Forum

[smuigal]

I was thinking about this post in another forum I read recently. This guy had spent $8,000 to learn how to make money online and ended up with nothing to show for it. He was $8,000 in debt. Unfortunately, like many of us, he used his credit cards to try and get ahead.

I have been humiliated in the past falling for a few coaching scams.The first time I found this site offering to teach you how to become a successful eBay seller. The cost for personal coaching was $2,000. There was a money back guarantee so I went for it.

After a week or so my coach had figured out that I really knew a lot more about the Internet than he did and asked me if I wanted to partner with him on a project. I thought, ARG!!! If this guy thinks "I" know more than he does, what the heck am I paying him for?

Yes, I knew a lot about the Internet but I did not have the understanding of how to put it all together. Anyway, I did get my money back in this case. But I was pretty frustrated and I was lucky that that money went right back on the credit card I used to pay for it.

The next time I fell for another coaching scam that promised to give me several products to sell and then show me how to properly set up my website in order to create sales. After just one hour of coaching I realized it was all about on-page SEO and how to use Google to drive traffic to your website.

Again, this was not what I needed to learn. At that time I knew exactly how to do both of these things. Sadly, I did not read the contract closely enough and they had a way out of their promise of a money back guarantee. That cost me $2500 on my credit card.

But... here's what I failed to realize back then. I could have called my credit card company and reported their scam. I have recently talked to a few people about this and they felt I could have gotten my money back if I had not been so embarrased to call up my credit card company and explain what happened.

So, the lesson learned there is that if you do use your credit card and you get scammed, report it right away. You just might qualify to get your money back.

Fast forward to today. The past 3 years my husband and I have worked on getting out of credit card debt. We did have to negotiate with our creditors to do so, but we did get it done. During those 3 years we did not use our credit cards unless we could pay them off at the end of the month. It is hard, I have to say. There are a lot of things we wanted to buy that we had to pass on, but with some effort, we did avoid getting back into debt.

Our only debt now is our car and our recent home purchase. Honestly, my husband and I are still sort of in shock that we own our own home now.

The only reason why we have zero credit card debt is because we have learned from our mistakes and continue to avoid using our credit cards unless we already have the money to pay them off at the end of the month.

My mistake was thinking that it was OK to buy the HOW TO Make money online guides with my credit cards. Why? Because there is NO guarantee that I would be able to use that information to make money online and pay that money back.

I have learned that it is better to set aside money to pay for the things I want to learn online or tools I want to use. That way I am only spending what I can afford to lose.

The second thing I have learned that is one of my greatest failures is this...

Stick to ONE thing. Sigh... believe me, I still have issues with this but this year I've done better. I have ONE business I'm working on online, my Netwoozy.com website. And I have one business I'm working on offline with a partner. She's pretty much doing all the work, I'm just helping her out.

I have a really hard time with this guys. My mind is highly creative and I enjoy learning new things. But... if I am tempted to BUY something online, I use the money I have earned to do so. I don't use my credit card.

There really is a lot of information within this forum and other forums online that will help you find your way to making "something" a little cash to get you started anyway, without having to buy the tools to do it first.

Mark talked about iWriter.com. This is a good place to get cash that you can use to invest in perhaps Marks AB program. Or, you can invest in learning how to make money blogging or maybe learn how to make money with Fiverr.com or some other freelancer type of work online.

What about you? What have you learned from one of your failures that could help us not make the same mistake?

 

[Swarlley]

I bought AffiloBlueprint a year or two ago and started building the first website completely on my own. I wrote my own articles and started spinning a few of them. I didn't have the money for any outsourcing or for AMA, UAW, etc.

I eventually quit working on the site when I couldn't stand writing and spinning my articles and doing all the manual submissions. I know that I'll never be able to spin many articles. It's one of those things I don't have the patience for.

Now since I've started with a new website on the first of August I have been able to afford the outsourcing of writing, spinning, and AMA, UAW, and SEOLV. I still write a few of my site's articles on my own but the majority are outsourced.

Since I've been able to outsource, I have my first site starting to rank well and my second site is coming together. It seems like it just a waiting game as my backlinks are being built and my traffic increases over time.

So I would say the mistake for me was not being able to outsource. If I was able to go back, I would work at my job for longer hours in able have the extra money for outsourcing.

Having to do all the work on my own was overwhelming and it caused me to quit before I had a chance to succeed.

So I recommend to anyone reading this to find a way to outsource whatever you can.

 

[cterao]

For me, the biggest mistake is not focusing on what makes money.

It's easy to sidetracked by a thrill of starting a new site, a new project, etc. Sometimes the ones we already have get so frustrating or boring that we just want to toss them all into the wind and start something completely new.

