GFY Advice thread… what have you learned the hard way?

• December 31, 2010

12 years ago I was bartending and finishing college, and about to start my own business that would result in making lots of money and therefore allowing me to make lots of business decisions and investments. It was my first rodeo and the first time I was making decisions with no history or experiences to help guide me through them. I made some mistakes. The first thing I learned was to not make the same mistake twice. The second thing I learned was that it was better to learn from other people’s mistakes than your own.

What mistakes have you made (business related, bad investments, etc…) that you learned from that you can share with others.

I’ll start it off with one of my own:

One of the most important lessons I learned (that everyone who is successful for the first time early in life should pay attention to)…. every thing you touch doesn’t turn to gold. Just because you excelled at one thing and made lots of money doesn’t mean everything you do will be a home run. I jumped into several investments/business deals where I had little to no experience but I thought it would come easy and I could kick ass doing that as well. Most times it failed. Stick to what you do best, but if you do venture out and do something new then understand you are a noob. Seek out others who are successful at what ever the new thing is you want to do and learn from them, pay them for help and guidance if you need to.

Try to put it into prospective. How many times you see new people pop up here who think they going to make millions but they have no experience and they have no idea what they are doing. One classic example was a guy ( he posted here for a while) wanted to hire me to help him kick off his new cam site. But after a short conversation I could see how this deal was going to work out, he had been ignoring everything I was saying and telling me why I was wrong and this was going to work for him. He had made millions in some offline business that had ZERO to do with the internet much less porn. He had researched cam sites for 6 months (as if this made him an expert) and was going to prove me wrong. His site lasted about 4 months and I doubt he ever made more than a couple thousand in transactions and he spent well over 100K in just programming. Don’t be that guy if you venture into something completely different than what you had been successful in. Check your ego at the door, learn as much as you can and listen to what successful people tell you. Don’t jump in with your eyes closed and no parachute.

Feel free to post helpful advice about situations you went through and things you learned the hard way.

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Is the money still there in blogging

• December 21, 2010

Does anyone really make more than 40k a year blogging anymore fulltime, I know the economy is really bad and everything in adult has taken it’s drop in sales, including bloggers!

Only with “adult blogging” is very hard for the average webbie to make 40K at least…
The problem is not “blogging”, but the current situation of the adult business.
In 2002-2006, it was possible for the average gallery submitter to make 10K per month, easily.. by working a few hours a day. not anymore.
And if blogging was positioned in year 2002-2006, I’m sure you could make lots more than you made submitting galleries.
Again, blogging is great, and I know some webbies who are surviving in the adult biz, thanks to blogging… But with the current situation it’s getting damn hard to make the decent cash you could make in year 2005.
Some others are doing cams black hat or chat e-whoring for the quick short term buck and risking getting caught and banned for life… They don’t take this as a business.

Yep. The problem is that those methods still work to push high numbers of untargeted traffic that only works for a short time before its banned. Even worse are spammers that make a lot of money during the illegal “golden hour” but I wont go into that right now and will never do..
But if you promote the right niche with good keyword research and SEO methods and using other means of SEO to get high targeted traffic like Twitter, newsgroups, feeds, social media, link dumps, promoting individual posts with good sticky/downy text, good selling text, etc. then you can make a lot of money with decent conversion rates with the right amount of promotion.

Read more at: adultwebmastergroup.com

Canada epic fail.

• December 12, 2010

As many of you heard I wanted to go to Canada to live. To immigrate. And it’s been a long awaited move that I was ready to make. About 10 years in theh biz, things have been kinda OK, worked out some clients, relations, more or less steady work, and figured if I come I’d get a job and be making my 50-60k a year for average living.

Long before that, I was born in USSR era, I desperately wanted to go to USA, but you can imagine that was impossible. Once USSR was broken I managed to make my first step onto USA land when I was 26. That was probably the most exciting thing I have known to that date.

Been to USA many time since that time, blindly loved the country, flew to the states right after WTC collapsed and was wondering streets of lower Manhattan feeling it all….

Long story short, you can understand that for 10 year I have more relatives in USA then here in my country, and if it was aparty I would of invited US/Canada?UK based fellas not my local.

So, when I actually decided to apply for Canada, it appeared that I missed 10 days terms when they invented new rules, so it made me still eligible to apply but no guarantees were given at all cus new rules meant no established procedures and longer waiting period.

