Your greatest failures earning money online

Jon

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Before we became the clued up individuals we are today when it came to earning money online what silly and stupid things have you either sunk money into or spend time doing with very little to no return.

Ones on my list would have to be

- Paying £30! for access to a drop shipping company which had purely the WORST selection of items to sell ever known to man. At that point I realised what a confest Drop shipping is as all it gives you access to is nothing you couldn't already do yourself

- Paying £40 for a box of women's hot pants that I thought I could sell on eBay at a profit. They were AWFUL quality and all in bright colours. Couldn't sell any of them.

- Paying £50 for a box load of socks from Germany (Why Germany? No Idea!) which I thought I could sell in pairs on ebay! - Couldn't sell them and ended up giving them to my Mum who was a school teach to put in the spare PE kit box!.

- Started out on PPH and just wanted a 'gig' so pitched myself very very low. Ended up spending 3 weeks writing 2000 words of content every day for 3 weeks for £40!!!

- Answering questions for ChaCha when they were in the UK for 3p a question

- Selling PS3 Game save files on eBay. These were little files you could put onto your PS3 to say unlock all the cars in a racing game. I sold them for £1.99 each, would just email the buyer the file. Made about £50 a week from them. Then it went wrong and kids thought they were getting a whole game for £1.99 not just a file. Their parents complained via eBay and to this day I am still banned from selling on there.
 

alditoharrods

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Oh this is brilliant!

Delivering bt phone books was the worst. We must have been walking for 20 each each (two of us) and we had to drive something like 25 miles to pick up the books. Ended up making £16 profit.

A few things I've bought to sell on haven't sold, but other items have been big ticket items - I got a job lot of vintage cameras for £6 and one sold for £50! Then I bought some nail polishes worth £45 in gift sets for Christmas for £14.99 and I can't even shift them at cost.

Apart from buying things to sell on, I don't pay money up front for anything.
 

Jon

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some more to add.

When I discovered that poundland TV Aerials could sell on eBay for £6.99 I was well into them. Went in every other day, buy 5 more, sell them, rinse and repeat.

I then decided to branch out into all manor of crap. Desktop fans, camera tripods, fishing equipment. Literally anything that looks 'of value' at pound land that I could make look either big or good in photos. None of it would sell, could never replicate the streak

I did 'canvassing' for 2 years.

This involved going to houses in a certain area of Leeds, knocking on doors and getting them to confirm who was living at the address / compared to who the council thought was doing it. The pay for it actually wasn't too bad but man I Was working every evening after work because it got dark at say, 5pm. Also worked weekends doing it..a LOT of hours


I also found a company who offered work typing in Capcha codes. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA). They are all over the Internet, people would type in what they thought and I would verify it. earned pence doing one after another after another after another. Gave up after 3 days, no mad should have to do that!!
 

mbmetro100

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I suppose these all came early doors in my internet marketing journey :D

I bought in to a "Get Rich Quick" scheme back in 2008 at a cost of $79 that had screenshots of excellent earnings and promising an easy to follow path to making obscene amount so money (it didn't turn out that way). This was another Clickbank product with an immediate download facility making it more attractive, but needless to say the only person who made money was the vendor, although I did exercise my right to the over generous 60 day no quibble refund 8)
 

FreeSwagSites

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Jon@TheMoneyShed said:
some more to add.

When I discovered that poundland TV Aerials could sell on eBay for £6.99 I was well into them. Went in every other day, buy 5 more, sell them, rinse and repeat.

I then decided to branch out into all manor of crap. Desktop fans, camera tripods, fishing equipment. Literally anything that looks 'of value' at pound land that I could make look either big or good in photos. None of it would sell, could never replicate the streak

I did 'canvassing' for 2 years.

