My 10+yr business journey. You will never read anything like this in your life

it should be great share of story
however you inspired noob like me here

 

Well, respect for the fact that you did put in alot of effort, and respect for being honest. I suspect your story is mirrored by many other webmasters, who are too busy keeping up the illusion that they earnt millions.

Have you ever thought doing shit work like get a domain, install gaming script & sell it? More often then not, it would seem the profit is in providing a service. Selling a gaming site is more profitable then running a site. if you want to look at building sites and need a partner to buy a couple of domains in advance then pm me.

My story is a little different. In 1999, before I was 18, I tried to start an online business. I already worked hard weekends and after school, saved up everything I could, had studied business at school, as well as computers and was desperate to create a website to start selling online. Ebay was unheard of in my country (even though there were in the US), yet I could see insane potential in selling items online. When I finished school, I had to work hard to learn how to make sites, and made one at home. My first website was related to musical instruments, as my father had the connections for stock. The concept was that I could make a sale, get paid, then collect and pay the distributor after making the sale. It sounded like a perfect business model. I would have had to hire a coder to help complete the site, but I had to wait until I found suppliers.
But my father just didnt see the potential in this, and for some reason refused to assit, or even give me the phone number of one of his suppliers. So I had to find other suppliers to work with, being 18, noone would work with me, and the only companies that would, the pricing was HIGHER then the retail price at the shops. Prepaid phones were pretty big here in 2000, it was just starting to take the country by storm, I must have been on the phones for hours, to all of the phone companies, trying to buy stock. Never got anywhere at all. You have to remember that in 2000, in my country, most people never really believed that shopping online, or being online would ever become the norm, yet I could see it. Even the people I was ringing to source stock only wanted to deal with brick and mortar businesses. Even they never saw potential to buy online, and I would be suprised if half the people I spoke to had internet at home. I remember in our school, would be less then half had a computer, let alone internet.
I should have spent my money on computer games, and spent those weeks playing computer games, rather then trying to start a business. Would have been a better use of my time.

You can imagine by now I had spent weeks, if not months, racking up phone bills, and I did get a few leads, and attend meetings, but as soon as they saw me, and my age, that was it. In my parents eyes I was not "working". I ended up having to move out, shit happens, and ended up homeless.
After that ended up working so hard at any job I could find, each week barely made rent, I couldnt afford internet, I couldnt even afford a phone. I couldnt do anything. In total, I have been "in between homes" at least 4 times now. Its something I hate, and since I had kids, its something I promised would never ever happen again, and I have worked hard to save every cent possible.

For the past 10 years I have poured nearly every spare cent into saving / reducing mortgages. At one stage, I was working monday - saturday at one job, and working security friday nights, saturday nights, and sunday nights, man I was tired, but thats what coffee is for, I had to do it to get ahead. Things like owning a TV was seen as a luxury, (ok, thats like $50 that could be in my account earning interest) things like internet at home, again luxury, and we had to do without all luxuries for years. Then once the mortgage was down, got an investment property. Sure I couldnt afford it, again, cutting costs. Things like instead of an $8 haircut once every 2 months, becomes once every 4 months.... I buy boots that have to last 3 years....

ok so right now I am not entirely wealthy, but I am relatively stable. This is why now, in the last few years, it became worth the risk to invest online, as I wont become homeless if my sites rank poorly, and my family will still get to eat, even if my sites tank.

With my own websites, I have had my own ups and downs. Invested in one site, did nothing to it, and woke to find it banned completely in google. Invested in another site earning from adsense, changed nothing but the ad code, and woke to find my adsense account gone forever.... another site was earning very nicely from an affiliate sales, only to have the company paying for the ads delay payments to the affiliate company for nearly 6 months before I finally received a payout. With that niche, no other affiliate payed anywhere near as much, a site that was earning, was suddenly dead. These were some very costly mistakes, but again, because I am relatively financially stable, while I never dare tell my partner how much I lost on those specific sites, it doesnt impact our family as we are used to living on a shoe string budget, it does however impact heavily on how much I can re-invest into my existing sites.

