How many times did you fail before you became successful?

Atleast 3 times. I hope not to fall again cause everytime it happen it is harder to get back in shape.

I remember starting from scratch for about three times. Fresh out of college I switch job very often

You remind me exactly of the klikrevenue butt buddies, ignore for you!

wow, i love the response this thread has taken and once again i really appreciate everything everyone has to offer in their posts

If you want to make 100k a year in this biz you really need to get into cams btw.

Hard work, perseverance and SACRIFICE.


Pretty much the same as being a parent.

wow, this thread definetly goes under my motivation thread.

I'm at the point where I've got tons of ideas that I want to work on, but don't know which one I should work on first. I generally, come up with 2-3 new ideas every month and just dunno where to start.

Experienced is the best teacher so keep going never quit.

it has motivated me more than i even intended when i first started it. i always take the advice of those that have actually suceeded more to heart

Izzzzzzzzzzzzzz online is weird man. I lucked out in adult 100% and made money off the bat. I also tried most of the stuff preached about here religiously after I was already making money and I blew a wad of cash and gave myself heartburn. I don't see how people do some of the stuff that is standard here. TGP's, submitting, freesites, I cannot do it. I made a few bucks sure, but damn if I wanted to work my ass off I would have gotten a job. Just keep sticking your finger in pies and pretty soon you'll find the right one.

Here's an interesting Story... Have you ever heard of Cornal sanders?


Of course you have his the mastermind behind Kentuky Fried Chicken. How did one man change the eating habits of america?

Was it because he started out young, had a ton of capital, or a massive marketing backgroud?

None of those are true.

Cornal Sanders started KFC was he was 65 years old. HE got his first social insurce check and it was for $99. Bottom line he said im going to change this. He looked at his resources and he has one thing. A chicken resicpe alot of people liked. Nothing more nothing less.

So he went out hit the streets and told everyone he could about his chicken recipe.

He went into resarants and said " I have the best chicken recipe you have ever tasted and I dont want anything for it you can have it. All you have to do is pay me a percentage of the profits of every peice of chicken for the rest of the life"

What do you think this guy said? OH BOY OH BOY I have been waiting for a fat guy like you with a white beard to come along and and sell me his chicken recipe. No he said "Excuse me sir but you are crazy i have my own recipe and no way am i going to use yours" and was asked to leave.

So most people would have stopped thier. He went to the next place and said the same thing. And was told no again. So he went to the next place and the next.

Guess how many times he was told No before his first YES

1009 times before he got his first yes

How many of u after 500 no's would say Damn yo i better check my recipe? LOL


U must try until.

Don't count keep trying !

had a executive search business,then a plus size lingerie business.Adult was the hit

didn't read any of the responses. only once, but it was ugly. i was cruising along making great money (at least what i thought was great money) 96 - 98, then dropped the ball in late 98 - came back and made more than i ever could have dreamed.

true that bro, i like the finger in the pie saying there. i still have alot more work to do, what i need to do now is learn to judge if something is going to be successful or not over a period of time and i have to stop quitting early

i have 1003 more tyies to go before i give up!!!!!!!!

thanks bro

"Even a 1,000 mile journey starts with a single step"

Lao Tzu

i wish i knew more about your business model, theres so little i know but thats why i also respect your words about biz highly.

i need to keep pushing hard

Successful, hmm I wish I even could have spelled to that word without peeking at the thread title

Failure is the stage for success

CHURCH STREET REPRESENT!!!!!!!!!!!

you gonna be in phx so we can oil each up?

