In the face of repeated failure, how do you stay motivated?

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For whatever it's worth - think BIG. Don't bother trying something that'll max out at like $10 a day. Look for things that have big markets, big opportunities, and big flaws that you can exploit to improve the market.

I'm not saying everything you do should be a BFD, but put your energy in to building something that you can forsee being a sizeable business 3-4 years from now. That'll keep you motivated beyond the nickels and dimes in your adsense account.
 


tornado said:
Glad to see I am not the only one in the same situation. Too many times I try to focus on a million things at once. Bought a book called Goals by Brian Tracy almost a year ago and never picked it up. Think it is time I actually crack it and read it. Quit my job in March 2007 and I have tried to do everything from IT consulting, real estate investing, web design, eBay store, blog network, and affiliate marketing. Some of us are taking action, but spreading ourselves too thing trying to make money one hundered different ways at the same time. Realize I need to pick one thing and stick with it for more than one hour. That is easier said than done sometimes with all the great ideas on WF. Thanks for the motivation!
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This is my biggest problem. I have a million ideas and I execute most of them- but I never follow through consistently because I spread myself thin developing the next 10 ideas that pop into my head. I will have an idea, build out the entire project, then just let the site sit because I get bored and move on to the next thing.

This internet stuff takes one of two things- discipline, or a simple mind. If you're simple/stupid, it's not that difficult to focus on the one or two viable ideas you come up with over time. If you have great ideas flowing all the time, you have to train yourself to just pick one and stick with it until it can stand on it's own with little maintenance.

I've been forcing myself to do that lately. It's pretty fuckin hard to do when no one is holding you accountable though. I've run an offline business and if you're not there to open the doors every morning, you have to answer to the customers. In the online world, most everything is automated and/or you're invisible to the customer. No one is affected except for you when you don't deliver.

So like I said, if anyone wants to motivate each other, talk shop, or kick each other in the ass to stay focused, hit me up on AIM. MDM704.
 
vizilla said:
Thank you all for the insightful positive posts.

This past weekend has been a huge setback for me. I just got out of college and I foolishly decided to move out. Got a part time job at UPS loading trucks to help pay some of the bills so I could focus on stuff full time. I was running a semi-steep deficit but I have a good amount of money saved up and was fine during the fast few months.

Now it's getting very cold and dark here in Boston, and will only get worse. I can't think straight. Not sleeping, bad appetite, losing weight (and I'm a skinny guy), everyday tasks becoming very difficult to do. I'm trying to get another job that would at least be warm. I went back home for the weekend to recuperate. It's a nice escape but things are just going to get worse with the job (colder, start snowing, ridiculous work during holiday season, work starting at 2:30 in the morning).. I don't know how the hell I'm going to be able to interview for other jobs.

Of course other people have much more on their plate so I don't have much of a right to complain about things. But damn things suck right now for me. This year is going to be a huge financial set back for me. I've gone from the best days of my life in college to the worst so far..
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What's with all you guys with college degress worrying so much about money? It shouldn't be that difficult to go out and get an easy, good paying job to hold you over while you get your online marketing stuff up to speed.

Anyways, as far as all your worrying goes- stop! Just think about the future. It will get better and if it doesn't get better tomorrow, there's always the next day. Keep your head up and eventually you will realize you're successful and all the tough times were worth it.

I go to a job I hate every day to work with people I hate, for a boss I hate... but I know that once my internet marketing income is back up, I will be free again. In the mean time, I'm finishing school and getting a wealth of experience in my day job- so I'm still progressing from that angle as well. I'm attacking this shit with full force, so eventually, it's inevitable that I will make enough money to never have to work for idiots again.

Everyone goes through struggles, if you give up now, you will be exactly where you're afraid you're going to be. So don't give up. If you don't play, you can't win.
 
A few months of not getting anything is nothing. My first year in business I made nothing. $100 or so in revenue, a few hundred in expenses.

You bet its hard. If you are willing to suck it up and live dirt poor you can make it. As forworking a job, bad idea. Save a few thousand dollars and figure out how you can live on $300 a month. Then shut every thing else off, friends, family, partying, games, whatever.

Is it pretty? Fuck no, but that is the method I used, and other friends I know have used.

