chatmasta

Hey,

Not enough people hear about the mistakes that everyone makes doing Internet Marketing. So why doesn't everyone post some of their biggest mistakes? Some of mine:

AdBrite Interstitials that show homepage. I sent an AdBrite interstitial campaign to a video blog I had just made that got like 20% CTR, figuring that it could easily make some money. Out of some 4000 impressions, not one person clicked through to my site. Not only that, but it was on shared hosting, and the second day of the campaign was totally wasted as HostGator had taken down that site due to high CPU usage. I'll never try that again.

Not selling a proxy network because I was lazy. I got into proxies really early, and I made some serious bank on them. My first network I made around $1700 profit in a month including the sale of it. I had a second one going, and it would have easily sold for high $XXX. But just as I was about to sell it, my hosting company took it down due to spam reports. I could have just put it up on another host temporarily and sold it, but I didn't because I was too lazy. So that's basically a high $XXX loss.

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Bofu2U

I don't know when to quit. If I lose $30 on a campaign after getting $5 back, I'll just hope that if I go another $30 down I'll somehow recoop back to profit.

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John

I spend too much time on this forum

Deliguy

that sucks man

Mine is easy, I don't even talk about it. I hate myself so much these days for it.

Back when i first got started I was too young to get a bank account by myself, and my only account was a savings account with my grandma. I didn't want my family to know i was making money online because they wouldn't understand and probably thought i was commiting some kind of cyber capital fraud. haha. So since I couldn't write a check (back when that was the only payment method allowed by Internic). I had to just register domains, use them for about 8 months and try to make as much money as possible before they would realize i wasn't going to pay for them and delete it.

So I had this...lets just say, if you could have any 10 single word domain names in the world. more than likely the domain I had is somewhere on that list. So yeah...I lost it.

I kick myself all the time for that. I should of just of said fuck it, got in trouble, got thrown in juvi, got kicked out of the house...whatever who gives a shit. i should of done whatever it took and kept that damn domain.

Biggest mistake of my financial life.

Classic phrase: If I only knew then what I know now.

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chatmasta

Hah, Eli, I hear that so much from people who have been in this business a while. It seems like everyone had their hands on something at one point that is very valuable now.

I'm a minor right now, I just route my EFTs through father's bank account, PayPal payments through my paypal account registered in mother's name, and I usually pay with that or its debit card.

Good system

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barman

Not having the sense to put 2 and 2 together. If I knew about the potential of IM a couple years ago, I would probably be retired right now.

In any case, my biggest IM mistake since I started a couple months ago...probably procrastination. I spent too much time learning and not enough doing. I know better now, but i missed the boat on my current niche and have to wait a while until the searches for it come back.

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John

ouch that has to hurt

highlifelight

God, I've made so many mistakes, and continue to make new ones every day. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes. There is nothing wrong with throwing stuff at the wall all day until something sticks.

However, once you get something to stick, ask "Why?". Why did this work while the other attempts didn't? Why am I getting more/less traffic? I've learned that "Why?" is the the most important question. You can always farm out the "How?".

Early on, I didn't understand this, and I simply spent all my time duplicating other folks' ideas, which didn't work. I kept asking how to do this, how to do that, when it was more important to understand why they're necessary. I'm getting too esoteric here.

Currently I spend too much time wringing my hands and worrying about my Adwords. I constantly refresh my pages to make sure I'm making more on conversions than I'm spending for traffic. It's this psychological block that I'm trying to break.

Also, I spent too much money buying worthless things as I started. I guess it served as my dues for coming into the industry and being ignorant.

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Reefer420

jumping in and buying like 80 domains before knowing how to do anything online...that being said though without those purchases I would never of had an incentive to learn more about this shit.

never thinking about making money online until last year... if only I had started getting into this when I had my own geo cities homepage and was 'blogging' about my life back in 1997 - oh well.

having a 9-5 job and an hour commute that sucks the life out of me and stops me from doing half of the things I would be doing otherwise.

oh well - at least I am getting into this shit now... twenty years from now people will still be looking at how to make money online and wish they had started back in the 'golden days' of the late 90s and 200x's.

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I'd rather be rich than stupid.

DaveEMG

Coding shit the long way. That's been my problem and will probably continue to be my problem. I'm just now getting in to the world of open source CMS's, which are making me smile from fucking ear to ear.

I guess my coding skills are still useful, and I can usually get myself out of any site problems when I'm integrating. But, this just means that PHP is now my new best friend, since everyone and their grandma seems to work in Linux.

