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IM ideas that DIDN'T work for me :\

by highrank
55 replies
Hey Warriors,

I'm in a reflective mood today, so I thought I would share with you a list of internet marketing ideas that just didn't work for me. I hope in some way, that knowing what didn't work for me might help you create something really successful.

EDIT: Due to popular demand, I've decided to include the reasons WHY I think these IM ideas failed. I'll also include a few of my projects that were actually successful!

The following projects were spread over a 5 year period.

1. Forum promotion website FAILED

This project started off well, I posted a thread in the SMF forum offering forum owners the chance to promote their forum on my website, in the hope of attracting more traffic and new members. Within 3 weeks I had over 100 forum owners submit a listing! Before I could monetize the website the listing started to drop as forum owners became disappointed with the low amount of traffic being sent to their forum. I didn't have any more ideas to make the concept work, so I dropped the project after a few months.

2. General music forum FAILED

I had high hopes for this project. I purchased soundbuzz.co.uk just after the popular online music store soundbuzz.com went bust. This immediately gave me lots of traffic to the parked domain, so I decided a music forum would be relevant. I spent close to $1,000 on vBulletin, SEO plugins, custom template design and all sorts of other extras. After 4 months I had only 2 active members. I decided that starting a forum was impossible without a team of friends to populate it with content.

3. Selling keyword domain names FAILED

I had just started University and armed with a $10k student loan I splashed out on a ton of keyword domain names that I thought could be easily flipped on SEDO. I was wrong! I will admit I gave up on this project too quickly, but I've learned that domain flipping doesn't interest me in the slightest.

4. Website template editing FAILED

I spent ages creating a templatetuning.com rip-off that offered the same services at a fraction of the price. I just couldn't attract any customers!

5. Website flipping blog FAILED

This project didn't really fail, it just evolved. I decided to take all of my blog posts and create an e-book. The blog was dropped and the e-book wen't into development.

6. Humor image website FAILED

I still love the domain name... 'FATBAP.com' haha! Although, I found it difficult to find content for this and eventually gave up (it just wasn't fun!). If you have the time to find hundreds of funny pictures and rank them on Google images then this could work for you.

7. Student web hosting FAILED

This could have been a nice little earner, but my first (and only) customer created a clone of a driving instructors website and ended up being taken to court. As I was the host and the domain name was registered through me I was caught up in the whole thing. It's put me off hosting for life!

8. Website template re-seller FAILED

I became a templatemonster.com re-seller (which took AGES to set up and be approved). I found that many customers don't trust template re-sellers as they are fearful of buying an illegal copy, or not having any after sales support. I think it would take A LOT of time and money to create a reputable brand.

9. Domain parking portfolio FAILED

I created a domain sales page for each of keyword domains. I had a few offers, but I am rubbish at negotiating and found it very difficult to actually make any money.

10. Forum owners wiki FAILED

This was another half-failure. I created a wiki style website full of tips and tricks for forum owners. I ended up losing interest and sold the website on digitalpoint. I made $20 profit wooo!

11. Facebook like website FAILED

This could have been/should have been a big success, but a technical glitch screwed it all up. I purchased 'insultbox.com' and set up a facebook like style website where users could create and share funny insults. I had over 1k Facebook likes, a PR2 homepage and ranked on the first page of Google for "best insults" within 2 months, but the script I was using broke and I couldn't afford to fix it! The site quickly died after that, but I still managed to sell it for $90.

12. Paid to click website FAILED

I spent a lot of money on paid traffic for this website and it worked pretty well. Yet again, it failed because of a poor quality script causing issues and eventually rendering the website useless. It was after this incident that I decided "I can make better scripts that actually work!".

13. Video game community w/ server FAILED

This was my first (and only) successful forum with over 100 active members it had the potential to grow into something big. I even had a go at machinima as a way of promoting the forum/server!

The problem: servers are expensive, and the work I put in wasn't worth the small return.

14. Viral video review website FAILED

I thought this was a novel idea back in 2009, create a website that reviews all of the trending viral videos and gets all the background info on them to add more value. I'm just not cool enough to keep up with it.

