What has been your worst online failure !!

My biggest failure was planning for weeks and in some cases over a month, then giving up in just 2 or 3 weeks. The lesson was eventually learned. Patience wasn't a strength of mine back then.

Mine was getting myself blocked from kijiji. It seems almost impossible to get unblocked.

Creating a product with too much competition and not spending enough time working through it to beat those competitors.

This is embarrassing. I convinced other physicians to join a venture I had thought up whereby we would provide medical advice to individuals through our website. After they all signed on, I lost a substantial amount of money having lawyers, after the fact, to bill me countless hours, only to tell me it would be a legal nightmare.

When we became subsequently cognizant of the potential liabilities, we quickly scrapped the idea.

I don't think I've ever failed online. Every site I made has some value. If it doesn't attract many visitors, it's still good for backlinks for my other sites.

My worst failures happen everyday, the only reason I am still in business is because I manage to pick myself up and learn from my mistakes to improve myself.

If you don't fail, you can't succeed. Even if you do succeed without failing, you won't know what success is until it's lost.

Well, I'm a believer of the statement- "failure is a stepping stone to success". My first few internet marketing attemps were a terrible failure. I mean, the campaings I built just simply sat there in one place, not making me a single penny. Very disheartning. It was this way for a few months, untill I learnt right of doing it.

So for all the newbies out there, I say, dont be afraid to fail. Because thats the way you learn. Whats even more important than failing is to learn why you failed. This way you dont repeat the same mistakes. It takes time, but your time is wellspent in learning the trade.

Good Luck

18 months developing a social site (on my own).

After 6 months I had 80 members and pulled it.

I built about 3 sites like this, all to have similiar outcomes.

Then I discovered Internet Marketing

Where to begin?? :-) Shiny object syndrome - jumping from one idea to the next without seeing the first one through to the end. There are so many IM models that can be (very) profitable, but none of them will work if you don't persevere.

What just one?

For me there have been so many... Let me think...

If I had to narrow it down to one it would be this fiasco: buying a bunch of adsense sites / amazon pre-built sites and selling them to my list.

They sold like crazy! I was amazed!

After the sale I realized the sites did not work possibly because of a script embedded in the site. They were worthless... totally and utterly worthless!

I immediately refunded every single sale. I felt terrible. I had let so many people down...

This knocked me on my ear for a while...but I decided that even though I was down, I was not out.

I dusted myself off and jumped right in again...

You need to keep on chooglin'...keep on doin', ...keep on keepin' on...

"100 per cent of the shots you don't take, never go in"

Wayne Greztky

I dare anyone to beat my failure!

I was in the right place at the right time with the right product back in 1998 and wrote The Internet Recruiting Edge. Sold it for $149, cleared 250K that year.

Stupidly figured that would go on forever (well, it *did* go well) and then wrote The Real Estate Pro's Internet Edge.

It became a product pick by the National Association of Realtors back in 2000!

And hardly anyone bought it.

Why?

Because back then, the vast majority realtors *didn't* use the Internet much and didn't care much to learn about it either.

So I lost 23K. Got to be a columnist for a popular realtor site, mind you with articles like the following (written in 1999!):

• Realty Times - Using Keywords to Drive Your Site in the Search Engines
• Realty Times - Last Minute Gifts for Realtors and Clients
• Realty Times - I've Got News for You: Use News to Find Leads
• Realty Times - The Real Estate Pro's Internet Edge
• Realty Times - Avoid Being Ripped Off: Choosing a Web Site Designer
• Realty Times - Use On-line Feedback Forms to Improve Customer Service

Admit it.

Makes a great story though, doesn't it?

I am not sure if it is a failure but I missed out on making major commissions with an Amazon product a couple of years ago. I had just started out and didn't really understand backlinking and its importance. I just happened to write about something turned out to be popular. Long story short - my site was wiped off the first page of google quite quickly.

Tiptopcat

mine is trusting people to easily. Been scammed, duped and lied to even by some ex-staffs of mine to tunes of thousands.

