10 Silly Mistakes Even Internet Marketing Experts Make
Some of you may have seen something like the image above if you visited my blog in a few days- my domain got parked by GoDaddy. In fact I managed to renew it just in time before the domain expired and was put under GoDaddy’s expired domains market, which would mean that I will have to pay USD1,000+/- to get it back. Luckily for me, I had to pay only regular domain renewal fees.
In my case it was not a typical rookie mistake. I DID put my domain on auto-renew ever since I bought it but the problem is last month the credit card I’ve been using for over 5 years expired, and I was issued a new card. This meant that any recurring payment using the old card will fail as the new card has a different security number (at the back of the card).
To make things worse, during the renewal date I was in Indonesia for a 5-day holiday and had almost no Internet access. I went online for a couple of minutes but there were so many emails, I must have missed the warning notice from GoDaddy.
All things said, it was still rather silly on my part.
This brings me to an interesting topic - silly things we do as marketers.
Here’s a list of them, tell me if you’ve done any of it before:
Anti Domain-Auto-Renewal - As I mentioned in the story above. I’ve lost one or two domains before from this but those domains were not critical to my business. Still, the guy who got it just put up a “domain parking” page with loads of ads and is probably still getting some cash out of it.- Bad English Domains - I’ve done this with 2 domain names. The funny thing just as you hit the “Order” button you suddenly realize the spelling error but it’s just too late and you’re stuck with that domain for a year.
- See Only, Don’t Buy - I once spent $230 a day in AdWords and got up the next morning to zero sales. I realized not too log after that the order link was broken - and I felt like a total idiot.
- Neighborly Love is Bad - I once wrote the wrong address for my Aweber commissions, resulting in the checks being sent to my neighbor. Luckily for me, he had already move out by then and I retrieved my check from his mail box after checking my Aweber affiliate profile.
- Who Moved My Affiliate Checks? - Sometimes people move around. I moved from apartment to house to apartment (5 times) in the past 4 years and I’m pretty sure there were some miniscule affiliate programs I signed up with that finally sent me a check - just to the wrong address!
- Wrong Paypal Address - I did this once, send a huge sum of money to the wrong person. The I had to file a dispute and only through the grace of the receiver did I get my money back.
- Come See My Download Files - In Cpanel you can choose to disable indexes of your directories. This way when someone types in yoursite.com/images they wont be able to see a listing of all the images. Most importantly, if they type in yoursite.com/download and you have no index page there (htm/html/php) they will be able to steal your products. If you have a WordPress blog, try typing in yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins and you will see what I mean
- Premature Ejaculation- I’ve sent out an email for an affiliate product that read “Product X Is Live Now” only to realize that it would a good 12 hours before that happened. In my case you could forgive me because converting between time zones can be confusing.
- Backups Are For Wimps - It’s soo easy to delete stuff, and by “stuff” I mean anything from your website files, your e-book source MS Word files, your database (MySQL databases are very easy to delete, just one click) and even your important emails with your login details. Then you realize you didn’t create a backup and you’re screwed. No choice but to spend another 15 days re-writing the same ebook.
- [yourname, [fistname], Who’s Name? - How many times have you sent out an autoresponder broadcast email and got the variables wrong? Instead of getting “Hello Gobala” you get “Hello [firstname” - this always happens when: (a) You have more than one autoresponder service and each uses different variables, and you “copy and paste” carelessly (2) you typed in the variables manually, and you made a typo, oops!
Well there you go, 10 silly mistake even Internet marketing veterans make. I made all 10 of them, how many have you got?
Hey bro,
funny reading this post and it reminds me of the same mistakes I did before too.
sent out a broken link during one of the promotion for the free stuffs and atter about 250 opt ins only then i realise that the download link is not working when one of them email to me..I guessed the rest of the people who opt in earlier thought that I am joke or a cheat..hahah
I also accidently deleted one of my mysql database in the cpanel only to realise that after clicking the delete button, cpanel did not even ask if you are sure to delete the database. the system just delete instantly without any hesitation whatsoever!