All of the above ended up costing me significantly more time and money than they ever made, but that doesn't mean they might not work for you!

Okay now for some IM ideas that did work for me!

1. Selling website scripts SUCCESS

I purchased A LOT of website scripts. After being left disappointed time and time again I decided that I could do a better job. The concept is simple - think of a new website script (or clone) and pay a freelancer to make it for you. I started selling my own scripts 2 years ago, my e-junkie transaction log says that I have racked up over $20k in profits in that time. Not bad!

2. Creating and selling e-books SUCCESS

If I'm honest, I've only made one e-book so far. It was launched as an WSO and made over $200 in a week. I then sold the sales website for $350. I was pleased with this for only 2 weeks work.

3. MP3 Search Engine SUCCESS

This project was complete fluke. I used my abandoned domain name 'soundbuzz.co.uk' as an mp3 search engine I then left it alone. Within 3 months I had 12k organic visitors per day. To make it legal, songs could only be previewed using Amazon API, along with a button to purchase the song (earning me commission).

PATIENCE - Is over-rated. An experienced IM can tell within a week if any idea has potential. Those who want to wait it out in the hopes of getting lucky are just wasting time in my humble opinion.

Persistence is vital, but so is knowing when to stop and move on to your next project. Otherwise, you could spend all of your time and money on something that will never work. Once you have the correct balance, you will succeed.
#ideas #work
  • Profile picture of the author locke815
    I think you forgot the word Patience.
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    • Profile picture of the author traveltext
      Originally Posted by locke815 View Post

      I think you forgot the word Patience.


      Patience FAILED
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      • Profile picture of the author highrank
        Originally Posted by traveltext View Post

        Patience FAILED
        :p that made me laugh

        I've added some more information as requested by some of you. Thanks for taking so much interest in my failures lol I appreciate the feedback.

        Although I don't like to admit it, I'm not the most patient guy in the world!

        Fortunately, I think I've learned enough to know when to let go of a project rather than waste time waiting for it to succeed.

        Do you think that investors throw their money at every feasible idea and wait patiently for it to work?
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        • Profile picture of the author ShayB
          Originally Posted by highrank View Post


          Do you think that investors throw their money at every feasible idea and wait patiently for it to work?
          No.

          They do their homework, research, ask questions, and analyze opportunities carefully.

          THEN they throw their money at a (worthy) opportunity and wait patiently for it to work.
          Signature
          "Fate protects fools, little children, and ships called Enterprise." ~Commander Riker
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  • Profile picture of the author PPC-Coach
    Now take that list and tell us why each one failed and how much effort you put into each.

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    • Profile picture of the author Jon Patrick
      Originally Posted by PPC-Coach View Post

      Now take that list and tell us why each one failed and how much effort you put into each.
      Would definitely be interested in learning exactly why these businesses did not take off. Most of them, aside from things like launching a competitor to facebook, seem achievable.

      Edit: Thanks for adding the info.
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  • Profile picture of the author abo28
    And what DID work for you, if you can share?
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  • Profile picture of the author travlinguy
    Every one of those could be successful. The real lesson would be to know how you went about trying to make those attempts successful. There's a lot of talk here about taking action and not nearly enough about taking the right action.
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  • Profile picture of the author Romeo90
    More importantly, what sort of timescale were these failed ventures in?

    A lot of IMing is also about perseverance, and not hoping for instant success.
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    Those are alot of business ventures. Are you having success in the venture that you're doing now?
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  • Profile picture of the author John Ayling
    So many people focus on the strategy or technique which they hope will make them money.
    But I've found that Nothing Works! Only You Work.

    There is a man in Australia, where I live, that is a billionaire because he built a business around cardboard box production and distribution, yet there are penniless people sleeping in them. Does this mean that cardboard boxes don't work for making you a billionaire?

    Ridiculous question when you look at it that way, but it shows that focusing on the subject is not relevant as to whether a successful business can be built around it.

    Better to look at the common trait amongst these failed businesses, and that would be the way they have been actioned. Don't need to get down on yourself, as this is not about whether you are good or bad at this but whether your actions are working or not.