But every time I've spent more time focusing on what already works, my income has increased.

If you have a niche that you're making good money in, keep doing it. Add more content, nudge those articles higher up the search rankings.

Chrisi, I don't know if I'm allowed two failures--I guess I'm just really good at failing :)

...But, my second thing would be to stick with a proven plan.

You have to be 100% certain in the plan you're following. If you're not, doubts will creep in and you'll start to second-guess yourself. Then before you know it you're browsing through the latest scams on the Warrior Special Offer forum, jumping from one shiny thing to the next.

Find a plan/program/system/whatever that actually works and put 100% faith in it. That's what happened when I did AffiloBlueprint for one solid year. Even though I didn't quite end up hitting my goal, I was a lot better off than if I had just spent a year bumbling around trying this and that.

So my two mistakes and bits of advice for others would be: focus and faith.

 

[digiblue]

Wow I'm really feeling this post and everybody's responses!

I don't think I could narrow down one particular failure, I have made so many of them as I have progressed on this IM journey.

Here are the biggest failures over the years, which I have learned my lesson from...

Failure One - Not knowing the balance between pulling the trigger and learning how the trigger works.

Let me explain. When I first came onto the IM scene in 2007 I entered a very foreign and strange world. I had to learn a new language, learn new skills, and then test everything out to see if it actually worked or not (many times it didn't).

I quickly became hooked on learning, so much so that I felt as if I was addicted to the accumulation of marketing knowledge. There is nothing wrong with learning but I pulled the trigger very little (taking action). Instead I kept on learning, learning, and learning, always thinking the right method, the right solution, or the right product would be just around the corner and it would be the one thing that would lead me to untold riches. How wrong was I!

It took me a good few years before I was able to shift the balance to about 50% learning and 50% implementation. Now I am at the point in my life where the balance is 90% action and 10% learning. And most of the learning is just to stay up to date with the changing Internet landscape. It took me a long time to learn that most of the learning isn't from downloading ebooks and courses but in the actual action.

Failure Two - The trap of Internet distraction.

What a wonderful thing the Internet is. But it's one of the greatest time wasters ever created. I think I was born with procrastination running through my genes. And in the early days, the Internet exploited my weakness. I would try to start my day with good intentions but soon find myself reading blog posts, Googling things I didn't really need the answer to, and hitting various forums. Hours would go past and then I would snap out of the "procrastination trance" and wonder "what the hell have I just been doing????"

It was not easy to beat the internet distraction trap but I can now successfully say that I have beaten this beast. I now only check emails once a day and have about 1 hour a day where I allow myself to do anything I want online. But this hour only comes after I have finished my most important tasks for the day.

Failure Three - Jumping From System To System

When I first got started in Internet Marketing I had no idea which system to follow, I was in the stage that some psychologists call "conscious incompetence", meaning that I knew various system existed but I was incompetent in my knowledge of them. So obviously, I had to learn. This is where people get into trouble. As Smuigal experienced and many others. In any "make money" markets there are sharks swimming around waiting to smell the new flesh and pick up on the excitement of the newbies. So it can be difficult to get an education, without getting screwed in the process.

I treated my first couple of years in IM as the equivalent of me going to university and studying IM. So I was fine paying money to learn things. The only problem was that I bought a lot of crap as well. I soon learned that most salesletters are better than the actual content of the ebook they were selling. Finding reputable people to believe in and profitable systems to follow took it's time and I fell into the trap of jumping around far too much.

But in the first year or so, I think it's okay to "jump around" a little bit. Not all systems are for everybody and it can take a while to find one that fits you perfectly. In my case, building small minisites is where a large bulk of my online earning comes from and it's a business model I think I have perfected through trial and error. Once I learned this system and it felt right, I stay focused, ignored all the "noise" in the IM space that was always blaring loud and just stayed true to my path and have been successful due to this.

Failure Four - Not reinvesting money earned back into my business.

I learned a long time ago by Robert Kiyosaki (rich dad, poor dad) that the best way to become rich was to constantly invest money into assets and not limitations. And to make money but put a certain percentage towards reinvesting in either business or asset accumulation. Well, this lesson went right out the window when I started IM. Any money I earned from my affiliate sales I use to blow on absolute crap and for far too long.

Now a large percentage of my income I earn though affiliate sales, I take what I need for my lifestyle expenses and then reinvest that back into my business. Most of the money goes to outsourcing. After finding a profitable system, reinvesting money is what has allowed me to get ahead in this game. And I strongly urge anyone who is making a surplus of cash reinvest it back into their business.

