WEB/DIGITAL The turning point in your ebusiness

[AllOutOrNothing]

For ones who have been successful with online businesses or sites was there a tipping point?

 

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[JScott]

I used to run an affiliate business that relied on brute force scale (I had scripts that generated several million "store front" pages scattered across hundreds of domains) to generate clicks and purchases.

The tipping point came the day Google indexed the first site, which had links to other sites, which had links to other sites, etc. Essentially, my revenue went from $0 to tens of thousands of dollars per month.

The next tipping point came when Google realized that my pages added very little value and removed them from their index (went from tens of thousands of dollars per month to $0).

After several rounds of my changing my pages to avoid detection by Google and Google ultimately finding them and removing them, Google won when I got bored enough that the effort was no longer worth the money...

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I used to run an affiliate business that relied on brute force scale (I had scripts that generated several million "store front" pages scattered across hundreds of domains) to generate clicks and purchases.

The tipping point came the day Google indexed the first site, which had links to other sites, which had links to other sites, etc. Essentially, my revenue went from $0 to tens of thousands of dollars per month.

The next tipping point came when Google realized that my pages added very little value and removed them from their index (went from tens of thousands of dollars per month to $0).

After several rounds of my changing my pages to avoid detection by Google and Google ultimately finding them and removing them, Google won when I got bored enough that the effort was no longer worth the money...

Thank you for describing "being a passenger in the fastlane" -- if you don't control the revenue stream, are you really the boss? Google makes a decision, and wholla, your royally screwed: Then you are the boss of nothing.

 

[ProInvestor]

I guess this is where the term "google dance" comes from!

Rgds.
ProInvestor

 

[JScott]

Thank you for describing "being a passenger in the fastlane" -- if you don't control the revenue stream, are you really the boss? Google makes a decision, and wholla, your royally screwed: Then you are the boss of nothing.

I completely agree with you. This wasn't so much a business as it was an experiment...I had a bet with a friend that I could generate $50K in six months via affiliate revenue, and had no illusions that it was sustainable without continual effort (making it a job).

That said, I likely could have taught someone how to continually morph the layout/design of the pages to keep fooling the Google/Yahoo/MSFT engines, and then split the profits with him/her...unless the engines fundamentally change the way they crawl/index, it likely would have been sustainable and continue to contribute passive income to me (making it more Fastlane)...

Unfortunately, I used to manage part of the affiliate program I was "exploiting" (eBay), which didn't sit well with me...so I didn't pursue it...

 

[NerdSmasher]

I've had similar experiences in the affiliate marketing area. I was making a few thousand a month selling subscriptions to different P2P services, or download services, until Google banned my adwords account. Then I went right back to $0 per month. For some reason I couldn't get MSN or Yahoo PPC to make me any money.

Oh well, my next business will give me more control... I just wish I could come up with something I have confidence in, and could actually do. Oh well, I guess coming up with the first idea is probably the hardest part

 

[aptohosting]

After the 100th client, word of mouth spread like wild fire and created a huge surge in our web hosting business. Now we are offering a better affiliate program and getting client through that also.

Tom
www.aptohosting.com

 

[John]

I think there were two main turning points for my ebusiness.

The first was deciding to quit my day job to focus full time on the business. For several years I was working for someone else while trying to run and grow my business on the side. My business slowly grew until I was making slightly more from the business than from my day job. At this point I made the decision to quit the job and focus full-time on the business. It was a scary decision since I wasn't completely sure how sustainable the business revenue might be long-term. It turned out to be a great decision, because once I had more time and energy to focus on the business things really started to take off.

The second big turning point for me was learning to hire people and delegate tasks instead of trying to handle everything myself. For the first few years of running the business I was a one man show. I handled everything myself: accounting, web development, server administration, ... I reached a limit to how much I could do and our revenue stopped growing. We were still doing very well, but I was stretched to the limit, and was forced to pass on new opportunities due to lack of time. I eventually started hiring people to handle various aspects of the business. From a Rich Dad standpoint, I moved from the S quadrant into the B quadrant. After doing this our revenue skyrocketed again, more than making up for the cost of paying our employees and consultants.

Both of these turning points required that I take a significant risk. Quitting my day job took away my backup source of income, and hiring people to help run the business initially took a big chunk out of our profits, and thus my income. Looking back though, they were definitely the correct decisions.

 

[FT1]

I've had similar experiences in the affiliate marketing area. I was making a few thousand a month selling subscriptions to different P2P services, or download services, until Google banned my adwords account. Then I went right back to $0 per month. For some reason I couldn't get MSN or Yahoo PPC to make me any money.

Why did Google ban your adwords account?

 

[NerdSmasher]

They claim that I was using ads that had some sort of copyright infringement. As I said, I was an affiliate for music downloading programs. Apparently they're fine with ones like Napster and iTunes, but the p2p ones they're not so fond of.... my ads were never misleading, but they still decided to ban me.

Like MJ said though, if you don't control the revenue stream, you're not really the boss. The next time I go into business, I'm going to be selling the product, and having my own affiliates; not being one! It was a lesson well learned.... I just wish I could have made some more money before I got banned, lol.

 

[Luke12321]

Off topic a bit, but since you guys seem to have experience with adwords. Where would be a good place online that I could build my knowledge of the subject more? I worked through the actual google learning center. Now looking to further my knowledge in Adwords! Thanks guys....

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Off topic a bit, but since you guys seem to have experience with adwords. Where would be a good place online that I could build my knowledge of the subject more? I worked through the actual google learning center. Now looking to further my knowledge in Adwords! Thanks guys....

Webmasterworld.com (another forum)
Sitepoint.com (has a forum too)

For ones who have been successful with online businesses or sites was there a tipping point?

Things started to move quickly for me when I started accepting credit cards; back in the late 90's, it was pretty difficult to get a merchant account.

 

[NerdSmasher]

Off topic a bit, but since you guys seem to have experience with adwords. Where would be a good place online that I could build my knowledge of the subject more? I worked through the actual google learning center. Now looking to further my knowledge in Adwords! Thanks guys....

In all honesty, if you want to know anything about adwords, feel free to send me a PM (anyone who wants to know). I have used it in many different campaigns, and many competitive searches, etc. and I feel I have a very good grasp on it all (I've also read around 10 ebooks on the subject). And, since I can't use any of my knowledge anymore, someone might as well use it...

Or make a post with specific questions, I'm sure I'll find it

I couldn't say exactly what ebooks I read that helped with adwords though... it was always a section or two in a book, but not usually the whole thing. And a lot of it comes down to your plan, and what you're comfortable doing... as well as some common sense.

Actually, check youtube or google video for videos on adwords, I think there are some decent ones on there.

Best of luck to you!

 

[hakrjak]

Thank you for describing "being a passenger in the fastlane" -- if you don't control the revenue stream, are you really the boss? Google makes a decision, and wholla, your royally screwed: Then you are the boss of nothing.

Yep, I've had the same problem with Ebay and Amazon removing some of my listings from time to time. I could go from making thousands to a few hundred bucks in a month, and it's all at the mercy of those 2 companies. I finally got fed up, and decided to build an external storefront, so I could not worry about their censors anymore.

- Hakrjak