What's the biggest mistake you've made while trying to make money online?

vibe_sms

vibe_sms

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I'm sure many of you have stories worth sharing.
Some of you may have lost thousands of dollars on a bad idea, spent months going in the wrong direction, or simply chosen the wrong strategy.
What mistakes have you made while trying to make money online? What's the most expensive lesson you've learned from your experience?
 
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Putting too much money into something before testing it properly starting small can save u from an expensive lesson
 
Mine was chasing the fastest method instead of selling what I already knew. Years ago I started out asking forums which way makes money quickest online, looking at dropshipping and offers, with about $200 to work with. Meanwhile I had five years of PHP, JavaScript and WordPress experience I could have sold to a local business that week.

The expensive part wasn't the money, it was the time. Today I run a contracting company, and the lesson stuck: get paid for a skill or access you already have first, then build the clever stuff on top.
 
My most expensive lesson was building a whole catalog of low-content books before checking if a single one sold. I spent weeks on formatting and covers, then found out the niche had almost no real demand. Now I publish two or three test titles first and only scale what shows steady sales after a month or so. Curious if others here validate before scaling, or just go all in like I did?
 
Mine was making a SaaS with two many free credits on a free plan + no custdev at a pre stage. Cost me a lot of time I tested different ad channels, most of them were paid. Didn’t work out. I had very few subscribers and what's more is that they weren't williing to upgrade a free plan.

Custdev and test all the time and that's what I usually do on Reddit now.
 
I focused too much on get-money-quick methods rather than on safer, "white-hat" approaches. Don’t get me wrong—I did manage to make some money with those quick-fix methods, but they never lasted long. As a result, I’ve faced some tough spots where I ended up with no money at all once those methods stopped working.
 
Trying to find shortcuts like crypto or other high risk investment instead to focus on active income. There is not such things as passive high returns
 
Hot_Box said:
Mine was making a SaaS with two many free credits on a free plan + no custdev at a pre stage. Cost me a lot of time I tested different ad channels, most of them were paid. Didn’t work out. I had very few subscribers and what's more is that they weren't williing to upgrade a free plan.

Custdev and test all the time and that's what I usually do on Reddit now.
Click to expand...
Did you find out why users weren’t upgrading? If the free credits covered everything they needed, that’s a different problem from users not finding enough value in the product. Reducing the free allowance would only help with the first.
 
I have a non-crypto story.
Once I got scammed when selling a Steam account, so ever since then, I’ve followed one rule: money first, then the product.
 
The biggest mistake I’ve ever made was getting scammed out of my money. When I first started making money online, I saved up to buy a blog as an investment. However, due to my lack of experience, I ended up losing a significant amount of money to a scam. It was a devastating experience that really knocked me down.
 
Mine was spending weeks polishing a site before i had a single person willing to pay for what it offerd. Now i try to get one real customer or at least a few paid test orders first, and only then build anything bigger. Way cheaper way to find out if an idea has legs.
 
@Koma that is no mistake , thats a learning step we all been scammed lol.

biggest mistakes i made was quoting websites , applications etc to optimisticly and not able to say no ; in domains allways cashing out to early ,spending money on coke and prostitutes lol and finding money holes and only exploiting them for what i needed i guess lol
 
Garlick said:
Did you find out why users weren’t upgrading? If the free credits covered everything they needed, that’s a different problem from users not finding enough value in the product. Reducing the free allowance would only help with the first
Click to expand...
The product was okay and the problem was that I had a huge gap between a free plan and a pro plan in terms of price which made my paid plan way to expensive though it had a massive amount of credits. Talked to the ones who left and almost all of them said that they've done enough with the credits I gave for a few months ahead and will be back sometime later lol
 
For me, spending a lot of time and money on running an online store was probably my biggest mistake. Due to ineffective promotion and my lack of experience in operations, I suffered heavy losses and nearly lost all the savings I had built up over many years.
 
vibe_sms said:
I'm sure many of you have stories worth sharing.
Some of you may have lost thousands of dollars on a bad idea, spent months going in the wrong direction, or simply chosen the wrong strategy.
What mistakes have you made while trying to make money online? What's the most expensive lesson you've learned from your experience?
Click to expand...
My biggest mistake was focusing on quantity over quality for outreach. I sent cold emails to so many people in 2 days, even though I have a decent website/portfolio, but I got no replies. I realized my emails were not personalized enough. It was a great lesson - 10 personalized emails are better than 100 generic ones. Still working on landing my first client, but learning a lot in the process.
 
Hands down, my biggest mistake as an online entrepreneur was not putting more money into marketing. Instead, I blew all my revenue on personal stuff. Total rookie mistake - that's exactly why my business couldn't scale and ended up fizzling out after a few years.
 
My biggest mistake was investing the savings I’d accumulated over years of working into cryptocurrency; I ended up losing all my capital and even falling into debt.
 
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