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

[StephenJJackson]

If I had to start over, I would have listened to the people that were trying to help from the beginning. I thought I could do it all myself and didn't really need any help. I was wrong, and for that I suffered.

Today, I hang around the people that do what I like to do, and I take their lead always remembering my glass is always half full.

Great post.

Stephen

 

[geoffreysykes]

The key mantra for me to to stop worrying what the competition are doing and get on with promoting your own ideas. I have a very analytical mind and am easily distracted when I think I see a pattern somewhere. Its best to pursue one's own ideas, and not worry wehther they are being copied or what someone else is doing.

 

[Authority Content]

I would have stopped chasing after "quick" money tactics, and instead focused on building a real business.

 

[index450]

I will stick with one solid affiliate program and stick with it for at least 2 years and promote it daily without distracting myself with quick rich schemes.

 

[martha77]

Save Your Time & Money

I have only been in this business for 6 months but I have spent so much time and money chasing the get rich promises..."Success in 24 hrs !"
Find a great mentor/site, which I know I have, and start slowly and surely..it's about baby steps,laying the foundation, etc..If you're serious and committed, you can see success in several months. I have...so start right and be patient and consistent.

Martha

 

[fleagle]

This powerful question is for you. Yes, <strong>YOU</strong>! Whether you are an affiliate, merchant, affiliate manager, an SEO or a blogger we want to hear from you!

<strong>Knowing everything you know today,
if you had to start over in your business,
what would you do differently???</strong>

Share some tips - Learn some tips.
<img src="http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/558233/1/istockphoto_558233_thinking_heads.jpg" alt="" align="left" hspace="10" />
The answers you share could greatly help others and you can learn something from the answers that get posted as well. An affiliate for instance might share that knowing what they know now, they wish they had focused on a small niche instead of creating a mall site and why. An affiliate manager could share that if they had to start their program over from scratch they would have structured it differently and go into detail about how.

OK here is mine. I will probably add more ideas as I think about it. There are lots of things I would have done differently if I were to start my business over today. My business today is so successful and I feel so blessed to have all the great clients, wonderful affiliates, reputation and traffic I have today. However I can see lots of ways I could have gotten to this level much faster if I had done some things differently.

<blockquote>Knowing what I know today I would have launched my forum 2 years earlier. I wasted too many years posting to, answering questions on and building traffic for other people's forums. People in the 'biz' have told me I should have my own forum for years. Why didn't I launch sooner? To be honest, I just let fear of the set-up, tech issues and spam moderation just hold me back. I basically let myself be frozen by the fear of the unknown. Now that my forum is well established, it's turned into one of the best decisions I have ever made - even though I started the forum later than I should have. The tech and spam issues were not insurmountable either.

<strong>LESSON TO BE LEARNED: </strong>Don't let fear of the unknown hold you back from doing something you feel certain would help your business. Contract it out if you have to, but get moving if you are sure it's the right thing.</blockquote>
I hope that this will turn into a rich discussion filled with lessons-learned and tips for success. Share your lessons, false starts or suggestions for doing things better. If you give, you just may get back far more than you thought possible.

I told you mine...
Would you please think about the question and share yours???

I have been on the internet for over ten years with an online business and i have had some successes and many failures. One of the biggest mistakes i did when first started was not finding a good mentor to hook up with that was successful that i could get advice from to do things the right way. I eventully found a great mentor and my business started to grow after that.

Another key tip you will need to be successful is believe in yourself and understand that rome was not built in a day it takes time and lots of effort to build a business online. Also always be honest, building a sense of trust with your customers is very important.

Sincerley,
tim fleagle

 

[Abby_D]

My mind set!!! When I first started, I wanted everything to work right away but I was still having negative thoughts. To be successful in Online and give value, you have to have a strong mind.

 

[dinariccs]

I would have picked up on the technical side earlier. There are way too many forms of traffic that require specialized knowledge that sales and marketing teams don't necessarily have, but should!

 

[James J. Quezada]

Right here is the right forum for anyone who wants to find out about this topic. You realize so much its almost hard to argue with you (not that I actually will need to?HaHa). You certainly put a fresh spin on a subject that's been discussed for decades. Excellent stuff,I?m impressed, I have to admit. Rarely do I encounter a forum that?s both educative and amusing, and let me tell you, you have hit the nail on the head.

I need to to thank you for this wonderful read!! I certainly loved every bit of it. I have you book-marked to check out new stuff you post?

 

[zerocool7]

I think If I could do it all over again I would have done a lot more research before I even built my website I wasted so much time I think I redid my website like 4 or 5 times to get it SEO friendly and the way it needed to be. I would have done alot more keyword research also. I have learned to be more patient because when it comes to google and the internet things happen very slowly.

