First Year On-line results, possibly of interest to newbies

I can feel your frustration, and indeed: the numbers are frustrating. But, as you say, there's more than plain numbers.

What exactly have you learned about yourself?

Look at Solyndra and take heart. You are most likely to
start out at a loss in IM. At least you must have gained
some experience in what works and what doesn't.

There are few lucky people who start out in this industry
with a profit. I knew a lucky few but they are the
exception and not the rule.

-Ray Edwards

Wow ... that does sound like a lot of education for under £250.

Can you perhaps carry forward the benefits of what you've learned and make a big profit over your second financial year? I'd want to ... :confused:

Hi!

Many of those who are slowly getting results there is often only one issue: not getting yourself into only one thing at a time and finishing it!

I've gone for like 1000 things by myself and still need to stop myself sometimes from registering the domain for the "next best thing".

Go with one thing and stick with it for 2 months and you'll see the results.

Daniel

I made my first sale online this time last year too.

Looking back at my earning reports I made

November 2010: £13.25

1 year of consistent, focused, hard work

October 2011: £2,031.14

I think your results are from "investigating methods, products". I think if you focused 100% on ONE method your results would have been different.

Start a new project for 2012, pick ONE proven method for making money online and work your ass off until you master it and start making money.

I spent last year creating an income through one business model. I plan to spend 2012 on something new.

If you have learned this much, then your loss is not as bad as you think. Put it to good use and do better next year.

Certainly a more entertaining way to spend the money. I would be tempted too :-)

John.

You don't say how much time you've invested, without that statistic it doesn't mean a whole lot.
People involved in IM tend to undervalue the cost of their own time or discard it altogether. You could have realized a $1000 cash surplus on your activity, but if you've averaged 15 hours per week at 10GBP per hour you've lost almost 7 grand.

Unfortunately you're in the top 98 percentile of people - people who don't/can't make a profit from the web. Now you can lick your wounds and go off a 'wiser' person, or you can be really smart and accept that you've been doing something wrong. I don't mean to add insult on top of injury but if you're open to the idea that some people do make money, then you must also be open to the simple truth that your methods weren't the most effective.

You've made an investment, you've learned a lot, now it's time to put your education to full use and cash in. You already have a bunch of things you can cross off your checklist, there's value in that right there.

Why not start by creating a 'case study' of what you've done over the last year and throw it open for feedback.

Good luck

Lets see, this year so far:
$85 for a new Matrix Program - One sale, no commission yet because you have to fill the matrix. Not really promoting this gig anymore. (Should have known better)
$45 for my hosting service - Need it to keep up my Blog
$187 for my Network Blog System- I do make a little back off that one each month!
$20 For my Craigslist System - Made $20 in profit from that so far!
$200 in Autoresponder fees - Using a FREE one for now.
$20 in domain name fees
So $557.00 Roughly?? - $140 in commissions = <$417>

AND...I'm sure there are many more out there with much, much bigger issues than that! However I am starting to see some possibilities now as I have re-focused on just one or two areas instead of the shotgun effect. I'm in for another year! )

Happy Thanksgiving!

PS...Finding the Warrior Forum helped give me some motivation to keep plugging away. Just like eating a Turkey It's coming a bite at a time.

I am also a newbie and can attest that IM is very difficult. If it were easy, everyone would do it!

I started out with 3 different projects. I wanted to have 'on the job training' so I would learn a method and then start it rather quickly. This often led to major "mistakes", but it let ME catch the mistakes and adapt. My first few projects have been totally abandoned. I only spent the cost of registering the domain - but it also cost many hours of work.

I took what I learned from those three and I focused more precisely and started 3 new projects. These had different major flaws and I ended up abandoning them after licking my wounds and learning my lesson.

I took the first six mistakes and spent some time researching more. When I had a plan to overcome my previous failures I started 3 new experiments. These were not perfect, but I decided that I would push through any mistakes and keep working on these sites. This decision was made because, at some point, you need to stick to a plan or you will always think of excuses to quit. These three projects had some major issues as well - but I decided I would adapt to them and see what I can do.

