This is the seventh post in the new blog expert series called: Successful Corporate Blogs and we talk about something many of us don’t do and we should.
One of my favorite Internet marketers sends out at least one useful video to his list each week. This guy is an incredibly successful blogger and his general niche is blogging and Internet marketing.
He’s never afraid to talk about his past mistakes
Why – because he wants other people to avoid making those same mistakes.
He pays close attention to the comments that are left on his blog. He will always answer and thank those who participate. What he also does is gather ideas from those comments so he can write articles and make videos that help if he sees a lot of people are having a problem with one specific aspect of marketing.
He started his first blog when he was in college
He built it around a pastime that he loved doing himself, it wasn’t built to make money just communicate with others who also enjoyed doing the same thing as he did. He started to make money but not a lot; he’s like many people who start the day looking at their Adsense and affiliate earnings and feeling depressed. He sold the blog and moved on; he’d lost interest in that particular pastime and made a few thousand dollars from the sale.
His second blog was far more successful
He met somebody else who was also into blogging who educated him about how to make money online. This other person told him where he was making mistakes. He learned, adapted and now works a couple of hours a day, travels the world at least six months of the year and makes an enviable income.
Sharing your knowledge should also include sharing your mistakes
It’s easy to feel isolated when you’re working from home and feeling like you’re not getting anywhere. By finding somebody successful online that you can trust and follow, he will be only too pleased to point out where you’re going wrong. If he doesn’t help you, then keep looking until you find somebody who’s approachable and does want to help.
The internet is an ever expanding universe and still has room for more people to make money. You only have to look at the statistics. Even though were going through a rough global economy I’m sure the figures for online sales when added up at the end of 2011 will be considerably more than the previous year.
By showing people that you’ve made mistakes and you’re not embarrassed about telling anybody about them, you become that much more human, trustworthy and credible.
What mistakes have you recently shared?
Please share them in the comments below!
Previous posts in this Successful Corporate Blogs series:
Successful Corporate Blogs: Are You Really Writing For YOUR Audience?
Internet Marketing Is Easy When You Use This Technique
Internet Marketing Is Easy When You Use This Technique Part 2
Successful Corporate Blogs: The Technique That Sells More
Successful Corporate Blogs: Build Loyal Relationships
Successful Corporate Blogs: Be Like Lady Gaga
Andrew is a website builder and helps small businesses with their on-line presence…so they can grow their customer list and increase sales. That’s it! That’s what we do each and every day.
for me, the mistake was quitting at that stage when i was about to break even. after all the hard work and i stopped. some bad decisions and thinking was the reason behind it.
Tushar
You are not alone. Many people belive the hype of on-line quick riches and don’t realise it can take 6 months of hard work before you see any return.
I assume you have re-started?
Andrew
Andrew
Mistakes…I’ve made few…:)
The more I write and create content online and see things like Panda, the more sure I am that being real, relevant and unique is the key. You do it well. Mistakes occur when you try new things which is the other key…just keep going man!
Mark
Mark,
If we don’t make mistakes…we are not taking risks – right?
And to be truly successful you have to take risks!
Andrew
I made the mistake of outsourcing my SEO work to the wrong people. The only people worth outsourcing your SEO to are the companies who will charge based on benchmarks. I paid for so many backlinks, but that just isn’t smart for multiple reasons I won’t get into.
Katie
It is good you learnt from the error, changed your approach and moved on.
Many just carry on and on and on…making the same mistakes.
Andrew
This is something most marketers avoid, talking about their mistakes. It’s easy to give advices on how to succeed, but the road to success is just as important.
You might get there by reading others, but will you be able to hold? Not if you don’t know what mistakes to avoid.
Lynn,
Very true. There is a best selling book called (something like): “How to be a complete and utter failure”.
Tells you all the things you should not be doing!
Andrew
Most of the internet marketers mislead people that are so easy for them to make millions with minimum effort and time, I made the mistakes believed to those people. Andrew is right, it takes at least 6 months or more to start see return, if you did it right.
David,
…and unfortunately so many people believe the scammers!
When I first started…I did!
Andfrew
I don’t have much blogging experience at this point, but I have noticed that sometimes site visitors or commentors are not included in discussion if they don’t seem to fit a particular niche. We have many many sales which started from a discussion which had nothing to do with our service and ended with a great referral to friend relative etc… Simply because, like you, we recognize every site visitor is a valued potential customer or referral source. Good job Andrew!
One major mistake I did was doing constant redesigning of my site. At first I never was contented with the current design so I change design and later on change again and again. Lost a lot traffic during that time :/
Aaron,
I did that as well!
My last redesign was about 10 months ago.
Andrew
My biggest mistake was not following my gut and thinking that I had to follow the same old formula of scammy sites and scammy backlinks and scammy ebooks, etc. in order to make money online.
It took me a year of halfhearted marketing before I realized I can do what I want to do, providing a real value and NOT being scammy and make money. If I had stuck to my guns at first and continued to seek out more honest ways of making money online, I might have already replaced the J-O-B income by now.
Having said that, that same long time has ingrained into me to NOT feel I must use methods that don’t sit well with my conscience, so I think it has made me a more effective marketer in a lot of ways. It’s paid off in that all the Panda updates have ended up benefiting me, not causing me to lose income.
Bethany
Thanks for sharing your story.
Far too many are trying to win the quick buck and they may last a few months but then…bam…everything goes horribly wrong.
Stick to appropriate methods and you’ll win in the long run.
Andrew