slonik.me

Author: rafael

  • Rio de Janeiro. View from Cristo Redentor

  • how to content

    sometimes the itch to update this blog. then time spent on cleaning here and there, updating, fixing the server, never ending list of non-content tasks.

    I’d like to publish my photography somewhere and I’m fed up with platforms. Working for free to billionaires is so dumb. I like the Flickr idea but I do not have eighty bucks to burn each year (on top of all those subscriptions).

    I’d like to create photography essays in video. and a video about my OM-3 that I like so much. I’d like to photo dump here all the pictures that I take and like.

    Wishing is not doing. At least wishing public here is kinda doing some content.

  • in a not so cold winter

    server is down
    birds still singing
    another sip of coffee

  • Trying to buy creatine

    I started three e-commerce brands in 2019, 2021 and 2022 from zero to, somewhat, an exit this year.

    I am not a frequent online buyer. First, I never had much money to spare in my last, so it’s an habit to not buy much stuff. Second, I have a tendency to overthink my choices. I feel like I need to make the perfect decision, so often I quit the process without making a purchase.

    But in the few times I do search for a product online I end up getting really frustrated by how poorly some websites are made.

    The following it’s not a comprehensive and it’s in no particular order. It’s a list of things I noticed when trying to buy from one of the most competitive industries in the internet: supplements.

    The brand names in this industry are just….

    SKULL. BRUTHAL. DARK. EXTREME. OPTIMUM. VENOM. CANIBAL. HARDCORE. DEMONS. IRIDIUM. TITANIUM.

    All of above are from real brands in Brazil.

    I’m 100% sure that I’m an alien customer. Almost all the brands use names and graphics in the opposite of what I’d expect for a product I’m going to ingest.

    I would love to see better wording and images related to healthy, quality, trust, certification and so on.

    I expect to know where are you from

    Many websites I visited in my search for creatine don’t tell me from where they are. Most of them lack a “About Us” page, phone number, or even basic information like the city they operate from.

    Trust. Trust. Trust. How many years are you in the market?

    Most of the brands rely on fake social proof. Lot’s of influencers, who probably received money or free products, try to convince me the product is good. I can’t trust them!

    Why not leverage other trust signals like the time in the market? Two of the companies I checked have been around 20 and 15 years, but this information is buried in the “About Us” page. It should be in the most prime location of the website.

    Specialists in the best most accurate nothing language

    “Our suppliers are the best in the market”… says who?

    “The most pure creatine”… can you show me an independent test lab?

    “Most advanced creatine technology”… yeah? Why?

    It’s so full of empty words that at the end of this session I was shocked I didn’t came across the “quantum” wording – or maybe soon we see a “AI Enhanced Creatine”?

    To make things worse

    A independent analysis from ABENUTRI – Brazilian Nutritional Association – find out that 10 creatine brands sold creatine that didn’t contain any creatine!

    And dozens of other brands didn’t have at least 80% creatine in their creatine!

    Out of 88 different brands, 23% were reproved. It’s also important to note that 7 brands couldn’t appear in the analysis due to legal action taken by their owners against ABENUTRI.

    In the end I got one

    Suffering from choice fadigue, I narrowed down my options to those on ABENUTRI list. The first one that had an acceptable delivery time and cost, and disclosed where they are and how long they’ve been in the market became my choice.

    I can understand why people prefer buying in marketplaces. Much of the BS is cut down and you get the benefit of comparing brands.

    But whenever possible, I’ll continue buying directly from company website. As a seller in several marketplaces myself, I know how much power these behemoths abuse. But that is a post for another day.