Silk Road forums
Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: calcium on December 05, 2011, 07:00 am
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If you've been involved in drug sales (/ distribution / etc) both IRL and on SR, I'd be interested to read your take on the similarities & differences. Especially if your involvement in IRL is higher than retail level.
For those of you not growing/making or getting direct from creator, how do you feel about your supply chains? (In the US eg a lot of the drug trade in many popular items is controlled by South American cartels, which have rather a problem with territorial violence.)
Feel free to interpret this liberally; I'm just interested in how it works. Obviously do what you need to not disclose things that are too specific to your own operation.
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Well for me it's really different. Where i live it's hard to find connection and when i do find one it's a friend who friend's friend has connection :P
Also everything I've gotten my hands on these last two years has been really low quality. I've smoked hash that didn't make me high one bit. Joints in which I had to search in my head for the high. Here I can finally see reviews of what I'm buying and I'm pretty sure shitty weed or hash wouldn't sell here.
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...how is the economy affecting business.?
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I have yet to sell anything on the site, but I've been selling weed and occasionally pills for years IRL. As a buyer it's actually not that different, as I get my weed shipped in from BC, so I'm used to the waiting and Christmas-like excitement when your drugs finally arrive. These days I just sell so I can smoke for free; if I can get a couple of $300 ounces of weed a month, I'm happy.
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the waiting and Christmas-like excitement when your drugs finally arrive.
Man, almost every day is like fucking Christmas around here! :D
::skips down to check the mailbox, again::
Of course, there's also that crushing disappointment when none of your 3 outstanding orders arrived that day. :(
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Recession proof. Only limited by my supply at the time. If you are looking for instant gratification this may not be right for you. IRL, cash in 2 seconds. On site, 20 days sometimes. :/ All the pros vs cons for me is easy. SR is a better choice for me. For all the obvious reasons.
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I would say when it comes to getting poroduct i have to just through hoops on both ends, But on sr it seems that the hoops have an end in site. There are times irl i get tired of the same old bs drama and stories from people.
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I would bet that 99 percent of the buyers think that its easy for vendors. just throw in the product in an envelope and collect cash.. It aint that easy.. Granted, its a lot safer than F2F, but its 1k times more work. more overhead, etc. Plus most buyers think we are like ebay or amazon and expect full refunds if someone steals the mail, etc. while I have replaced most (only happened twice out of all the packages ive sent) but I think that the buyer should accept the same risks as the vendor..
I have been thinking about not selling here anymore because of the pain in the ass issues. It takes a lot of time to properly put a package together, and cost. then you have to keep all orders straight. then you have to go to 10 different post offices that can be 50 miles away. To keep my costs down and headaches, im going to go to the post office 3 times a week. that way I dont have to keep running. If I did enough to go once a day, I would. but I dont think it would kill someone to wait an extra day.
So, if your a buyer, always plan in advance. if your stash is going to run out in 4 days, id be ordering 2 days ago, lol... Always think about 10 days ahead. always have money sitting in a mt. gox or trade hill account so you can buy bitoins and make a purchase within a couple hours..
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It aint that easy.. Granted, its a lot safer than F2F, but its 1k times more work. more overhead, etc.
obviously i don't claim to have all the answers, my guess is seller issues vary...
pain in the ass issues. It takes a lot of time to properly put a package together, and cost. then you have to keep all orders straight. then you have to go to 10 different post offices that can be 50 miles away. To keep my costs down and headaches, im going to go to the post office 3 times a week.
i would say there should be a lot less running around, less in and out meeting different buyers f2f, so that time is probably spent indoors / front of PC.
i would think making parcels nice and pretty is time consuming yes.
ie the above requires more organisation, not that i claim to be able to do it better....
if postage with signature & tracking is enforced, the seller could prove "the package" reached its destination, then the onus / responsibility was definitely the buyers.
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I think a DCN is good enough. Buyers need to remember to put a valid address and name on the shipping part.
I won't be held liable for a buyer who "gets close" to his address or puts a name that doesn't live there. If a buyer does that, and it doesnt arrive, then thats the buyers fault and takes full responsibility...
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Main change I think is you've got to be able to have sufficient capital to support your transactions for 20~ days if you're going international. Where as F2F it's all instant. That and the number of people you can sell to, you can have good customers in person but you can't go around shouting about it without attracting too much attention from the wrong people who either get caught or will try to give you in.
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First of all, I'm a relatively new member on Silk Road (more than a month) and I only have a few completed transactions, but I read a fair amount of posts on the forum and A LOT of stuff about bitcoins, PGP and anonymity thru Tor before joining, so I believe my opinion is not completely worthless.
One aspect that nobody has talked about yet is that, most of the time, a seller who managed to pass thru the relatively long and complicated process of understanding the whole bitcoin/Tor system used by SR, and more importantly purchased a 100$ (I think it's this price) seller account on SR is to my sense often more reliable and trustworthy than the lambda street pusher.
Also, when done correctly, transactions on SR are much safer than those IRL, for obvious reasons mentioned in many other posts. The quality of products can and is reviewed by other customers here on the forum and via the feedback system, so it's very unlikely you'll get a bad/mixed-with-some-shit-product. I must also mention the large variety of drugs available on SR (it's litteraly the Ali-Baba's cavern !)
