My $36,000 Mistake
Terry
Have you ever made a BIG mistake…I mean a really big mistake that’s cost you a lot of money?
I have. And not just once, but several times. I remember for example the $100,000 I lost on a real estate deal, but that’s another subject entirely.
In internet marketing I’ve been careful. I learned in the beginning to do small tests so my financial risk on any of my ads were low UNTIL I knew something was working or not. Try 3 ads…lose a couple of hundred dollars on two of them, but one works. The winner quickly earns more than the losers in the tests.
But most clients I work with have figured that out. You keep your investments and risks low until something proves it will pay off.
Simple to understand. So let’s talk another issue…that of opportunity cost and conversion.
The #1 issue that still shocks me when I run into it for an experienced online marketer is when they’re not tracking anything.
Yes, that’s right…I said an EXPERIENCED marketer.
When I coach a beginner, that’s understandable. They’re a beginner so you expect them to make some mistakes such as not tracking. But experienced marketers earning a full-time living online still make this mistake all the time.
It’s easy to keep creating new products and finding ways to generate more traffic. That’s why you see me talking so much about the importance of FOCUS and how running multiple frontend items splits your focus.
The most profitable clients I have focus heavily on one primary frontend product – and a strong funnel system to move their visitors and prospects through that funnel. Get the visitor on the list. MAKE THE FIRST SALE of this product. Follow-up with upsells and additional backend sales.
Work on conversion all the way through this process (higher subscriber numbers, more frontend sales, and so on). Make that frontend offer the best deal possible to give your customers the results they’re looking for quickly.
Then pump the traffic through…with PPC, affiliates, and other forms of advertising.
I’ve made the mistake of not having this focus personally many times in my own businesses. This isn’t a lecture for anyone else as much as it is for myself. I get bored too easily with my own projects and continually want to create new ones. That’s my issue and problem, but it’s common for others I work with as well.
You will ALWAYS bore of your project much faster than the market does.
I remember the story of a company that was discussing a new series of ads. The ads made their rounds several times through the executives. They edited them. They added updates. They made changes. And they kept making their rounds.
Eventually one of the executives made a comment to another one that they needed new ads now instead of continually running these. That would be possible, except for the fact the ads never ran in public yet. He was tired of seeing the ads making their rounds inside the company before they were published.
I have that same issue. By the time I publish an ad I’ve often done so many revisions I’m tired of seeing it anymore. But once it’s published, that’s when you really have to pay attention because you need to track and test the results. You need to run split tests of different headlines, photos, and intros.
Only testing a live ad produces the best results possible.
This brings me to my $36,000 mistake. I ran an ad for over a year WITHOUT doing any testing on the sales copy. Just put up the sales copy and let it run. After a year, I had another copywriter (John Carlton), give me some suggestions for test headlines. One of his test headlines was only a MINOR change to the headline.
Yet this little changed boosted sales on that site by over $3,000 a month. One change in the headline meant that much more money every month. All I could think about at the time was how this ad had already been running for over a year, so I lost out on $36,000 in real sales I could have had. No additional traffic needed. Just $36,000 never to be seen again….a big mistake.
Why did I make this mistake?
I simply didn’t take the time to setup a few simple tests for the site. Every time I setup a site I think back to this experience. It keeps the importance of testing in my mind and convinces me to setup the tests needed.
I wonder how much you may be losing right now if you’re not testing.
Sometimes it those simple tests that boost your conversion enough to turn a losing ad into a winner. Or they improve your conversion to the point where it’s a worthwhile promotion for your affiliates. Or they enable you to expand your advertising into directions which weren’t affordable before.
In other words, the REAL KEY to traffic is getting your conversion up to the point where generating traffic simply becomes an investment in the growth of your business. You can afford to buy traffic by the profits you make from your sales.
All traffic has a cost associated to it in either time or money. Your income from the traffic needs to make whatever you’re investing worthwhile to continue the traffic flow.
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Posted on: Monday, January 11, 2010 at 4:31 pm 
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