i can pretty much lay it out for you. when i started, i did avs in 96. it was so easy to spam the search engines back then, not even funny. i was making 100K a year on avs, doing fuck all. in 97 started a paysite, with basically the same idea as far as traffic went. actually did even better, until 98, when i tried to do a huge traffic deal with goto.com (now know as ovature). bombed miserably and i lost a ton of money. luckily i never fucked with my paysite. one day in early 99 i got linked by the hun to a gallery i had submitted elsewhere. it killed my server. but it was the seed in my brain of what could be. i hooked up huge amounts of servers, and went all out in the TGP gallery game, with (at the time) the highest quality video out there. people laughed, but i knew i was going to become a multi-millionaire in 99. hell, my gf laughed. but i knew it. we went HARDCORE with submitting... i had several people working in my office doing nothing but submissions 12 hours/day seven days/week, i don't think anyone has any idea of how much tgp exposure we really had, or how hard it was to actually get there. at the peak i was making well over 300K/month from my little paysite, for several years. now i am done, and make over 1K/day (only talking about adult of course) doing fuck all... rebills and se rule

don't think i ever said that much before.

Maybe a 1:2 success-failure ratio.. I could afford maybe two mistakes before I could learn that new thing..

Wow, now thats very interesting because my foundation into this business was based on a very successful GoTo campaign back in December of 1999. From there I got much larger into the PPC game and continued to expand into SEO and been growing ever since. Odd how I would fail big time in TGP/MGP marketing but do well in SEO/PPC and you did just the opposite.
WG

i have much love for you bro thank you for your words, wow.

in a way you kept everything so simple, i believe i see where 1 of my biggest faults is already. eventhough i have consolidated most of my adult biz, i still amm too spread out. i need to focus on 1 task at a time and make it successful before i move onto the next.

i thought you made all of your money as a moose-hunter???

Can't actually say I did fail, but that is just down to doing a massive amount of research before ever going into a biz. Tis only me, but I like getting totally under the skin of any business before participating in it.

The other factor is no business *ever* remains the same, - it rises and falls with the seasons and ya just got to roll with the flow and adapt. Also, (excuse the cliche shit, but it's 100% relevant), business life is not a sprint, - it's a marathon.

I failed a lot of times and people begun to doubt my ability but I manage to be strong and focused.

I spent alot of time doing "moderately well" and a couple times falling in and out of this biz. I've been doing it since highschool though, didn't really settle into things until the last couple years.

even Walt Disney was turned down for "not being creative"

Great things start from small beginnings, so they say.

I have made and lost and made fortunes. I have also had partners and worked alone. You need to try to find the right groove for your style, skills and personality. You also need to know your goals. KRL is correct but so are those who say partners can/will screw you if you do not do it their way.

Ultimately look at each experience as a lesson and if you do not succeed analyze why and pick yourself up and try another way; never give up.

You do need to either lever time or capital, otherwise you are limited to what you can produce in your waking hours.

My style is solo, I have a small team of trusted staff but have no need or desire to be the biggest; that requires both large capital and large staff. Been there, done that and in my case I rather not repeat it. I hated being a manager.

Find your strength in business, mine is ideas, yours might be management. Pattern your project on your strength and keep trying until you find the groove that works for you.

Richard Parsons, CEO of Time Warner was being interviewed on a business show and the question asked was "What is the most important thing you attribute to you're being one of the most successful CEO's?"

His answer - "Focus"

tons.....................

Since there seems to be some disagreements on partnering, the best thing to do is to be sure you execute an extremely comprehensive and protective partnership agreement, or operating agreement if an LLC, etc.

Make sure you have lots of legal outs and escape clauses if things go bad.

Pretty much you have to look at your partner deals like hedging your stock investments, have stop-loss positions in place ahead of time. The minute things start to go south with your partners initiate the backup plans to get out and limit your losses.

Too many partners make the situation worse by each trying to take control when things go bad. All that will get you is legal bills up your ass. Let go of the mess and get the fuck out, try and get some cash for your shares, even if its a little, let the bad partner think he's won, and get on to your next venture.

The worse thing you can do in business is get tied up in years of litigation. Not only is it obscenely expensive, its physically and mentally draining and will cause you nothing but misery and aggravation.

Bite the bullit, take your loss, and move on. The faster you get done with a bad deal, the better off you'll be.

excellent words

i too am an idea man. now i have to find a project that suits me

KRL i love you bro, your experience speaks volumes to me. and i am seriously taking your advice to heart as well as a few other great suggestions posted in here

Well,

So far I never failed - if you consider a failure only bankrupcy. However I had projects that ended badly with losses (sometimes in the magnitude of tens of thousands of USD).
But generally I manage to get back online in a timely manner. Now I try to get into this porn business and I am sure that I will be succesfull...

