Biggest Mistake You Ever Made?

Discussion in 'General Chat' started by jamespeter, Jan 6, 2009.

  1. #1
    It seems like everyone and their dog are telling us these days how easy it is to earn extra money in internet marketing.

    My grandfather told me that a wise man learns from his mistakes, but a wiser man learns from the mistakes of others.

    I am very interested in hearing from our experienced forum members.

    My question is this: What is the biggest mistake you have ever made in internet marketing?

    Thanks!
     
    jamespeter, Jan 6, 2009 IP
  2. PHPGator

    PHPGator Banned

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    #2
    Oh man, when I first got into Adsense I had no clue how it worked. Some friends told me about it and helped me set it up on my gaming forum. I was telling everyone and their dog to click on the ads. I am still banned because of it and now realize how ignorant it was.
     
    PHPGator, Jan 6, 2009 IP
  3. kingofsanda

    kingofsanda Peon

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    #3
    When I first started marketing my site I thought I had to spend lots of money
    on paid links to rank well in the serps, later on I discovered that this was not
    true.
     
    kingofsanda, Jan 6, 2009 IP
  4. inpaqt

    inpaqt Peon

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    #4
    Didn't backup my database on my forum.
     
    inpaqt, Jan 6, 2009 IP
  5. copper12

    copper12 Peon

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    #5
    I advertise, buy traffic all the time, so when I first started out, the biggest mistake was not checking them out first. After that I learned my lesson, and alls been smooth sailing.
     
    copper12, Jan 6, 2009 IP
  6. blaineglynn

    blaineglynn Active Member

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    #6
    my biggest mistake was getting caught up with all the "new products" and not actually doing something. For 2009 your goal should be to get focused on one thing, take action, and do it. if you dont take the right steps you will never get anywhere.

    ~Blaine
     
    blaineglynn, Jan 6, 2009 IP
    NeverEverClever likes this.
  7. Gytis B.

    Gytis B. Peon

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    #7
    As I know this mistake was very popular few years ago, I'm glad I didn't do that too. :D
     
    Gytis B., Jan 6, 2009 IP
  8. internetmarketingiq

    internetmarketingiq Well-Known Member

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    #8
    In order to make money online, someone has to spend money online. The biggest mistake made over and over is ignoring the needs of the person spending they money. It's not about YOU, it's about YOUR CUSTOMER.
     
    internetmarketingiq, Jan 6, 2009 IP
  9. seethesun

    seethesun Peon

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    #9
    Being content and doing nothing was my biggest mistake. Starting back in 2002 my girlfriend (now wife) and I had a business where we booked weekly condo rentals for unbelievable rates. We had a very good deal going with a travel incentive company. We were mainly selling in eBay and pushing them toward our website.

    About a year later we eventually opened up our offer to distributors, who mainly sold it on eBay. When eBay started cracking down on travel (ours was legit, but the way it was structured it was against their rules) most of our sellers stopped selling and that was our main source of income.

    We didn't do anything to generate other traffic to our site and our sales slowly dwindled, eventually making us close the site. To this day I regret that. I have thought about going back and trying it again, but the rates have since gone up too much and the deal is not anywhere near as good.
     
    seethesun, Jan 7, 2009 IP
  10. ErikJ

    ErikJ Peon

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    #10
    my biggest mistake was at the begining I would blindly buy programs and advertising and not track it and also not research it. So instead of the research and know what I was doing method I just spent money to compensate for it and that got me no were. now I can spend little mponey and make allot more from my efforts

    so the biggest mistake was spending money without knowing what it will do for me and just hoping it works. Do your research
     
    ErikJ, Jan 7, 2009 IP
  11. soju

    soju Peon

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    #11
    Definitely Adwords was the biggest mistake. Luckily I didn't lose to much. But the service yeilded me not a single buyer. Advertising on like minded websites did wonders for me, however.
     
    soju, Jan 7, 2009 IP
  12. akki123

    akki123 Peon

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    #12
    the biggest mistake i made was clicking on my own adsense ads continuasly and because of that my account was banned.
     
    akki123, Jan 7, 2009 IP
  13. Laceygirl

    Laceygirl Notable Member

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    #13
    I thought that writing unique content would be important to get ahead of the competitors.

    I wrote about 150 hours worth of absolutely unique articles for my sites over a year. I found out later that it doesn't even help because various articles have been stolen and scattered all over the internet for that niche, and there is like 20 domains copied from mine using numbers and -.

    What a waste of life.
     
    Laceygirl, Jan 7, 2009 IP
  14. sachajak

    sachajak Peon

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    #14
    My biggest mistake so far (I'm not discounting the possibilty of making others, such is the learning process) has been to spend around $2000 on ppc and only received $120 in sales.
    It was a hastily arranged campaign which I thought was going to produce results. I had the old beginners luck on the first day so I upped my daily spend thinking it would repeat. But it didn't.
    And actually, having the bottle to admit my mistake and stem the losses has helped me focus on better, more cost-effective, and free! methods of traffic generation.
     
    sachajak, Jan 7, 2009 IP
  15. sjbarticles

    sjbarticles Peon

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    #15
    Creating an ecommerce site with loads of unique content, dominated my targeted keywords but wasn't making enough money so transferred the content to a blog with a perfect domain name. Stupidly didn't research 301 redirects so got pathetic rankings - lost my great position with my original site and didn't even get ranked/indexed properly with the blog.

    Had to re-write all the content and created a new site which was more successful but still never achieved the rankings I had at the start.
     
    sjbarticles, Jan 7, 2009 IP
  16. WarzMX

    WarzMX Active Member

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    #16
    Big mistakes:
    1. Used PTR program to advertise a site with google adsense on
    2. Dublicated my website while working on improving it, but it got indexed by google, and they think I have dublicate content :mad:
     
    WarzMX, Jan 7, 2009 IP
  17. shailendra

    shailendra Peon

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    #17
    submitting websites to search engines. doing so is utter waste of time
     
    shailendra, Jan 7, 2009 IP
  18. rew3211

    rew3211 Peon

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    #18
    My biggest mistakes:

    1. Trusted a scammer on DP.
    2. I just planned things and planned things, but never took any action.
     
    rew3211, Jan 7, 2009 IP
  19. sajidmm

    sajidmm Peon

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    #19
    My biggest mistake is join CPA networks. and i spend money to drive traffic to them and i have a site with 1000+ Unique , i put CPA offer on that and i never get any single $1 from CPA. So far this is big mistake i did online.
     
    sajidmm, Jan 7, 2009 IP
  20. oxlay

    oxlay Peon

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    #20
    not Focus! that's why last year i've got nothing...
     
    oxlay, Jan 7, 2009 IP