The 2 Mistakes That Cost Me An Estimated $246,000
I came to the realisation in 2010, that if I was going to effectively help people to build their passive income online, I had to let them fail.
It Was My Job To Help Them To Fail FAST
Because, by failing fast it brought success to them quicker. So, what do I mean?
Let me go back to late in 2006 when I listened to a husband and wife at the front of the room tell their story. They had made $250,000 in the last 12 months from selling one ebook.
The ebook was about infertility and how to fall pregnant. It was based on their own story and how they eventually came to have 2 amazing kids.
This was my first introduction to internet marketing.
What intrigued me, was that these 2 people were highly qualified consultants. They owned their own business and appeared to have it made. They were highly paid by the hour… And that’s where the problem was.
Their business was successful, but it was keeping them away from their kids. When they went on holiday the income stopped. The typical trading hours for dollars trap.
At the time, I had just sold my telephone system installation business and was looking for other opportunities.
This sounded like a perfect opportunity… I would take 2 weeks to write an ebook, create a sales page online to sell the ebook, take payments with Clickbank and then set up a Google ad to drive targeted buyers to the sales page.
I took a huge amount of notes and couldn’t believe I was getting all this valuable information from them for free.
Then, the next day at the same event, I heard a speaker talking about setting up hundreds of sites on the internet and getting paid when someone clicks the adsense ads on the site. This was amazing… I get paid if someone just clicked on the ad!
He showed proof that he was earning an average $300 a day from just one of his sites. I was so excited that I didn’t hesitate to take him up on his offer. I paid him $8,000 to build 20 one page sites for me.
A month later I went to a seminar and one of the speakers was a Doctor who had given up his profession to pursue affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is when you sell other people’s products on your website and are paid a commission if the sale is completed. Satellite TV was hot at the time and it was relatively easy to get a $100 commission for a satellite TV installation. He showed proof that he was earning an average $4,000 a month from satellite TV sales made in the US, while he was based in Australia. I paid him $1,000 for his home study course.
You’ve probably guessed by now what my mistake was…
6 months later I had an ebook that wasn’t selling. I had 20 adsense sites that had made $0.00 and a satellite TV site that made a $100 sale every 2nd month…
So, what was the big mistake?
Not Focusing on ONE Strategy
You see, it gets worse. Because after 6 months of lousy results I thought I needed to know more…
I invested in a course that promised the insiders secrets to selling on eBay. A week later I had an eBay store and was selling digital products for $4.99. That was actually successful until eBay changed the rules and I had to change my downloadable products to physical products, which I never did.
Then I found the blogging world and bought every product that taught me how to make a fortune with simple free blogs… That failed!
Then I moved onto buying public domain information that had been rewritten and would make great reports. I was giving these reports away in exchange for an email. These emails were going into an autoresponder which would automatically send out follow up messages at pre-determined time intervals. These messages were a mix of additional content on the subject or offers for products.
Then there was the creation of membership sites where I would have 500 people paying me $97/mo.
Then there was the software that with 2 clicks would fill my bank account with cash… And the domain buying and flipping, the website flipping, the local marketing and…
…All these products that the experts were saying would catapult me to wealth in record time!
And that was my 2nd biggest mistake…
Listening To EVERY Expert
In December 2009 I remember looking at my maxed out credit card statement and thinking…
“This sucks! I’ve accumulated all this knowledge, I’ve seen proof that others are getting great results and I’ve got nothing to show for my efforts!”
It took me 3 years, maybe I’m a slow learner, but it finally sunk in. I had been doing it all wrong.
Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers” talks about the 10,000 hour rule. Basically he talks about 10,000 hours of practice being required for huge success… And I had certainly done my 10,000 hours.
Armed with my 10,000 hours of practice and the information from “The Go-Giver” I knew what I had to do. I had to…
1) Choose one strategy that I would implement over the next 12 months.
2) Choose which expert was successful at the strategy I had chosen and only listen to what he or she had to say.
I spent a day unsubscribing from all the lists I had been suckered into joining and remained on Jason Fladlien’s list. If you are an InMyHomeOffice subscriber you will know the rest of the details…
I focused on one niche and one strategy of building a membership site. In 12 months I had generated a profit of $82,030.27 and was only working an hour a day on the website.
That’s Why I Help People To Fail Fast
In late 2006 I learned about the ebook strategy that brought me success in 2010. That’s after I focused, applied and persisted with the strategy.
I had lost 3 years of income $82,000 x 3yrs = $246,000 because I was chasing the next shiny object.
But, the experience I gained from failing was invaluable. If I hadn’t tried all of those different strategies, I wouldn’t be ‘desensitized’ to the compelling video sales letters that seem to be around now.
I Learned From Making Mistakes
And this is so much more of a powerful learning experience.
So… Don’t be scared, make mistakes and FAIL FAST… It’s the fast track to success!