    I would look at why each has failed, and look at how actions can be changed for the next one.

    The responsibility for success of each of these businesses needs to be on you changing your actions rather than picking a new strategy/business type, because this is where you have the most power. The ultimate power actually.

    Power to you on your next venture!

    Cheers,
    John
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  • Profile picture of the author SeanSupplee
    Nothing comes easy and giving up on a method after just one attempt or a few weeks the only failure is yourself. Im sorry to be blunt but online success comes with work and a lot of it. In fact I work more then I would at any job but that's only because I love what I do now. All of the methods you listed above work. By using them all at the same time and being able to tie them together into a profitable system is what takes time, knowhow and willpower.
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  • Profile picture of the author Geoff101
    You are doing exactly what MOST imers do. STOP doing so many things. Pick just ONE thing and try to do it until you succeed. Multitasking and information overload destroys your chances of making money online.

    If you cannot resist jumping to the next big thing every few days you'll fail ALWAYS.
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    • Profile picture of the author sovereignn
      Originally Posted by Geoff101 View Post

      You are doing exactly what MOST imers do. STOP doing so many things. Pick just ONE thing and try to do it until you succeed. Multitasking and information overload destroys your chances of making money online.

      If you cannot resist jumping to the next big thing every few days you'll fail ALWAYS.
      For all we know this was over the course of ten years, just saying!
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    • Profile picture of the author figgity
      Originally Posted by Geoff101 View Post

      You are doing exactly what MOST imers do. STOP doing so many things. Pick just ONE thing and try to do it until you succeed. Multitasking and information overload destroys your chances of making money online.

      If you cannot resist jumping to the next big thing every few days you'll fail ALWAYS.
      That is so true. I know from experience. Then when you have so many things going, it's hard to get off from under them/get rid of them because you've invested so much sporadic time and money.
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  • Profile picture of the author Adrianhenry
    I have found two things out through IM.

    1. Choose a single idea and go with it, forget everything else
    2. A lot of people are looking for a magic strategy to make them $$$ but most of the time the strategy has to be developed and tweaked with what works for YOU in any particular case. All of this done over a long period of time.

    I feel the two biggest mistakes new online marketers make is not following these two points.

    But i think its good that you are analysing your failings. I think that can be very helpful because lets face it, most of us fail more times than we succeed. Just try to make the failures small and the successes BIG!
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  • Profile picture of the author sriram rajan
    Good of you to share the list .. but am sure over 10 years you had much more success than this, please put that out and you will know how succesful you were , otherwise i am sure you will not be doing this for 10 years ... Also that shows you are not going to quit till you succeed which is the rigt attitude. As Brina Tracy puts it --> The most succesful people are the ones with most failures ... I sure hope you are very succesful..
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael Ten
    Only those who never give up will succeed, it seems. Good informational post, you made though.
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  • Profile picture of the author lsargent
    I think you really have to know what you're doing to build "social community" sites, and effectively monetize them. It looks like you started seeing success once you were focused more on "selling stuff" versus building a community.
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    • Profile picture of the author Daniel Evans
      Respect for being persistant and finding something that worked for you.

      I do think perhaps you were trying too many things without dedicating time and love to each though I do accept there's no timescales attached to them!

      All the best

      Daniel
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  • Profile picture of the author WebUs
    You are the absolute definition of try, try, try again. I've failed at way too many things before finally finding one thing that works. It's amazing when that moment comes but with all the failures can be frustrating.
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    • Profile picture of the author traveltext
      Originally Posted by WebUs View Post

      You are the absolute definition of try, try, try again. I've failed at way too many things before finally finding one thing that works. It's amazing when that moment comes but with all the failures can be frustrating.
      I second this. I have had as many failures as you before I settled on a niche (travel) that allowed me to find success in the subscription model. That is, charge property owners an annual fee to list their properties on my site.

      The beauty of trying things out online is that you don't need to spend a fortune finding out what doesn't work.
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      • Profile picture of the author cjreynolds
        Originally Posted by traveltext View Post

        I second this. I have had as many failures as you before I settled on a niche (travel) that allowed me to find success in the subscription model. That is, charge property owners an annual fee to list their properties on my site.

