When taking action as a Newbie goes wrong (long read)

When I first made my attempt at making money online, I knew absolutely nothing about internet marketing. In fact, I had no web skills at all. The only thing I knew how to do was get around on the internet and post on forums. I just I wanted to make someone money and a lot of it.

So, it was around 2004 when I bought a couple of domains and web hosting from Yahoo, and used site builder to get started. After going through the templates, I realized how much site builder absolutely sucked! I didn't know how to code, but figured out that I could download webpages and use the graphics to create pages. I even looked at source codes of different websites whenever I saw something I wanted to add to my to site. I learned a little about HTML by doing that but it wasn't enough because every page that I previewed looked like crap and I wanted excellence. Long story short...I never published anything.

I decided to give it another try after hearing about the milliondollarhompage. At the time, about half of the pixels had been sold, and I still knew very little in terms of webdesign and marketing. There were a bunch of people trying to capitalize on the idea, but only one came close and that was the milliondollarpornpage. I tried creating something similar with site builder and soon realized it was a bad idea and searched on Yahoo for a way to create one. I didn't want to buy a pixel script and knew nothing about outsourcing so I chose a free pixel script. The hosting plan that I had at the time would not support PHP and MYSQL so I upgraded with Yahoo. Long story short.....it didn't work out. My site looked like crap and I was not happy. Once again, I wasted money but learned about PHP and Mysql in the process.

Now frustrated and desperate for something to work, I had an idea for a controversial website this time. I rather not to say what it was about, but site builder was not the tool for the job. After spending a few hours creating my pages and setting up email, I immediately began my marketing campaign. I submitted my site to yahoo, and promoted in chat rooms. The response I got was mixed. Some people thought it was stupid and a waste of bandwidth, while others were appalled that someone would create such a site. Long story short.....didn't work out. The idea was great, but it looked like dog crap and I had no way of capitalizing on the traffic. It got to the point that I was visiting my site more than anyone else. Learned some new things but wasted even more money on hosting and domains that I never got around using.

The next idea involved getting people to donate money to me through paypal on yet another site I created using site builder. I asked visitors to help save a fictitious character and needless to say, it did not work. I became a member of at least 30 random forums just so I could post spam and got little to no traffic for all of my efforts. But on the bright side, I learned a few more things. Like how to set up donation buttons and how much some people really hate spammers.

Learned people were bidding on ridiculous listings on Ebay and thought I would give it a try. And when I say ridiculous, I mean people listing their souls for sale. Long story short....that didn't work to well neither.

I tried making money with Zazzle even though I didn't know how to create graphics. I ended up making one sell with a shirt I added only text to before I decided to try something else. I think the commission was between 1-2 dollars but it didn't matter because you need a at least $25 in your account before you can cash out. I was happy I made the sale but it wasn't enough for me to keep trying.

Right after that I decided to make a porn site. This idea involved creating a fictitious character who was trading porn for college tuition. Basically, after donating a dollar to my site, you would have access to my porn. The problem was that I couldn't figure out how to create a members only page and I couldn't link the images of my site to the movies. Movies I didn't have authorization to share anyway. So after weeks of screwing around with my my site, I went ahead and created videos in movie maker and uploaded them to youtube. Surprisingly, someone actually donated a dollar. I was hoping I could fix the problem with the videos but never got them to work. Tried giving the guy his money back, but he didn't want it because it was only a dollar to him. The only thing I learned from this was Yahoo charges wayyyyy to much money for hosting and domains after switching providers.

I created my very last website almost 3 years ago. I tried to get people to help pay off my debt by donating. Only this time, the story was real. I used site builder and had adsense all over my pages but zero content. After months of not making any money, I finally gave up on it. I had domains that I bought specifically for get rich ideas that I never got around to using. It wasn't until I stopped taking action that I realized that I couldn't keep doing this.

There comes a point where you have to stop and ask for directions. And that is what I've been doing for the past year by visiting this forum and learning as much as I can before I create another website. There are a number of reasons why I've failed at getting rich online. Most are painfully obvious but this is what I came up with.

1.Did the same thing but expected different results
Self-explanatory
2.Had the wrong mindset and mentality
See number 5
3.Tunnel Vision
My only focus was to get rich online the easiest way possible.
4.No strategy or planning
As soon as I got an idea I bought the domains and hosting.
5.Lack of education, Common sense
I did not like reading, and rarely took the time to learn anything new.

and so on.......

In total, I lost about $400 on domains and web hosting over the years doing things the wrong way. But I did learn somethings along the process.

Take action but be smart about it.