Oh, that, and not starting more sites when I was younger. And you know what - even now there are still opportunities. Its foolish to think that just because things are a little tougher now doesn't mean things won't pay off down the road.

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"If you ain't first you're last..." ... "Oh hell, Son, I was high that day. That doesn't make any sense at all, you can be second, third, fourth... hell you can even be fifth."

Icecube

- thinking way too much before actually doing things
- after using mambo some years ago I decided that I'd better code everything on my own, I wanted everything to work exactly as I intended, I was wrong, never spend too much time coding shit before actually understanding if a project has real potential
- spending way too much time here and everywhere reading posts by who-knows-who on how they make money instead of finding my way
- overrrating the average internet user skills, I have started observing people while they browse only lately: they damn click everywhere, double clicks, they can't distinguish content from ads, they have no idea of why you're asking them to submit their email, they have no idea of what sponsored results are

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LazyD

Deciding that credit card site was a good idea for my first dive into affiliate marketing...

Not letting go of said credit card site and still working on it 7 months later...

Trying PPC with mortgage offers right off the bat through YSM and somehow managing to rack up over $400 in charges in less then 2 days... (Got that shit reversed luckily)

Trying PPC for things that are way oversaturated (read: ringtones, dating offers, etc)

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springer

Eh,yep. We've all done things we aren't real proud of.

I first got interested in computers back in the 60's, when they were as big as a truck, had TUBES and recorded on magnetic tape. I figured it'd be better to know how to fix them than to program and run them. They needed the geeks to run 'em but, when one of 'em broke, the geeks needed ME! HAH!

My rich Uncle Sam taught me how to fix 'em good, then sent me on a world tour to do just that. By the time that was over, things had begun to evolve... some kids named Jobs and Wozniak were building little bitty computers in their garage. I was a lot more interested in my newfound freedom, booze, fast cars and faster women (Not always in that order)

Didn't get ahold of my first PC until 95 and thought "What will I ever do with this thing?" Shit, I recall there used to be a place that announced new web sites. Sometimes, it'd be DAYS between them. HAH!

Took me a few years to realize money could be made on the innernets... Ummm, I may have been the second owner of some of Eli's expired domains and just couldn't figure out what I'd ever do with 'em. (We should hang out)

I also threw out a crap load of AOL CDs. I guess people collect those things now. Probably quite a few $$s worth. Used to get new ones in the mail, sometimes 2 or 3 times a week.

I don't really regret getting a late or misguided start. Where would I be now if things had been different? Who knows, maybe dead.

I've had a LOT of good things happen though. Used to be real big into ebay... when it was first starting out and a guy could make some decent bank. Got a lot of shit for free and sold it on ebay for obscene cash. George Carlin once said, "Only in America can some guy take two pieces of crap, nail them together and someone will give him a buck-ninty-five."

I earn a pretty handsome living off the innernets... money from thin air! I think the absloute BEST thing is not having to put up with some moron boss.

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BeefyChong

watching too much porn

No actually, I've made the mistake of turning my website around too much (using subdomains instead of directories, implementing mod_rewrite, etc.) too fast. I fell into the google sandbox effect : my site has gone from search results, G gave me a fair PR (3) and my backlinks disappeared from G. Just as if it was a new website.

But I guess today I'm ok, my traffic went from 100-200 a day to 700-900 like 3 months later.

Now if I could only get more than a shitty $0,06 / click on AdSense... I have about 150 clicks a day and barely $350 a month...

zayd

Wasting my time on stupid shit.

If I knew what I know now a year ago I'd be getting serious bank. Now it's going to take a little bit longer. Not that big of a deal, but it's still something I regret.

Edit: Oh, and trying to get my friends started on the internet. BIG MISTAKE. My friends are too stupid to do what I do. I should have understood that from the get go, but I kept giving them the benefit of the doubt and in the end I just got burned. Fuck friends when it comes to money. Only help people that show willingness to learn and who'll help you back when you need it.

Blastyourass

Wish I started this back in the 90's.

Miguel

Fuck it I'll admit it:


#1 Not buying google shares.

#1.2 Not finishing college. ( I still want to go back, if only to prove to myself that I did it )

#2 Bought crap ebooks and WSO junk, and spent way too much time on the Warrior Forum.

#3 Still ongoing at times: procrastinate too much.

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nothing to see here move along now.

CorrectAD

I had a software company about 5 years ago (age 23) where I had written a full enterprise scale car reposession app.

If I had know then what I know now, I'd be making 5-10k per month per client, hosting their data and marketing bad credit offers to their customers on a daily basis, making me millions of dollars.