By the way, I would suggest you guys look at it as internet development rather than online marketing. Build web sites that people use and promote themselves. Having even $1000 a month of passive income makes the world of difference. Once your living expenses are taken care then you can work on projects that might rake in good money.
 
I once heard an MLM guy talking. He was saying like to keep your dreams alive, you need to touch it once a week at least. So, I will be going to touch that Ferrari at the hotel parking lot every week. I am gonna touch that dream mansion I want. I am gonna touch those boobies.. err..
 
My way of looking at is like this: there are 24 hours in a day, 8 of them are sleeping - the rest is money making and skill development. So I have 5 hours taken up with early morning job, 4 hours taken up with evening job. This leaves 7 hours a day for my business - I think it's impossible to do unless like Andrew said above to just cut everybody off.

You don't get time for friends, and XBox's and Wii's - none of that is for you until you can make this sucker work for you. I hear people telling me "don't work too hard" and "you'll burn out" all the time but it's bollocks. If you want something enough you'll do what you can to get it.

I then think of all the crappy situations around the world that go on for crappy little countries with crappy little economies - and I think to myself "hey, I'm a UK citizen - I've got rights, freedom and a crap load of other things that other countries don't have - why complain about a little hard work?"
 
Jondoe0069 said:
What's with all you guys with college degress worrying so much about money? It shouldn't be that difficult to go out and get an easy, good paying job to hold you over while you get your online marketing stuff up to speed.
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That's what I'm doing. :D Got a good paying job with a privacy screen, couldn't ask for anything better while building my internet stuff. (well besides that they are nazis with the social sites like facebook and forget AIM...)
 
This thread should be stickied and made required reading for everyone. It would sure cut down on guru get rick quick ebook sales.

Thanks for motivating me with your stories, guys :) After two months of ceaseless reading,testing,failing I finally have my first profitable campaign bringing in $100 a day. Not much, but it's a start.
 
All the standard stuff has been said here, so I won't bother trying to rehash the motivational aspects -- staying mentally motivated is a big challenge, and it is utterly and totally critical to success in self-employment of any kind, online or off. What I will do is throw out a statistic from my own business that sometimes suprises people outside of marketing: Two out of three of my PPC campaigns either lose money or fail to perform to expectation.

Again, 67% of all attempts to make money in PPC fall flat for me.

It takes a certain kind of mentality to get and stay motivated when one is looking at that kind of rate. I was "trained" for it in offline sales; the business in which I worked considered a 1 in 4 close rate to be successful. If you could achieve 1 in 4 you were all but assured a $50k+ income a year (this was way back when anyone still gave a shit about $50k a year.) Going to work early in the morning, coming home late at night, six days a week, facing failure 75% of the time (vs. say a Burger King fry guy, who faces failure maybe 3% of the time "ZOMG! The Fries! Are still frozen!") is a hard way to live. But understanding the rewards of success kept me able to deal with failure, since it was literally a predicted, necessary part of the process.


Frank
 
I think the hard thing is always to stay on track. I was lucky and had a few websites make enough profit to keep me afloat. (I say luck...but it was lots of work and throwing TONS of things against the wall).

But I still get wild ideas at 2am that I just have to run off and develop, and of course 90% of them are not the next big thing. Then I force myself to go back and work more on the things that I know work for me. (Which is 2 main niches, and a little PPC but mostly traffic from articles, blogs, and Search Engines with LOTS OF RESEARCH before I work).

I know that if I could just stop the wild ideas from wasting my time, I would make twice as much money as I do. But I also think that if I didn't get wild ideas, then I never would have made anything.

A paradox? I think it is just one that "our type" of person has to live with....

But also, I think sometimes the depression comes from working too much, and a week-end spent away from the 'puter is just what the doctor ordered. I know I tend to isolate myself and spend days obsessing about a project. In a
way I am lucky because I do have kids to tend to who force me (like nobody else could) to stick my head up to tend to them. As I work to support them, they step in and return the favor by keeping it real.
 
Don't give up, but it's important not to center your entire life around this stuff. It'll drain you - fast. It will lead to a crappy diet, low motivation, fatigue, insomnia (or excess sleep) and all these problems will feed off each other.