Seriously- you can never be too trustful of people when it comes to your business.

1: Not getting AWeber from the start but losing thousands of subscribers due to glitch on the self hosted mailing list script.

2: Ranting about stupid idiots (never heard about intelligent ones, by the way) that complained about getting spam from me on a double opt-in list, when they actually got unsubscribed by AWeber automatically, and the receivers of my rant thought it was meant for them and wrote me nasty letters and unsubscribed.

My biggest mistake? Kind of a long story, but trust me you're gonna love it...

One time I was hired by a guy to help him launch his BizOpp product, but I didn't ask to see the product first because I was desperate for money at the time and, well, I just didn't think it mattered that much honestly.

He gave me a basic outline of everything he wanted and I set to work building a website, sales funnel, autoresponder, video, sales page, articles, building a business plan, and everything else you'd need to launch a product in that kind of competitive niche.

2 months down the road and 100+ hours of work later I found out on LAUNCH DAY that his product is nothing more than a compilation of plagiarized products.

Literally the exact same thing as another product, but without the author information. It was several edited .pdf with the first, like, 5 pages removed so that there was no sign of who actually wrote it, and he was going to sell several plagiarized products bundled together as his own product (and for 4 figures, too)

Of course, it was obvious to me, and probably anyone else in the niche who would've read it. I'm glad I checked because it could have ended up being legal trouble for me down the road.

His response when I confronted him?

Wait for it...

This is seriously the best part of the story...

A little more suspense...And...

"Don't worry, I have lawyers!"

Lolololololololol

Obviously I told him, "Well I don't have any lawyers, and I can't be a part of this any longer."

But seriously, that was a HUGE mistake. What's worse is I did all that on a 50% deposit and the contract I signed had me being paid the second half AFTER we launched the product. So not only did I do all this work for a total sleaze, but I didn't even make enough profit to pay myself minimum wage for the work I did, since all of MY profit was in the second 50% deposit.

I did keep an eye on him though for a couple months with the idea that if he tried to launch 'his product' using my work I would notify the original products' owners.

Wow, just thinking about it is getting me all worked up.

Sigh.

Lessons Learned:

Always see the product your selling before you sell it (Carries over to affiliate marketing, too)
Always review your client's contracts very, VERY carefully
People will screw you over without batting an eyelash
And last, but not least...Plan for the worst! You'll never be disappointed.

So yeah. That's my worst mistake.

- Stephen

This isn't MY mistake, but I learned a valuable lesson from it:

A person I do business with on the net writes about HIS biggest mistake on his website. It goes a bit like this (and I am summarizing and paraphrasing).

Two guys were friends and they often talked about their internet businesses. They had different interests but were still in contact regularly. They continued to work their plan on their own.

Fast forward 5 years...Person A has $500,000 in profits while Person B has virtually nothing.

The difference?

Person A built mailing lists, while Person B did not.

This one thing cost Person B $500,000 over the same time frame...and he is still kicking himself over it.

This isn't MY mistake, but I learned a valuable lesson from it:

A person I do business with on the net writes about HIS biggest mistake on his website. It goes a bit like this (and I am summarizing and paraphrasing).

Two guys were friends and they often talked about their internet businesses. They had different interests but were still in contact regularly. They continued to work their plan on their own.

Fast forward a couple of years...Person A has $500,000 in profits while Person B has virtually nothing.

The difference?

Person A built mailing lists, while Person B did not.

This one thing cost Person B $500,000 over the same time frame...and he is still kicking himself over it.

Lesson learned.

-Not focusing on one method that simple make some money.

-Chasing the next cash on demand button. " stop looking and start working"

- wasting time!

This is the short just the facts version, In Hindsight I laugh a lot at this, at the time I was so depressed I actually got a JOB!

A long time ago ( the product was the motorola razor v3. It was VERY Popular then)
I bought 5 mobile phones from a liquidation stock warehouse and sold them on eBay. made $50 a phone and was very happy.