Instead, I sold the shit for 40k, cashed the check (by cashed, I mean went to Ace check cashing) and blew it on drugs, pussy, drugs, pussy, a car, some more drugs, a few more fucks, and theeeeeen....


CRASH.


That's a business regret that I've been fortunate enough to learn from.

You know what's funny, though.... in my mind's eye I can still see what the success would look like if that company still existed.

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collecting ip addresses was way cooler than this godamn signature...

cashflowrusty

1) Being against advertising on the internet (actually usenet, before the www was around) and being hardline about it.
2) Not getting into pr0n back in the wild west days.
3) Procrastination!

I HAVE, however, held on to every domain I ever registered. One from 1996. :-) Tripled the number in the last 9 months, but of those are .info sites.

chatmasta

Wait, are you still against advertising on the internet? Because that could prove to be problematic.

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ScottDaMan

My #1, buying too many domains and not putting them all to good use (fuck, I just bought 35 more .com's too).

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Gay Webmaster Forum <-- Still #1 - LOL

MyOwnDemon

My biggest regret ever concerning this business:

Back in 98, I was a freshman in college. A friend of mine (another freshman) somehow decided the internet was an endless goldmine and he could make a killing online. Back then, seeing as how the internet wasn't as big as it is now, it was very easy to disagree with his point.

He wanted to start an internet company, but really had no business plan or idea of what he wanted to do except sell software which someone could download online directy instead of waiting for a cd in the mail. He asked me if I'd like to join up with him.

I said no, without a second thought. I thought he sounded like an idiot when he talked about making money online. I never thought the internet would be a big business.

Well, needless to say... he is now a millionaire, many, many, many times over. Cars, houses, the whole nine yards. I'm not even sure if he ended up actually finishing college.

I kick myself in the ass about that every single fuckin day. I had a good opportunity right in my face and I laughed at it. Now, when someone comes to me with an idea I listen carefully to every single word.

Live and learn, right?


My second biggest regret:

Not getting into this business sooner. I just started about a year and half ago. I'm only 27 now, so still pretty young. I just wish I would have started learning this stuff about 5 years ago.

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I_like_cock

Laziness.

Fuck, lose money on PPC, make a shit site the doesn't do a damn thing, fail miserably, try to sell garbage to garbagemen.

Just do something and learn from it. Do something, anything. Mistakes are good if you are making them when you are moving forward.

If you feel like being lazy... then watch SEO_Mike's new video that surly directed.

YouTube - fell in love with a girl - the white stripes (jack white III

Miguel

HAHA SEO_Mike that is some awesome singing man...

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nothing to see here move along now.

CorrectAD

lmfao

My favorite part was when he was like : uhhhhh uhhhh uh uh uhhhhhhhhhhhhh uh uh uh uhhhhhhh uhhhhhhhhhhh

You Rock SEO_MIKE - I hope you live forever.

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collecting ip addresses was way cooler than this godamn signature...

cashflowrusty

Oh, I changed my mind all right!

I was only against it up to about the time the WWW came around(say, up to about 1996-97). I just didn't want spam email, newsgroup messages, and gopher/archie spam stuff on the internet...

Then, when the browsers started coming out, I started making some bucks with the 'blind click' programs. Loved that!!! AllClicks sent me lotsa money... Well, some good money...

LazyHippy

Generally being a lazy fucking hippy and procrastinating a lot... (Why do today what ya can put off til tomorrow....?)

Also, over-estimating the intelligence of the average internet-user!

Prob my biggest missed opportunity was about 99/2000 I was fly pitching selling leather mobile phone cases (all the rage then!), this was when with enough fucking about on a top-of-the-range phone you could just about write your own shitty monophonic ringtones.

I found a couple of programs online to convert MIDI files and thought about selling tones, but did nothing cos I thought no one would pay for fucking ringtones...

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nmwando

it seems alot of people here (me included) have the stop procastinating, read this and hope you get better at taking action.
its something to do with guaranteed fun from steve pavlinas blog, could be of some help
check it out here

halfpc

where do you get to observe other people browse? I'd like to do that myself

eliquid

spending too much time thinking and not doing - procastinating.

I got into online industry in 94.. still not a millionaire. I think about every move I make or should make, instead of doing it. I wish I could just sit down and throw 100 sites a day at the wall and see what sticks, but I over-analyze the shit out of it until I wasted 8 hours doing nothing.

I still work for the man, instead of myself and because I work for the man I have very little time to do my own things at nights and weekends, but I am building it up slowly right now.. however if I would have done it back in 94, I am sure I would be retired now.