Inputs for blog post - What is one of the most painful mistakes u made?

Hi everyone,

Not sure if this has been done before, but even if it has, it does not matter

Would like to compile a list of REAL LIFE LESSONS in this directory industry on your most painful mistakes u made. I would like to limit 1 mistake per person so list your MOST PAINFUL/UNFORGETTABLE one. Your name & website will be listed beside the mistake if you desire, so do mention it in this post too.

Hopefully i can get a good response and the final result will be put up in my PR5 blog linked to Linksfactory.net. Think it will be a good reference and interesting read for all those who come after us.....

Anybody to start the balling rolling?

Tks

 

Ok, well I think I can claim one of the worst so I will get you started...

I once converted a directory from free to paid and dumped the entire free queue, some 5000 submissions, sending them each an email trying to convert them into paying customers.

Big mistake! The entire community turned against me and it took me over a year to re-establish my site. Looking back, it was just a plain stupid thing to do, I should have honored the list of people who had submitted for free.

 

We've been doing an interview of submitters to our directory and publishing the results on our blog... lots of interesting stuff and some common threads... anti ppv and anti spam.

http://blog.classifieds1000.com

You get the interview after a successful submission at: http://directory.classifieds1000.com

 

george55, pls don't spoil my thread by advertising for your blog, which has almost NOTHING to do with what i'm asking

hoping to get more inputs, anyone willing to share for your the sake of future generations?

 

Spell check and make sure it's fine. I used to hit post rightawaythen go back and edit, then edit again and technorati just started ignoring me. When you hit POST make it permanent.

 

Here's my mistake: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=307284 learned to stop buying scripts from dude who don't prove themselves and their scripts and sales.

 

On what topics you would like to have mistakes ?

 

REAL LIFE LESSONS in this directory industry on your most painful mistakes u made.

 

have tried to make it clear in my 1st post..... mistakes made in the directory industry, meaning those who own directories or involved in 1 way or another in this industry. hope that makes it clearer

all inputs have been noted, tks..... hope to get more!

 

OK.. I made on mistake too..
Once a time, i announced $3/year listing on www.bqtm.com (when it was PR2)
And then Chris (mystickmedia) did 15 submissions in a go.. Got not much money..
If I would have sticked to a price of $15/listing then i would have got enought $$

 

The mistake I made was to use a category dump for my first directory LinkLister, then I started adding categories and other categories would be deleted, links would move to an irrelevant category. I found a fix from an0n for this known problem but couldn't manage to implement it myself, an0n installed it for me for free and no problems since.

 

The first mistake I made when starting my directory was looking for the absolute cheapest host possible. That wasn't my biggest mistake though. My biggest mistake was not backing up my files at a different location. The server at the before mentioned host was hacked and I lost everything. Since then I have learned of the imprtance of a quality host and storing your files at a remote location.

 

great, i'm getting good materials for my blog. Keep it coming guys. Oh, incase you guys forgot, if you want your name and URL to appear beside your mistakes in my post, pls list here the name & URL u want printed. Tks

 

Painful mistake? Starting a directory and expecting no effort needed and making tons of money when people starting submitting their site to my paid directory in doves!

 

As I always -say - I am technically dumb --here is one of the most foolish things I did with my BLOGGING ( Sorry OP -- my mistake was not BLOG post but the whole process of Blogging on my directory)

I was suppose to install/ open a blog and I duly install WordPress. Initially, I posted few posts as well. But after few days one of my friend --coolweb pointed out that my category Directories was broken I checked it and found that I have indeed installed a blog with that URL
I also checked others and found to my horror that 2/3 of my directory categories were broken.

Now I have learnt a lession

 

Well i am not sure if its very painful for others but it was for me....

I usually use Firefox as my default browser and every time i would post on my blog it would give me the perfect result in it, but then i got my friends complaining who use IE that the sidebar on my blog is missing, this was probably a problem in the theme that i fixed later but still i didn't realized it for more than weeks, than again one day while i was fixing the sidebar.php file of my wordpress theme i didn't realise that the code was fully loaded and i copied it as backup (blunder) i did some changes which spoiled the entire blog theme so i re copy/pasted the incomplete code i had backupped and damn.... nearly all the links in sidebars including the button and stuff were missing i was very sad but then had to restore and reproduce all of them manually!!! so be careful when playing with blog!!!

 

BTW i just found out that i might have posted irrelevantly here as my blog is in no way connected with my directories, plus i thought this Thread is under the Content Management>Blogging forum of the DP.... pardon me for my post if its not related!

 

No prob khushal, but think we wld love to hear abt your personal story in being in this industry and one of the more painful lessons u have learnt

 

Lesson: Never copy paste the code within the file and paste it somewhere else as a backup in case you think it will be required for future use, always copy the entire file as backup!!! Thats what i've learned from my experience!

 

As some people here in DP knows I am not technically good in this thing and I openly admit it. Technically Dumb as jhnrang said. So I tried to do some modifications and boom my deeplinks were gone. Now besides the editors that adds sites no one can take a look anymore at my directories except Rob.