Egomancer

The most inspiring success stories are the ones which have someone coming up with an original idea that takes off. But successes (and failures) of that sort are the minority and in any industry most people will be trying to make their money by copying existing ideas.

Which is fine as such, except that it apparently doesn't occur to very many that the more competition they face, the better they have to be in order to succeed. As far as our industry is concerned, the goldrush has been over for a while and in future, even skilled bandwagon spotters are going to find the opportunities few and far between.

That is not to say there isn't still plenty of money in online adult entertainment. In fact, the professional operators who are slowly replacing the early cowboys, are going to be forced to put more emphasis on market growth, since it is becoming increasingly unproductive to fight over existing business. But that growth is unlikely to be very fast or happen very quickly, not least since first we face two or three years of consolidation as operators with deep pockets go shopping for other businesses.

We are already seeing that trend taking shape and even the beginnings of the next: that of sponsors attempting to control their whole supply line, by buying up traffic sources, bringing well-known designers and/or photographers in-house, etc. That again seems to be a - usually painful - phase all industries pass through on their way to maturity (it seems like a logical step, but very rarely works).

With all this, it could be five years or more before the "big boys" finally start to focus on their core businesses and the industry can begin to move forward. But will there be good news, even then, for affiliates?

Unless someone believes that our industry is not bound by the same rules which ultimately govern every other, the affiliate role - as we have known it so far - can have no long-term future. You only have to consider the ridiculous lengths some sponsors go to here to get affiliate signups, to realize how expensive affiliates are becoming. And once sponsors do settle down and look more closely at their businesses, they will also realize how much they are damaged by the lack of control that is intrinsic to current affiliate programs.

The good news for smaller operators is that the bigger the industry leaders get, the harder it will be for them to deal with specialized market sectors (not only in terms of taste, but also presentation), or react quickly to new trends. So those who can reach and satisfy customers outside the mainstream should continue to do well as should people sharp enough to spot potential bandwagons early.

That said, if the painfully slow and half-hearted takeup of blogs and now RSS feeds are any guide, there will not be too many in that latter group...

great advice

If you don't do mistakes.. if you don't fall.. if you don't do WRONG things.. you won't know success or the opposite of bad things!!

This is natural.. after every HILL there's a CLIFF.. this is life!

Right dude.

Thanks Izzzy! Had my ups and downs, and fortunately more ups.

Look very closely in Microsoft's first office pic to the right behind Bill Gates.



He's got a Mac sitting on his desk. (This is before Windows was created and when Steve Jobs had a nice GUI concept already.)

very interesting indeed. i lost 15K in that deal, which was a HUGE amount of money to me at the time.

interesting, and kind of cool.

Cheers. i can expand a bit. i decided around 01 to go completely exclusive video content. this is when my site completely exploded and the money became insane. with no affiliate program, it was all in house (still is, but on a much smaller scale), and the profit margins were (and still are) HUGE. for example, to shoot a bj scene for a g, that's basically nothing when you have a money machine running for you. economies of scale baby.

i'm a little bit drunk btw.

How many times is not important. At lease you have your goal and direction. It's very simple. Just keep going.
The most worst of all is if you have no ideas or lose your faith.

i've yet to fall and i dont plan to. i started investing small and have increased my investments as profits increased. im a rarity in the business world, never really took any risks and have still been successful. that's the benefit of an "online business", start up costs are so small.

I failed at my first TGP...
I failed at my first review site...
I did OK on my first link list...
I failed horrably as a gallery submitter... HORROR_AAHH_BLEEE!
I did OK on my next 3 TGP's... But not 100K...
I failed some more...
I found another working thing...
I found 5 more working things and hit 100K...
I found 1 more thing and hit a lot more K...

Failure is part of our life, what's important is we stand up and continue with our lives after every failure.