Most people don’t know just how many business and websites I’ve tried.
Or how much I’ve failed.
In fact, just about every business and website I’ve created has failed
My string of failures started in high school and continued through college and even for a short time after college.
This website is one of the first businesses I’ve started that I would call a success(!). With each successive website or business I tried, I learned something new.
One of my favorite books is How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, by Scott Adams. For those of you who don’t know who Scott Adams is, he’s the creator of the insanely popular comic strip Dilbert.
While there are many things I love about this book, my favorite part of the book was when he listed out all of his failures. It wasn’t a short list, and some of them literally took up hundreds (perhaps thousands) of hours of his life that he’ll never get back. I also greatly appreciated the fact that almost all of these were side hustles.
This got me thinking about some of my past business and website failures, which is also a rather lengthy list. I thought I would share some of my failures.
1) Selling a Video Game Character for Money
About ten years ago a buddy and I had this great idea to level up a character in the online game Maple Story and sell the character for money. Alright, it wasn’t our idea – it was his brothers.
What most people don’t realize is that there is actually a sizable market for leveled-up characters, in virtually every online game. It may be difficult to understand how people could possibly shell out hundreds – or even thousands – for an online character, but the demand exists.
This took more time and effort than expected. I don’t know how many hours I sunk into it, but I never ended up selling a character for money.
2) iPodLoaders
iPodLoaders was a business idea my friend and I came up with in college. It seemed like a great way to make money from home. We could do it on on our own hours and it we could get clients through our website. What could go wrong?
We created our website but we didn’t really know what to do after that (the answer is so obvious to me now: content marketing!). We didn’t get a single customer.
3) USA Casino Index
In Minnesota you can gamble on your 18th birthday. I went to the casino with three friends the day I turned 18. We got a room but I spent less than 10 minutes in it – I played poker all night.
I like to learn a lot about a given topic, and I liked gambling. Casinos were a natural thing to look into (at least that’s what I told myself at the time). So my friend and I decided to make a website that documented every casino in the United States.
We gathered statistics like how many table games they had, whether they offered poker or not, how many restaurants, and more. So we had (what we thought) was a solid site. But we spent no time thinking about how we would drive traffic there, who our target customer was, or even how we’d monetize it.
Despite spending countless hours on it, we eventually abandoned it. We didn’t even keep the domain name, so it currently is housed on my friend’s personal website.
4) David Carlson Politics
I was a double finance and political science major in college and was very interested in politics. I became nearly obsessed around the time of Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign for President. It had a huge impact on my political beliefs.
Most people don’t know that I used to blog about politics. David Carlson Politics was my personal political blog and my first foray into blogging. While I did post a ton of blog posts on the site, I simply was ignorant of what it would take to bring the blog to the next level.
I’ve come a long way since then and one of the favorite posts I’ve written this year is 30+ Ways to Improve Your Blog.
5) The Liberty Blogger
I decided the problem with my political blog wasn’t just the way it looks, but also the name. So I started “The Liberty Blogger.” I was smart this time around and started the blog on WordPress. It looked a little better, and was a fresh start to blogging.
Unfortunately this site also didn’t work out. If I’m remembering correctly I was thinking at the time that there were so many libertarian-leaning political blogs that there just wasn’t enough unique content I could write. It’s a bit ironic because there are literally thousands of personal finance blogs and new ones started every day.
With that being said, political blogging is very timely and reactionary to the news of the day. Looking back I’m very happy that I decided to go the personal finance route when it comes to blogging.
6) Noisecake
Noisecake was a music blog that I started with three other friends. I think this site had huge potential, and I still think this was a missed opportunity.
This blog failed for a really simple reason: there was four of us who co-founded it. We each had a different end game in mind. I wanted to build it up to be a money generator for us, eventually providing all four of us with a decent side income each month. After all with four people working on a blog you should be able to (theoretically) accomplish four times as much as a single blogger. Unfortunately not everyone saw it the same way.
One really important thing I took away from this experience is that there’s virtually zero chance that I would start a blog with another person. People rarely last more than six months in the blogosphere, and there’s too much potential for problems if you start a blog with one (or more) individuals.
This was years ago but I still can’t bring myself to give up the domain name. Talk about having trouble moving on!
7) My Awesome House
My Awesome House was a website I started just before starting Young Adult Money. I really liked the idea of an affiliate-driven website (for obvious reasons), and essentially the idea was to share ways to make your house more “awesome.”
I think the idea had potential, but I dropped the project to start Young Adult Money and it’s been my only website project since. I do like the idea of a house/home/remodel/design-related blog because there is so much potential content and people are always looking for ideas or “how-to’s” on home-related topics. There are a lot of real estate blogs that make hundreds of thousands in profit, so it’s a lucrative area to get in. Competitive, but lucrative.
8) Social Media Site for Gamers
An idea my friend and I worked on about six years ago was a social media website for gamers. There was already a few websites out there in this space such as Steam, but it seemed to be a niche with a lot of potential. After all, gamers dedicate a lot of time and money to gaming.
Starting a social media website obviously takes a ridiculous amount of work, and between myself and my friend it simply wasn’t going to happen without funding or other partners. With this idea I went as far as looking into venture capital and what it would take to get an investor on board.
We eventually abandoned the idea. Now if we had started Twitch I wouldn’t be writing this. I’d be too busy running my billion dollar company.
9) BroTank Buddy
Another website failure was “BroTankBuddy,” essentially a website that aggregates “bro” tanks from different fashion labels and retailers and puts them all into one place. The revenue would come from affiliate sales and perhaps even our own unique products.