        The beauty of trying things out online is that you don't need to spend a fortune finding out what doesn't work.
        I'm trying to get into the travel niche myself - How well does your Adsense perform on your travel site?
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        I just added this sig so I can refer to it in my posts...

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  • Profile picture of the author eluminoustechnologies
    Hi there

    Good information in the post try little hard for success. Just try again and again.

    Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author dmister
    Thanks for sharing all the successes and failures. I think the main lesson is to focus on less projects and I think you have also shown forums are hard work to make them active. I am going to try to avoid running a forum as it is too much hassle and they are next to useful if no one is posting!
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark72
    Love your persistence!

    Noobs should take note of just how many times you have to "fail" before things start to fall into place.

    I think some of tforums could have worked out if you had spent some money on making them look active and interesting from the start.

    Also, I love your mp3 idea. 12k visitors per day is a fantastic achievement!
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  • Profile picture of the author kiranrk
    Originally Posted by highrank View Post

    Hey Warriors,

    I'm in a reflective mood today, so I thought I would share with you a list of internet marketing ideas that just didn't work for me. I hope in some way, that knowing what didn't work for me might help you create something really successful.

    EDIT: Due to popular demand, I've decided to include the reasons WHY I think these IM ideas failed. I'll also include a few of my projects that were actually successful!

    The following projects were spread over a 5 year period.

    1. Forum promotion website FAILED

    This project started off well, I posted a thread in the SMF forum offering forum owners the chance to promote their forum on my website, in the hope of attracting more traffic and new members. Within 3 weeks I had over 100 forum owners submit a listing! Before I could monetize the website the listing started to drop as forum owners became disappointed with the low amount of traffic being sent to their forum. I didn't have any more ideas to make the concept work, so I dropped the project after a few months.

    2. General music forum FAILED

    I had high hopes for this project. I purchased soundbuzz.co.uk just after the popular online music store soundbuzz.com went bust. This immediately gave me lots of traffic to the parked domain, so I decided a music forum would be relevant. I spent close to $1,000 on vBulletin, SEO plugins, custom template design and all sorts of other extras. After 4 months I had only 2 active members. I decided that starting a forum was impossible without a team of friends to populate it with content.

    3. Selling keyword domain names FAILED

    I had just started University and armed with a $10k student loan I splashed out on a ton of keyword domain names that I thought could be easily flipped on SEDO. I was wrong! I will admit I gave up on this project too quickly, but I've learned that domain flipping doesn't interest me in the slightest.

    4. Website template editing FAILED

    I spent ages creating a templatetuning.com rip-off that offered the same services at a fraction of the price. I just couldn't attract any customers!

    5. Website flipping blog FAILED

    This project didn't really fail, it just evolved. I decided to take all of my blog posts and create an e-book. The blog was dropped and the e-book wen't into development.

    6. Humor image website FAILED

    I still love the domain name... 'FATBAP.com' haha! Although, I found it difficult to find content for this and eventually gave up (it just wasn't fun!). If you have the time to find hundreds of funny pictures and rank them on Google images then this could work for you.

    7. Student web hosting FAILED

    This could have been a nice little earner, but my first (and only) customer created a clone of a driving instructors website and ended up being taken to court. As I was the host and the domain name was registered through me I was caught up in the whole thing. It's put me off hosting for life!

    8. Website template re-seller FAILED

    I became a templatemonster.com re-seller (which took AGES to set up and be approved). I found that many customers don't trust template re-sellers as they are fearful of buying an illegal copy, or not having any after sales support. I think it would take A LOT of time and money to create a reputable brand.

    9. Domain parking portfolio FAILED

    I created a domain sales page for each of keyword domains. I had a few offers, but I am rubbish at negotiating and found it very difficult to actually make any money.

    10. Forum owners wiki FAILED

    This was another half-failure. I created a wiki style website full of tips and tricks for forum owners. I ended up losing interest and sold the website on digitalpoint. I made $20 profit wooo!