Additionally, based on my personal experience about buying weed IRL, it was VERY rare to get to know the strain of the weed I was buying. It's obviously makes quality evaluation a little bit tricky. But I'm sure I didn't got the best sellers available in my region, and if you know personally a seller for years IRL, and you know the source and quality of the product, it's easier and acceptable to do business with him IRL.
But while there are many pros for SR, scammers seems to be a real problem. I avoided them by making my first transactions (a few weeks ago) with well-established sellers, with a good reputation, high score and great and consistent reviews; I suggest to always aim for something near [SellerName] (100). The perfect example of such a seller is Anarcho47.
In conclusion, You must have noticed I'm a big fan of SR since I discovered it, but we must keep in mind that this is still a really young website (less than 1 year old). Shit can happen in the future down here, while IRL you usually know what to expect if you know enough your provider(s).
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Ive only been on here a week but I would have to say even though its way more work to sell on SR its worth it for all the cool
people u meet. Irl I only deal with one person usually and 3 max if the one isn't buying units when mine are ready. Here it's lots more
fun - always busy with comp and packing ugg lol :o.
It's not that bad lol - I don't see making tons more money on here after u figure all the hours and shipping costs but it's definitely
a great time. I am too lazy to make lots of posts of same item at different prices for different sizes so my loss.
A couple of the buyers have helped me figure out the posting offer/ shipping function deal and also the pgp nightmare roflmfao. ;)
Lots of good people here from what I see.
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How does dealin on SR compare to IRL? It dont compare at all. That would be like comparing apples to oranges. In some ways better, in some ways worse.
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Doesn't really compare at all....although the thing I have noticed is buyers with no connections in IRL going online and expecting sellers to kiss their asses expecting free shit, bonus express shipping and generally expecting to be ass-kissed and being treated like kings...
You can't really say anything or rage as a vendor, I prefer to keep a "chilled vibe" with my customers but it does explain why such people don't have any connections in real life lol
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For me it's a completely different experience. I mostly wholesale in the F2F world, probably started off like a lot of us lifers who manage to stay sharp enough not to get caught and keep building. I'm not talking serious weight personally, but I have about 6-8 sales reps (depends on seasonality) that carry my stuff and then I retail if it's someone vetted out and it looks like it's going to be a "stop by once a week with that ounce" sort of deal.
This is my first full-tilt retail experience since my intial 6 months of selling product (before I discovered how much money there was in growing weed. Sadly in my country the penalties for getting caught doing it keep going way up, so the risk/reward just makes it not worthwhile for me). I have to say I love it. I think I'm now one of the oldest weed vendors on here, and while I don't do some of the transaction #'s that many of the weed vendors on here do, I mostly sell 1/2 and whole oz's, which is what I prefer anyway.
the Pro's to SR? Well, I get to move my overstocks and I can get cheaper prices on product because I can justify the additional inventory because it's for here. This is singularly the most awesome community on the internet, so diverse and yet we all come together over this cause. Only one or two people in the F2F world who do business with me know my real name (even the guys I've been working with for 10 years don't), and I don't generally exist with a crowd that is involved in drugs in any way. On here, I can offer up opinions and have interesting conversations about drugs, and people sometimes message me and tell me they've seen some of the stuff I have said on the forums and respect what I have to say. It's a great feeling, because it's something I can't have. The net margin on my sales is definitely higher on here, leaving out the crazy time factor to packaging, messaging, shipping, etc., so that's nice. And it's helping me pad my GTFO assets so I will be more prepared when it's time to go 100% expat (sooner than later).
The cons. Obviously in a community like this, a venue like this, you are going to have scammers. My policies seem to have deterred many of them (although it's strange how literally every out of escrow package I have ever shipped has arrive and yet sometimes, the odd in-escrow purchase seems to just not show up.....), but they are out there. It's something you have to build into the margins. The other one is the amount of time it takes to move funds around, the general pace of the business. I am 100% confident in my shipping, have been since day 1, but any seller who doesn't admit there is a little twinge of "this had better fucking get there" when you ship is loony. Just the overall time-consumption of maintaining this site occassionally burdens you. But the vast majority of the time I love getting messages from people and chatting back, hearing trip reports on my mushrooms and stuff. It balances the devotion required (kind of like a parent watching their kid be cute as hell?).
The experience I've had here has been great. There have been moments (remember Safe_or_Scam?? lol) where you want to bang your head against your computer screen, but overall it's been a great feeling knowing that I'm able to make some money and provide for my family while helping people, all over the world now, obtain things that violent states think they shouldn't have and use. It's been a brilliant run so far (6 months already!), and I'm sticking around unless there is a major shift in the very foundation of how this site runs and what it is.
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Silk Road in a nutshell from my point of view: more work, less profit, less risk. Seeing as my freedom is more important than money, it's totally worth it to me. Not a single person I know IRL knows what I do. I'm a real estate entrepreneur as far as they're concerned :)
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Silk Road accounts for about a billionth of the dollar value of the IRL drug trade. That is, it doesn't even make sense to compare - it's like comparing apples and blue whales.