I have learnt that it is better to drop a dead site / project, and spend the time with my family, then it is to flog a dead horse and send good money after bad. From now until 2016, I actually plan to reduce the number of sites, and domains I own (even if it means liquidating at a loss), to only having 1-2 sites that I am truly passionate about. It will mean the sites that I keep will have more of my time, energy, and finances poured into them.

One good thing about working online, is that after years, I still love helping others with their sites. But the best thing would have to be that I love waking up and finding more money in my paypal then when I had when I went to sleep. Thats something I love about being online. (I just wish it happened more often!!).

 

just keep trying, and stick to what you good at! I am sure everything will back to normal

 

Ohh, hard luck... never loose hope and start once again. Hope you will succeed.

 

Dude, that's pretty heavy, not what i expected. From what I gather, you're probably only around 30 years old, you're feeling tired and depressed. But atleast you're working out and staying healthy. You had a bad run, but that's all it is. Despite what you may think, your skills and experience are still very valuable. There are plenty of people who're older, uglier, and with no skills to speak of in that situation. Rest well, take walks often, give yourself sometime to get out of your funk.

 

Hang in there Dino. With 35 years old you are definitely not too old. I suggest you get yourself a job in the real world and start from there. When you are again in your feet you can try this again.

If you can grab yourself a copy of The War of Art, written by Steven Pressfield and read it. I believe it will help you.

 

Believe it or not, there is still hope for you. You are 35 years young, with many years still ahead of you. Use it to your advantage. As many people already pointed out, you have a wealth of experience. This is something you can use moving forward.

Start somewhere, anywhere in fact. Just do something. Anything that is productive and will get you out of this funk. As they say, the only way out is through.

 

It's so hard to get out of a funk when you've lost so much time.

 

as mentioned by many, 35 years old is old yet. you still have time.
there is a billionaire who at his mid 30s has absolutely nothing. He worked a few jobs, took part-time degree course, eventually graduated.
he went into financial sector, saved enough money to have some money for investments. during his 40s, he finally succeed in his venture and became a billionaire.

although not everyone can be a billionaire or millionaire but with hard work, i am sure you will get paid off.
you are able to make some money online. there are alot of people cant even make $10 online in a month.
you did not waste your 10 years, you've earn experience.

yes you have failed ventures, get a job, earn some money, try again!

if you try, something positive might happen. if you dont, nothing will happen.

 

But you'll lose so much more if you stay idle, and it will be much harder to get out of a funk the longer you stay in it. Take one step out, then another. Just keep moving!

 

you've lost so much time, for what exactly?

what was your aim? get rich? family? kids? render service to poor in 3rd world countries? invent something?

without a greater aim to go towards, any life is wasted on passing trivialities. even if you get filthy rich at one point.

maybe you should take this chance to pinpoint what exactly you want from your life. when you look at it beyond the surface, you may find something different than what you thought to be there.

 

I know what I wanted. I don't want to say the phrase "I want women" because I just want "woman". Most people in life just settle for who they can get as opposed to getting what they desire. The easiest way to achieve a major choice of women for your significant other is to have the power. To get the power you need the money.

 

even if you had 5 billion dollars and found someone and thought that she was 'the' one, she would easily turn out not to be the one. just like how millions of others people experience. leave aside hundreds of millions other people who are not as rich, who also think they found the right woman, only to find out they didnt. and there are hundreds of millions of people who found the right woman without any special effort.

as non-analytic and logical it may sound, there is no way to maximize your chances with that and its up to what you would call fate. if anything, having a lot of money WOULD attract a lot of women who would have nothing to do with your right woman, but would behave as if they were. leave aside a lot of gold diggers who would want to get a good divorce soon and cash in on your money.

since its something more up to fate than anything you do, the best way to find your woman would be to live how would you like to live, behave how you like to behave, do the things you want to do (aside from i want money which will give me woman 'activity'), and maximize your chances of encountering the woman who would be compatible with these, love you for these, and be together with you for (and also despite) these.

actually when looking at it like this, this is a logical approach to this problem.

 

@DinoJRG Just wondering how you've been doing over the last month or so. Have you had any positive changes?