Making Movies

Originally Posted by Russell

Remember the more you educate people, the more obsolete you make yourself. 90% of people follow the crowd. Once something gains popularity, people want to become that.



I could name a million examples bit you get the point. Self extermination seems to be a lot of peoples m.o.

I disagree, everyone i have helped educate has become a friend or business partner. I actually find it easier and more opportunities available the more I talk with people. I tell people enough to get them excited about scrapping, without out giving out too much info or trade secrets.

Originally Posted by jghilino

I disagree, everyone i have helped educate has become a friend or business partner. I actually find it easier and more opportunities available the more I talk with people. I tell people enough to get them excited about scrapping, without out giving out too much info or trade secrets.

I agree with Russell more that what you said (although I agree with you also). Whenever I talk about scrapping with people and I ask if they have any unwanted appliances, computers, etc. I don't tell them I scrap them for money, I tell them I recycle them. When you mention "money" they think that there is $50 worth of metal in their old washer, and they don't let me "recycle" it for them. If/when they haul it down to the yard themselves, and they get 5-10 bucks instead of the number they thought of, they wonder how I make money with it. I don't like explaining whats in scrap, because that's scrapping secrets (?) that's knowledge I worked hard to gain. I don't like giving up information to people who I know will be a threat to my business.

Going to self extermination. Lets say that I have 10 friends who ask me about scrapping. If I tell them that you can scrap out a washer and gut the motor and make X amount of money, they may want to get into the scrapping business. If they start scrapping, thats 10x less scrap available to you. I don't see why any business owner would give away all their knowledge to everyone. In my case, I don't get "business partners" out of telling people how to scrap things, I get competition. Just my .02

yeah that's an interesting way to look at it.
it's gonna take me most the day to think about it but off the top of my head, i'm a giver.

I'm not sure the information of scrapping is a secret in any way, people been scrapping things for eternity.
on a radio station I listen to there's scrap metal businesses advertising all day, saying things like, most have have $200 worth of metal in their shed, the old fridge, the mower ect ect, they really get the message across.
and the guy walking around collecting cans is no secret to anyone that he makes some money doing it, the guys that tear cables from live power boxes certainly know there's money in copper.

what information do you know about scrapping that most people that have been in this forum for a few months don't? if a person's interested then they'll find all the info they need, if the're not interested in scrapping then I doubt they would bother looking at you tube video's on the subject, much more interesting things for those types, like the sneezing panda.

scrapping generally isn't a business, you can make it a business but generally it's an opportunistic way of making money,
like going fishing or hunting, there's money in meat if you wanna go out shoot some bears or catch some fish, heck, there's guys out there bottling tap water and making money, some even made a business out of it, like evian, talk about money for jam, speaking of jam, have a fruit tree? well can you make jam and sell that too, a person is only limited to their imagination and resources but to me if I inspire a non scrapper into a full on scrapper king, well great, there's other incentives, like the environment, instead of going to landfill things get diverted, re-used, re-cycled, refined ect, every little bit helps.

From what I can see there's already huge competition in the U.S.
i'm not talking about scrap metal as that's always been, but e-waste.
seems like there's already a lot of people buying e-waste components and the advertising
creates more interest too, both for new e-waste scrappers and new e-waste buyers.
many serious scrappers are biding time, building their network to do just as their gold recovery buyers
are doing today, just watch how many ad's you'll see in a couple years for buyers of e-waste, it's all coming,
members here, right now lurking the pages, keeping up to date the prices buyers are paying, the handy posts of customers giving out the info of exactly what they sent, how much money they got ect ect, it's all precious information for those guys, so regardless of what secrets we have, if your keen you can find that info.

for me, I guess it's a little different in australia, we don't have 315 million people, just 22 million. in the U.S. there's 33 people per square kilometre of space, we have 3 people per square kilometre, so walking down the street in america I would pass 32 people before I walked past just 1 here, and with just half the time the person is a female, it's no wonder why we're so fond of sheep in this country, especially one's wearing gum boots

e-waste scrappers here are too few, metal is king and cords are queen and that's about it.
but just like everything, people will catch on quick and take it to the next level like they are in the states,
except i'm doing it now and maybe in a few years time, all the new scrappers will be selling to me.
so it's a bit like the illuminati, teach the base level to be productive and it all filters up.