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Seems to me that SR is a real nice way to make a profit, cause lol SR everything costs a lot more than it does if you just know the right people/right places to look.
More work? Yeah and your profit margins are that much higher, lololololololol.
It would seem like most people willing to pay some of these prices must have absolutely no connections IRL.
i went on SR (and thats why i'm here) to see if methamphetamine was available and for how much (due to me being slightly unsatisfied with the quality of the glass i can get, northeast US we dont have meth much and i'm lucky to be able to get any as it is....) and LOLOLOL fuck that, the glass i get is IMO cut too much but i could get 2g for the price of 1g here, easy....
and another thing, do people actually believe you can get uncut cocaine ON THE FUCKING INTERNET? UNCUT. RAW FROM SOUTH AMERICA?
lol people are killed over the cocaine trade every day of the year, uncut isn't gonna be online, unless maybe someone cleaned out a lotta street coke real good.
protip: if you cant spell COLOMBIA its not from COLOMBIA. "COLUMBIAN COCAINE" yes obviously cool bro.
this makes me lol, seriously.
i saw one person say in their methylone ad that molly means "very pure methylone not to be confused with MDMA molly".
learn what the fuck slang is, molly is SUPPOSED to mean MDMA powder or crystal, just because dumbfucks often SELL methylone as molly doesn't mean methylone=molly, shithead. Molly means MDMA, whats sold as "Molly" is just fake/not real molly a lot of the time IRL......
this provides the lulz, aspies who dont know anything about drug prices/in this case slang either.
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I don't directly sell on silk road because I hate dealing with bitcoins and I don't want to pay the sellers fee... But I do deal with a few reputable vendors and I can tell you it's a much easier experience in real life because... you sell what you sell, the money is instant, deal done.
Safety is the big one here.
Silk road user x can't pull out a weapon and attempt to rob me which is nice :P
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IRL the drug dealer will get into my car near his place of dislocation and give me the drugs for money. We have chat about drugs and life in general, and then I will drive the dealer to his next location.
If I was a cop or informant, the dealer will be in danger. Also I will be in danger, if it was a sting operation. My car is not powerful and dynamic to get away. I have no black windows installed either.
In comparison Silk Road delivers drugs of high quality to my doorstep for a quarter of price. The quality of a drugs is unbeatable. I can do it without contacting intoxicated and stupid and careless people.
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I can do it without contacting intoxicated and stupid and careless people.
^ So true and that's the main appeal of silk road to me.
I don't have a problem finding what I want. Shits sake, I live in one of the most populated cities in the country... obviously the drug world is alive here and I have my connects. As I said before, there's no established structure in the real world. You're throwing the dice every time you deal.
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I can do it without contacting intoxicated and stupid and careless people.
I remember someone from the streets who was convinced Methoxetamine was a mix of ketamine, MDMA and speed when I mentioned it to him, it's things like that which are nice to get away from.
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I can do it without contacting intoxicated and stupid and careless people.
I remember someone from the streets who was convinced Methoxetamine was a mix of ketamine, MDMA and speed when I mentioned it to him, it's things like that which are nice to get away from.
Oh lord help that damned soul
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Bitcoins sucks.
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Bitcoins suck.
Tell me about it haha
-DF
drugfather
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In some ways SR is better and in some ways its worse. SR is less physical risk but there is more risk on my end to get scammed. In real life no one that I buy or sell drugs to would dare take my money or drugs. But on SR no one is afraid to rip me off and I dont have alot of recourse when they do. There is less risk of police on SR but I make more money in real life when I rob your house after you rip me off for $100 and I steal shit worth $5000. On the flip side even though there is less police risk I don't fuck with snitches so for me that's not much of a gain. The main people that gain from SR are nub drug dealers and nub drug buyers. SR is a place for them to start learning how to sell and buy drugs properly.
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If you're a user or seller I would say this place is a heaven! But if you're trying to buy wholesale I would say it's best to stay in the streets from the prices I've seen here. I have 0 transactions btw just looking at prices and wishing there was a forum like this for someone who wish to buy here and sell in the streets.
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if you're trying to buy wholesale I would say it's best to stay in the streets from the prices I've seen here
You can't look at pricing for 1/8's and 1/4's of an ounce and extrapolate that determination for 1/4 and 1/2lbs. There's not a vendor on here that won't give you a deep discount for taking in one shipment what otherwise would require them to send out 64 mailings, track PMs and DCNs and deal with all the headaches that smaller orders entail.
Like any relationship, you have to work towards a good relationship with responsible vendors, and take the time to learn the ropes with them for larger deals. Firing off a PM from an account with zero history asking for lb prices will probably get you ignored. Baby steps first.
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I am just a buyer but I enjoy SR so far. One of the things I like the most is the forum. Its very interesting to read and I look forward to posting my opinions and thoughts about drugs. I look forward to speaking about things that I want to talk about in real life but I wont because they are illegal. Here I can speak openly and give advice and receive advice. Its also a very cool community. I feel like I am very lucky to be here and I wish only the best for SR and all the decent folks using it.