The first site of my final three was made on October 2. I rank #2 for my targeted KW, but that KW was not as strong as I thought. I only get about 20 unique visitors a day. This website made its first sale, for about $20 in commission just last weekend.

The second site of my final three was made on October 22. I improved my KW research based on mistake from the above website and picked what I thought was a stronger keyword. I also developed a plan that was for multiple keywords instead of ONE KW. I have ranked in Top 5 for two of my 5 targeted pages/KW and receive about 100 Unique visitors a day and growing. This site had its first sale in mid November and another sale this past weekend. It also has a 'list' of 6 subscribers that is growing slowly, but steadily.

The third site is an adsense site that has yet to achieve its ranking goal.

My point to say all this is: It is clear from my work that IM success is achievable. I too have spent more than I have made so far - but there is momentum and success that can be scaled up. I am trying to diversify my efforts and see what method of traffic generation and income works best for me.

The same will be true for you and other newbies. If you have focused, defined goals and a clear plan then you have a chance to be successful. Hard work, dedication and a teachable spirit are key.

I have only been doing this for two months and I have wanted to quit many times. I frequently think "this isn't going to work" or "I won't be able to achieve my goals" - but pushing through those thoughts and focusing on what I have done well and where I have succeeded is key.

You have generated more earnings than a vast majority of those who try IM. May quit before making a penny!

Look at the past year and ask yourself:
1. What did you do well?
2. What did you do poorly?
3. Did you choose a good "beginner" niche?
4. What methods of traffic generation have you tried? What worked? What did not?

Take this information and LEARN from your mistakes.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. - Winston Churchill

It's true, you need to try to focus on just one (maybe 2) things. The more you try to build up ONE thing, and do your absolute BEST work for that ONE thing, you'll be more likely to see results. Even if you just spent a year writing for a blog and promoting it, you could have gotten 1000 views a day by the end of the year and you could start selling ad space and make a fine living that way. It's super easy and you don't have to sell anything but adspace. That is my current activity right now because I don't like to "sell".

First and foremost, you haven’t failed until you quit.

Considering what you’ve learned over the past year I’d say you’ve made a wise investment in your future. It cost me a whole lot more to learn what I know and I’m still way behind you in skill lets.

I’m reminded of a story about a young farm boy that left the family farm in New England for New York City and a job selling securities back in the 1920s. After a couple of disheartening weeks be quit in frustration and moved back to the farm. Naturally, when he returned home all of his friends wanted to know about life in the big city. When one asked “How did you like the selling business?” the young man responded by saying, “It’s no good --- I’m sorry I learned it”.

I should note that I'm not suggesting you are naive farm boy --- far from it. It's just that you've for more to learn.

Hang in there --- You’ll make a go of it.


Ernie Mitchell

I read all this with mixed feelings - I am almost at the end of my first year of IM, and I don't feel too bad about it all. Even though, I still am not turning a profit, really, (everything I am making is going back into investing/paying for my sites), I am at least making enough at this point to cover all my overhead, and I am seeing my income slowly increase.

My 10 websites are in multiple niches, and LOL, so far my best site is the site that was my #3 site - it is 7 months old, a PR2, and getting over 3,000 unique visitors a day. AND, I just made my first sale EVER, on this site, from a Clickbank product - a bit over $20.00 I have started seeing a consistent amount of money from Google adsense, increasing monthly, but have not reached the payout platform yet.

LOL, for right now, I am using a few fiverr.com gigs to bring in enough income to cover all my outsourcing costs. I have made over $200.00 from fiverr alone since I got started on there three months ago. It is not passive income, however, so I plan to slow down with it once my websites start paying off better. Fiverr just is enough to keep me going until then -

Keep your chin up, the first year is the roughest. My thing? I am too determined to prove to myself (and my husband) that I am gonna make, so I am NOT quitting!