Well that's enough failures for now I think :)

I'm sure there will be many more but at the end of the day, failure usually paves the way to success.

 

[smuigal]

Isn't it something how we all really do have many of the same issues when it comes to our failures. But we can share them, help each other grow, and help new members recognize these things so perhaps they can avoid them.

I've had two really successful websites. Well, three. I sold all three of them. One of them I sold out of panic when the credit card companies raised the interest rates to 26-20%. I was also really sick at the time and my mind was not in focus.

The other two sites I sold, I made a nice profit on, but one of them I wish I had kept. It was earning almost $200.00 a month in Adsense and I was ranking #3 for a really profitable keyword. I earned about $3.00 a click. I didn't spend enough time on SEO so it was stuck ranking on number 3.

Someone came along and offered to buy it from me. I ended up selling it and now they ranked the main keyword at number 1. I think it's probably worth $500.00 or more a month now in Adsense. They also recently resold or redesigned it. I think they probably ranked it at number 1 for a few keywords and made a killing on the sale.

Anyway, I bring this up because of what you mentioned Dig... I think it's important for us to focus on the successes.

I have another website that earns up to $3.00 per click, but I don't have time to work on it right now. I'm sticking to my plan and focusing on Netwoozy. But... once I have the income coming in, I'll start to outsource the work needed to build up my other adsense site.

So... it is definitely worth while to stick to what is working and make it grow. I have about 4 really good Adsense sites that I can grow once I have the funds to outsource the work.

Thanks for your contributions guys. This is great stuff here. :)

 

[margarita]

I have a question about time. How much time do you have to spend a day if you dont do outsourcing?
As I am still a newbie, I havent got to that yet. Can any of you remember how much time you spent before you did outsourcing?
Thanks if you can give me an idea. I seem to spend hours and hours but dont have the feeling I am getting anywhere.

 

[smuigal]

Hi Margarita,

That is a loaded question. I would look around for some other threads on starting out. This thread is about learning from our failures.

But to turn your question around... I would say that I have many times failed to schedule my time and so it becomes wasted time.

One thing I do that helps me to get my work done now is I will start my work day doing the actual work. I avoid email, I don't do research, I do nothing else until my work is finished. After my work is done, then I do other things like research or taking care of my emails.

Unless of course my email was part of the work that needed to be completed. :)

 

[jmpruitt]

it really depends on what you are doing. one thing I generally recommend is if you are doing everything yourself, focus on just one or two pages on your site, rather than all your pages. Get those pages ranking and bringing in a sale or two. I generally recommend starting on the product review pages for that, since they are the easiest to make sales from.

You can do it spending 2-3 hours a day, but it will take time to build up. Really. there are a lot of factors that will play into how long it takes. some keywords you can get ranking within a few weeks, while others will have more competition and could take months.

 

[Cecille L]

I have a question about time. How much time do you have to spend a day if you dont do outsourcing?
As I am still a newbie, I havent got to that yet. Can any of you remember how much time you spent before you did outsourcing?
Thanks if you can give me an idea. I seem to spend hours and hours but dont have the feeling I am getting anywhere.

I suggest you come out with a daily plan or maybe map out a weekly plan for yourself with goals written down for that week. I used to have the same problem. I am easily distracted and can't keep track of what I've done and what I've yet to do. Organize your tasks and jot them down. I've found that having a schedule helps me keep track of what I should be doing at *this* moment and the goals let me know why exactly I am doing this. Once you have everything listed, you can begin timing yourself as you do these tasks. Then you'll get the hours you actually spend working on your projects. :)

Hope that helps. Have a good day!

 

[mark schaaf]

I would have to say my failure was in staying with the coaching club I joined for as long as I did. I think it was a good choice for me because it taught me a lot and at first it was so overwhelming I didn't know where to start. The place had lots of videos explaining all the important stuff but like any place they can't really teach you how to pick things and how to have ideas.

After listening and reading everything they had to offer what seemed a dozen times and not seeing the updates they said would happen every month I saw no point in staying with them. I am not saying there still wasn't things to learn from them but I don't think they were presenting the information an a why that was good for me.

There are so many people trying to teach you stuff for making money it is very difficult to pick one. The Affilorama people seem to share a lot of information without having to join anything and that is great I think as far as that aspect goes they are the best I have seen but at this time I don't really have money to do a month by month thing.

In some ways I am a lot like digiblue from above and I go through streaks where I am almost obsessed with finding out more information and trying to do things better trying to learn more SEO and how to wright better. I do plan out my days pretty well and spend a few hours on forums every other day to do posts that answers question people put up and will get some traffic from that and I will come on this site and give my point of view on things and answer some of the few things I know works but I ask a lot of question on this site as well.

