Daggermouthx
Regular Member
- Sep 23, 2018
- 243
- 554
“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long.
We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious...
And curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
-Walt Disney (A fucking sociopath)
I’ve heard quite a few times that you can’t learn from others’ mistakes. I believe it, but it could just be my personality—I’m really fucking stubborn, and like to see things for myself.
What I believe you can learn from others’ mistakes is how they handle it. Successful people keep moving forward. They try, they fail, they reflect, they adjust. If success comes, it comes.
So... I thought it would be fun to talk about some of the stuff I’ve tried that hasn’t worked. Some of these are from my personal business, others from a marketing company I work for.
General
Planning too much—A lot of times, especially in the beginning of my journey, I would plan too much. I would try and read everything I could and try come up with the perfect strategy. OR... I would scower the internet looking for some super secret magic recipe to success.
Planning too little—Quite honestly this is something I still do, but I’m learning from the mistake. Here, I realized that planning too much kept me from taking action and I didn’t get anything done. So what did I do? I would try to get a general idea, and just fucking try something.
I’ll finally be happy when I’m successful, because people will like me. (Attitude)—I thought it would make me happy. I thought others would think I’m super cool, cause I’m doing something great. Nope. Most people don’t give a shit, or they feel bad about themselves, instead of fawning over you. Just do it for you. Enjoy the ride, and you’ll be happier 90% more of the time, than that 10% when you actually do something.
Social Media
Buying a big instagram account without a plan—I make decent money, so I tend to throw it away on learning experiences. It’s really not as bad as it seems. Here, I listened to a podcast by GaryVee where he talked about buying instagram accounts, because the sellers don’t realize their value. I had no idea what I was doing with it, and spent many hours everyday learning how to build it. Never learned how to monetize it though, so it was a huge suck of money and time.
Jarvee with a brand new account—Rookie move, I know. Don’t regret it. I read that it wasn’t a good idea to do it with a new account. Did it anyway. I thought if I only did likes, that the account wouldn’t get banned. And... it didn’t. It got shadow banned, which was probably more frustrating. Also didn’t have a plan, was just doing it.
Buying fake followers—Yep. Learned this wasn’t a great idea, because although it can increase perceived social value, it drags your engagement rate wayyyy down. Great learning experience for better understanding of the IG algorithm.
Trying a niche that I didn’t like—This makes instagram an absolute fucking chore. Trying to grow organically in a niche that you think is fucking stupid—is well... fucking stupid.
Overall laziness—I would try to grow IG accounts organically. Not a bad idea, however, I wouldn’t put in the effort. If you want to grow organically, it takes a lot of fucking work. I wouldn’t DM anyone to collaborate, I wouldn’t tag good locations, didn’t comment, didn’t like other comments/posts, didn’t tag accounts in the post. I would just post, and hope something happened. This rarely works.
Posting only advertisement quality posts on Facebook—This is actually something my marketing firm does, that I strongly disagree with. However, I have to do what I’m told. They only post very blatant, “hey you need to go here and buy this” type of shit. Then they always complain about how they’re engagement sucks, and they can’t get any impressions.
Re-pins—Thought it would be a great idea to just re-pin a bunch of shit that my audience likes. It brings a lot of monthly views, and engagements. None of those actually help me though. I’ve had maybe one click on my website while doing this.
Profiles—Not filling out the profiles fully or taking the time to write great copy. It’s great if you have great reach, but if you have poor conversions all that work doesn’t mean shit. Nice profiles make a big difference.
Only using popular hashtags—Your posts get drowned out and see about 25% less engagement (when starting out) than using smaller, more targeted, hashtags. This 25% adds up very quickly.
Facebook Ads
Not knowing my audience—If you want this to work, you need to know who your audience is. You need to know their buying process. You need to know when they’re ready for what you have. You need to know how to get them to that point. I didn’t, and it was a very expensive mistake.
Not testing different CTAs—I thought the only CTA I needed, was message me. It made sense to me... People don’t like calling, you have an awesome landing page in the messenger chat, you have a great offer. Still need to do this, but I think for my business, people might prefer to call.
Not planning out your A/B test—I just wanted to get it done and over with. I didn’t have any plan for the A/B testing, I just used a couple different sets of ad copy. Didn’t see any significant difference.
