note: this is more of a post to myself and people who give a shit since I don't blog about myself anymore.
I thought it would be cool to give those of you trying out the ideas I've been able to share over the last year or so some insight as to what ultimately made each of the projects either fail or cause me to lose interest in them.
This way, you can either abandon ship or figure out how to avoid similar situations for yourself.
I'll start with my favorite: http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/13286-20k-per-month-using-system.html#post167236
This was really an interesting idea that I worked for 1 year, and made well over $250,000 with. This was really the first time I had sold a BUNCH of shit online.
So, why did I stop?
I got fucking sued.
3 TIMES!
Sure, I won all the lawsuits, but if you've ever been on the receiving end of a deposition... and paid for attorneys in 3 different states to represent you, you'll understand why I don't do it anymore.
If I hadn't had all the legal bullshit to deal with, I'd probably have a very advanced ripoffreport type system in place.
What would I do differently?
Not use the companies names on my website, for one. And, I would have been a lot more careful with what I said about the companies. While mudlisnging was awesome for conversions, it was very costly.
And, I would have had a much better follow-up system in place to sell more stuff to the customers so there'd be more money after all is said and done.
So, if you're doing this... be fucking careful. Especially if the companies you're targeting are big... and the only ones worth working on are big.
Then, a couple months later I wrote this post: http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/16559-easy-way-make-100k-year.html
I was a little quick to squeeze that post off I think, because I made several thousand dollars almost effortlessly in a local niche market, and was blown away by how easy it was.
Basically what I had done was get companies in my chamber of commerce to let us come out, shoot a video of their business and put it on our directory for $100/month. The cost to me started racking up pretty quickly to get the videos made...
now I post the directory in a few places on craigslist once/twice a week for traffic and we'll see what happens in August when it's time to renew.
It would be some nice cash, but nothing I'm counting on.
What would I do differently.
1. Not offer so much shit upfront just to get the deal... while $1,200 - $2,500 payments are awesome... there's a lot of work/cost involved.
2. Have someone else deal with the traffic/marketing instead of doing it all myself.
3. hire a professional sales person/team. The sales process is really tough and can get expensive if you don't know what you're doing.
Then there was the ever (not so)popular: NetStartup.TV - Starting A ‘Net Business LIVE
I thought the idea was awesome, and I really wish this one had worked because it was a lot of fun. It's crazy how much we've grown. From our little shared office to a 1500 sq. foot office with employees. I guess I wish we'd documented it.
I think the big fuck up on this project was that we put the focus on the type of business we were going to start instead of just doing the shit we do on a regular basis.
The church directory idea died literally days after we came up with it, because... honestly... who wants to sell shit to churches all day? I mean there's a BUNCH of churches, and in my opinion a shit ton of money, but.... I cuss to much to try and pull it off.
So, instead of doing what we usually do and say: "oops dumb idea. on to the next one." we just canned the whole netstartup project.
You guys would have LOVED some of the drama that's gone on here over the last 6-7 months though... I had to fire a guy for hiring prostitutes from CL using our company email account (remember spitzer?)
I've heard some people take shots at the idea, but like i said.... it was fun and I'd do it again if I wasn't so busy.
I have literally started and dropped over 50 projects during the last year and to me, that's part of this business. You keep the ones that go with the "ultimate plan" and lose the ones that don't.
lol this would have made 6 months of content on a blog easy... I don't know how you guys manage to keep those things updated.
Anyways, thanks for reading... and for those of you who took the time here are a couple of bonuses for you:
BONUS #1: Credit Reports/Repair On Collection Agency Keywords
There is some really decent traffic on these.
I had a 25% conversion saying that our free consultation would get the specific collection agency off their reports.
I imagined doing debt leads, bad credit credit card apps, and a few other things but I just never got the time and stopped my ads when the offer went down. In feb it made $4k in 3 weeks.
BONUS #2: Apartment traffic
I stumbled across this a couple of weeks ago, and honestly just could NOT BELIEVE how much traffic apartment searches get.... it's fucking nuts.
So I tried out a landing page that offered credit repair to help people move into their apartments.
BIG CTR on google... always somewhere around 20% and the conversions to leads were 12%. It made money, but I didn't really spend the time to make it as profitable as I know it can be.
I also threw up a landing page for "no credit check apartments" where I collected the lead to get them a list of apartments that don't do credit checks, made a pitch for credit repair, but then autoreponder emailed them their list of apartments...
...which was my affiliate link to apartments.com with a deep link containing the info they gave me... apartments.com pays $10/lead
it's on cj, but this was converting. high ad spend, but i think totally doable.
Again another project that if I sat there and tweaked, advertised, tweaked and advertised agin, could be a fucking earner... I just have NO time.
Well... I guess good luck. See you at ASE!
