Interesting Question.. If You Had To Start From Scratch Today Could You Do It?
 

I just had lunch with one of our Crew and this question came up. Alot of people here can attribute alot of their success to timing and or having funds available to them. If you had to start everything from scratch today with little money and build from the ground up and without using your reputation or connections. Starting out 100% fresh only with the knowledge you've acquired. Could you do it?

I know for a fact I could without a problem, I did it once and could do it again :winkwink: Anybody else? I know alot of the people I know could not.

simple answer ............. NO

Definitely.. without a doubt!

Yup, I got lucky in the beginning because of a relatively uncompetitive market and low cost to entry but I could replicate the success today after the years of experience I've had underneath my belt. It would be much harder but definitely doable.
WG

Hell Yeah.

have done it twice already.

yes - without a doubt

great question... i have done just that... my site launches as soon as it gets ccbill approval and i will let you know :)

Could I do it? Yes.

Would I do it? Not sure. Probably not.

i have done it before. i would do it again if need be.

I make no money now , and I think I could make no money again when starting from scratch

bring it on :)

Word. :1orglaugh

Yes, no doubt.

Interesting point Aaron. That's a whole other debate LOL.

I think the guys that would have the most trouble are some of the old timers. It was real easy money back then and alot of them probably would not have a clue of what to do today if they had to do it all again. I see alot of these guys have sat back on their success and not really kept up to date with the industry.

For sure.

I start completely over every few months actually.

The way I see it...The amount of morons in this business increases exponentially every year. Thankfully, I've been establishing contacts for long enough that I can directly reach pretty much anybody that I want/need to reach these days without having to rely on others.

Gone are the days of real webmasters. These new people don't know jack shit other than all they have to do is sign up for a program and milk it for all it's worth. Free content, free hosting, design this for me, upload that....Hell, now days there are sponsors who will even submit FHG's with your linking code.

It's become pretty fucking sad.

There's a lot that I still don't know about this business, especially when it comes to programming and technical shit like that....But at least I try to learn which is more than can be said about most of the newbies.

Hey Aaron could you contact me or give me your contact details. I've been meaning to hit you up to do some business together :thumbsup

Amen to that. However there are new people entering the industry that are willing to learn and work. They have been through the free stuff and realize there is no money there.

Could I start today from nothing and build again. Yes I am doing just that.

But it requires work. Unlike a few years ago when the competition level wasn't there.

If you are coming in today and just think you can rape the sponsors for all the free stuff and do nothing and succeed? well you might want to think again.

Also if you have no money, no skills, and you just want a free ride.... McDonalds is hiring.

i have bounced in and out of adult many times so yea it can be done :)

Yes, but I think it would be harder now then it was a few years back.

Definitely, give me an internet connection, my scripts and DBs and some free hosting accounts and I'll be rocking from zero to hero in 3 days. :thumbsup

Modest success is usually achievable by effort with a modicum of skill and knowledge, so it is repeatable. Serious success is something else altogether because however much we would like to tell ourselves otherwise, luck and timing play major roles.

To illustrate: my first business success came about at the time of the oil crisis in the early 70's when I had a respectable but unremarkable operation. I didn't realize it at the time, but I went on looking to expand my business while almost all my competitors had decided to dig in until the market eased. When business took off again a couple of years later, I had a solid customer base and the means to service it, and emerged with one of the biggest companies of its kind in London.

Could I have repeated that success? I seriously doubt it. Not only was my success a product of the times as much as my decision, but that decision could have been disastrous if the recession had been deeper or lasted longer. So while I have always been grateful I got that one right, I never under-estimated the part that luck played.

Obviously there are exceptions. But it is far easier to find entrepreneurs who subsequently fail (often spectacularly), than it is to find ones who bring a Midas touch to a string of ventures.

shap saying if you started now with nothing you think you could make 1M+ year in a short time?

Absolutely positively.

I am still trying to get constant bank, because i am fairly new comparing to others here, but i has been very hard, especially with not much to fund it, it is doable though.

hell yes, with my knowledge across the board coding, graphics and marketing.. I'm unstopable

i already did that.
i started in 2001 and then got out of the biz from 2002-(early)2004.

it was was fuckin hard as hell to do. Took me a good 6 months to re-build 'my empire', make new contacts, get my name out there, do some trades, re-learn a TON of shit, and basically, just start from scratch. It was a nightmare. And my answer is NO, i wouldnt do it for the 3rd time.