I guess a lot of experienced marketers also do make other kind of sillt mistakes..cool to hear what other have to say.
Cheers!
Zacky
Well my friend Gobala,
We were directed there in GoDaddy.com when we visited your site! We thought we’ve lost you haha!! And wondered someone might take away your domain name, which is very dangerous!
Anyway, thanks for sharing this article, we’re sure it’ll definitely help!!
Regards,
1minutefilmreview.blogspot.com
I just got lucky. If I was late by a few more hours it would have been gone, gone, gone…
Same with me man, I even wrote an enquiry to Gobala’s other site internetmillionaires under the enquiries section informing him of the error.
Fortunately it was ‘rescued’ on time. Haha….
But noticed that the archive section is back to its previous state - no record/links of previous post in it. Only an empty page.
Gobala, you might want to check it out..
Hi G,
Hey! for a minute I was worried when I saw that godaddy default page I was going to let you know but I went to http://easywordpress.com/ and it’s up and running so I figure you’re probably working behind the scene, Anyways I’m glad your back G and Happy Easter if you celebrate if not Happy Sunday anyways!
Your Friend Here In Vegas!,
Albert
Not that I am already in internet marketing. When I just started making my family website, I did not know about FTP programs. At the time my control panel can only upload one image per session. I had like over 200 images and was doing it one by one…. when I found out about FTP, that’s when I had my “Duh!” moment.
Hey Kay,
I was in your situation before. Upload the images one by one… When I discover FTP, I was like, “how much time I’ve lost?” Haha!
- Dennis.
It’s a good experience non the less.
Gobala,
Thank goodness I’ve never lost a domain or sent large sums of money to the wrong person, but I’ve had more than a few dumb mistakes in my career.
The funniest thing I’ve ever seen is when I was doing some research for an article recently on digital download theft. Turns out, one of the major search engines ignores all of your ‘no-follow- tags and indexes everything it finds on your domain - whether you like it or not.
I was test to see how many popular products there where who’s download pages could be found with a simple search. One of the ones I found was the download page for a software product designed to protect download pages from theft! How’s that for irony?
Great post,
Andrew Seltz
The Go-To Guy!
I am about to start my digital shop at Streamxy.Com, luckily I test you suggestion on point 7, to my surprise all my wordpress plugin is shown. Thank and I had disabled the NoIndex Function.
Great post!
lol.
Joe Gilharry
Go Hard Marketing, LLC
Thanks for sharing, we are all guilty of these mistakes at one time or another, but do we learn from our mistakes?, that is the question. I once set up a whole campaign, ran it for a couple of weeks and couldnt figure out why there were absolutely no results; a bad link was the answer. Now I always ask a colleague to do a test run first even the payment, to make sure its all correct.
Thanks a lot for your list. I too check the #7 and all my file were so “publically” shown.. have put a password protect on them now.
You don’t need to password-protect it, just turn off “indexing”
May I ask how to do that, turn off indexing? Me a bit stupe when comes to this thing
Maybe I’ll create a post on how to do that
omg.. you really opened up my eyes about the rules no 7. come see my download files.. Thanks.. I never realize it before
Nice stuff and informative too. Yes some are very silly mistakes which could cause you down
Gobala
I did the premature thing not too long ago. Calculating time zones can cause trouble. I sent out a blast to my list, reminding them that I’d be on Blog Radio in so many hours. Right after it broadcast, I realized I’d calculated off EST, and the show time was in CST. Of went a second broadcast — and eggg on my face.
Great Post Gobala
And if you want to Paypal some money to someone in future- I’m ready! Probably my worst blooper is to upload a 1000 page website into the directory of another 1000 page website!
The result of course was an interesting 2000 page website…
I dunno why but I found ftp a real swine to learn!
I’ve lost an ebook too!