This idea came up when I had already started Young Adult Money, and for better or for worse I simply could not find the time to work on both.
10) Melaleuca
I’m sure some of you have heard of Melaleuca, but for those who haven’t it’s a health and wellness subscription company where you get paid based on how many people you refer each month. Basically it equates to a pyramid type compensation model where the more people you refer, and the more they refer, and so on results in more and more monthly income for you.
At the core I do like the idea of referral marketing, but Melaleuca had a number of problems that turned me off. First of all, no one has time to listen to get together (in person) for a presentation these days. Second, the health and wellness space is getting more and more crowded each year.
Oh and not to mention the whole referral compensation aspect of it leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths.
I referred four or five people and eventually dropped out.
What I Learned From My Failures
Reflecting on all these business and website failures makes me realize how far I’ve come. While almost all of my business and website ideas failed, they have taught me a lot. It’s difficult for me to even put myself in the mindset I was in years ago when I was working on political blogging or trying to create an index of all the casinos in the United States.
Today I’m much more picky about where I spend my time. There has to be a good business case and I need to know exactly what my personal commitment is to the project. I also don’t tend to partner with others because I have found more success working on my own and being the sole decision maker. Things move along quicker and it eliminates the need to justify and negotiate every decision with a business partner.
With that being said I’ve also met a lot of people over the years and have learned what it takes to start a successful blog, monetize a website, and find and negotiate advertising. Now more than I ever I recognize how important it is to put in the work and stick with a plan long-term. An idea is absolutely worthless without execution and dedication. If you won’t put the work in, you won’t succeed.
Do you have any business or website failures? Do you think it’s more a lack of commitment that causes businesses and websites to fail or a bad product?
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Thanks for giving us a peak into your previous endeavors. It’s so true that behind many successes are often less successful ventures. I’m struck by what a natural entrepreneur you are! I really admire that.
Yes it’s surprisingly fun to talk about these past projects. It’s always good to reflect back on what worked and what didn’t.
I’ve had my share of failures and like to think they’re important as they can provide a lot of valuable lessons – either collectively or individually. In regards to Melaleuca, someone tried to rope us into it several years ago and it did seem fairly pyramid-y to me. Unfortunately, well fortunately I guess, I knew to stay away from it thanks to other pyramid scheme failures years ago.
As far as Melaleuca goes, it’s really interesting. I know some people who are very successful in it (who have cashed $1M+ and probably now $2M+), but to get there they had to go all-in. They even admitted that the first year they really wanted to push hard in getting people signed up the year was “a blur.” It worked out for them but I think there is going to be more and more competition in the space and I think people would be smart to limit their exposure.
Aw bless you, I like the fact that you tried all of these things.
After all, you never know if you don’t try! & this blog is definitely a success
:-)
Thanks Francesca! I agree – you never know what idea will work and what won’t work. This blog I feel like I really went “all in” and have sacrificed greatly for it to succeed, so I’m happy with the results but also recognize that it takes a ton of hard work to create something successful.
I’ve wondered about your past endeavours, now I need wonder no more. :-) Sure am glad that Young Adult Money took off, your wrote Hustle Your Way out of debt, and was on Martinis and Your Money. If not, I’d never have had the pleasure.
Thanks for all the great stuff you put out, as well as for being such a role model!
Thanks Keith! Really appreciate all your support!
Also if at thebeginning you feel bed, failures help to became better in several fields:D
It’s awesome that you have all these ideas. My Awesome House is a good idea too. With some of the family friends I have spoken to in person they scratch their head at the concept of a personal finance blog but seemed very receptive to the idea of reading about building or remodeling a house. A house is the largest “investment” a person might have, there’s even home improvement channels dedicated to the topic, so it is a good idea.
Based on how much some house-related blogs and websites have sold for in the past year or two…yes there is a ton of money to be made there! Some of those sites profit $200-$500k a year…. :0
Pretty cool to go through your list of your previous business ventures (I hate to say failures). I had a few myself. My friend worked in IT so he was the tech guy but I don’t know if he was that adept at building websites and how to increase traffic. We created sites about things that we were interested in at the time…dating, fantasy sports and we wanted to sell customized arts/crafts that we could buy in NYC to sell online (still think that might work…perhaps etsy). Also had an idea to build a NY government job aggregator which I thought would have been excellent since the government’s job search function was horrible…thought they have improved it. In any case, I still need to learn to increase traffic and how to monetize. I have a lot to learn…that’s for sure.
That’s pretty cool to hear about all the website ideas you had – I recommend you put together a post like this so I (and others) can hear more details! I think there are a lot of good ideas out there that have potential. I think derivatives of the ideas in my list would absolutely be successful if the right person was dedicated to it and put in the time and effort needed to make it succeed.
I love the list of failures. When I see a successful person the first thing I wonder isn’t “how did they get there” the first thing I wonder is “how many times they failed to get there.” I love that it just takes one win and every one can call you an overnight success.
I love to hear “how people got there” and typically it involves a number of failures or, at the very least, major setbacks. It’s encouraging to read and hear about people who persevered through the tough times.
Wow this is interesting stuff. It reminds me of the concept of even though you see a nice tip of the iceberg, there’s a whole lot underneath the surface that you don’t see.
My brother plays computer games a lot and he was telling me people pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for certain items and weapons. Time is money guess they don’t want to spend the time finding it on their own!
Yeah for sure! I read a lot about Chinese “gold miners” who mine gold on WOW for 12-18 hours a day. It’s pretty incredible what people will pay for things.
I’ve had my fair share of failures and will probably have some more. They good thing about my failures is that I’ve learned something from all of them.