by Neil Patel on November 10, 2009
As I have mentioned to you in the past, I have made a lot of mistakes. Luckily most of these mistakes where small and didn’t cause much harm to my business or me. But the one occasion I have made a big mistake not only did it cause one of my businesses to go under, but it also caused me to almost go bankrupt.
So here is the story of my million-dollar mistake.
The early days
Towards the end of my high school career, I started my first real Internet business. The business was called Advantage Consulting Services (ACS), which consulted small to medium sized businesses on their Internet marketing strategies.
At first, like most businesses ACS struggled. But from blogging, speaking at industry events, and cold calling, my business partner and I were able to grow ACS into a cash cow.
During our peak, we were pulling in millions of dollars with high profit margins. Once ACS started to do well my business partner and I decide to expand, but we didn’t expand in a good way.
Most entrepreneurs would expand their core business and try to accelerate their growth. But my business partner and I aren’t like most entrepreneurs; we decided we would be different and expand into new ventures that weren’t related to our core business. [click to continue…]
by Neil Patel on November 4, 2009
Finding the right business partner isn’t easy. I have been an entrepreneur for about 8 years and I have been through my fair share of business partners. And although I have been blessed with having some great partners, I have also had a few that didn’t work out.
The business partners that didn’t work out weren’t necessarily bad guys and they didn’t do anything wrong, but for one reason or another things just didn’t work out.
Now before I go into finding the right business partner, I want to break down some reasons on why you should have a business partner: [click to continue…]
by Neil Patel on October 30, 2009
Adding RSS subscription link within your blog’s sidebar isn’t enough these days. Yes, those links will get clicked on and you will get some subscribers, but you won’t convert a lot of those visitors into readers.
If you want to convert a high percentage of your visitors into RSS subscribers, here is what you can do:
Offer multiple options
Not everyone uses RSS feed readers. Even web savvy users like me don’t use feed readers. But what everyone uses is email, so a good way to get more subscribers is to offer an email subscription option.
Location, location, location
The location of the link to your RSS feed will play an important factor in how many subscribers you have. Here are a few locations to consider:
- Above the fold – you don’t want to have your readers scroll down to find your RSS feed.
- Sidebar – you can use your sidebar to offer multiple subscription options, such as email.
- Content – right after your blog post and right before your comments you can write a little blurb that convinces people to subscribe to your RSS feed. For example, you could use “Want to be notified when there is new content to read on Quick Sprout? Just enter in your email address and we’ll shoot you an email when there is new content for you to read. Don’t worry, I promise not to spam you or share your information with anyone else.”
[click to continue…]
by Neil Patel on October 26, 2009
Do you have a business idea that you want to pursue? If so, you are probably wondering if it is going to work and if it is going to make you a ton of money, right?
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the chances are, neither I nor anyone else is going to know whether your business idea is going to work or not. So instead of asking people what they think about your idea, here is what you need to do: [click to continue…]
by Neil Patel on October 19, 2009
As you may already know, I have started a lot of companies and most of them have failed. But what you may not know is that I had a ton of other cool ideas. 
So here goes:
1. Mesothelioma Girl 15
Do you remember Lonely Girl 15? She technically wasn’t 15, but she was a big hit on YouTube. Once I saw that, I wanted to film a hot chick that acted like she had mesothelioma (a form of cancer).
I know that’s a sad thing to joke about, which is why I never executed on the idea, but if you can get enough buzz and rank for the term “mesothelioma” on Google, you can potentially make millions. [click to continue…]