Writing
Too salesy—No one likes to be sold, but they all like to buy. Again, this what my firm does a lot. I strongly believe this is why our clients have seen so very little growth over the years. We market for motivational speakers, and well, they could easily have the same results without us lol. Put yourself in their shoes. Do you want to read sales copy all the time? Big fat fucking NO for me, bro.
Buying spun articles for money site—Yeah, enough said.
Everwebinar
Big sale upfront—Again, people don’t like to be sold. Our client had very poor sales with this.
Telling people the everwebinar is live—Lying to your fan base is always a great idea /s.
No A/B testing—Our firm never A/B tests. If we do it, we do it. Most of the time if it doesn’t get great results, we keep doing it. This is why I have a jaded view of most marketing companies lol.
Online training
Charging too little—Since we work with motivational speakers, the customers go and buy everything they have right after the seminar. Afterwards, they don’t ever use the products. Charging too little on a monthly basis has the same effect as charging them a lot on a monthly basis. Very little difference between $10 and $99 a month in this case.
Trying too hard to nurture—In this special circumstance, if people used the training more, they are more likely to leave early. We’re basically a planet fitness, we know you’ll never use the gym, you fat fuck.
Amazon
Switching to FBA and sending too many products—It costs a ton of money to send it out. Then it cost a ton of money to keep it there, finally it cost a ton of money to ship it back—because you sent too damn much. Send a decent amount of your best selling products, and a hand full of the rest. Amazon seems to duplicate the sales that our website sees in terms of product sales %’s.
Not doing keyword research—We basically just have sales copy. I think most people here can see how this doesn’t help.
I probably have a lot more to be honest, but I only want to write this in one quick sitting.
In the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re successful or not. Successful people are some of the unhappiest people alive. Do it, because you respect yourself enough to go after what you want. You’ll all be the more happier and self-respected for it. Don’t wait around for the perfect plan. Don’t switch strategies every month. Only switch your plan after learning something new that can put you on the right path, don’t make impulsive changes.
Hope someone gets something from this.
What failures have you guys experienced? If all you have done is read strategies, what kind of failure can you try to experience asap?
We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious...
And curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
-Walt Disney (A fucking sociopath)
I’ve heard quite a few times that you can’t learn from others’ mistakes. I believe it, but it could just be my personality—I’m really fucking stubborn, and like to see things for myself.
What I believe you can learn from others’ mistakes is how they handle it. Successful people keep moving forward. They try, they fail, they reflect, they adjust. If success comes, it comes.
So... I thought it would be fun to talk about some of the stuff I’ve tried that hasn’t worked. Some of these are from my personal business, others from a marketing company I work for.
General
Planning too much—A lot of times, especially in the beginning of my journey, I would plan too much. I would try and read everything I could and try come up with the perfect strategy. OR... I would scower the internet looking for some super secret magic recipe to success.
Planning too little—Quite honestly this is something I still do, but I’m learning from the mistake. Here, I realized that planning too much kept me from taking action and I didn’t get anything done. So what did I do? I would try to get a general idea, and just fucking try something.
I’ll finally be happy when I’m successful, because people will like me. (Attitude)—I thought it would make me happy. I thought others would think I’m super cool, cause I’m doing something great. Nope. Most people don’t give a shit, or they feel bad about themselves, instead of fawning over you. Just do it for you. Enjoy the ride, and you’ll be happier 90% more of the time, than that 10% when you actually do something.
Social Media
Buying a big instagram account without a plan—I make decent money, so I tend to throw it away on learning experiences. It’s really not as bad as it seems. Here, I listened to a podcast by GaryVee where he talked about buying instagram accounts, because the sellers don’t realize their value. I had no idea what I was doing with it, and spent many hours everyday learning how to build it. Never learned how to monetize it though, so it was a huge suck of money and time.
Jarvee with a brand new account—Rookie move, I know. Don’t regret it. I read that it wasn’t a good idea to do it with a new account. Did it anyway. I thought if I only did likes, that the account wouldn’t get banned. And... it didn’t. It got shadow banned, which was probably more frustrating. Also didn’t have a plan, was just doing it.