I find I get honest answers on this site more often and don't get the crap like I do on others. When I ask people about thing on my web site here I get good feedback and good suggestions where on some other forums people will just say they don't like something and not say why or what they think I should do. Sometimes people will say it looks like a kid made the site or I should start all over and get a wordpress template then on the same site people will say it is exactly what they would do by keeping it simple and not go over the top with trying to make it flashy and making the pages too busy and say I have really good articles on the site.

In the beginning I had a tough time listening to peoples comments when they were bashing my site but after a while when I figured out that way more people like how I put my site together then didn't I stopped worrying about it. One of the things I do now is spend too much time working on the site and doing things for the site. But I haven't worked a real job in over 2 years and have only had 1 interview in that time I think it is an age thing, companies just don't want anyone in there mid 50's which to me is so stupid because for so many years when people reach the 15 to 20 year mark for working at place is when they start trying to figure out ways to get rid of them and find cheaper workers where with me I only want to work another 15 and be done with it.

So I spend a lot of time doing this for a number of reasons I figure after spending a couple hours everyday looking for a job and sending out resumes that if I want the internet thing to work that I need to treat it like a job. I also think it keeps me sharp that way whenever someone has the good sense to hire me to help manage things again I will be ready. I am just lucky that I am not alone and have someone else working in the house so I can do this. I know I may never be able to make a full time living at this and also know that sometimes it takes a long time to make any money doing this let alone good money but I still know once I get a job I will still keep doing this.

 

[smuigal]

Nice comment Mark. You hit the nail on the head there too when you said we have to treat this like a job.

It's hard to be both the boss and the worker. I think our "inner" boss is not tough enough sometimes. We can flake out or allow ourselves to get distracted.

i was thinking about your comment and thought... no boss likes it when you're working if you sit there and read emails or post on Facebook, or Twitter or text etc... they want you to spend your time working.

But... we have to have a plan. You mentioned you have a plan and that is what I'm working on. I actually have a plan too. Now I have an XLS file that I can work with. I can see my progress and over time I'll see results.

I'm STILL working on this plan. But I am getting results with the little bits I've scheduled to do.

Being our own boss isn't as easy as we think it is.

 

[Cecille L]

It's certainly difficult being your own boss, particularly if you are easily get distracted or if you have a full schedule (taking care of children, for instance). It helps to establish a routine as well as set goals for yourself. Create a daily schedule and time yourself as you do tasks so that you will know how long it takes for you to do each. Setting goals for yourself helps you keep track of things and gives you perspective on where you stand as far as projects are concerned. :)

 

[mark schaaf]

Thanks I try and stick to my plan but once in a while i veer off of it for a day or two sometimes because I will read an article about something then want to read more because it may be something I hadn't heard of and because I am in the middle of putting up a new page to my site it makes me wonder if I should keep doing it the same way as my other pages and if not do I think from the new information should I go back and re do my current pages. Because SEO seems like it is an ever changing thing the on page SEO always need to be tweaked. I also forgot to mention what I also look at as a failure and that is not taking much time off because sometimes I will get a bit burnt out and then not do anything for many days and just do stuff outside in the yard or something but are really things I should be doing every week anyhow but I often seem obsessed with the web stuff. Maybe it is because it is my site and I want it to be the best it can be and am always trying to learn what it takes to be the best. I guess one day if my site is on page 1 position 1 for every page on both google and yahoo then I will know I have done it right. But now I have a few pages on page 1 for some long tail keywords but that is how many say to start. Get something up there and make it go farther to the front then work on other pages getting there and just keep going.

 

[smuigal]

Hi Mark,

Hey, you're learning... that's the key. I'm learning too. In fact, I was thinking of a few things I need to do to get past this distraction thing. You see, I look online for ideas on what to write about for my content. Thep roblem is I get stuck on too many different ideas. Even though this IS what I need to work on, I'm still getting distracted.

My brain is formulating a plan for avoiding this. I'll post it in the YO blog once I've figure it all out. ;)

Good that you're on page 1 for longtail. Keep it going, it leads to shorter more traffic keywords ranking well.

