If You HAD to Start Over - What would you do Different???

[Billy Kay]

When I started out, everything was new. There were no guides, no tools. Everything I learned was thru experimentation, trial and error.

Nowadays, anyone with access to the internet can make a site. Enter "red shoes" in Shareasale make-a-page, and you have a full pre-coded red shoes product page. Enter your affiliate ID and your banner location in some programs, and it generates an entire website for you. Want to have an always updated page that never requires updating? Use a "widget". Don't know html? There's zillions of places to get free website templates.

A lot of new people who use just these new easy ways, don't succeed and get frustrated. I think it's because they don't do the basics - everything seems to be handed to them.

What good is a make-a-page shoe page if one of the links isn't working and they don't know html to fix it?

And if they made a site that offers every shoe Payless has - wouldn't the actual Payless site be more professional anyway? Has anyone told them they'll have a million competitors doing the same exact thing? They don't know that a niche site like "red shoes for tall women" would be better.

I could go on, but there's no substitute for experience. You have to be a master of many things to be a successful affiliate. You have to be a webmaster (no broken links/know how to cloak or redirect links), a site designer (your site has to be appealing), a graphics artist (your logo and icons), a marketer, a customer service manager, an SEO specialist (you need traffic - and the RIGHT traffic), a networking pro (you have to deal on a daily basis with hundreds of merchants) ...

And all of these things come from... just doing it. Every day. See what works and what doesn't work If something's working, you need to improve on it and exploit it.

 

[YourMlmTools.biz]

How would you buy links?

Rick

 

[Linda Buquet]

Really great points Billy! Affiliates have to really be multi-talented in so many areas.
I guess that's one reason I'm not off being a full-time affiliate.
I don't think I could be organized enough
or patient enough.

 

[GettingRicher]

I would have done a lot of reasearch before making my moves. I lost a lot of money on buying products I never used or products that had a free alternative.

 

[Darwin]

When I got introduced to IM it was via using adwords. That seemed to be the main thing, not marketing a product but using adwords. Then I was like a kid in a candy store. Wow, wow, wow. I can do that, I want to make money like that. I ended up getting overwhelmed and thinking really need lots of disposable income to make it. But I stepped back, observed, read and now I would have started as I am doing now, Crawl, Walk, Run. Build a good foundation, get smart on marketing, best business practises, research, content, relationships and building a good foundation and expand from there. So if I had to do it all over again I would begin at the beginning as though I am in Kindergarten or a Froshman and learn and expand.

Darwin

 

[unique18]

Seo

If I could start all over again I believe I'd try a niche in insurance
I would read more forums and less squeeze pages and paypal wouldn't dance
I'd still like blogs because writing is fun but I'd spend more time on one
I'd spend more time on creating links and generally getting things done

I'd run a mile when I saw a guru and ignore all pop up ads
for experience has taught me more than tips from all the marketing lads
If I could start all over again I'd learn seo first not last
But had I done this I may never have learned the rest of what's now in the past

 

[Linda Buquet]

Cute unique! Your answer in the form of a poem!

I LOVE that this great thread continues to grow
with everyone's feedback and contribution!

 

[frugalwench]

I would have concentrated on the keyword density on my pages more than the actual design itself, or in getting any type of traffic... I finally found that out after I had a very successful traffic-selling site about three years ago, (which I got disgusted with because of PP's policy of automatically honoring all refund requests for all "virtual" goods or services). Also, the text in "alt" tags for your images is MUCH more important than what you might think. You can also name all of your images with long hyphenated keywords and/or phrases.... I'll post more stuff when I think of it...

Good advice. I'm seeing that I probably need to do that as well. I'm also not sure about my niche. I'm combining my two passions, frugality and gardening, in one site, concentrating right now on the gardening.

Also, I would like to say that if you're on a blogging or article site, it is easy to get sidetracked by discussions in the forums, or by reading other blogs, articles, when you should be spending that time building your content. If I could do it again, I'd have about 20 more pages on my niche content! The key, I think, is to get focused on your niche, and try not to get distracted by other topics.

 

[frugalwench]

When I first started in the internet for E-bizz I was, like a lot of people I guess, drawn by the idea that internet could make anything possible and for free... So I started with free web-hosting, free advertising, free traffic, free , free, free... Did it get me anything? Yes ! Of course ! A lot of work and some results... The moment I had made a little money I considered to reinvest a little and at that moment it grew so fast that I looked back and realised this : If I had invested this to start-up I would have been a lot further by now...

