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Luke Shamoun

Professor Sam

ENC1101-0026

25 October 2023

Profit Methods-Discourse Community

COVID-19 had a very large impact on the lives of many. These impacts varied by person,

some losing their jobs and others having their daily affairs affected for years. Most were

negatively impacted by the virus, however for my friends and I it was the start of a new phase in

our lives. At the beginning of COVID, while in quarantine, I came across a form of reselling

known as retail arbitrage. This is when products are bought in store or online at heavily

discounted prices and then resold for a price closer to retail. I began practicing this, being

successful with high profits. I expanded this business into other fields such as Amazon FBA and

Dropshipping. I was extremely successful in each form of ecommerce that I tried which can not

be succeeded by many. My friends were interested in the things that I was doing, so I began to

teach them how to start the same businesses that I was running. All of the friends that I taught

also became successful in ecommerce, showing me that I was as good of a teacher as I was at my

practice. My friends and I decided to start a new venture, a community in which we taught others

with the same interests as us how to be successful in the field of ecommerce. We created a

platform in which we are the experts, teaching members in a discourse community known as

“Profit Methods”.

Discourse communities are identified by a shared set of traits. Dan Melzer identifies these

traits in the article “Understanding Discourse Communities”. The first of these is “a broadly
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agreed upon set of common public goals”(Melzer 102). For Melzer’s guitar group, their goals

were “having fun, enjoying the music, and learning new songs”(Melzer 102). These goals are

one of the things that separate them from just guitar players in the area. My community also has

a set of public goals. People join the group with goals to start, grow, or diversify their income.

Most of the members that share these goals are men between the ages of 16-24 with our oldest

member being sixty-seven years old. Everyone works together, testing new ideas and methods

that can be used by everyone to increase revenue. When joining the group, members are asked to

state their goals. Everyone has a very similar answer, to gain financial freedom and increase

spending money.

The second trait of discourse communities identified by Melzer is “mechanisms of

intercommunication among members”(Melzer 102). My group has daily communication of all

members that choose to communicate daily through a server on a platform called discord. This

communication occurs both from me and the other experts to the rest of the members as well as

the members discussing within themselves about experiences, trial and error. “All social media

platforms offer methods for group communication and participation”(Seely, Xu, Chenn 283), but

we chose discord due to the ability to structure the server exactly the way we want it and give

specific people access to speak in channels. We have this setup so that we can separate

information given by our experts and the other members giving information. “Use of these

communication mechanisms to provide information and feedback”(Melzer 102) are the third trait

of discourse communities. We have experts for each venture that we offer information for that

announce updates of information and processes within their private threads where only they can

send messages. There are places for the members to ask questions to the experts as well as

members to talk to other members about their experiences. Through trial and error, we have
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found that this is the most effective use of our “communication mechanisms to provide

information and feedback”(Melzer 102).

Another important factor is “one or more genres that help further the goals of the

discourse community”(Melzer 102). These genres are very important within the community and

are participated in by most members. For Melzer, these genres were types of music that the

group would play. For my group, the genres are different ways to make income that we provide

information on. These genres consist of different methods that we use to make money, Retail

Arbitrage, Dropshipping, FBA, Shoe reselling, stock trading, and other random flips. These

genres are important to members as they provide diverse ways for each individual to make

money. If they are unsuccessful in one genre, they can go to another to find success.

The fifth trait of a discourse community is a “A specific lexis (specialized

language)”(Melzer 102). This language will often not be understood outside the group or others

with the same interests as them. For Melzer’s group this language consisted of music language,

“root note of scale, a 1/4/5 chord progression, putting a capo on different frets, whether to play

solos in a major or minor scale, double drop D tuning, and so on. If someone couldn’t quickly

identify what key their song was in or how many beats per measure the strumming pattern

required”(Melzer 105). In our group we also have a set of specialized languages that members

must learn. These terms consist of things such as FBA, AIO, ASIN, SPLR, PREM, and many

other terms that would not be understood by people outside of our interests. On October 13,

2023, one of the FBA experts in our community sent a message saying “Price Drop

B0BZHCQ6PF, FBA hot, Local FBS hot”. To most people this message is confusing and means

absolutely nothing, but with the proper knowledge it is an opportunity to make a purchase and

sale.
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The last trait that all discourse communities share are “a threshold level of expert

members (24-26)”(Melzer 102). Our group consists of many experts in each field that we have

information on. These experts help the members within the group to make progress as well as

help them with any questions that they have. These experts have all had their own success in the

field and now use that knowledge to help others.

Discourse communities are very productive in the advancement of skills of the members

within. With the teamwork that occurs in these groups, information is able to be shared more

efficiently and accurately than anyone can find on their own. I have grown with the input of the

members of the group even though I was the one that started the group. There are certain things

that one can not see on their own, needing the help of others to improve. “Profit Methods” has

allowed me to grow in my businesses as well as help teach hundreds of others how to succeed as

well.

Works Cited

Melzer, Dan. “Understanding Discourse Communities.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing

Volume 3, edited by Dana Driscoll, Mary Stewart, and Matthew Vetter, Parlor Press,

2020, pp. 100-115.

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Seeley, Sarah, Kelly Xu, and Matthew Chen. "Read the room! Navigating social contexts and

written texts." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 4 (2021).