    11. Facebook like website FAILED

    This could have been/should have been a big success, but a technical glitch screwed it all up. I purchased 'insultbox.com' and set up a facebook like style website where users could create and share funny insults. I had over 1k Facebook likes, a PR2 homepage and ranked on the first page of Google for "best insults" within 2 months, but the script I was using broke and I couldn't afford to fix it! The site quickly died after that, but I still managed to sell it for $90.

    12. Paid to click website FAILED

    I spent a lot of money on paid traffic for this website and it worked pretty well. Yet again, it failed because of a poor quality script causing issues and eventually rendering the website useless. It was after this incident that I decided "I can make better scripts that actually work!".

    13. Video game community w/ server FAILED

    This was my first (and only) successful forum with over 100 active members it had the potential to grow into something big. I even had a go at machinima as a way of promoting the forum/server!

    The problem: servers are expensive, and the work I put in wasn't worth the small return.

    14. Viral video review website FAILED

    I thought this was a novel idea back in 2009, create a website that reviews all of the trending viral videos and gets all the background info on them to add more value. I'm just not cool enough to keep up with it.

    All of the above ended up costing me significantly more time and money than they ever made, but that doesn't mean they might not work for you!

    Okay now for some IM ideas that did work for me!

    1. Selling website scripts SUCCESS

    I purchased A LOT of website scripts. After being left disappointed time and time again I decided that I could do a better job. The concept is simple - think of a new website script (or clone) and pay a freelancer to make it for you. I started selling my own scripts 2 years ago, my e-junkie transaction log says that I have racked up over $20k in profits in that time. Not bad!

    2. Creating and selling e-books SUCCESS

    If I'm honest, I've only made one e-book so far. It was launched as an WSO and made over $200 in a week. I then sold the sales website for $350. I was pleased with this for only 2 weeks work.

    3. MP3 Search Engine SUCCESS

    This project was complete fluke. I used my abandoned domain name 'soundbuzz.co.uk' as an mp3 search engine I then left it alone. Within 3 months I had 12k organic visitors per day. To make it legal, songs could only be previewed using Amazon API, along with a button to purchase the song (earning me commission).

    PATIENCE - Is over-rated. An experienced IM can tell within a week if any idea has potential. Those who want to wait it out in the hopes of getting lucky are just wasting time in my humble opinion.

    Persistence is vital, but so is knowing when to stop and move on to your next project. Otherwise, you could spend all of your time and money on something that will never work. Once you have the correct balance, you will succeed.
    HI,
    I've observed that over the entire tenure, the amount of time you've spent on focussing on revenue isin't much.
    You see, in any business, if you spend decent amount of time focussing on the returns,
    you'd slowly start getting it.
    And you'd not focus on too many options like what you've done.

    Even now, I suggest, you focus on 1 or 2 options that gets you revenue. I swear, the day, you see dollars in your hand, you'd start loving every second you spend.

    All the best
    Ravi
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  • Profile picture of the author tryinhere
    You right about one thing, and this is yes YOU FAILED at doing these things.
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    | > Choosing to go off the grid for a while to focus on family, work and life in general. Have a great 2020 < |
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  • Profile picture of the author nasuryono
    Love this kind of case study post, it is very helpful!

    I hope you will create an eBook or something that has more solid facts, figures, etc. on your successes and failure... Hey, this is another business idea!
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    ----------------------------------------


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    • Profile picture of the author Casey Wong
      Now that's an interesting summary on what work and what didn't work. Truly appreciate your effort in testing things out to see which work and which doesn't.

      I would have to say that Ravi has a good point that we need to focus on a few elements to make things right. Follow One Course Until Successful, the path that any entrepreneurs or internet marketers will go through this journey to freedom!!
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      • Profile picture of the author cjreynolds
        Originally Posted by Casey Wong View Post

        Now that's an interesting summary on what work and what didn't work. Truly appreciate your effort in testing things out to see which work and which doesn't.
        I don't think this was really a review of those techniques he listed, as in "Don't try these, they don't work", it's more of a journal of his attempts at finding what works for him, and a great example for all of us. I think starting out, in spite of what everyone tells us, most of us want to believe that, against all odds, we will find that "Genie's Lamp" that will bring us wild success the first time out. I just know I'm gonna be one of the "lucky ones".

        highrank, your post was a refreshing dose of reality - I needed that!
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        I just added this sig so I can refer to it in my posts...