This involved going to houses in a certain area of Leeds, knocking on doors and getting them to confirm who was living at the address / compared to who the council thought was doing it. The pay for it actually wasn't too bad but man I Was working every evening after work because it got dark at say, 5pm. Also worked weekends doing it..a LOT of hours


I also found a company who offered work typing in Capcha codes. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA). They are all over the Internet, people would type in what they thought and I would verify it. earned pence doing one after another after another after another. Gave up after 3 days, no mad should have to do that!!

A real life Del Boy!
Next year Rodders ...
Didn't they find some high valued antique eventually? Check in the garage Jon ;)
 

Blackpepper1

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Well when I first started I joined so many sites and allot of them were no good or disappeared.
I bought into cyclers and matrix type sites that just didn't make any money as they relied on people joining and paying a fee.
Over the years I have learned to spot the scams and don't keep joining more sites that you don't have the time to spend any time on.
Don't buy referrals or paid sign ups these will never be active.
Better to promote your own Blog/website and then getting active interested referrals through that.
 

Skinnylatte

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I spent about £300 writing an ebook and having it edited and formatted to Kindle, I think I've made back about £15 since it was published 2 years ago :-\

I also bought of job lot of rampant rabbits and put them on ebay as 'personal massagers', this was about 10 years ago. I got banned for a month (felt a bit peeved about that as others were doing it) ;D

Spent a few $$ on fiverr buying back links to my site which completely ruined my sites rankings and nearly bankrupt me when the phone stopped ringing.
 

Jon

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This thread is GOLD!

£300 on an ebook - ouch! What was it about?

What did you do with all the rampant rabbits you didn't sell?
 

Jon

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Another one to add as well

In 2006 I made some VERY poor choices regarding concerts I thought would be popular

I would buy concert tickets at cost price from ticket master and put them on eBay straight away to make a profit


I chose poorly, I would stupidly buy groups of 4 group tickets thinking they were more likely to sell. Well were they eck

Lost a lot of money on the likes of kylie monogue where people didn't want to pay over cost for 4 tickets together. Ended up selling most for half price

Did it for one month just trying to chase my money, must have blown about £500 on it and worse still I did it on a credit card!!!
 

Skinnylatte

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The book is about birthday parties, it's still on Kindle, I sell about 1 a month and get 70p, at that rate it might break even by the time I'm 80 ::)
I threw the rabbits away, I couldn't at the time think of any other way to get rid of them and was scared my kids would find them :eek:

I used to buy concert tickets too, but always seemed to do ok, Rod Stewart made me a good profit I remember!

Even when I was a kid I used to buy second hand riding gear in charity shops and jumble sales (I was lucky enough to have a pony) and advertise it in the back of the pony magazines for a profit, sometimes iit sold and sometimes I was stuck with it.

I once invested in a scheme that promised to make you rich, I think it was advertised on a lamp post some where. You had to send a cheque off to an address and then you got sent the 'secret', which was of course advertising on lamp posts and the like for people to send you a cheque in exchange for the 'secret', I can't remember how much it was, maybe £20, I can't believe I did that, what a dope lol
 

Jon

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Skinnylatte said:
The book is about birthday parties, it's still on Kindle, I sell about 1 a month and get 70p, at that rate it might break even by the time I'm 80 ::)
I threw the rabbits away, I couldn't at the time think of any other way to get rid of them and was scared my kids would find them :eek:

I used to buy concert tickets too, but always seemed to do ok, Rod Stewart made me a good profit I remember!

Even when I was a kid I used to buy second hand riding gear in charity shops and jumble sales (I was lucky enough to have a pony) and advertise it in the back of the pony magazines for a profit, sometimes iit sold and sometimes I was stuck with it.

I once invested in a scheme that promised to make you rich, I think it was advertised on a lamp post some where. You had to send a cheque off to an address and then you got sent the 'secret', which was of course advertising on lamp posts and the like for people to send you a cheque in exchange for the 'secret', I can't remember how much it was, maybe £20, I can't believe I did that, what a dope lol

hahaha, I see those adverts up in Leeds sometimes. Was it like hand written note? Can't believe they got £20!, they must have been raking it in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVgArsc4zLw
 

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