I used to be scared of failure. I hated the thought of putting time and effort into something that ultimately might not result in the perfect outcome I want. Instead I just wouldn’t try. Hey if I didn’t try I wouldn’t fail right? I’ve since come to realise that if I don’t fail I won’t learn. Each time I fail and get upset, I’m reminded of our light bulb friend, ol’ Eddie. I love these two quotes from ol’ Eddie.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas A. Edison
And
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison
I feel like this when I look back at my entry into passive income. Oh dear, what a failure, lucky it only cost me $97. Here’s a few of my notable big ticket failures.
- I rushed to get “something” up on the web. In all the excitement I didn’t really take the time to understand what I was doing and why.
- I thought writing good sales copy by “copying” other sites would work. Turns out, this is an art, each copyrighter carefully constructs sales copy for each individual site. So using a mix match was NEVER going to work.
- Websites that “look” like they are from 2007 are no longer relevant. Nope, we are all aware that when we see big red text on a white background there is a sales push coming.
- Something that looks crap or looks like a money grab will not sell anything. Yep the internet in its current form is over 15 years old now, people are more internet savvy and have probably purchased crap too many times.
So I decided to take ol’ Eddies advice and give my passive income website a working over, no point in giving up just because something failed hey Eddie?
I needed to brush up my 2010 web skills not my 2007 web skills so I did a major upgrade on the site myself. It’s now become more of a test of my web development skills that creating a passive income stream.
I’ve created a proper mini site around the product now that consists of:
- An entry page designed to build my mailing list
- A main sales page designed to sell a single product
- Supporting pages that are found on proper company websites, like disclaimers and privacy information.
This instantly gives the site a professional look feel and takes away that nasty 2007 sales letter approach. Here’s the classic before and after shots for the entry page:
Before
After
The site underwent a major rewrite in the words department as well. Basically I’ve juiced up the whole thing. If you’re interested check it out here.
So what’s does all this mean. I’ve moved passed my failure fear and now as they say, (you need to say this like a gen Y) “I’m like totally into failing now”. Fail fast, learn quicker.
The whole point of writing this blog is to document my attempts to escape the cubicle and share my experiences. I have to say it’s an enormous amount of work even getting into passive income let alone getting something actually listed. But I’ve gone through it twice now, and it’s getting a bit easier.
I think the days of putting up a basic sales page and watching the money role in are gone. (Hey if they aren’t, can someone let me know).
In a nutshell fail often.
