Scraping the Fringe

I seriously considered buying my own domain name yesterday. I wanted to own the address “http://www.scrapingthefringe.com”. I came to this conclusion for two reasons:

1. It’s just really cool to have your domain.
2. I love the title Scraping the Fringe. It took me awhile to actually think of putting together those 3 words but hey it’s better than my other title for this blog “Rants, Ramblings, and Whatnots”. Sounds very generic doesn’t it?

My untechieness has caught up with me again when options about protections came or messages about getting more traffic by buying domain names that are similar to yours. Some of them I do understand, especially if you want to start your own business but others are completely unnecessary. I realized then that sometimes selling something is a product of fear. Fear of not getting the product, fear of not getting as much as you think you should, etc.

One great example is my friend who bought this $150.00 jacket from this store called Aritzia. The sales girl talked her into it by saying that they were not sure if other branches had the same item and it was already on sale (by the way, I would never ever buy a $150 jacket). They gave her a sense of urgency to buy it and successfully they did. Given though that my friend loves the store and will buy anything from there.

Another is when my friend and I got a free 1 week gym passes. We knew that they were going to sell us memberships and we have agreed beforehand that NOBODY will sign anything. We went in thinking that we would completely safe from any sales pitch. The “fitness consultant” then tried to talk us into signing a contract by giving us discounts and all that other crap. We didn’t budge so she resorted to the “fear tactic” by telling us that the discount was only applicable on that day. She also told us that we won’t really feel the goodness of the gym if we only tried it for a week. The worst was she actually told us that trying it out for a week is nothing and we will ultimately fail to tone up (my goal) and lose weight (my friend’s goal). After being called fat and useless, we decided to not do anything instead.

This psychology of fear is extremely powerful. It preys upon our wants even if we can live without them. Our wants turn into needs and then it turns you into this buying demon that won’t be able to stop. Realizing doesn’t really help either. That’s why I decide to avoid eBay as much as I can. This is coming from a person who just lost 2 winning bids at the last minute. OH SO FRUSTRATING!