So I can agree with a previous post about not only focussing on free traffic, but it goes a lot further than that... Free software, free hosting, you can find almost anything for free on the internet. But the internet is not different from the real-life business world : you need to invest to really become succesfull.

That is my modest opinion: I would invest faster. Not a lot however. But a minimum. In my case that was 200$...

I'm at that stage now, where I want to invest something, but I'm going to build a lot more content first. I think that investing right now would be folly, before I have more to offer. I think that the old cry "CONTENT! CONTENT! CONTENT!" is still true today. If you have nothing to offer visitors, no matter how much you invest, you won't make any money. You have to have enough to make them stay on your site and want more.

If I could do one thing differently, I would not start on a blog or article site. I would maybe build it as a free website, then buy some space and transfer it, but it's a pain trying to get content from my blog sites to real site pages. A lot of "copy and paste" and rebuilding entire pages, which is entirely too time consuming. I'm wasting time now doing that when I could be using that time to monetize and build traffic.

I would also make a daily time management plan, as to how much time I was going to spend on each task daily, such as how much time marketing, how much time building content, etc. I started out trying to market before I had much to sell. I think I'm heading in the right direction now, but it's cost me 5 months of time. Still, at least I've caught on after 5 months instead of a year.

 

[YourMlmTools.biz]

Wouldn't you want to slowly add content to your permanent site?

Rick

 

[frugalwench]

Wouldn't you want to slowly add content to your permanent site?

Rick

Yes, I would, but I don't really have over 15 pages of content now. The content is on an article site, and it's linked from my website to there. My true website only has about 3 pages. I need to move the other pages over to make it seem like a real site, not just a landing page to other sites. I hate landing page only sites that lead to everywhere else. Don't know why, but I do, so I don't want mine to be like that.

 

[bronnamdi]

I will limit myself to only one website until I can earn a reasonable income from that site before getting another one.

 

[frugalwench]

This may be duplicate content, but I was surfing around looking for a great free content manager today, and ran across this and had to share.

Christopher Heng has a great article on his site about his biggest regrets in starting his sites. I thought it made some good, common, valid points, and it made me feel better. because there's only one or two I'm guilty of right now.

You can read the rest of the article here.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Linda edited out the 2 paragraphs from the article. At the bottom it says "Please do not reproduce this article in whole or part, in any form, without obtaining my written permission."

 

[Linda Buquet]

Title: My Biggest Website Regrets and Mistakes
Learn from my mistakes on website design, promotion, income, etc.

Thanks that looks like a good one!

 

[experienceadvertising]

You can always do things differently after experiencing various senarios. In my personal business, I havent been doing it long enough to say what I would have done different besides recruit more clients!

 

[Sportsgreen]

I would not have spent money on buying unresponsive traffic and spent it on adwords instead.

Secondly i would not have become addicted to paid directory submission (one more just one more).

 

[kbldshmn]

I'd have considered PPC's a lot sooner and not closed off my mind from it. Actually, maybe my answer to this questioni is to keep an open mind to possibilities.

 

[YourMlmTools.biz]

You know I am simply having no luck with them. Of course it's a martial arts niche so it could be that

Rick

 

[Linda Buquet]

ShoeMoney talks about what he would do if he had to start over.

"The most common question asked on this blog, interviews, and emails I get is always ?if I had to start over tomorrow with nothing what would I do?. It?s a hard question for me to answer. There are an extraordinary amount of opportunities to make 100$ per day. I mean I can think of probably 50 off the top of my head. The problem is those just don?t work for us anymore. I am not a one-person operation anymore. We now have a large office with 5 employees, our own server racks, and many other expenses so that we have to make thousands per day just to break even. So messing around with things that make 100$ per day just no longer works for us."

As Success Grows Opportunities Shrink - ShoeMoney®

 

[Darwin]

As a business grows its need for input grows as well. A whale consumes so much more than a sardine.

If you are truly starting over and have a business with partners or employees it means those partners and employees must start over too. Whoever relies on your for their livelyhood must find new resources to sustain their life.

You can never truly start over as you began the firs time. Everything is always different, your knowledge, the economy, friends, family etc.

Things always look differently from above looking down then from below looking up. I believe it's impossible to Start Over but it's totally possible to start a new chapter or a new adventure.