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  • Profile picture of the author NitroMarketer
    Great reflection and thank you for sharing your insights. I think that in the end what we can learn from this thread is that you would have many "failures", however you are going to learn from them, and then you are going to have successes that would make most of the profits. It's the 80/20 rule, simple enough. 80% of the things you try would probably fail, however 20% of the things you try would be a success enough to cover the loses. In the end internet marketing is all about trying, testing and tracking, there is no other way.
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  • Profile picture of the author hostwindsEvanM
    Have mixed feelings about this, thoug one thing is for sure - you never gave up. You may have dropped a few chances through bad taste but you were persistent enough to find something that works for you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dave Windsor
    Good information, thanks for sharing Highrank!
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  • Profile picture of the author Kal Sallam
    I'm assuming its a been a huge succsess giving the amount of traffic received.
    How did you end up getting that much traffic for your search engine may I ask?
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    • Profile picture of the author highrank
      Originally Posted by tryinhere View Post

      You right about one thing, and this is yes YOU FAILED at doing these things.
      I don't know what you mean by this. You probably didn't mean to sound like an ass, but you do Thanks for your pointless input anyway though.

      To everyone else: Thanks for all the feedback! I'm glad that you found my list useful.

      I do still believe that all of these ideas could have worked, but I was likely lacking the patience, tools, money, resources, knowledge & most of all experience to make them a success.

      In my opinion, making money comes with a HUGE learning curve, so I tried lots of different ideas before I found the one that worked for me.

      Originally Posted by Kal Sallam View Post

      I'm assuming its a been a huge succsess giving the amount of traffic received.
      How did you end up getting that much traffic for your search engine may I ask?
      To be honest, it was a fluke so I'm not entirely sure! I had a domain name of a very popular mp3 online store which gave me the initial traffic. Then somehow (without doing anything) I ranked in the top 3 for "lemonade mouth mp3" which was a very popular teen show on Nickelodeon. Soon after that I was on the number one spot for "IPL theme song" which is an Indian cricket program intro which literally brought me tens of thousands of unique visitors. I hope that helps!
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      • Profile picture of the author tryinhere
        Originally Posted by highrank View Post

        I don't know what you mean by this. You probably didn't mean to sound like an ass, but you do Thanks for your pointless input anyway though.!
        These were things you alone failed at, and they have no bearing on anyone else but you, so if there was a point to the thread it is this, do not look for 1000 ways a person will tell you why something will not work, but find one way it will work.

        For every thing you listed as a failure there would be many people who are very successful at those roles.
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        | > Choosing to go off the grid for a while to focus on family, work and life in general. Have a great 2020 < |
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  • Profile picture of the author ChristopherGabriel
    You can certainly make money with most of the methods you failed with, but you continued on and eventually found methods that earn good money for you.

    Everyone is different, and what might work for one may not work for you, but if you are having decent success with a few IM outlets, stick to them and invest more energy into making them bigger. Failure is an amazing thing, probably my favorite thing of all! It inevitably drove me to finding "new ways" to make money "even easier", good stuff.
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  • Profile picture of the author Colin Palfrey
    There are a lot of people not really grasping the importance of these failures.

    Things fail - great plans fail, that okay!
    It's not always because someone wasn't patient, it is often because there wasn't a sufficient cash-flow to get the idea off the ground, so it is doomed from the start.

    The reason that failure is a good thing can be easily seen by looking at virtually any successful person. The one common trait is that they failed over and over again and never stopped trying, until they finally succeeded.

    Very, very rarely does someone succeed with the first idea they try. You have to have the guts to critically exam where you are and whether you have the means to push yourself forward in your current plan. If not, or if it isn't for you, stop doing it. Start over and keep going, Give everything a good shot, but realize that it is not your only shot.

    Every single time you try something and fail, you are one step closer to hitting pay-dirt!
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  • Profile picture of the author alexgold87
    Thank you for sharing!

