Dealing With Entrepreneurial Failure


To be a successful entrepreneur you are going to have to learn to deal with failure. There is no way around it. Thomas Edison tried over ten thousand different experiments before he finally demonstrated the first incandescent light bulb on October 21, 1879. Bill Gates’ first company, Traf-O-Data, was a failure.

Michael Jordan was once quoted as saying: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot; And missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

In my short stint as an entrepreneur I’ve failed more times than I can count. I have also had my share of success, but it’s not even close to equal. The failures far outweigh the successes, and I’m sure I have a lot more failure ahead of me. I’m OK with that because I know that as soon as I stop failing, I have stopped trying to innovate. It’s the nature of the business of being an entrepreneur, and of success in general.

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. It is naive to think that every good idea that you have will result in a successful business venture. I have yet to hear an entrepreneur say “every single idea I come up with seems to work.” More likely, you hear something like “I failed at my first five businesses before this one took off.”

Think about that for a second. Five businesses. Sometimes the number is three, sometimes it’s 20, but the important point is that most entrepreneurs don’t hit a home-run with their first company. It really does amaze me – how many people have the chuzpah to fail five times and still start a sixth business. You have to be supremely confident and treat those previous five times as a learning experience for the sixth. And if number six fails, you have to do the same and move on to number seven.

In my opinion, the most important thing is how you deal with failure. Once you accept that it’s inevitable, you are able to learn from your mistakes and move on. It’s easy to let the failure consume you – not so much because you are pessimistic, but more because it is hard to see something that you poured your heart and soul into be ignored or rejected.

As soon as possible you need to come to the realization that your business is what they are ignoring or rejecting, NOT you. The sooner you do that, the sooner you can objectively analyze why you failed and learn the things necessary for improvement in the future.

Can't go wrong when the science is right

Failure isn’t easy and is extremely frustrating, but it’s a necessary part of success. Don’t believe me? Ask Thomas Edison, Bill Gates or Michael Jordan! Ok, asking Thomas Edison might be a little tough, but you get the idea

Inexpensive Traffic Generation Techniques


The need for traffic

Whether you joined a multilevel marketing (MLM) organization or you are trying to promote an affiliate link, you need traffic. But maybe you are on a tight advertising budget which won’t allow for expensive pay-per-click campaigns. There are many ways to generate traffic, but this article will discuss inexpensive traffic generation techniques. Some of these techniques are free and some cost a little money. One will actually pay you back for the money you spend.

Techniques 1 and 2

The first technique is the easiest and simplest way to generate traffic and it is free. Put your link in your email signature. Email signatures are not intrusive to the receiver. If you do not know exactly what you want to put in your signature, do a search on the internet for email signature examples. Once you have your email signature ready, go under your options and set it to automatically appear at the bottom of your email. Now every time you send an email, your links will be displayed.

The second way to generate inexpensive traffic is through banner link exchanges. There are thousands of banner exchange sites on the Web. The way to do it is join up with the banner exchanges. You would enter you banner link and receive code to put other marketer’s banner links on your site. This technique will only work if you have your own site to display the banner(s). Free banner exchange can be a great way to get your affiliate link out to a fresh targeted group of consumers.

Techniques 3 & 4

The third way to generate inexpensive traffic is to join a manual surf site. These are websites where you get to display your site in exchange for you looking at someone else’s site for 15-20 seconds. You are paid with credits (or points) to manually surf other people’s sites. You exchange these credits for visits to your site. Two really good manual surf sites are Traffic Adbar and Traffic Swarm. You can join the sites for free and surf. If you do not have the time, you can buy credits. If you have some time on your hands, this is a very good technique for generating inexpensive traffic.

The fourth technique for generating inexpensive traffic is joining an autosurf site. This technique will cost you money, but will pay you to autosurf other people’s sites. This is a little riskier way to gain traffic. There are thousands upon thousands of these sites, so you have to do your due diligence when deciding which ones to join. Find an autosurf monitor and see how the autosurf site ranks.

Techniques 5 and 6

Autosurfs are all different in there structures and payouts. You buy ad units and you will be required to view a certain amount of other people’s sites daily. Now you earn a percentage of money each day by autosurfing the subscribe amount of sites. At the end of a subscribe time limit, you get to cash out. You can also get paid with autosurf traffic by buying advertising space on the site. This advertisement will display at the top of the autosurf site. Just to warn you again, this can be a little risky. You have to do your due diligence when deciding to use some of the autosurf monitor sites on the Web.

The fifth technique for gaining inexpensively generated traffic is by joining some topic specific forums. This is a great way to meet and learn from others. You generate traffic by putting your links in your signature box. Keep in mind to not only post messaging in the forums promoting your opportunity. You’d be cited for spamming and quickly removed by forum moderators.

You passively promote your business opportunity by adding meaningful content to the topic being discussed. Others will see your links in the signature box and visit your site if interested. Join 3 or 4 forums and make entry in each on a daily basis. Before long, your site will be getting extra exposure at no cost except for the time needed to post.

The sixth technique for generating inexpensive traffic is blogging. Blog is short for Web Log. Blogging is publishing your thoughts or interest through an electronic medium. You can get a free account at www.blogger.com. Just go there and set up an account. You are allowed to have multiple blogs, so you can Use your blog to publish ideas and opinions about your product or service. Then use http://www.pingomatic.com or http://www.pingoat.com to notify other blogging services that you have updated your sites. On your blog, promote your links and keep your content updated and fresh.

One more technique

The last technique is writing articles. This is a great inexpensive traffic generator. Article writing can be fun and interesting. You may think that you cannot do this, but you can because this is probably one of the best forms of advertising your product or service. You promote your product or service by putting your links at the bottom of your articles in the resource box. The resource box is like an email signature box. If you are having problems writing the articles, do a search for article writing software. This will help to make your writing experience easier. Now just remember that this will be a slow process, unless you just turn out article after article. When your articles are ready, submit them to some of the ezine directories.

There are many ways to generate traffic. Some cost lots of money and others are inexpensive. Using the 7 techniques discussed in the article will allow you to generate inexpensive traffic. Email signature, banner exchange, manual and autosurfing sites, writing in forum, publishing a blog, and writing articles are all good inexpensive techniques.