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eBay millionaire

The Entrepreneur Channel on a TV screen
  • Posted at 11:09am
  • 29 October 2007
  • by RhodriMarsden-RT

Despite common sense desperately barking at us through a megaphone from the top of a nearby stepladder, we will go to desperate lengths to try to get rich quick.

There's those pyramid selling schemes where you not only end up losing huge sums of money, but also spend precious hours persuading friends and family to do the same thing.

Then there's the lure of those adverts advising us that we can earn a fortune by working from home stuffing envelopes: somehow we're not alerted by the fact that these ads are scrawled in biro and stuck in a newsagent’s window. We willingly shell out cash upfront, and merely receive a few sheets of information in return, advising us to sell that information on to someone as stupid as we are. Nice.

Now, The Entrepreneur Channel is certainly no scam – of course not, it's an aboveboard organisation which gives you exactly what it says it will. But it exists for the same reason: to persuade dreamers like you and me to part with money in order to be let in on the secrets of wealth.

In the same way that shopping channels gently persuade elderly viewers that a £59.99 CCTV unit is a small price to pay for not having their door smashed in by local youths carrying baseball bats, The Entrepreneur Channel focuses on another inherent weakness: we're desperate to make huge amounts of money for little or no effort.

They're only showing two programmes at the moment, on strict rotation every hour. One sells you Brian Tracy's "Psychology of Achievement" CD course for £55.95, which allows you to forget that you're an underachieving drone and gives you the mind-set of a tycoon. (Interestingly, it's not revealed during the show exactly what success Brian Tracy has achieved, other than succeed magnificently in selling the world a CD course on how to succeed, but there you go.)

The other show features former QVC presenter Paul Lavers talking to a chap called Brandon Dupsky, who has produced a set of CDs and booklets on how to become an "eBay millionaire", which he's hawking for an eye-watering £137 (plus £4.95 postage and packing).

Brandon doesn't look like most successful people who crop up on The Entrepreneur Channel. While the others have a healthy, bronzed glow and a winning smile, Brandon has a slightly strangled, high-pitched voice, looks like he's spent eight years indoors selling stuff on eBay (a fact which he confirms) and seems about to burst into tears.

Fortunately for all concerned, he doesn't. He just drops the barest hints as to what we can find in this £137 package of his: these essentially boil down to buying stuff for cheaper than you sell it. And, after a few months of buying and selling, who knows, you might even make back the £137.

Brandon's not a bad chap. He's just really, really interested in making money – hence the £137 price tag. "It's almost like money for doing nothing," said Paul Lavers at one point, although it was unclear whether he was referring to us selling stuff on eBay, or Brandon selling his secrets to us.

It's an extraordinary idea for a television channel. But I bet it's doing well. In fact, I half expected to see them carrying adverts saying: "Coin vast sums with the minimum of effort! Low costs, low overheads! Just set up your own entrepreneurial television channel!"

The Entrepreneur Channel broadcasts 24 hours a day on Sky 682.

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