Buying fake followers—Yep. Learned this wasn’t a great idea, because although it can increase perceived social value, it drags your engagement rate wayyyy down. Great learning experience for better understanding of the IG algorithm.
Trying a niche that I didn’t like—This makes instagram an absolute fucking chore. Trying to grow organically in a niche that you think is fucking stupid—is well... fucking stupid.
Overall laziness—I would try to grow IG accounts organically. Not a bad idea, however, I wouldn’t put in the effort. If you want to grow organically, it takes a lot of fucking work. I wouldn’t DM anyone to collaborate, I wouldn’t tag good locations, didn’t comment, didn’t like other comments/posts, didn’t tag accounts in the post. I would just post, and hope something happened. This rarely works.
Posting only advertisement quality posts on Facebook—This is actually something my marketing firm does, that I strongly disagree with. However, I have to do what I’m told. They only post very blatant, “hey you need to go here and buy this” type of shit. Then they always complain about how they’re engagement sucks, and they can’t get any impressions.
Re-pins—Thought it would be a great idea to just re-pin a bunch of shit that my audience likes. It brings a lot of monthly views, and engagements. None of those actually help me though. I’ve had maybe one click on my website while doing this.
Profiles—Not filling out the profiles fully or taking the time to write great copy. It’s great if you have great reach, but if you have poor conversions all that work doesn’t mean shit. Nice profiles make a big difference.
Only using popular hashtags—Your posts get drowned out and see about 25% less engagement (when starting out) than using smaller, more targeted, hashtags. This 25% adds up very quickly.
Facebook Ads
Not knowing my audience—If you want this to work, you need to know who your audience is. You need to know their buying process. You need to know when they’re ready for what you have. You need to know how to get them to that point. I didn’t, and it was a very expensive mistake.
Not testing different CTAs—I thought the only CTA I needed, was message me. It made sense to me... People don’t like calling, you have an awesome landing page in the messenger chat, you have a great offer. Still need to do this, but I think for my business, people might prefer to call.
Not planning out your A/B test—I just wanted to get it done and over with. I didn’t have any plan for the A/B testing, I just used a couple different sets of ad copy. Didn’t see any significant difference.
Writing
Too salesy—No one likes to be sold, but they all like to buy. Again, this what my firm does a lot. I strongly believe this is why our clients have seen so very little growth over the years. We market for motivational speakers, and well, they could easily have the same results without us lol. Put yourself in their shoes. Do you want to read sales copy all the time? Big fat fucking NO for me, bro.
Buying spun articles for money site—Yeah, enough said.
Everwebinar
Big sale upfront—Again, people don’t like to be sold. Our client had very poor sales with this.
Telling people the everwebinar is live—Lying to your fan base is always a great idea /s.
No A/B testing—Our firm never A/B tests. If we do it, we do it. Most of the time if it doesn’t get great results, we keep doing it. This is why I have a jaded view of most marketing companies lol.
Online training
Charging too little—Since we work with motivational speakers, the customers go and buy everything they have right after the seminar. Afterwards, they don’t ever use the products. Charging too little on a monthly basis has the same effect as charging them a lot on a monthly basis. Very little difference between $10 and $99 a month in this case.
Trying too hard to nurture—In this special circumstance, if people used the training more, they are more likely to leave early. We’re basically a planet fitness, we know you’ll never use the gym, you fat fuck.
Amazon
Switching to FBA and sending too many products—It costs a ton of money to send it out. Then it cost a ton of money to keep it there, finally it cost a ton of money to ship it back—because you sent too damn much. Send a decent amount of your best selling products, and a hand full of the rest. Amazon seems to duplicate the sales that our website sees in terms of product sales %’s.
Not doing keyword research—We basically just have sales copy. I think most people here can see how this doesn’t help.
I probably have a lot more to be honest, but I only want to write this in one quick sitting.
In the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re successful or not. Successful people are some of the unhappiest people alive. Do it, because you respect yourself enough to go after what you want. You’ll all be the more happier and self-respected for it. Don’t wait around for the perfect plan. Don’t switch strategies every month. Only switch your plan after learning something new that can put you on the right path, don’t make impulsive changes.
Hope someone gets something from this.
What failures have you guys experienced? If all you have done is read strategies, what kind of failure can you try to experience asap?
