My Biggest Online Mistake - What's Yours?

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I just thought I would share a quick experience I had with a potential new client this week.

He works in the fitness industry and came to us with an interesting project. 'Eddie' James took the call, got some details, and then we had a talk and called back to get some more information.

Right from the start of the call, I made it clear that I was getting information together to provide an accurate quote for a bespoke package. Instead the prospect pushed and pushed for a price on the phone.

Then he started talking about a very low price as if I had mentioned it myself.

The deal didn't go ahead, because I cut it short.

The reason ? Well, overtime I've given a rough quote, the actual job has always turned out to be very different from what was discussed. So now, I don't let anyone force me to give out a quote - in the case of this prospect it meant they were ejected!
#main internet marketing discussion forum #biggest #mistake #online
  • Too many to mention...

    Biggest Financial Mistake

    Was owed $45,000, company when out of business, never got paid. Lost $10,000 in adwords cost to produce the revenue, back in 2004-05 pre Google Slap.

    Stupidest Mistake

    Setup a complete autoresponder series to run, promote, and profit while I traveled for two weeks. I didn't review the series and forgot links in three out of five of the emails.

    Those three being the first three, made some money, but lost $1,000's due to it...

    Idiotic Mistake

    Had $3,000 or so with a CPA company using all legit whitehat techniques...
    Decided to try some non-incentive offers with using incentives, earned a couple hundred from my strategy, but was withheld payment due to my blackhat use, which is understandable, but a little annoying that they withheld it all.

    I've made so many, that in fact, I will probably make another tomorrow.

    Just learn from them and grow.
  • LMC! That is not fun at all! Sadly there are always some clients out there who go under or plain just don't pay...
  • Not reaching out and connecting with others sooner in the game. It's only within the last year or so that I've started working with other marketers to improve services/add value for my subscribers and I can't believe I kept to myself for so long! There's tremendous value in making connections - even if people aren't able to help out right away.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • All of my mistakes in life have led me to where I am now and I'm pretty freakin' happy now. So, I guess there is nothing that I would have changed.
    • [1] reply
    • Want to quickly share mine.

      1:
      I totally relied on Google Adwords for my marketing and income became over 10K to 3K/month after they slaped me hard (3 k is from affiliates)...Now I did multiple SEO etc and recovered.

      2:
      I didn't join War Room for 1 year after I joined this forum. Seriously it was a big mistake!
  • I wasted my first 14 months on dead-end activities. They were profitable, but I knew in my heart that it wouldn't last. Even so, it was very hard to give up the "now" for "future" income.

    Shortly after EPN took over from CJ, eBay changed their TOS, specifically mentioning what I was doing, so I shut it down. I really struggled for the next several months as I started over, virtually from scratch. I was already doing IM full-time, so these months were tough. I fought with cash flow nearly every week.

    If I'd started from the beginning with a real, sustainable business model, I'd be WAY ahead of where I am now.


    (My friend - the one who showed me the method I used for 14 months - had his EPN account suspended this week. He was doing 5-figures per month. Now it's at zero.)
  • Hey Kelly, it is hard to do.

    I spent way too much of the day in a meeting about a crazy widget for the iPad. Yes we can get it made, yes it is cool. But will anyone buy it - I doubt it. Felt like we were making something and then trying to find a market.

    That is another bad mistake.
  • My biggest mistake was not pursuing and investing in new things when I had spare money and then watching this money dwindle away over time..It is now my intention to put spare money to work for me through investments maybe buying a good traffic website or something.
  • I wasted the last 5-6 years thinking I knew it all and was too stubborn and all over the place trying to make a success of this.

    I spend over maybe $1000-$2000 on random crap, scripts, autoresponders, graphics, hosting all for nothing really.

    One thing is once you fail too many times you learn from them and eventually you see how things work an what you need to do....if you dont give up that is

    Anyway I've changed my tune recently and things are going well.

    EDIT _ Oh and I also did a common mistake which was when I first found ths forum I read it every single day for about 12 months just reading every thread and all the success stories "How I made $10,000 in 30 days" etc.....dreaming about it all but waiting for the "perfect idea" which never ends up coming in to reality. You just gotta start something and see it through to the end and then fine tune/test and scale it up. Oh how I wish I listened back then!
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  • Spending on random crap Oh dear.
  • Banned
    1. Thinking and Not DOING more.

    2. Not buying generic domain names back in the day. Would be making a killing with them now and pretty much set for life. I guess that is more of a regret than anything.

    3. Relying too much on the big Google
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    • 1. Yep absolutely you know it's hard to regret procrastination thoug because you can't remember it! I kind of regret how many videos I've watched on youtube wasting time but you know what I agree with this quote "Wasting time having fun isn't wasted time"..No big regrets as of yet.
  • Not doing more - I think we are all kind of guilty of that?
  • Didn't find a mentor soon enough...
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    • Yeah same here I could have learned so much faster if I was persistant with my goals of 20 forum posts a day on sites like this and daily updates on my first website..
  • I worked and signed up members to the tune of $10,000 and never got paid. I was hot but they were out of England so there was nothing I could do.
    • [1] reply
    • This is terrible I think we've all had our experiences with scams and blackhat users..For my worst I was selling a gaming account for $625 and got reversal scammed in PayPal. Thankfully I got my gaming account back but precautions gotta be taken
  • Is there some sort of ESCRO you could have used?
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    My Biggest Online Mistake - What's Yours?

    I just thought I would share a quick experience I had with a potential new client this week. He works in the fitness industry and came to us with an interesting project. 'Eddie' James took the call, got some details, and then we had a talk and called back to get some more information.