Started to research suppliers and found a supplier with lots of Motorola V3 phones. (the V3 was very hard to get at one stage)

Ordered 5 and sold them in a day, about $30 a phone profit. so I did this many times.

Had someone contact me via ebay and ask can you get me 20 V3 Phones. i made a quick enquiry with supplier, worked a deal and sold a batch of 20 phones dropshipped to the guy I met on eBay. made about $350 on the deal.

Paid for an ad in an Internet marketing newsletter that was sent to 5,000 ebay sellers and wannabe ebay sellers.

Got $5,000 plus in orders in the next 24 hours and over $70,000 in the first month.

Long story short, Got a better deal buying 100 Lots of phones so imported them and on sold via my website.

3 months $180,000 in sales at about 14% Net in the pocket, about 2 hours a day if that, organising the deliveries and sending out products.

VERY HAPPY dreams have come true!

Knock at the door, Its a guy in uniform, he is from customs and they have been opening my packages for a full month. they have a bill for unpaid taxes of about $15,000 plus a nice little fine of $5,000, PLUS a warning, "If you import 1 more batch of phones the fines are more like $50,000"

BUSINESS OVER, Refunded nearly $10,000 in orders and lost another $10,000 after paying all the bills etc.

Went and got a JOB and didn't turn on a computer for nearly 2 years.

LESSON?
Research the RULES not just the markets and opportunities, employ an expert when NEEDED as what the rules say and what the rules MEAN are very different things.

Hope this helps someone.

starting a blog with my own name and copying pasting plr articles, after a year of wasted time i started being ok

My biggest online failure was with PPC when I first started out. On my first campaign I ended up with a negative %500 ROI. Ouch!

Working hard to set up a bunch of epn sites & starting to make decent money from them ($20 a day). Then getting banned from epn...

Mine is forgetting about Uncle Sam the first part of the year only to have to work my tail off in the latter to catch him up on his cut.

I like to think of myself as totally perfect in every possible way... but alas.

I spread myself way too thin when I got here, thinking "yeah, all those other suckers don't want to multitask, but I'll work 3 times as hard and make 3 times as much money"...

Everything makes money though. It takes time!

It was either the short redhead or the leggy blonde.

When i sell a product that no one patronize and buys it.

Thankyou everyone for some great posts, its important we see this side of the coin so we can all learn from this and enable the newbies on here to pick up some fantastic advice on what not to do as well as what to do.

All the best to you all and thankyou again,
steven.

Here's a major failure of ours:

We'd worked for a client that offered local seo packages to small and medium sized businesses, providing back-end outsourcing support. We were amazed they didn't have an online order form to take orders, instead opting for more traditional telemarketing and paper order forms.

We thought it would be a good idea to create a site with an online order form that could be used and dumping marketing spend into it, saving the cost of telemarketers. We spent quite a bit of time/effort/energy in getting it up and running and it was a total dud. Couldn't get any sign-ups, not terribly intuitive on the front-end from the user's perspective, etc. We then tried to sell the site that had an order form that could only be used with that one particular company...we just wanted to recoup some of our costs on the project...failed miserably too.

This wasn't the first time we'd made this mistake. We're now VERY good of testing Version 0.1 first. (Something I'd read from Derek Sivers and REALLY took to heart) We test markets before we spend a TIME on development. Once the market is proven we're MUCH more willing to spend a bit of coin in getting it up, running, looking nice, etc. Lesson: Don't build a product or service until you're SURE people want it!

That is so true, i heard someone the other day saying only spend 5 minutes researching a niche and that everything sells, i totally disagree, it does not matter if you take 3 months researching as every minute spent will save you ten fold over time.

Your story is another great interesting story that people will benefit from greatly, we all seem to make the odd mistakes, we have made a few beauties.

at the end of the day though it is not how you fall down that matters it is how you get back up again !! Learn from failure and move forwards a stronger marketer.

Thankyou everyone and all the best to your futures,
Steven.

Most of my failures came from trying to rank websites. I finally got some good rankings and now those are gone due to the recent update. I guess the rest would be coming up with great action plans and not going through with them all the way. Anytime I don't give something 100% that I know could result in traffic or money, I call that a failure on my part.

