Bunch Of Fucking Failures...

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CorrectAD

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Apr 29, 2007
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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!
 


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?)

thats fucking hilarious....

good read, thx for sharing this info, i was one of the (few) guys following your startup.TV and always wondered wtf happend, i thought maybe the guy that got his truck stuck came in your office fucked things up

:rasta:
 
Ya great post.

I thought the 20k a month thing was a great idea. But I didn't do it as I was a little squeamish about my domains getting nuked or my white hat hosts dropping me.

I guess it was a good thing. Were you using trademarks in the domains? Can you give an example now? Or some made up type example that is similar?
 
glad you like... the guy in the truck - haha


as far as why I got sued... it's because I "tortiously interfered with business relationships"

nothing ever stuck, but I did lose 2 hosts... ultimately got one in Australia called DigitalPacific that withstood the final (and hardest) hits.

lol good times.
 
I always enjoy reading your posts. Even if it's not what I'm doing, it's nice to know how (and what) others are doing out there.
 
NetStartup.TV was a great idea. Targeting churches was the dumb part.They don't have the "big bucks" to spend that you speak of... quite the opposite. Plus you're dealing with older folks who don't understand internet lingo.

I think you should revive NetStartup.TV with a different niche/concept. But, it did look like a shit load of effort and I know what you mean by being busy as shit.

Cheers
nice post
 
I will say your posts have gotten me thinking correctAD and, more importantly, they've gotten me to DO something.
I'm glad I followed some of your advice on the 100k thing and not the thing that gets one sued!
It IS alot of work and could get expensive(if not thought through properly) but that's true of any endeavour, really.
Quite decent of you to post a followup re: potential problems, too.
Eventually I'll have an idea of my own to share. In the meantime, I need to stand on the shoulders of you others.
Keep up(and share) the good work.
Lloyd
 
Great post... I've been working on something that your 100k/year thread as well as the 200k per year thread have inspired me to do... thanks for the tips!
 
NetStartup.TV was a great idea. Targeting churches was the dumb part.They don't have the "big bucks" to spend that you speak of... quite the opposite. Plus you're dealing with older folks who don't understand internet lingo.
Churches have tons of $$$$$
Biggest problem is that most members of them are idiots.

Church donations up and down
More than $34 billion in total church giving was reported to the Yearbook by the 65 denominations.

That is just for xtain churches.
And all of it is donations so it is all tax free for the church.
 
Churches have tons of $$$$$

Correction:
Churches have tons of revenue
Which is allocated to existing programs
And their budgets are shrinking
Do you think they are likely to ADD web marketing to the mix?

Its hard enough convincing BUSINESSES they need to advertise in times of economic downturn in order to stimulate and drive business. Adv/Marketing is usually the first thing to get cut.

So... good luck convincing a church.
 
Just wanted to say thanks for the post. I may throw up some test campaigns and see what I get. The niche is probably already saturarte now thanks to you :P 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.

I admire and appreciate all you affiliate marketers out there that make a living off of it. Where you have no "real" job as the world would see it, but to us it is very real. Hopefully within a few months my wife and I can quit our jobs and I can be a full time affiliate marketer.
 
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