving people and several car lanes to get close.

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

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 funny 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 frightening off the competition and stopped the bid.

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.

You have the freedom of choice and that choice is yours. To succeed or not is entirely up to you. Picking up a niche market that you believe in, doing some research on it, getting a domain name and using a cms like joomla or wordpress to quickly put up a site ( No html skills required ) then actively marketing that in similar discussion boards and other blogs is — in one runaway sentence **all you need to do**

An online home business is like a dream job. Sometimes demanding, a little frustrating but definitely worth the reward for the 5% who figure out how to make it work.

Running an online business is like a dream home job. Demanding, sometimes frustrating but definitely worth the reward for the few who figure out how to really make it 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 please please never ever buy a car at an online auction. The cameras that are focused on the vehicles, do not allow one to smell the exhaust fumes, see the color of the blue exhaust fumes or see long dents that might run the entire length of the cars. I 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 where any reasonable person standing right beside the car would have done.

Mary Kay Cosmetics and most Multi Level Marketing (MLM) companies say they offer the world’s greatest business opportunity which is based on selling products. Mary Kay Cosmetics, a $2 billion a year enterprise, where hundreds of products are sold through word-of-mouth advertising.

I believe that Mary Kay is another recruiting scheme in which they try to get their consultants to purchase a boat load of cosmetics and then resell them. Their hook is how can you sell cosmetics if you don’t have an inventory to sell?

Former Mary Kay Consultants, whom I happen to be friends with, say that the problem is that a consultant never has exactly what their customers need when the customer wants it. It is nearly impossible to predict at the level how many of each product you are going to need after the first few months. Hence, after the first few months, you end up making smaller orders at a much lower discount level on a more frequent basis. Furthermore, that lower discount level equates to a smaller profit margin for you.

What ends up happening quite often is that by the time the new consultants purchase their cosmetics, factor in the costs for promoting their business, delivering them or working with customers, it results in a small profit. Also, the requirements for purchases are greater than most people can meet, hence most of the consultants wind up with a lot of unsold goods. Hence, the vast majority of the products sold to the consultants are never resold to an actual customer. Is it because the consultants really don’t try to sell? Perhaps, but a majority factor is that Its because the products are of mediocre quality and are overpriced.

With the internet and large department stores in the mix, cheap substitutes for these cosmetics are everywhere and have similar if not better quality. Consider this: where are you going to find your new customers? Mary Kay encourages their consultants to begin with their friends and family and then branch out from there to strangers. Even the most supportive family and friends only need so many cosmetics. Hence, after an initial order when everyone generously buys some items to help you get started, it will be many months until they need to replenish.

Then the next move is selling to strangers. You’ll try to rope in some of the people you meet through giving skin care classes into having a party and your friends and family will probably may also do that for you but their friends and family probably won’t. Ask yourself how many women you know are just desperate to get their friends together for a Mary Kay party, probably not too many.

Is Mary Kay Cosmetics a scam? I would say no. This critique about Mary Kay Cosmetics concludes that they are a lawful organization that allows individuals to generate a profit by selling to their friends, family and anyone they can get in front of to try to grow their business. If you enjoy recruiting friends and relatives and hosting home event parties than this may be right up your alley. Personally, I’ve completely avoided these kinds of programs altogether and have advised my friends and family as well as I have been able to make a comfortable living from the internet at home much more easily.