I remember wayyy back, before YouTube and image shack. I was learning PHP and made all these tools. Some of them were to scrape sites because I wanted to compile lists of cheats for games I played. I also made a site where you can upload videos and pics.

There was nothing like it at the time and it began getting popular. But I was pissed because it was hosted off my PC and it lagged my internet when people uploaded.. I didn't see it as a business opportunity and made the script private (requires password, only my friends knew it). Then months later all these image hosting sites became popular. I slapped myself.

Thing is, this kept happening.. over, and over, and over.. the only similary between all of them was that these situations happened in my own hobbies. Things I was very dedicated about, I would produce good quality products. It was never about money, so I never marketed what I made. But I could of, for huge profits.

Things changed after I adopted a business mentality.. now I don't follow what I'm interested in because it's not quick money. I follow whatever is popular - usually stuff I'm not into. So what happens? I 'm not motivated enough to put in 110% effort. Back when I was working on stuff I was passionate about, I put in so much effort, literally coding/designing/writing for months..

Do what was suggested in the replies here. Start some niche sites. Find a passion and begin working on making THAT your source of income. There's a market around anything, if you're creative.

The money will come in time. A few months is nothing. All jokes aside, if you want "fast easy" money, then grow weed or shrooms. Risk is low and ROI is ridiculous. Or you can do what one person I know does, sell "legal" drugs. Chemicals in the gray area.. designer drugs that have the same effects as acid/MDMA/etc, but haven't been made illegal yet. One dude I knew used to import these from China. Made $5000/week and the law couldn't touch him.

Anyway - my point is.. ultimately, it's up to you to determine your life's path. When we're young and we're so into video games, we don't care how many times we lose to the boss, we keep playing till we win. There's a passion that neither failure or anything else can break down. This eventually leads to success. Keyword is eventually - but if you're so into something, you're not going to see it as being a drag, and time will fly.. so success will seem to creep up on you.
 
Even when you're successful you get frustrated. As your definitions of success morph and grow. So where 10$ a day profit might be great in the beginning and 100$/day success. Well 100$/day on a project becomes a big failure as you were aiming for 1-2k.

One thing I see again and again is people quitting too early and not milking things for what they're worth. I've had projects that when built made only 1/10th -1/30th of what they do now. As it takes times to monetize properly and find the product to promote. This probably sounds gay but focus on achieving one thing and making one thing work. If someone else is doing it so can you. Don't stop until you make it work and each time you do that you'll get even more certain. And it's that certainty that allows you to conquer even bigger goals.

For example I'm fairly new to Pay Per Click marketing but I know people make big money with it all the time. So I figure if they can do it so can I. Then I decided that I'd try one of the hardest niches I knew. And everyone said it's too hard. 2 months later I'm making 300-400$ a day. Now I'm not sharing this to brag about it but to share that focus and determination is what will get you there. Everyone I talked with said pick and easier niche. But I figured if I could conquer the hardest all the rest wouldn't be that bad. Focus and Determination!

Also if this isn't what you eat, sleep and breathe you probably should find something else to do. Because if you're just here for the money and don't love this shit it will kill yah. I wake up and read a coding book. Write code and research 14 hours a day, but honestly most of the time I wouldn't want to do anything else. Even on vacation I take my laptop with me and research.

I'm sure you all think I'm sick now, but that old saying is true;

"Do what you love and love what you do!"
 
Andrew said:
A few months of not getting anything is nothing. My first year in business I made nothing. $100 or so in revenue, a few hundred in expenses.

You bet its hard. If you are willing to suck it up and live dirt poor you can make it. As forworking a job, bad idea. Save a few thousand dollars and figure out how you can live on $300 a month. Then shut every thing else off, friends, family, partying, games, whatever.

Is it pretty? Fuck no, but that is the method I used, and other friends I know have used.

By the way, I would suggest you guys look at it as internet development rather than online marketing. Build web sites that people use and promote themselves. Having even $1000 a month of passive income makes the world of difference. Once your living expenses are taken care then you can work on projects that might rake in good money.
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STEVE JOBS AT HOME IN 1982 — “This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.” —Steve Jobs
 
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