Marketing-wise, what is the stupidest thing you have done? Whether it caused financial loss, ruined an image, anything... what do you rate as your biggest mistake?
I once paid an outsourced sales company $45k and they returned $0. Wait... no... that's not the stupidest thing I've done -- mathematically. I also kept a sales guy on board for several years who consistently failed to sell. I've probably burned half a millions bucks on ineffective salespeople.
Probably did the same as ronmojohny, I was ranking 4th for a keyword that was bringing in 6,000 uniques a day and I changed the whole page including title tags etc lol
Paid 900 bucks on yahoo auction for a laptop to an user with no reputation... Still got 225 bucks back from yahoo because of bid protection....
Signing u mywebsite with clicksor and was told that it was the best one in the web world for getting huge income than adsense by one my adsense banned friend. Spent 6 months with $2.5 return...
I ask a "friend" for advice and money to invest in a business... the guy turn down the whole thing and even made me feel stupid.... now he is billing 18k per customer... and the worst thing... he called me once to help him because he told his daddy on a dinner about my idea and his dad found out it worth it... so they want me to be part of the society because i was the guy with the idea. I worked for that bastard almost a year... and I'm still waiting for my "stockholder income" I got nothing but a salary.
My thing is more of doing something that made feel stupid. I received an email from Paypal regarding a payment. I look at the email address and knew I never bought anything from the person listed. I started to panic! My first thought was to close my account down! Well as it turns out it was my very first affiliate marketing sale! I'll never forget that switch from panic to pure joy! Stavra
the one and only is this i really dont know where to invest my money.i m very less confidenc person and dont belive on my abilites.
I was 18 when I borrowed $40,000 and eventually blew over $100,000 in total borrowed money (a lot to do with neglect and sillyness after the initial loss) on my first online business venture - ultimately forcing me to file for bankruptcy. Ergh.. ouch? You can read my story here. Heed it as a warning folks. Pete
This is a really good thread to allow people to share their personal experience. Really appreciate the openess in everyone of you to share your experience. Let's hope all of us can learn from your personal experiences.
I started a Yahoo PPC campaign as a newbie without knowing anything about IM and I spent over $500 in less than 16 hours and I really only had about a $50 budget... Ivan
wow a lot of these mistakes involve huge financial loss...I can be thankful that none of my mistakes have involved losing a lot of money one stupid thing I did when I was still learning was waste a lot of time with traffic exchanges because I didn't understand the whole idea behind them and how their traffic is virtually worthless for a main site I've blown a little money here and there, but nowhere near as much as you guys (<$100). I've also wasted a lot of time optimizing for keywords that were WAY out of my league. Also I regret not writing as many articles as I am now a few months ago... But for me, I don't really have time to dwell on the past, all I can do is keep at it.