What is your biggest mistake in Internet Marketing? I'll tell you mine.

59 replies
I've been at this full time for 3 years and 6 months.

I was thinking this morning how I would have done things different.

The first 2 years were brutal.

So what's the one thing I would have changed?

If I could do it all again, I would have SOLD something.

In other words, I wouldn't have spent so much time and money on affiliate marketing or Adsense or content production. I based so much of my early efforts on "word count" and, of course, I got nailed in the Panda and Penguin algo changes.

Instead, I wish I would have tried to sell something (anything): Info Products or physical products or even my own services. You develop a much different feel for marketing when you are actually trying to move REAL product and build up a REAL customer list.

Anyone else want to share? I'm real curious - thanks!
#biggest #internet #marketing #mine #mistake
  • Profile picture of the author Weedy92
    No mistakes, any mistake I've made I've considered it to be a learning expirence that's helped me grow and get better.. Have I spent money on bad ideas before? Yes, but a few hundred dollars is nothing compared to the amount of education I learned. Knowing what works and what doesn't work is something that's key in IM.
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    • Profile picture of the author DanWestern
      Originally Posted by Weedy92 View Post

      No mistakes, any mistake I've made I've considered it to be a learning expirence that's helped me grow and get better.. Have I spent money on bad ideas before? Yes, but a few hundred dollars is nothing compared to the amount of education I learned. Knowing what works and what doesn't work is something that's key in IM.
      That's exactly how i feel. Any mistake i make helps me become better, i've spent money on lots of products that are advertised as being incredibly helpful but are not and i learn a lot more from every individual mistake I make.
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  • Profile picture of the author myonlineempires
    Banned
    Definitely waiting too long to start an idea for a project. Don't wait, start now!
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  • Profile picture of the author imchillin
    Biggest mistake? Shiny Object Syndrome! It's so hard to focus on one project when you let yourself get distracted by the "next big thing" and then you have 35 half done projects laying around, lol! STOP AND FOCUS! *me yelling at myself, of course, and not the focused warriors that don't have this problem, lol* There's nothing wrong with multiple streams of income but at least finish one project to a point of making some type of income before adding another project to your life..... :-)
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    • Profile picture of the author hockmasm
      Originally Posted by imchillin View Post

      Biggest mistake? Shiny Object Syndrome! It's so hard to focus on one project when you let yourself get distracted by the "next big thing" and then you have 35 half done projects laying around, lol! STOP AND FOCUS! *me yelling at myself, of course, and not the focused warriors that don't have this problem, lol* There's nothing wrong with multiple streams of income but at least finish one project to a point of making some type of income before adding another project to your life..... :-)
      agreed! i started a website that is making me 150 per month. i then came up with another idea for a site that i thought would make me rich! however, after building it i realized i did not have enough time to work on both as the second site took a lot to manage and gain visitors. so i sold it and made my investment back. now i am focusing on my original site and producing quality content in hopes that it becomes a leader in its niche one day and turns that 150 into 1,000 per month!
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  • Profile picture of the author MrMonetize
    I also suffered from shiny object syndrome to start with. I have yet to meet a newbie marketer who hasn't been drawn in by something. I think this forum has a lot to answer for!

    Truth is, I now have a good understanding of every aspect of Internet Marketing just through trial and error in the past. Another marketer told me its like getting a self educated degree, and he wasn't wrong. Most of the gurus play on human emotions and sell you crap, rather than actually teaching you the skills required to make money online. That's what annoys me.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jeff Schuman
      Not outsourcing faster. I guess I felt like I needed to be hands on with every aspect of my Internet business. In reality it is better to do what you like best and outsource the rest. You will accomplish more and like it better as well.
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      • Profile picture of the author cashp0wer
        Waiting too long to start. I kept reading and reading and reading until I finally told myself - JUST DO IT - I should have done it much sooner.
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  • Profile picture of the author thatkeywordguy
    The power of focusing has been a big one for me

    great TED talk here

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  • Profile picture of the author Matt Carlson
    My biggest mistake was not taking ation for a long time.I wasted my first six months purchasing every other shiny course and didn't put anything into practice.

    And when I started taking action,I tried to do everything by myself.I could have accomplished 10 times more by outsourcing mundane tasks.
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    • Profile picture of the author karocom
      not taking action for a long time
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  • Profile picture of the author DotComBum
    My biggest mistake is keep registering domain names and letting them expire.
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    • Profile picture of the author SurrealPSD
      Originally Posted by DotComBum View Post

      My biggest mistake is keep registering domain names and letting them expire.
      ^ Yup, that was the one that stung me too
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      • Profile picture of the author myob
        My biggest mistake early on as a new affiliate marketer was trying to sell in competitive niches using the same methods as the competition. What I learned is there are not any "saturated" niches; only saturated marketing methods.