However, I learning to move forward and take more action because now I need to more than ever before.

"Hurry up behavior" in any field is one of a major cause of failure.

Don't put yourself in hurry up behavior.
Take time to research first and then take proper planning to achieve certain task.

Its my major failure and I always want to beat and overcome it by planning and research. So, the rate of failure is now too less.

You should also do research and planning before any work done. Because only 5% experienced marketers adopt this policy to get success.

All the Best!

Regards,
Zaheera

For a long time I always thought I needed more stuff...and this has been my biggest mistake.

Instead of back linking, I searched for hours for an automatic back linking software,
Instead of article writing, I read about the best way to write articles,
Instead of creating a product, I learned about how to create a product,
Instead of doing, I researched outsourcing (without having anything for the outsourcer to do at this point)
I couldn't, and didn't make a video because I needed better software,


My business and my whole life took a turn for the better when I realised that it was "I" that needed to take action.

For websites of my own:
I dont really belive in "biggest failures ever made". This really depends on what you expect from a site.

Every site you make can give you something back. A site is never entirely worthless from my point.

It also doenst matter if you are a beginner or do research for min/hrs/months -
The main problem is most people make a site especially for e.g. adsense if it doesnt convert well or at all they give up and say "trail and error...leave it build next site..." they dont take the time to try out other stuff on that site.

For me the big difference between an "IM" and a "good IM" or "fail" and "success" is mostly the "thinking".

Build a site for e.g. adsense -> Not converting -> fail move to next or normal IM

Build a site for e.g. adsense -> Not converting -> try e.g. amazon or other stuff -> success or good IM

I made some blogs for affiliate products that never converted changed a bit and adsense was a hit.
Also some of my adsense sites convert good for Amazon but adsense was only around $0.30/day.

Even a sh*y blog stuffed with plr and nowhere ranked can be used for redirecting or filtering traffic or for testing themes and plugins....

Around 2 years ago I bought a "domain package" with 100 domains just to get my hands on 2 I really wanted. On 3 of those domains I installed wp to test plugins and other stuff.
however one day I got an email asking when I would answer the comments I took a look and saw comments over the last few weeks and installed statcounter.
That blog wasnt in any SE I didt do any backlinks or promotion but I found links and post about it spread over the net even on FB and had over 40 visits a day..... now after adding some ads, offers and frequently updates it makes $5-$10/day and is still not ranked....

So you see even a stupid site with scraped content, images, vids can still be usefull.
You just have to be patient and tryout different things if you site isnt converting well, maybe you have an adsense or amazon goldmine without even knowing it....

For client sites:
Yes you can really do big mistakes my biggest one was to create an Online-Shop-Portal for a medication wholesaler it ended up in a huge desaster.

6 Months work and good €10K lost after some laws changed. The entire solution was garbage and couldnt be used for anything else... From that I learnd (the very hard way) to "sell" solutions for special customers and not to "create" something....

Tried any strategies I have read and not focusing on one methods....then ended up being frustrated because there are no positive outcome.

It sounds like we have all had our moments.
When we first started we came up with a niche idea, my wife elaine contacted the local radio station in Derby, around 40 miles away from our house. Elaine rang me at work to tel me we had got a slot on the radio, they liked are idea, we eagerly went down on the train, we got a videographer to video the live radio interview of which we where able to plug our business. Afterwards we came out, paid the videographer and went off to a wine bar.

A couple of wines later to celebrate we travelled back on the train eagerly awaiting all the orders flooding in, lol, they didnt, in fact we have only ever had a handful in this niche since then lol, never mind we learnt our lesson very early on and that was a long time ago.

All the best,
Steven.

when i started out going for big comp keywords for my seo!

waisted months before i realised my mistake

My worse failure is thinking I would make a few dimes via adsense on my youtube song video.

Get a few views but not many clicks on the adds.

Not coming to the Warrior Forum sooner.

Mine was by trying to make quick money instead of thinking long term.