Learning The Industry Whats The Best Way?

[maxpower]

i also haven't seen max stab anyone in the back. he's not exactly his own best friend when it comes to business relationships but that's a different issue. his pm's to me lately have been courteous and show he's sometimes listening. sure, he has to bust out sometimes and show us the old ignorant and pointlessly rude max, but these periods are getting shorter.

now if only we could convince him to use spell check

Thax Bass, I really do try to take in everything, even if sometimes it might not show. Your help has always been invaluable to me, and regardless of my attitude of sometimes wanting to learn the hard way your opinion has always served as the best starting point I can find.

[Squirt]

At one of the Xbiz seminars last week an audience member asked if there are any books out along the lines of "Porn Business For Dummies".

Everyone laughed, but I think a lot of people thought to themselves, "I should write that book!"

And that brings to light a good point

There is no place to learn this business. You either have to depend on instinct via trial and error or mentoring / teaming up with others.

To date I haven't seen any success stories of a single person doing everything on their own with no input from anyone and relying only on trial and error. Plain logic dictates that anyone reading and posting on these boards is relying on a form of mentoring to foster their success

[Squirt]

.... he's not exactly his own best friend when it comes to business relationships but that's a different issue. his pm's to me lately have been courteous and show he's sometimes listening. sure, he has to bust out sometimes and show us the old ignorant and pointlessly rude max, but these periods are getting shorter.

Yes exactly.. he's learned to modify his behavior to get what he wants. The core values that make up his character still remain. He is no sith, yet he's far from even the least acquiescent padawan :smoke:

[maxpower]

I did kind of stab one person in the back and that was Luke from chilihost. Around when I first joined I said I would create some feeder sites for him to help promote his service, and after he got like 50 sets ready I was in the middle of doing something else so I could not do them for him. :embarassed:

I still feel bad about this 1 ½ years later, but I also never agreed to create anything else that I was not 100% sure I had time to do.

[Madame0120]

Trial & Error. There's no other way, for Control Freeks like us.

[chubbs]

Trial and error has cost me almost $50k and nearly 3 years of what I consider wasted time. Had I had a good mentor from the start, I'd of spent much less money and learned just as much, probably more than I did doing it "the hard way". Oh well, live and learn.

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over & over and expection different results. I guess I was temporarily insane.

Needless to say I have started to ask for a lot more advice and am taking the advice I get to heart. Man I wish I'd of known there were people like Basschick when I started. Or even just this board.

Hope this helps. --Chubbs

[Madame0120]

I want to be clear .. yes we've done lots of trial and error, but it wasn't flying in the wind. I spent more than 6 months doing basic research, had a business plan, a geek and some working capitol, before we ever launched the first site.

After that, it is really just other ppls opinions.

[Dzinerbear]

I don't think 1+1 always = 2, in other words, I don't think there's a formula that'll work every time if you follow it. I don't believe you say, "Do your TGP gallery exactly like this and it'll make money."

For instance, basschick does a killer TGP gallery and it sells buckets. You copy the template and change the background and text colour add your own content, and it tanks. Was it the colour that tanked or was it content that tanked or was it that content with that colour that tanked?

When I was with my last employer I told a guy exactly how to make a good AVS gallery. He followed my instructions to a tee -- everything I did to make lots of money -- and he didn't make a dime. So maybe the AVS didn't have a lot of traffic that liked black guys or maybe his content was over-exposed, or maybe I was lucky and don't really know what I'm talking about, who knows.

I tried two hubs with UGAS and couldn't make a penny. Another webmaster who makes galleries that aren't as nice looking as mine makes a lot of money, using sponsor content a lot of times, too.

I think there are some basic points that are good to learn from, but essentially I think you have to get in there and play around. You need to see what works with your particular traffic base. Just because something works with bear traffic doesn't mean it'll work with twink traffic.

You can tell someone to submit to these six link lists and they'll get buckets of traffic, but if they submit on the wrong day, at the wrong time, or if Anna Nicole Smith dies on the day their galleries show up, they won't get any traffic.

Cheers
Michael

[Fister]

I don't think 1+1 always = 2, in other words, I don't think there's a formula that'll work every time if you follow it. ...
Cheers
Michael

I'll "piggy"back off Michael's comment with one other point. The business does change quickly and often in my estimation. What's hot one month may be slow a few months from now. Trying things out and measuring results is necessary.