 

[mark schaaf]

Smuigal. There are many things I do when writing to stop what you are talking about a little. Sometimes I will wright down all my ideas for articles then just start from the top one and work my way down. Sometimes If I don't know exactly what I want to write I will just start writing what come into my mine and keep going I have done this a couple times and when I read it I had 3 different subjects but still related and still geared towards my site. I will then cut and past each different parts onto another page and work from there. And it isn't like I have 500 words on one thing sometimes I will have a paragraph then 5 paragraphs later I will have another that is related to the first. And like I said I will match them up later. Something I know exactly what to write and it takes about an hour to put together an entire 1000 word article and sometimes it seems to take for ever. I am putting together a new 20 page section on my site and adding each page as it is done and because of the information I want to put on each page it has been taking me about 3 days for each page. Sometimes it takes that extra research to get everything right. But I will still have bouts with straying from what I need to do I will sometimes go for 3 months and be good then go for anywhere from 3 to 5 days and get almost nothing done because I am either stuck on something or lost in reading something I think is new or important and sometimes I just don't feel like working and will just play on the web but it seems like even when I am just playing I am still learning something because I am looking at other peoples sites and info. If you are avoiding things maybe you need to set up a reward program so if you get a page done in a day you get to have ice cream as a snack while watching TV that night or you will fix your favorite meal. Some people find it easy to turn work into a game or a challenge of some sort so there are a few more ideas to help you when you get distracted. Mark

 

[margarita]

I have found all your comments about failures and organizing time very helpful. Thankyou everybody.
It seems that it needs great discipline to get traffic to a site. I too, spent a lot of money on "enticing" schemes, that promised all. After a while, thank goodness, I began to see the similarity in the sales pages and became wary. I think the surplus of information really is daunting and overwhelming at times.
I think it is in the moments that you feel you are not getting anywhere, that you become vulnerable to these flashy schemes, where they promise results in days, and even minutes.
I find when I feel like this, I give myself a little break and then "get back to the drawing board." It is very useful to be able to check on the affilorama forum and see how other people are managing their internet businesses.

 

[ishuvonet]

I also did some mistakes when I was a beginner but continuous learning and taking action and lessons from mistakes are helping me now to make real money.Thanks to all of you for sharing such personal experience and lots of things to learn from here too.

 

[Cecille L]

@Margarita - Yes, driving traffic to your site is the most challenging task in managing a website. It takes a lot of patience and can bore you to tears at times. When I find myself getting distracted, I go offline and do something else, like may be check on my kids or plan out the next day. I review my goals too which helps a lot in giving me perspective on what I do and how much work I still need to accomplish what I've set.

 

[margarita]

Thank you for your honest comment Cecille.

-

Yes, driving traffic to your site is the most challenging task in managing a website. It takes a lot of patience and can bore you to tears at times.

My normal job is highly creative and stimulating and I too find this trying to drive traffic very boring in comparison, and wondered if it was only me feeling that way!! Of course one does it looking towards the end result.

As I am only able to do this work part-time at the moment, because when I am offered a teaching contract, I take it. I now, have been offered a very high-level teaching job for 8 weeks, which will not leave me much time for my online work. Will this be terribly negative or should I try to at least keep up with a few articles, although I wonder how I could do it? Due to the economic situation now in Italy, (as I guess everywhere else) work is no more offered on a permanent basis, hence I am serious about trying to make my online business "work," as most of you all are.
So would it be totally disastrous if I were not able to do anything for 8 weeks?

 

[Cecille L]

It won't be totally disastrous but I suggest you keep working at your site even to just update it with new content. If it is going to be too taxing for you, then you might want to consider outsourcing some of these tasks. You can hire someone to build backlinks for you or write articles for you for a minimal fee. You can check out Affilorama Services or sites like oDesk or eLance.

Hope that helps. Have a good day!

 

[margarita]

Thanks Cecille, re your comment

It won't be totally disastrous but I suggest you keep working at your site even to just update it with new content.

Are you telling me that it would be a great mistake to do little to my site for two months? Is this noted by Google?

 

[Cecille L]

Everything on the internet is noted by Google I think. :)

The thing is you need to work continuously on your SEO so you could get your keywords ranking. Your competitors will work on their SEO continuously as well, so you need to more or less, keep up. It's best to keep your site updated with new content at least once a week, it's both for your readers and search engines. A website that is regularly updated invites readers to keep coming back and search engines to index the site frequently.

My two cents. Have a good day! :)

 

[margarita]

It's best to keep your site updated with new content at least once a week,

Thanks so much Cecille,
By keeping site updated, do you mean by actually adding a new article once a week?

 

[jmpruitt]

Hey Margarita,

Adding fresh content to your site regularly, at least once a week, will help keep the search bots coming as well as giving you more pages indexed and more keywords you can target. One of the quality site standards Google looks at is how many pages you have, so adding fresh content at least once a week helps keep your site in good standing. this is really hard to do if you are relying on SEO, but if you target lower searched keywords, the seo can be much easier to handle, and you can do enough link building in a week to keep up. As you start making sales, you will be able to outsource the link building and focus more of your attention on content development.