One of my teachers used to repeat, “If you don’t make mistakes you don’t make nothing!”
And Mike Litman, “You don’t have to get it right you just have to get it going”
All The Best!
alex
Hi Gobala:
One of my mishaps that put me into a panic for about 3 hours, was the launch of my first eBook. I didn’t know that I should have offered the download in a ZIP file.
Thank you for your honesty about making mistakes. I don’t feel so bad that I am not the only one making “goofs” every now and then
Well, I had a good sized targeted list of people waiting to buy, so when I advised them the eBook was now available for their purchase … oh my goodness! Email after email started coming to me “Claudia … I cannot get the PDF file; it keeps timing out … please help me!”
Somehow I figured out what was wrong after about 1 hour of not understanding why the people’s computers were timing out, and uploaded my eBook in a ZIP file, but oh boy! I was typing “please forgive me” emails for about 2 hours to a bunch of people!
Oh and your #9 — yup, I lost about 200 very targeted email addresses through stupidity. BACK-UP everything!! I agree
To err is human.
And yes, I did some of these booboos too! Hahaha!
Ian del Carmen
http://FireballInternetMarketing.com/2-months/
Hi Gobala,
This is the 1st time I reply to you despite numerous mails sent to me. Mostly I read it all. Thanks for that.
It is however, I pitty you too much as you have to spent hours of time to salvaga your domain back.
Hope your remainder will help me a lot for not to make the similar maistakes. :))
Yours
I’ve started a whole website devoted to my silly internet marketing mistakes! It’s sad when I have more content about mistakes than just one post could fill!
Great article.
Hey Gobala,
That is simply hilarious! Thanks for being so truthful- because being a newbie, you would never think that a veteran such as yourself would do Mistakes - period! Providing us with a list like that would definitely help in future projects:)
Great article.
I too once blew through a few hundred Adword dollars by not realizing that partner sites were being billed on impressions rather than PPC.
I bought Adwords for my wife’s Makeup and Skincare 101 audio program for women. I bought terms like “makeup”, “skincare” etc. and went out for the day.
A few hours later, I had thousands of impressions because the ads were running on Newsweek, Woman’s Day, and other very high traffic sites. Resulted in no sales:-(
Expensive lesson that I’ll never repeat.
Hi Gobala..
It seems to me that you are being a bit hard on yourself (I guess that is what happens when you have very high standards). I have recently become a member of your WordPress Adsense System.. and I must say it does me proud. I have thrown so much stuff at it yet it does not want to break.. yup.. the Super Adsense Theme Rocks! It is clear.. concise an robust.. even for a newbie like me who deliberately removed a couple of php files to see what would happen (not recommended.. but hey I not breaking the law… right). As far as mistakes are concerned. Well let’s just say we make them and we learn from them. It’s just a pity that domain registries will not debit directly from a bank account - so I have a multiple reminder service in place (let’s hope the batteries don’t run out on the day). Thanks For Your Honesty
Hai Gobala,
Many of us do the same mistakes you did.
Its not bad sharing with others
Great Post Gobala
Loved it! I am one who has given support techs job security. i see buttons and want to see what it does. Sometimes it’s good, and other times…. oops! I have also done such bright things like forget to turn my speakers on and wonder why can’t I hear anything.
keep up the good work, I enjoyed it.
Kathy Pop
Cool post..me too ever key in wrong paypal address to receive payment. Most of us have multiple emails be more cautious when you key in your paypal address. Thank you for sharing…:)
Some good tips in here. Thanks.
That time i want to find out info from your website,so shock why gobala krishnan’s website become go daddy,am i typing wrongly,recheck again and again.Then,i tell my self ,Is gobala go for travel and forgot to renew,hahaha’JUST KIDDING’No worry ,Gobala,You are still my best internet marketer.
I think we have all made some of the same mistakes. You feel like such an idiot too.