        "The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way."
        - Dale Carnegie
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    • Profile picture of the author Rukshan
      Originally Posted by DotComBum View Post

      My biggest mistake is keep registering domain names and letting them expire.
      Right! I also do same mistake.
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      • Profile picture of the author Tayman
        Celebrating after making several 1k a day net profit campaigns on FB instead of working harder while the iron was hot.
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        • Profile picture of the author Brad Berry
          There is one big mistakes in my journey in Internet Marketing. Most of my time is waste on noneffective methods and it really cost me a lot of my resources. Next time is not always better, I screw the part when I select the package of advertisement.


          Each time I remember that time, My confidence goes down. But now, its a different story. In the end, just learn from your mistake, mate!
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    • Profile picture of the author joann111
      oh, so true, tell me about it


      Originally Posted by DotComBum View Post

      My biggest mistake is keep registering domain names and letting them expire.
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      • Profile picture of the author andrewkar
        Waiting too long...
        Signature
        Do what you want to do!
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  • Profile picture of the author Kalednet
    My biggest mistake was creating a product that I "assumed" people will love.
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    • Profile picture of the author danebristol
      The thing i regret the most is NOT starting this sooner !. I mean i have been doing Internet Marketing for 5 months now and honestly its the best thing i have ever done. my You Tube Channel is exploding and people are actually making a nice amount of money from the content i supply.

      This forum is certainly an asset ! Wish i found it sooner !

      Dane
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  • Profile picture of the author headmaster211
    Banned
    Honestly, the biggest mistake I did in my 1st year was not building a list. However, I did pretty well without a list too. I learned from my mistake, started making a list straight away and my income grow multi-fold and more consistent than ever.
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  • Profile picture of the author fin
    Buying too many domain names.

    I've only really just started my adventure, because I had to live my niche for about 8/9 months before I was comfortable writing about it.

    So all the other stupid things I've done I don't really count. I'm glad I took the time to study some important blogs that have made my change the way I think about stuff.

    Maybe another one is not reading enough fiction books.

    My main goal when I started IM was to move to a tropical country. I've accomplished that in 1 year so I'm pretty happy with that. Even though I make my money writing articles for a company, I still have all the extra benefits of being self-employed: get up when I want, take a break whenever I feel like it. And I can work on my own business in my spare time, but I'm in no rush so can take it easy.
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  • Profile picture of the author MilkerFocus
    Too afraid the future. The fact is Just try our very best now, tomorrow will be easy.
    Have you even watch "3 idiots " Movie, if you don't you have to watch it.
    It mentions exactly what we face.
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  • Profile picture of the author Terry Kyle
    Originally Posted by thatkeywordguy View Post

    I've been at this full time for 3 years and 6 months.

    I was thinking this morning how I would have done things different.

    The first 2 years were brutal.

    So what's the one thing I would have changed?

    If I could do it all again, I would have SOLD something.

    In other words, I wouldn't have spent so much time and money on affiliate marketing or Adsense or content production. I based so much of my early efforts on "word count" and, of course, I got nailed in the Panda and Penguin algo changes.

    Instead, I wish I would have tried to sell something (anything): Info Products or physical products or even my own services. You develop a much different feel for marketing when you are actually trying to move REAL product and build up a REAL customer list.

    Anyone else want to share? I'm real curious - thanks!
    My biggest mistake was a failure to SPECIALIZE and instead just learning a little bit about many things rather than a LOT about one or two.

    Generalised knowledge is worthless - specialized expertise has VALUE.
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  • Profile picture of the author thatkeywordguy
    >> "Generalised knowledge is worthless - specialized expertise has VALUE."

    thats a good one
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  • Profile picture of the author therichb
    Selling always is not a good way to be in internet marketing.... The main factor lies here is to keep the client involved in your offering....

    Whether it is a niche product or not, the way you sell matters & brings you relevant queries for purchase
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    • Profile picture of the author MrMonetize
      Originally Posted by gulahmedsoomro View Post

      Great Discussion..
      Great comment
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  • Profile picture of the author kencalhn
    my biggest strategic error has been not getting affiliate marketing programs launched earlier. online fulltime since the 90s, selling a lot myself, would've sold 4-6x as much if I'd recruited and developed affiliates and run launch contests and the rest of it.

    I dislike the busy work needed to manage affiliate marketing, but recognize it as the "one missing link" from my business; I'll be trying shareasale. I'm a top content producer and do very very well on my own, I'd do so much better w/affiliates though, it's just a fulltime job by itself.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dan Lyons
    My biggest mistake was expecting "success" to happen by a particular date. And when that date passed and I wasn't where I thought I should be, it sent me into a complete tailspin.