So I have applied as a Web Designer, attached a ton of real ref letters, samples and shit, been waiting for them to respond…. for almost 2 years. Then suddenly they issued a new rule with 37 NOC occupations where they had everything but Web Designers. That was not in demand so they excluded and that made me near non eligible to apply.

Lawyers ( Candian, $1,5k paid in fees ) suggested to take an alternative route applying as a System Manager. I figured that if I turn papers here and there it might be something near that thing, at least i decided to proceed and applied. I tried one respectful company in Canada to help it and they tried preapring me a job offer but failed by several reasons, one of them was lack of given time to process the offer.

And jsut recently I have received the negative, they declined me. Know why? They told me I’m certainly a effing cool webdesigner but certainly not a System Manager, they made their point I have applied as a web designer and then suddenly changed my application to System Manager too. That last thing shocked me, cus my lawyers did NOT tell they applied and sent my docs out as a Web Designer, i assume they should’ve know I would fail if i apply as System Manager instantly, just wanted their money I guess.

In short Canada wants welders, coocks, nurses, ass wipers of certain type that should speak English near perfect ( pass IELTS test for 6,5 ) – mine in 7.5 – out of 9. Have higher educaton, realtives in Canada, job offer preferably. Or Canada wants Top Managers that could lead their economy to the new horizons. Both are definitely not what Ukraine has to offer as of welders and nurses here don’t give a shit about English at all, and Managers here are mostly bribe specialists.

So, that is leaving me a little frustrated honestly.

So, assume, I’m still looking for a job offer in Canada as a web designer / project manager, just a job offer to go to work, no immigration papers needed.

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How bad is your work/sleep schedule?

• December 6, 2010

I really find it hard waking up and getting straight to work, which usually leaves me to slacking most of the day away if I wake up in the morning or afternoon.
There’s hardly much physical energy spent sitting at a computer most of the day so it’s difficult to have a normal routine like most people. I think all the time how perfect it would be if a day was like 30 hours instead.
The best hours I’ve found that work for me is waking up around midnight, slacking for just about as long as I want, until like 6am, by that time the sun is coming up and I can make some breakfast, get started on whatever work I need to do, get into the feeling of a normal day, work more efficiently, and the day just seems to go slower leaving more room to get shit done. If I’m going to spend the entire day working I can stop around 5pm or when the sun goes down and get about 11-12 hours of work in. The only thing that sucks is I’m sleeping most of the night away which is when my friends are off work and slacking/partying. But they’re usually up past midnight so I can wake up around then and get straight to getting fucked up for a good 3-4 hours, by the time the sun is showing I am sobering up and it makes the day pretty relaxing.
If I goto sleep around 5am for some reason I end up over sleeping and get up around 2pm, 2-3 hours wasted there, get my slack on until 8pm and that only leaves 9 hours for non-efficient work that probably includes more slacking in between. If my schedule is so messed up that I wake up after 5pm or some shit I can usually plan on not getting a damn thing done at all.
Waking up at like 7am for some reason is extremely hard, I will usually end up going back to sleep a bunch of times until like noon, 12 hours spent sleeping and I’m still tired as hell the entire day.
cliff notes: My schedule is super fucked.
Read more at: gfy.com

SKNANB Visa Program Update

• December 4, 2010

Dear SKNANB Visa Prepaid Cardholder,
Please be advised that effective January 12th, 2011 SKNANB will be closing the SKNANB Visa Prepaid program. SKNANB Visa Prepaid Cardholders will be able to use their prepaid cards up to this date only.
If you have a remaining balance, we highly recommend that you utilize such balances during the month of December 2010.
Those persons who do not use their funds by January 12th, 2011 will need to make arrangements with SKNANB to receive the funds remaining on your SKNANB Visa prepaid card(s) through another payment option offered to you by the Bank, at an additional cost.
Details regarding the alternative payment options along with associated costs may be obtained by emailing us at vcsupport@sknanb.com or by calling our call center between the hours of 9am and 4pm Atlantic Standard Time, Mondays to Fridays on +1.869-466-9733.
This closure does not affect any of our other card programs including the Visa debit card program, the MasterCard Dinero program, merchant processing etc.
All of us at SKNANB wish you and yours a very joyful Holiday Season.
Cardholder Services
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