    P.S.: Finally you ended up with Music Search Engine Start-Up. Yeah! Start-Ups are the best!
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeLogan
    Great job, and some great advice. Keep working, if you fail, do it quickly and move on.
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    • Profile picture of the author cjreynolds
      I believe the point, Pete, is that most of us go through a similar journey in IM - Most newbies come in here expecting to "snag it" on their first try. The fact is, most of us have to try more than one, sometimes several methods before we find one that fits us (that's something different for each of us).

      For me the OP was a reminder that I can't expect to hit it out of the park the first time out. It's about being realistic. As for me, I'm hoping I don't have to try that many things before I find my stride, but you seem to be ignoring the last part of the list - the part that lists the successes. This is not just a whiner who came in here cryin' "I've tried everything - nothing works!" - he was sharing the part of his IM experience that I don't see shared a lot. People prefer talking about successes.
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      • Profile picture of the author tryinhere
        Originally Posted by cjreynolds View Post

        I believe the point, Pete, is that most of us go through a similar journey in IM - Most newbies come in here expecting to "snag it" on their first try. The fact is, most of us have to try more than one, sometimes several methods before we find one that fits us (that's something different for each of us).

        For me the OP was a reminder that I can't expect to hit it out of the park the first time out. It's about being realistic. As for me, I'm hoping I don't have to try that many things before I find my stride, but you seem to be ignoring the last part of the list - the part that lists the successes. This is not just a whiner who came in here cryin' "I've tried everything - nothing works!" - he was sharing the part of his IM experience that I don't see shared a lot. People prefer talking about successes.
        Always two sides of a coin and yes I agree with the other side as well, I suppose just trying to add some balance and maybe I read the headline / tag all wrong, in that I did not want people to think these things did not work just because one person failed at it.

        All low stress and all good.
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  • Profile picture of the author TrumpiaTim
    Have you dabbled in mobile marketing yet?
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  • Profile picture of the author Alessandro Zamboni
    Some of your list items worked well for me.
    The winnin gkey is always patience and application, because with only one of the two all will fail miserably.

    Put efforts in everything you do, day after day, and you will see results.
    This is what I did until now.

    See you soon,
    Alessandro
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeremy Bratcher
    I could create a similar but shorter list so seeing this makes me feel better about my IM experience. So here is my list in chronological order:

    1. Blogger Blog - Hey guys, start writing a blog and put some ads ups and cash will start rolling in, right? Well, yes, but not if you don't have a plan and are blogging about nonsensical things just to blog. More like a personal blog. No targeting, so no traffic. Blog is swimming in an ocean of other blogs. Randomly busted for click fraud. Goodbye Google Adsense forever.

    Profit: $0 FAILED

    2. Pay Per Download - Not a bad idea. People download your files for free and you get paid each time. Went way down the rabbit hole. Ended up making about $10/day consistently but this was from 6-8 hours of work, manually posting my links all over the internet. Lesson learned: spam doesn't pay.

    Profit - $600 (for 2 months of full time work) FAILED

    3. Microniche review sites - Great idea, zero idea how to do it. Bought about 10 domain names in different niches and set up websites offering reviewed products with Amazon affiliate links. Then I realized, I had to keep each site fresh and/or do backlinking and SEO to keep them ranking in Google. Too much work with no return in sight. I abandoned this project and left the sites to die.

    Profit: $0 FAILED

    4. Offline Services and Consulting - I never, ever considered this when I first entered IM. I was under the popular impression that IM would let me push a magic button and create money with little to no work. Offline was what I was trying to avoid but since I know had marketable skills from my IM experience, I had plenty to offer small businesses and individuals. Had to learn how to put together a product list and sales pitch and how to talk to business owners like a pro. This is my current project and is evolving (hopefully) into something more.

    Profit: $1k/month SUCESS
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeff Schuman
    Failing in Internet marketing is no different than failing in the offline world. There are many examples of people failing their way to success so to speak. There is an old saying, "it is better to have tried and failed than to have failed to try", or something like that.