    I think that's a big myth about online business - the word "online" somehow makes folks think that things move more quickly than regular "bricks and mortar" business.

    A friend told me he heard a very successful millionaire say that he thinks it takes 1000 days to build a good, solid business. He said to not even think of quitting before then. Not sure I agree but interesting food for thought.

    But I love what I do and I wouldn't change it for the world. But next time round I'd manage my expectations a bit better.
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  • Profile picture of the author pvn158
    truly agree to sell your own product, build your own brand that 's a long-term business
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  • Profile picture of the author andreabolder
    Waiting to make sure everything was perfect (perfect blog, perfect system, perfect products...). Success online is about going for it. Doing the activity that makes you money instead of focusing too much on the process. Hard work, motivation and consistency are the keys to success not perfect products and perfect systems.
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  • Profile picture of the author Trev81
    Not focusing enough. Biggest problem in my life. Not just IM
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  • Profile picture of the author wpo1408
    Originally Posted by thatkeywordguy View Post

    I've been at this full time for 3 years and 6 months.

    I was thinking this morning how I would have done things different.

    The first 2 years were brutal.

    So what's the one thing I would have changed?

    If I could do it all again, I would have SOLD something.

    In other words, I wouldn't have spent so much time and money on affiliate marketing or Adsense or content production. I based so much of my early efforts on "word count" and, of course, I got nailed in the Panda and Penguin algo changes.

    Instead, I wish I would have tried to sell something (anything): Info Products or physical products or even my own services. You develop a much different feel for marketing when you are actually trying to move REAL product and build up a REAL customer list.

    Anyone else want to share? I'm real curious - thanks!
    I relied too much on Google.
    I was with them for 10 years and then lost my a/c, but hadn't changed my MO.
    I feel a ot freer now, although I still haven't matched my Adsense income YET, but I will.
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    • Profile picture of the author thatkeywordguy
      Originally Posted by wpo1408 View Post

      I relied too much on Google.
      That's my second biggest mistake
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  • Profile picture of the author jingrong
    My biggest mistake is I shouldn't give up so easily on internet marketing 7 years ago. I should keep trying, fine tune it, and improve it until I see result. Who knows, if I persistent enough I may be one of the Internet Guru.
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  • Profile picture of the author nasuryono
    Totally agree with you there. I wish I had sold my own product from the beginning. It's faster money and you don't have to wait each month for the checks to come
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    Using the worst PPC search engines and spending thousands thinking that i was going to get sales with their piss poor traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author jamiebarclay
    I agree with your comment on Building and selling a product. I partnered with people in the past and this didn't work out. I guess from my perspective I needed to trust myself a little more. But as some of the wise warriors have said above every mistake is really a learning and I look at all of these challenges or misdirections to learn what actually works.
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  • Profile picture of the author SJJPFTW
    #1 Procrastinating

    #2 Wasting so much money on PPC
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    Also... listening to the advice from too many gurus who just wanted to sell me something instead of help me.
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  • Profile picture of the author starcraft2
    Banned
    What I wish I had done differently is I would have just jumped into freelancing right away to make the first dollar as soon as possible, just so i could have stayed focus, made some money initially and reinvest those dollars into other ventures
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  • Profile picture of the author xpesos
    my biggest mistake was investing in ptc and then marketing them for referrals ..
    ahh so poor of me, didn't know then that i could earn the same amount that i earned in ptc in month from service selling
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  • Profile picture of the author Prosper2day
    Jumping from one idea to the next one.
    It almost drove me insane and got all of my HAIR I'm saving a few strands for my next project.
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris Silvey
      My biggest mistake? Some years ago I tried to go up against Newegg.com. I am a computer nerd and selling stuff I drooled over all the time got me excited.

      So what I did was of course get a LLC license, My FID, Business checking account and signed up with a distributor. Think it was D&H using the drop ship method. I went with a ecommerce platform called vevocart asp.net and ran my own IIS server with a static ip.
      I had to stitch together product information to make a catalog, csv. It was a bear to do.

      Problems arose. I found out asp.net wasn't a very good web platform. Namely due to performance on Page file size. This shows up as a garbled wall of text in the pages site wide which kills web spiders. The vevocart application wasn't SEO friendly at all. I learned a ton about asp.net, controls and C+ as I went through the system to make it viable for a bit of on page SEO.

      I had server issues where it would go down, corrupted database, had a shady SEO get my site blacklisted by Google.

      On top of that I had to deal with this which all said and done I spent about 2.8 years, just because I was stubborn. The worst followed as I went from distributor to distributor to find a better price. It was a long process. What put a nail in it was of course the whole niche. read on if you dare..