I have lost domains the same way. Credit cards changed, moved to another state that didn’t have the same Internet & email service, computer crash losing everything and by the time you get everything reset, retrieved, reformatted, it’s too late to retrieve the domain cause they want $3000 and ya ain’t got the money. It sucks, but ya move on.
So glad that you got everything squared away!
Yeah, we thought we’ve lost you after Gaman of sabahandotcom talked about it. Really couldn’t believe at first but it happened. Well, we human after all. Glad that you able to capture it back.
For info, my ‘enggeris’ is not good but your no.10 I believe should be spelled as [firstname] and not [Fistname]. Or maybe you purposely did that to catch me
From time to time we’re victims of Murphy’s law
We’re just human beings never free from flaw
Sometimes when told to write we tend to draw
But in the Internet jungle don’t get into a brawl
(C) Samuel Goh Kim Eng - 260308
http://MotivationInMotion.blogspot.com
http://msi.Rocky101.com
Wed. 26th March 2008.
Great points.I stumbled this articles!
Hi G,
Just 1 short qn. If you turn of indexing is the file still accessible if the other party is send to a specific page for say dowmloads of your ebooks etc?
Regards,
Dominique
yes, they can still link directly to the file. The only difference is that they cannot browse the contents of the folder…
By the way i really dig those new blog header man.. fresh lah!
Of all the mistakes.. I’d say number 7 was the scariest and quite an eye opener for me. Thanks for the tip!
10 Most Common Silly Mistakes…
If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Hey There GB,
I certainly do recognize most of the mistakes made. Somewhere, somehow, I’ve had broken links, misspellings, credit card expirations, and these th…
Gobala, banyak betul kesilapan yang saya telah buah seperti yang saudara nyatakan tu terutamanya pada kesilapan no. 7. mungkin itu punca salah satu pendapatan saya di Internet kurang hasil. Thanks Gobala for sharing. Sharing is caring
Gobala..
Is that really careless or kinda traffic strategy.. lol
Thank you for letting us learn from your mistakes!
Karen
Great post Gobala.
I’ve made many of those silly mistakes myself ;(
Thanks to your post I feel better that I’m not alone…lol
The last silly mistake that I made is with my latest niche membership site.
I’m selling this product via clickbank and to make sure everything was set up properly I put this product into “test mode ” and I join my own site to test it out.
Since everything was perfect I started to drive traffic to it, after couple days I check out my stats from my admin panel to find out that I was up to 4 members into my new membership site…
Huh pretty strange since I did not receive a single payment and I only test the site once myself.
Finally this product was still In “test Mode” lol
I never got back to CB to uncheck the test mode and 3 peoples where able to sneak in at no cost.
Really like the 2 quotes from Alex Newell comment:
“If you don’t make mistakes you don’t make nothing!”
“You don’t have to get it right you just have to get it going”
That pretty much say it all
Again great blog post Gobala.
Cheers,
Cedric Aubry
Ah I have done that one as well, but it didn’t make it to my Top 10 list.
Thanks for this wonderful post.
Check out the “See my download”. Shocking. Didn’t know about it.
Tks!
That was interesting. I am very new to this field and hence have not had any “make any of these mistakes” yet.
Only ‘managed’ to send emails saying that there are attachments but clicked send before attaching them.
But anyway thanks for the warning.
guru
Good tips for “veteran beginners” like me.
So, i can said all of us know how to avoid this mistake anymore right?
Wow! That was a close call… if you were to lose this domain name, I don’t think you can forgive yourself…
Got many domains at GoDaddy too and I use PayPal for the payment instead of credit card… but PayPal has its own issue too. So, I guess a little extra “stay alert” would be needed all the time.
Zamri
Yes, I made those mistakes too. I thought I made those blunder alone.
Another mistake I made is sending a promotion email to my list but with no link in it. But it is a blessing in disguise when those interested email me back and asking for the link. At least I know some of those are serious
And thanks Gobala, on the list.