Biggest Mistake Ever Made?

Just curious, we've all made some big mistakes. some cost us dearly, others are just learning curves.

I spammed a newsletter to a list that did not subscribe to my site. It was in the early days (1999) and I got all of the addresses from a cc in an email. Something like about 250 addresses. It didn't result in any serious harm to me or my business, but I did learn a lesson. It surprised me at the time, how many people did not like this approach ;-)

What's your biggest mistake (learning experience)?

 

Creating another site after another using the same approch.

 

Affiliate program. Tons of money wasted on an affiliate manager with negligible results. Being nailed with a google penalty because affiliates ripped all my content. That sucked.

 

I agree about the affiliate programs -- perhaps the biggest time waster there ever was. I can't believe Commission Junction and Linkshare are still in business, but they must work out for someone.

 

I'm not sure if this is the biggest mistake I have made, but it is a silly one....canonical errors

The various links that I had, internal and inbound links pointed to different URLs, though they all ended up at my homepage.

 

I hear ya! Some of my linking strategies were truly deplorable early on. I have learned over the years to have a consistent plan and to stick with it.

 

Biggest mistake was probably, as a newbie, choosing my first and last name for my domain name. Naturally, it is rarely searched for, so I lost the SEO benefit of putting a competitive keyword phrase in my url.

 

There is alot of money in affiliate marketing. Alot of sites get most of their sales from affiliate programs alone. If affiliate programs didn't work then there will hardly be any around, but alot of sites have them even the large ones like Ebay, Amazon, Google, etc.

Linkshare, I have made over $1,000 from them since I joined. That's just my little amount, there are others that make $100,000 and more per month if not per day from using these networks.

My biggest mistake was for going in the wrong direction when I started working online. But I soon turned that around and here I am today. lol

 

Biggest mistake, trying to be an early adaptor on every SEO "trick" that comes along. Link Farms, key word stuffing, too many to mention. Have grown up, and learned to take my time, not panic and be steady.

 

I did something similar to that. Back in 1998, I got a bunch of emails from guestbooks and started emailing them about my new website using my Yahoo account.
My yahoo account got suspended by Yahoo for spending spam as people started complaining to Yahoo.

 

The biggest mistake I ever made was to play games like
maplestory
warcraft
or any of that other crap... instead of working on my site(s)

I actually spent $300 on maplestory!... what an idiot.

 

lol,I think lost many opportunities to make money is my biggest mistake.

 

maplestory's fun though, my gf's bro works there. VERY good benefits!

 

My biggest mistake is not seeing the potential when I started on the internet. Thats more then 15 year ago. If I was smart then I didn't had to work anymore.....

 

In late 2000, I started using those Paid 4 clicking sites. I kept clicking their links, did all kind of junk registrations, but other thans a few sites like netflip, uniqpaid never got money from any. One of my biggest clicked site was mikespaid4email. They started with 20 dollar payment limit, when I almost reached there they raised the limit to 100 dollars. Now when I think of what I did then, I feel how idiot I was.

 

Playing with HYIPs and Autosurfs 2 years ago.
Actually I made a good amount with 12DP (6.5K), but being so stressed with its debacle.
That’s why I don’t believe in algoco.

LoL, and what about me?? I read 1000$ email on 300dollars mail and some site called emailempire for 3 months)))))))))

 

1. Biggest mistake was writing a book without researching the demand
2. Not surrounding myself with positive people - I have since remedied this
3. Not realising that not everyone understands what the hell we are doing.
4. Underestimating my ability

This is just in the last 2 years - made plenty more before that

 

Another mistake is buying domain aggressively. And later let it being grabbed by other when comes to an expiration.

 

Same period in my life - turned out to be my greatest mistake ever. I don't bet on any affiliate programs any longer. In Web 2.0 it's not so difficult to avoid them anyway.

 

I told someone a premium domain, and it was only for 10$ and they bought it