 

[FitGal]

If I had it to do differently I would have built fewer websites. I started by writing on revenue share content sites. I could see what articles did well and I made websites for all of them. And they were/are all big sites. Trying to manage and rank organically for multiple keywords on a number of sites is not easy. I have since sold a few of them but I still have about 20 or so and it is to many.

 

[queenbearn]

OMG, i ask myself this all the time.

I had a big dance studio that i opened with my boyfriend. Within 2 yrs i was completeley bankrupt but was able to eliminate all my debt and start fresh with an established business. I felt i was all alone though and my business partner "boyfriend" was never able to handle any management issues. I always knew what i WANTED to do but had a very difficult time implementing it and/or making it a reality. I needed help and was never able to get it. Then of course when we had some good months, the director of our kids program decided she needed to be on her own, with all of MY students. Took me for alot and once again - too trusting and no contracts in place to prevent this from happening. In the end, I lost everything. So what would i do different?

1. Have a more educated parnter that would accent MY shortcomings.
2. Have a sales manager and TEAM that concentrated on sales.
3. Have an incentive program for ALL teachers and sales people to give them a reason to sell more.
4. Have sales contests.
5. Make sure i hired the right person that could implement all of this.
6. Have employee contracts in place that would help prevent employee theft and disloyalty.

I hope that helps. What i learned is that your business is only as good as the people you have working for you. If you choose the wrong people and don't have everything in your vision made into a reality - it won't work. Also, as soon as you are somewhat successful there will always be someone there that wants to take it all away.

 

[talfighel]

I have been online now for over 10 years.

For my first 5 years I did not make any money but lost a good amount trying different things that did not work.

Over the past 4-5 years I have done OK and have earned a full time income online with affiliate programs. (sold well over 3000+ products that are in the work at home niche)

The one thing I did not realize over the past 4-5 years is that I should have worked with affiliate programs that would pay me, as the affiliate, residual income and an income from the efforts of others.

I focused all my attention all those years on programs that paid me a one time commission and that was my biggest mistake ever.

If I had to start things all over, I would not ever promote programs that paid me a one time commission.

 

[Peter Santiago]

I often ask myself this question. And when I ask myself this, I think about all the things I know now that I wish I had known when I started.

If I had it to do over again, I would concentrate on building my list. I have ranked several sites on page 1 for several search terms. But in the beginning I didnt collect traffic information. I didnt know to do that. Now I do and I do that will all the sites I work on.

If i had it to do over again, I would integrate Facebook with the SEO and Email Marketing campaigns. I didnt know how to put them together. I thought one was for personal and the other 2 were business. Now, I do integrate FB with my other marketing efforts.

If I had it to do over again, I would do a lot more testing. Early on, I concentrated on just getting searched. Page 1 was always on my mind. It was like I was working for Google. Now, I use multiple traffic streams and Google is just one of the many. And I concentrate on getting the customers over the rankings.

Those are just a few. I would do a lot more differently if I had it to do over again. But that is what experience has taught me.

 

[epol15]

I would start with personal development. It was only after spending over a two years in the industry and spending goo gobs of money I happen to fall onto learning how to change my thinking to give me different results.

I tell you it was not really after that till I started to see changes and the more I worked on it the more and bigger the changes became. For me anyways!

In the end it's all done the same way. IM that is. Does not matter what opportunity or anything like that.

Its based around supply and demand and helping to give quality content to the reader. Another words, conversions.

 

[wesdm63]

There are so many things I would have done differently. Most importantly I would have reinvested more money into my business (instead of "living it up" with earnings), I would have paid more attention to my list and I would have relied on people who had been there before for help and advice.

I bought over 100 expired domain names in my first few months of affiliate marketing. I had no idea what to do with them or why I had them and I missed out on some great opportunities to flip those domains for profit (one domain was getting 15000 Unique Views daily and I did NOTHING with it).

Expensive lessons to learn but I am glad I learned them when I did ... rather than repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

 

[leandros2198]

Concentrate on targeted traffic and of course not do the same mistakes.

 

[Joe D.]

This is an excellent question, and I can think of many things I would do differently. The number one thing I would say is that I would have been quicker to act instead of procrastinate. In the past I would want to do everything perfectly and all at once. When I couldn't do that, I just waited and didn't act. If I were to start over, I would just try things and "do it anyway", regardless if I had all the answers. If it didn't work then I would just learn until it did. I would have learned and progressed a lot faster that way.

 

[clob]

I would have definitely stayed away from the saturated niches like Internet Marketing and Web Hosting and chosen a topic I have a passion for.

 

[JakeCompetition]

This is a strange question, you know why? because we are made of our tests, tries and fails.

Without failing, you can't really understand..... and all the books and ebooks of the world will never tell you "how the thing works". You'll understand it just doing and redoing and trying and having better procedures.

Yes, of course this is added to our passion and skills. Anyway, I wouldn't change anything because I like what I've done and what I'm doing