    I have failed in many things online in the last 10 years, but stuck with it long enough to get some successes and reach some of my goals. To me the failures were worth it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Geekgirl01
    To be honest you sound just like me to date I have about 10 failed ventures sitting behind me!!

    Thats purely because
    1: Im a VERY impatient person!
    2: I dont always put in as much effort as I should
    3: I get bored and distracted very easy

    BUT this time round im hoping to be different and to learn from my lessons. I have decided to freelance my skills out to keep me going AND build on my new website as im doing and see it as a project/hobby rather than something that will bring me money or help me get rich and so on.
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  • Profile picture of the author celente
    This is a load of bollacks.

    For all the 100 times we do fail, we have at least 10 things that work OK, and then 5 or so things that work KILLER!

    So go back and see what successes you had, and see if you can improve of them.

    It is impossible to have all failures if you are working hard, you must have had some sort of breakthroughs.

    I see you have minute successes, so go back and try to improve of those and scale them up and you will see better results.
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  • Profile picture of the author Broderick Boyd
    Great post!

    Being persistent, putting in the hours, learning, taking action and being patient are all definitely great keys to success in any given venture.

    Keep the new success flowing!

    -Brody
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  • Profile picture of the author Simon Ashari
    MP3 search engine? Would never have thought of it myself. Nice work.
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  • Profile picture of the author ColouredRice
    I think it's not that the ideas you have didn't work or anything like that, it just seems to me that you just simply gave up too quickly because you weren't seeing profits soon enough or you lost interest.
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  • Profile picture of the author matchoo77
    Wow. I think you'd be much better off learning a niche like forex trading and then putting up offers that give the people in that niche what they want. I don't think you have to be some sort of genius to learn a niche...if you devote maybe 6 weeks of study for an hour or 2 at night...browsing forums, blogs etc...I think the average person could figure out....or at least have an idea of what to sell to that niche.

    Maybe I'm crazy though.
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  • Profile picture of the author xatsmann
    I have to say I'm a bit shocked all the people who are critical of this post because this guy admitted he had failed at some stuff he did online. That's not to say everyone was--some people seem to get what he was saying by acknowledging a failed attempt at something means that you are not a failure or you can't learn from your failure and try again--but what's wrong with say an idea didn't work?

    I think the reason why I gave up doing this a few years back was because it appeared to me everyone on the Warrior Forum was afraid to admit that they were failing at times--it appeared to me it was as if everyone was saying, "oh yes, I failed years ago but now I'm raging success and you should be too..." I realize now that was an incorrect assumption on my part but there is nothing wrong with saying an idea simply didn't work, despite doing due diligence before launching a project. Seeing other people have had failed projects make me more likely to try my own since I see now that failure is part of success.

    I also applaud this guy for saying you should have a time limit to decide if you're project is a success--you can quibble about the time, maybe a week is too short--but that's perfectly reasonable advice. If you're not getting the results then why not move on to something else instead of flogging a dead horse? How can you ever walk away from a bad idea if you're always thinking more time or cash will fix it?

    Someone on here had in their signature, a quote from Thomas Edison where he said something to the effect that he hadn't failed but simply found thousands of ways to make a light bulb that simply didn't work--but Edison knew the end result of developing a workable light bulb would make him rich. This is not true with most undertakings in IM so it is more reasonable to have "failure points" (which, by the way, is what I learned you should have any business project in my project management course in school) so you can cut your losses and work on something else.

    I also like the way this post pointed out that some of his failure, mostly by accident, lead to his successes (and to the people who kept asking tell us what worked--didn't you read the whole post? He clearly listed three successes at the bottom of the post.) I found that part the most useful of this post, namely that failure is way to learn. I think most people learn more from the failures than from their successes, . As the old Roman proverb says, "Victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is an orphan."-- so thanks and kudos for adopting your failures and sharing them with us so we could all learn from them.
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  • Profile picture of the author ColouredRice
    It's not being critical or anything, it just seems that he jumps from idea to idea a lot by the tone of his post (or at least that's how it struck me). There's absolutely nothing wrong with admitting his failures (which is commendable) but I think the result of a majority of his methods was either poor planning or just simply losing interest too quickly.
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