Starting Over

I've been pretty open with my big failures here.

Humbling, humiliating, yet it's good to have a fresh start for me and my family.

Without losing everything I would have never looked to other income sources, including online stuff, and I'd have never found WickedFire. As a result of WickedFire and the relationships I've made here I've been able to support my family financially.

Them feels.
 


conjamuk said:
Has anyone lost it all and rebuilt. My main money sites got hit finally after 5 years. 90 percent of my revenue wiped. I'm actually looking forward to starting it all again.
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I have, at least twice now.

As far as I care, I'm actually starting on #3. I won't get into details, but it took 3-4 shitty things at once to knock me down this last time.


morphy said:
I'm in the same boat. The way I see it, I've done it once with less resources and less knowledge, I should be able to do it again
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Great point. I have tons of assets and knowledge I didn't have the first 2 times. I'm also doing things to make my life more suitable for "working my ass off" mode. That's what it took the first few times.
 
Andrey said:
Let this experience give you himility and kindness if that is possible with the brain damage you have undergone. Next time you making a couple grand per day don't think you are the final boss. Abide as a peasant and all will be well. Sucks though.
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That's the plan amigo. I have enough good people around me and motivation that I know I'll be back to that level in a few months. I've learned many lessons from this year that I'll probably share once I reach 5,000 posts.
 
Yeah, I've had to start over. Multiple times. Even start from negatives. If you know what I mean.

To get out if it, you need to be persistent.

To get into it, you need to be arrogant, lazy, unheedful.

My situation was really really bad. But it also got me to pursue happiness and knowledge outside of materialism.

Bad fortune is guru.

Best advice I can give is to always have a beginner's mind.
 
conjamuk said:
Has anyone lost it all and rebuilt. My main money sites got hit finally after 5 years. 90 percent of my revenue wiped. I'm actually looking forward to starting it all again.
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Here I am. Thinking back all the shit happened to me and my family this year, since january 2013, I can quite say that 2013 is the fucking worst year of my life, an apocalypse of bad events, accidents, stress, bad karma, financial loss, neighbors and other morons legal issues.
Strong stress of the first 6 months of this year has given back all the bad habits I won a few years ago. Self esteem gone away.
The final shot given by lazyness, lack of focus and comfort zone.
conja I have seen black from july to november, only black, I have lost focus for whole weeks, forgot most projects, lost customers.
Like an earthquake that lasts a year and kill you slowly.
Just my family (parents, sister, close relatives) saved my life.

Lost about 90% of my financial assets, my nice house and the cool BMW.
I have done a total clean up in my business, projects, skills.
Learning to be cheap, every penny matters for my bills, servers, services.
I have kept only the best, and now I'm building again my business, growing my skills every day and I will never stop again in my life, I have started from the scratch not from zero because I have some good projects that bring me good money.
But I am grateful, I have challenged the worst and I am still alive, and last weeks results are better I could think. The best lesson in my life even if too expensive.
Sorry for this so long post but it's the first time I share this experience.
Take a rest conja and take care of yourself
 
I still remember to this day, few years ago, I went to my atm machine about to go out to a bar with a hommie of mine, when it was Washington Mutual, put my atm card, withdrew 40.00, I got a over withdrawal charge for 35.00 or some shit like that, I looked at the receipt, it was at negative 40.00, I stood there frozen, and I thought how much I owe on my CC, which was around 10,000.00, that was enough for me. I became the biggest penny pincher on the planet, even when I went on dates, she paid
 
My biggest site got hit fucking hard about 18 months ago. I put some money into an aged domain and started putting a shitload (for me, $15K per month) in to traditional marketing via retargeting, email campaigns, ads, sponsorships, etc..

Long story short, ROI is better than it was to begin with, with only about 20% coming from organic. Still have some droughts, but was able to more than mitigate..

Moral of the story- there's no free lunch. You want to get visibility and earn some rev, you need to hustle and put money in to every marketing channel you can.. they'll usually pay off if you have something worth buying.
 
3 Random Thoughts To Share:

1) Don't Worry
I went into panic mode after the first Penguin hit. I lost a lot of my money sites, and I lost my clients sites. Obviously this sucked. Out of everything though, my non-tech father is the one who calmed me down the most.

