I have two classes where I take great notes: Marketing and Asian Studies.
My Asian Studies class has 60 people and my marketing class has 488 registered students in it. It’s finals time, and I decided to sell my entire semesters notes in each class for $5 bucks a pop.
I expected to make about $15 or $20.
Asian Studies Class:
I sent a mass email to the class, including this link as an example of my notes:
https://www.neville1.com/asia-notes.html
I got about 5 responses in two hours. Unfortunately, my Asian Atudies professor was one of the respondents saying:
“Dear students, I appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit shown here, but buying and selling notes is unethical!”
Unethical? Maybe. Illegal? Not at all. I knew I could win this battle, but she was a great professor and I decided to respect her wishes. I sent out another email retracting my offer to that class and apologized for any unethical behavior on my part.
Money Made on Asia class = $0.00
————————————————–
Marketing Class:
I sent out another mass email including this link as an example of my notes:
https://www.neville1.com/marketing-notes.html
I got about 35 responses in two hours. Every time I checked my email after that I got even more potential buyers.
Some interesting responses though. I got THREE “fan-mail” letters simply saying
“I don’t want the notes, but you are very enterprising.
Goodluck on the test!”
My favorite emails however were the hate-mail letters I got. I got four of them. This guy could have effectively killed my sales if he had used proper spelling and grammar in his email sent to the whole class:
From: csonnier@mail.utexas.edu – Coby Jude Sonnier.
“i’ve got notes for free. the whole outline. hit me up and i’ll email it to you cause i could care less about makin money like this guy. its in word so make sure you have it. -coby”
Surprisingly, I still got 9 orders after Coby’s email went out. This next guy offered me one dollar for the notes. When I responded saying the notes were fixed at $5, he wrote back:
From: chillaxer0008@mail.utexas.edu – Jorge Eduardo Leal Jr.
“No deal, final offer is $2.50 for the complete study note. Considering your probably lack of sales with the study notes, here’s your chance to make a sail.”
My last chance to make a SAIL?? I was selling notes, not preparing for a Regatta. He then responded again:
From: chillaxer0008@mail.utexas.edu – Jorge Eduardo Leal Jr.
“You just dont get it man,selfish bastard, stop trying so
hard to make money,eventually everything will work out”
Yeah Jorge, NOT trying hard to make money will really rocket me into wealth. Good luck with your strategy. You better start buying lottery tickets buddy.
This next guy was not a man of many words:
From: h00ter_bill@mail.utexas.edu – Dustin Travis Jenkins
“go fuck yourself”
Very well said. Almost poetic.
SO after shooting a few fun emails back to my newfound friends in the lower echelons of society, I tabulated my results:
Not bad for one class. I also learned that if I had done the exam review and included it in the notes, I could have sold them for $10 a pop easily.
It’s finals time so I must go study, but I hope you enjoyed watching me SAIL my notes!
-Nev
Coby Sonnier, Coby Jude Sonnier, Jorge Eduardo Leal Jr., Jorge Eduardo Leal, Jorge Leal, Dustin Travis Jenkins, Dustin Jenkins