Spigven, in my first year working online I followed and tried to emulate someone I knew was successful in their endeavours. I didn't copy their work of course but I mirrored what they did but in my own style and in a different niche to theirs. I studied and studied everything they did (from backlinks all the way through to where they placed their aff links), rather like an infant watches everything their parents do. Their website became more familiar to me than the streets in my town.

If I'd not had someone to emulate then my earning time would have been so much longer and harder. Within 4 weeks of my first website going live, I'd made around $60. In my first 12 months online, I made a profit of over $6,000.

Don't give up. I suggest you do what I did, if you haven't already. Find someone who you know is successful in a similar (but not identical) niche to you and try to emulate them. It's sometimes easier just to pick one person/website. Study thoroughly what they do and don't do. Study their backlinks, how they structure the site, what social media they use, their writing voice, how many comments they get, how many posts they've made, etc, etc. Then, in your own unique way, do the same.

I think I would have been like a headless chicken otherwise. I gained so many valuable insights this way that have since helped me come close to making a full time living online after 2 and a 1/2 years.

My first year was not good. I jumped around trying different things. I learned a ton. Second year was great. I did, however, have the advantage of having to build sites for my offline business and do SEO for my offline biz before starting an online biz.

Don't get discouraged. Do you like it? Are you still motivated to make it work?

Find one proven method and focus on that for many months. The simpler the better. Be determined to do only quality work, regardless which method you use.

Revenue starts slowly, but it builds as traffic, conversions, subscribers, and sales build.

You don't sound disheartened which is great. I know I've had and still have disappointing days. But then I have days where I break sales, traffic, subscriber records and it's incredible.

For me, I was more concerned about achieving consistent earnings over spikes. Consistency was important because I wanted to be able to count on it month-to-month.

My 1st year, I made $29.

Seven years later, I quit my day job!

Will

I know it's rough to stay motivated. It's really hard to keep your head up when you want so badly to make money, and it doesn't happen immediately. But EVERYONE of us has lost money. Even the ones that are making money, most aren't making it at the rate they would like. It just takes perseverance, continued learned, and continued implementing. Don't give up.

Take the lessons learned and apply stuff that worked with a proper mindset. And really ask yourself critical questions like how much did you actually put in to this?

As per Galaxy Quest "Never Give Up, Never Surrender" There's a lot of money to be made online there's absolutely no reason why you can't get a piece of the pie. I don't think any of the more successful IM guys got where they were over night. Like everything in life it takes hours and hours of wood-shedding to get to where you'd like to be. If you don't put in the time, money, and effort you'll never get there.

My advice would be to focus on one method, more specifically on a method that provides greater returns. Most of the people that seem to be making serious money right away or within a couple of weeks are people who create products.

Hi

I am a couple of months into IM and have spent quite a few dollars due to expenses and a couple of mistakes I have made.

But I really don't look it as a loss. I am paying for my education and I cannot really expect to see a return on it until I have completed at least part of that eductaion. But I honestly believe that what I am getting for my money is pure value and will hold me in good stead in the long term.

Keep your eye on your goals and you willn't go far wrong

Jay

Lots of good advice here from ncmedia and many others.

I must have been 1 of the lucky ones, in that I made a 30 or 40 dollar profit my first month in IM.

I did it by posting ads on free classified sites and had people write to a gmail account I set up to auto respond with an affiliate offer for dating. I sat for 6 to 8 hours a day just placing free classified ads.

So it is possible to just use the sweat of your brow to earn money online, but it takes stubborness and persistence.

Later I lost money with trying PPC and other paid advertising methods, until I figured out which ones are cost effective.

Use free advertising methods like backpage, Craigslist, OLX and other classified sites, google for them "free classified sites" and also post on Facebook. Create a fanpage for free, then post your fanpage on other fanpages. There are gigs on Fiverr that will give you the best and biggest fanpages on Facebook to post on to get traffic.

Speaking of Fiverr : Create a gig to write articles or create backlinks and provide that service to make some money too. Post your fiverr gig on Facebook fanpages that deal with affiliate marketing and you will get some bites for sure.

Good luck !