"Don't worry Son. So you might have lost one small thing, that doesn't really matter. What you have done is figure out the bigger picture. Worst case scenario, you move home for a month or two and bartend, 3 months later you will be right back where you are now, only stronger and wiser."

Luckily I never had to do that, but it took away a lot of my panic. If you have already been there before, then you understand the hardest part of all and have a solid knowledge base to work off of.


2) Sell when you have the chance.
There is something very special about having 6-figures sitting in an account, not wanting to be touched. Once you have a small nest egg it's possible to start working on bigger things, and you make better decisions from not having to make shortcuts to get your next meal.

I was listening to this podcast talking about some theories of my favorite books Antifragile when one message really hit home.

If your business has a larger potential downside than a potential upside then it's time to sell. Black Swans will come eventually.

So if I'm looking at a website of mine and it's based solely on SEO that I have manipulated in any way, then there can be a large potential downside. Google will get smarter, the next Zebra will come. Sell while you can.


3) This has been stated time and time again, but I'll say it once more... Diversify.
Diversify your traffic.
If you're putting all of your effort into SEO then you're not only leaving a lot of money on the table, but you're also increasing the likelyhood of a catastropic event for your biz.

Diversify your businesses.
After the first Penguin I really started putting extra effort into this. I'm very glad I did. My finances are now much less volatile, and I can sleep better at night.

One thing that has worked well for me, is hiring people to actually build a biz for me. Hire westerners fresh out of college who want to travel the world for $1.5k/month. They are smart and capable, but need real world skills that you can teach them. Give them the big picture of the business and tell them to go. Figure it out for themselves and only come to me when they get stuck.
 
I'm gonna have to disagree with #1 and #2 above.

1. Worry your ass off.

Doing so will make sure you find every nook and cranny to market your product. If you're not worried, then I will take your lunch from you.

2. Always Be Selling

Find every way imaginable to sell, cross sell, bundle, re-sell, affiliate offer, and market the shit you have. I have a small handful of actual product that I've marketed at least 10 different ways.. direct on web, via apps, on Amazon, via re-branding, etc. ALWAYS BE SELLING. Pennies from heaven add up.

3. Yep - Diversify. There's no single product that will make you a millionaire. But 50 of them each selling $1k-5k per month? It will stack up.
 
elgordo said:
I'm gonna have to disagree with #1 and #2 above.

1. Worry your ass off.

Doing so will make sure you find every nook and cranny to market your product. If you're not worried, then I will take your lunch from you.

2. Always Be Selling

Find every way imaginable to sell, cross sell, bundle, re-sell, affiliate offer, and market the shit you have. I have a small handful of actual product that I've marketed at least 10 different ways.. direct on web, via apps, on Amazon, via re-branding, etc. ALWAYS BE SELLING. Pennies from heaven add up.

3. Yep - Diversify. There's no single product that will make you a millionaire. But 50 of them each selling $1k-5k per month? It will stack up.
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Agree with these.

The majority of the successful folk I meet are worriers. They don't all sweat the small stuff, but they are constantly thinking/worrying about doing better.
 
Worry is not what breeds success for me. It's motivation. I have motivation regardless. Fear causes people to go potato.

2. I don't think I said anything against this, but focus on the big wins, not the pennies.
 
Worry is the biggest motivator I can think of.

Also, must people don't have a single product that can storm revenue. Its much more realistic to find a number of "smaller" rev streams that add up.

At least that's what works for me.
 
i have an excellent plan:

1. worry til ur palms are sweating rivers all over ur keyboard. wanna take some xanax to take the edge off? too bad johnny! QQ.

2. always be buying. america is #1 in everything because we are #1 at consumption. wanna buy a ps4 to shift your attention to video games while your sites are tanking? buy it u fool, dont think.

3. don't diversify. the fattest people i know all eat mcdonalds. do they diversify into burger king, wendys, and dairy queen? hell to the no! they pick one fast food restaurant and stick with it.

4. making money online is easy as hell. dont make it more complicated than it has to be, otherwise you might as well be flipping burgers for my fat friends who eat at mcdonalds.
 
Can we sticky this thread? Maybe somewhere in the newbies area or just somewhere?

I know that next time I get wiped out, I'm really going to appreciate reading this.
 
kumansk said:
Fucking glad op is not here replying to shit, probably out there rebuilding. Keep at it.
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Yes working my ass off now. One site has survived and should keep me afloat for a while at least while I rebuild.
 
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