      Neweggs retail prices were cheaper than my wholesale cost from my distributor for the most part, so I thought well, I will move to another distributor. Same thing. In the end I must of had 5 distributors, a catalog of about 32k products that couldn't compete with Newegg. Well I put my conspirator hat on. Something wasn't right with open commerce. I found out a good portion of the distributors are owned by the same investors, share the same board members. If you remember when the fake I7 processors showed up on newegg. This is how I found out some of the affiliation as I and other retailers dug deeper into the workings of the industry. Newegg I found out for the most part directly from their own mouth is that they buy direct from the manufacturer. Here they circumnavigate the laws and standards where all retailers are forced into the distribution chain. Newegg has an affiliation of some kind with D&H, they only purchase some things when they are out of stock or low on.

      Back to the I7 story. Newegg first points to D&H as the source of the fake I7, but D&H points its finger to ASI which ASI points a finger at IPex and some clever reporter dug real deep and asked a question of ASI in which they replied We do not own Ipex or have an affiliation with IPex or other distributors. This of course rose a red flag. I dug into Ipexs site which mysteriously dropped off the internet for 4 days, but I dug into the register and found that ASI registered the IPex site.

      With all this boiling in my head. I head on over to the Microsoft Partner site and posted my findings with pics. Other retailers jumped in on the Info harvesting and everything was falling into place on a intricate form of monopoly and control. We tore into the Microsoft Reps there about Newegg buying direct from Microsoft while we were forced into the chain. It was a big riot. This was my last day in the PC hardware niche.

      Now if I even knew about WF or IM in general, I would of been in a much better position today and not have wasted nearly 3 years, money and frustration.

      I guess you can use an example of what not to do. If the niche you are in doesn't work and you have tried all routes, dont be stubborn, dont pursue it. Sometimes you can get to focused.
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  • Profile picture of the author Socialbakers
    My biggest mistake is probably focusing on too many things at once. As I think about it, I would have done much greater job focusing just on one particular thing rather than trying to do them all at once.
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  • Profile picture of the author HJWakelin
    Mine would be sucking at everything... believing the myth "free will make you money!"

    Free traffic exchanges etc gave me heaps of hits over 7 years, but only 1 sale ever! Chris Farrell membership made me commissions, but Click Bank wouldn't release the check until I had 5 buyers with 5 different credit cards - damn their tough CDR rules! I got one sign up, but lost them 6 months later,and now am being charged a monthly maintenance fee via Click Bank.So all I struggled to earn is being chewed away!

    One of my biggest mistake is probably jumping from one to many things at once. As I think about it,I would have done much greater job focusing just on one particular thing rather than trying to do them all at once. And buying "paid" traffic from a trustworthy source.
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  • Profile picture of the author thatkeywordguy
    Why do you guys wish you had held the domain names?
    Because of the age factor in seo?
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  • Profile picture of the author sdentrepreneur
    I have been Full Time online since 2007, the only thing I would have done was created my own product/course sooner. I completed it in 2011 and having much more success than selling other peoples stuff :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author Ahmed Auf
    Buying every new WSO that comes out and I like, I have a lot of curiosity.

    Also not setting definite work times everyday and not doing an everyday to do list.

    Organization and time management are key as we're working from home and you can easily get distracted.
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  • Profile picture of the author wackiin
    Mine was never making REAL money so not knowing how to manage it.
    then Start making A Lot of money and instead of investing in new things and having multiple
    Sources of income and not thinking what would happen if the 2 things I had going hit the crapper. known as the God complex
    you get so big you think your it!
    And then it did hit the crapper and by then my weekly bills had moved to a insane amount to live on each week

    Advice Once you start making xx.xxx on a reg bases find other income streams both online and offline so if one fails you have other methods banking.

    Second Save some if you make 10k a week don't spend 10k a week.
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  • Profile picture of the author johnnyleebon
    I have started three months ago, but what i think is people who make mistake are great. As quote by Robert Kiyosaki " People who make mistake they learn, people who don't like mistake they will never know".
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  • Profile picture of the author thatkeywordguy
    Its interesting how many people have talked about the power of focus.
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  • Profile picture of the author seanpbh
    I have been doing IM for a year and a half doing a lot but making hardly any money. Spent too much time writing content, trying to get backlinks and SEO etc. I have been listning and looking for help from people who lists I am on and have come to realise that I should be doing what there doing. Building a list and helping/ selling products to other people
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  • Profile picture of the author moneymakerway
    I spent money on hype programs and products too. But in the end I've gained a lot of great knowledge, cause not all of these products were complete loss of time. We all learn on our mistakes. During my experience in IM I've realized what are essential things.
    Here is a list: goals, determination, focus, consistency, plan, organization and action.
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