Mistakes: Upsetting Clients and Spending Money

Today I would like to discuss one of the mistakes I have made during my time trying to make money… spending money that I shouldn’t have spent, that I didn’t need to spend and money which I could have used in much, much better ways. I’ve wanted to do a more personal post in a while now, but have been pondering what to do. Now I have some ideas, I’m here to give you some insights into mistakes and why they can be so costly.

The Start

I first started making a bit of money on one of my websites a few years ago. At the time I wasn’t thinking about making money and didn’t have any plans to do what I want to do now. This means that when I got that first offer, for someone to put a banner of theirs on my website, I went slightly mad and thought I was the king. This led me to make some costly mistakes which probably cost me any repeat payments from this company.

What Went Wrong?

So where did it all go wrong? It didn’t take me long to figure out where it went wrong, I just had to look back and see why I made the clients unhappy to see why they wouldn’t come back after their advertisement time ran out.

The mistake I made was to get too excited about the interest and try and change my site to meet the demands, encase more people started to get interested. To do this I bought a new theme for the website; well actually I bought several new themes for the site, just to see which one looked the best.

This wasn’t the main mistake though; the main one came after this. As I was so interested in making the best possible website for advertisements, I spent the next couple of weeks with the site under maintenance and also spent quite a lot of the time making the site crash, as I was so interested in getting the theme right and then getting spaces for advertisements to go. Obviously this isn’t a bad thing, as I was thinking about my ‘business’. The bad part of it was that I was doing all of this when my website (business) was live. What this meant was that the person who had bought advertisement space on my website wasn’t getting what he expected. For the first month of the deal, the website was up and down and sometimes I hadn’t even got the advert on the page!

Yes, I’m Stupid!

It was a stupid mistake that I made, and I’m happy to admit that. Because of that poor experience for that client, I’m guessing he would never do a deal on that website anymore (luckily I shut it down). But the good thing is that I have learnt from that mistake and now know that you must treat people you work with very well and give them exactly, and more if possible, what they expect. I’ve learnt that you can’t just change everything whenever you want in business, you must plan the appropriate cause for action and then check it again, to make sure nothing can go wrong.

So What about the Money?

I mentioned in the title that I also spent money, so what’s the deal with that part? Well by buying those themes for the website, I spent all of the money that I gained from the advertisement deal, and guess what; I didn’t gain any more clients. It was a shame really, but this taught me a valuable lesson as well: You can’t just spend the money you make; you have to think about what it means and what can be done with it. If I had the chance to change what I did, I would and instead of spending the money so aggressively, I would save about 70% of it and then invest the other 30% in areas of my website which I thought needed help. But before I did this, I would plan out what I needed to do and what the best plan was.

What’s the Point of This Little Story?

The point? To show you that everyone makes mistakes and to also present you with ways to try and stop this kind of mishap happening. The main way to stop these kind of problems is to plan and most importantly, to think about what you are doing. At that time in my dealings, I didn’t think. Now I do, and it’s working… I’ve had websites after the one I mentioned above and have kept my clients happy and made some money (not loads, but enough to keep me motivated to make more), so I have improved from these mistakes.

If you have made any mistakes in business, please mention them below and say how you have overcome them. Or if you are currently in the middle of a mistake, please just ask and we will try and help.

Image: Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net