I thought it would be cool to give those of you trying out the ideas I've been able to share over the last year or so some insight as to what ultimately made each of the projects either fail or cause me to lose interest in them.
This way, you can either abandon ship or figure out how to avoid similar situations for yourself.
I'll start with my favorite: http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/13286-20k-per-month-using-system.html#post167236
This was really an interesting idea that I worked for 1 year, and made well over $250,000 with. This was really the first time I had sold a BUNCH of shit online.
So, why did I stop?
I got fucking sued.
3 TIMES!
Sure, I won all the lawsuits, but if you've ever been on the receiving end of a deposition... and paid for attorneys in 3 different states to represent you, you'll understand why I don't do it anymore.
If I hadn't had all the legal bullshit to deal with, I'd probably have a very advanced ripoffreport type system in place.
What would I do differently?
Not use the companies names on my website, for one. And, I would have been a lot more careful with what I said about the companies. While mudlisnging was awesome for conversions, it was very costly.
And, I would have had a much better follow-up system in place to sell more stuff to the customers so there'd be more money after all is said and done.
So, if you're doing this... be fucking careful. Especially if the companies you're targeting are big... and the only ones worth working on are big.
Then, a couple months later I wrote this post: http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/16559-easy-way-make-100k-year.html
I was a little quick to squeeze that post off I think, because I made several thousand dollars almost effortlessly in a local niche market, and was blown away by how easy it was.
Basically what I had done was get companies in my chamber of commerce to let us come out, shoot a video of their business and put it on our directory for $100/month. The cost to me started racking up pretty quickly to get the videos made...
now I post the directory in a few places on craigslist once/twice a week for traffic and we'll see what happens in August when it's time to renew.
It would be some nice cash, but nothing I'm counting on.
What would I do differently.
1. Not offer so much shit upfront just to get the deal... while $1,200 - $2,500 payments are awesome... there's a lot of work/cost involved.
2. Have someone else deal with the traffic/marketing instead of doing it all myself.
3. hire a professional sales person/team. The sales process is really tough and can get expensive if you don't know what you're doing.
Then there was the ever (not so)popular: NetStartup.TV - Starting A ‘Net Business LIVE
I thought the idea was awesome, and I really wish this one had worked because it was a lot of fun. It's crazy how much we've grown. From our little shared office to a 1500 sq. foot office with employees. I guess I wish we'd documented it.
I think the big fuck up on this project was that we put the focus on the type of business we were going to start instead of just doing the shit we do on a regular basis.
The church directory idea died literally days after we came up with it, because... honestly... who wants to sell shit to churches all day? I mean there's a BUNCH of churches, and in my opinion a shit ton of money, but.... I cuss to much to try and pull it off.
So, instead of doing what we usually do and say: "oops dumb idea. on to the next one." we just canned the whole netstartup project.
You guys would have LOVED some of the drama that's gone on here over the last 6-7 months though... I had to fire a guy for hiring prostitutes from CL using our company email account (remember spitzer?)
I've heard some people take shots at the idea, but like i said.... it was fun and I'd do it again if I wasn't so busy.
I have literally started and dropped over 50 projects during the last year and to me, that's part of this business. You keep the ones that go with the "ultimate plan" and lose the ones that don't.
lol this would have made 6 months of content on a blog easy... I don't know how you guys manage to keep those things updated.
Anyways, thanks for reading... and for those of you who took the time here are a couple of bonuses for you:
BONUS #1: Credit Reports/Repair On Collection Agency Keywords
There is some really decent traffic on these.
I had a 25% conversion saying that our free consultation would get the specific collection agency off their reports.
I imagined doing debt leads, bad credit credit card apps, and a few other things but I just never got the time and stopped my ads when the offer went down. In feb it made $4k in 3 weeks.
BONUS #2: Apartment traffic
I stumbled across this a couple of weeks ago, and honestly just could NOT BELIEVE how much traffic apartment searches get.... it's fucking nuts.
So I tried out a landing page that offered credit repair to help people move into their apartments.
BIG CTR on google... always somewhere around 20% and the conversions to leads were 12%. It made money, but I didn't really spend the time to make it as profitable as I know it can be.
I also threw up a landing page for "no credit check apartments" where I collected the lead to get them a list of apartments that don't do credit checks, made a pitch for credit repair, but then autoreponder emailed them their list of apartments...
...which was my affiliate link to apartments.com with a deep link containing the info they gave me... apartments.com pays $10/lead
it's on cj, but this was converting. high ad spend, but i think totally doable.
Again another project that if I sat there and tweaked, advertised, tweaked and advertised agin, could be a fucking earner... I just have NO time.
Well... I guess good luck. See you at ASE!
I thought about the credit repair, but not about apartments... Looks like you are making some decent cash. Hopefully you can tweak some things to get the load off you, and sit back and count stacks.