Hmm Bigdog good question. I hadn't thought of it that way. I had thought of it more if I was stripped of everything now would i do well in this biz? To that the answer is yes. I built it from the ground up and was in charge of every aspect of our success from the beginning. The flip question: could i match our existing success? Without funding and with the current industry situation I would have to say no. When you really sit down and think about it it would be extremely difficult to do. You stumped me at my own question
:thumbsup

Btw next show we have to meet up. I remember seeing you at the mgp party snapping off pics left and right :winkwink:

My answer would be no.

We started out in 1996 with $500. In today's climate we couldn't do it again.

But we know we could earn enough money to live comfortably.

I'm sure I could. I have solidified enough solid relationships to get me back on my feet if need be, but quite honestly Shap, it would be a huge mental obstacle overcomming it.
Duke

I don't think I could do it....It took YEARS to build up this shit.

I got my start from a 10,000+ yahoo club that I built up from providing FREE weekly sets of girls to my club members...I was able to get a signup within an hour of setting up my paysite.

Now, Yahoo clubs/groups are dead. You don't get the 100+ members signing up per day and you don't have the adult club directory on Yahoo....If I didn't have that, I'd just be another newb with no traffic trying to peddle some crack hoes. I've seen plenty of people try to follow me and MISERABLY fail and they did it because they didn't have a fan base before they started their paysite.

Plus I was just to IGNORANT to know that starting a paysite as a newb would almost guarantee failure. I never joined a paysite before I started mine and I rarely surfed them so I had virtually NO experience in internet porn when I started. I just knew that I had an audience and that I could work it for my own benefit.

My success is built on time, luck, early entry, good marketing, excellent salespitch writing, and branding and less on actual webmastering skill...I've built my name on the SURFERS telling others about me and not on networking with others in the biz.

So if I had to start today, I highly doubt that I would have made it...Yahoo Groups are dead now....I also wouldn't have been able to pay the 750 visa registration fee as a newb instead of visa coming along AFTER I was making enough to just pay them with deductions from my current income.

I wouldn't have made it...Seriously.

Yeah but he said FORGET about your connections...He only said based on your CURRENT KNOWLEDGE.

Thats right and Thank you for being one of the few on this thread who is being real:)

i would have absolutely no interest in, or motivation for starting over.

Knowing what I know now it would be no problem at all.

But if I was a totally green newb faced with all of the difficulties today (Visa regs, fees, competition etc.) I would probably pass.

That's a tough one.

When I first started there was lots of free traffic available. Not many people were posting to TGP's, bandwidth was expensive. You could actually get galleries listed every day on free hosts that had headers and footers, or on terra.es and shit like that.

Today there is very little free traffic. So even though you can get free hosting, free content, free whatever from sponsors, you still need traffic to make $$.

Without the capital to buy the traffic I don't know if I could get to this level again.

Its possible but it would take a long time.....fight for every scrap of free traffic out there and reinvest every dime made back into the biz.

Hopefully this will all remain a hypothetical *knocks on wood*

Yes but it would be a lot harder as there is just more competition each and every day but with the knowledge that I have aquired over the years I think I could get pretty close to what I have today

I did it once before, and I'm in the process of doing it again, business seems to go in cycles for me. I have a lot more knowledge to deal with it and make things work the way I need them to this time around so I think I'll be just fine.

Good points. No matter how much knowledge anyone has now, there will be no second chance at getting on the internet early. That opportunity will never come again.

I have started from scratch many times and succeed every time.

im starting an affiliate prog, nothing adult.

but the potential is huge. and ive only seen 1-2 at most sites offering it.

its gonna be big

probably the best question on gfy ever....

i have to say yes, i could do it...

you know why?

because if you have determination then you can do anything.

its all about getting traffic that converts.

anyone can read on how to get traffic that converts.

so, GET THAT TRAFFIC NEWBIES!

Time & Luck do play a certain part. If I had to start again with nothing in the bank I'm not sure if I could redo it from scratch but if I had $50k to play with I could certainly do it again. Certainly risks though its nice to have backing and a fallback business thats still making money

Absolutely...

I think Pimpdog was the perfect model for showing it could be done in a time that was after the initial goldrush. An unusual tactic perhaps, but he proved it could be done by combining lots of the aforementioned elements with an off the wall marketing strategy.

As for myself, I am certain I would struggle.

I have had to start over 2 times and each time I did it better so ,yes if I had to. I work better with mt back against the wall.

Same here man.. I would rather get into a trade of some sort. Might do that still.

doin it now

gotta love when a host eats your files ;)

i kinda feel like i start EVERY day from scratch.

i really don't want to see the day where I don't feel like that.