Why I almost had to leave Internet Marketing…
It was about to be Internet Marketing from Scratch – Again
And to tell you the truth, I was embarrassed to share it originally.
I discovered on Thurday January 3rd that my main site www.Marketing-Makeover-Miracles.com was down. No big deal right, it’s just one site.
No – it is the hinge that ties my 200 sites together – let me tell you why I had to follow my own advice faster than ever.
For those of you who hadn’t heard from me in 5 days, which would be everyone on my list, we were told from our hosting provider they were compromised, they used words like hacked, terrorists, and indicated everything was gone.
That means my lists – over 15,000 contacts, all clients.
Literally without that list – I had no business.
I don’t think I realized how dependant I was on my list. I knew it generated me money, but forgot it held all of my clients, all of my purchasers, everything.
No way to make money, get in touch with anyone, in other words, I was starting again.
It was 5 full days – and not only did we not hear from them, the main phone number on the hosting site, was out of service.
Lessons learned that I hope you can benefit from:
– use a third party such as Aweber. I originally followed the advice of my mentor Matt Bacak and used autoresponse plus. Benefits are unlimited lists, pay once. Bad points and what I am experiencing now – prone to security breech. The host was also a suggestion as well, I believe it is now time to change – because it wasn’t cheap, and now it has been breeched.
– Backup the list myself every week – kind of like closing the barn doors after the horses have left – but they reported they had no access to recover the lists, and I had no back end access to try to get the data myself.
– Keep your domain names at a seperate location from where you host – if I had transferred those few domains that reside there (my other 200 sites are elsewhere), I could be redirecting, and the only loss is my list, but the site would still be building.
So why was it so devastating at the moment….
1. No list – no backup – no idea who my clients were – especially those that had paid me to directly mentor them – ultimately no business
2. That site – www.marketing-makeover-miracles.com was down – which meant my autresponder was down, and all 200 other landing pages, and sites – link to that site/location to access the autoresponder.
3. It would have meant starting from scratch with Aweber, and changing every single landing page autoresponder link with new code to go to aweber
4. The work involved in doing this, was enormous. The time long. And the result, sites back where they were – no forward motion.
5. I was away. I couldn’t believe it. The access to my materials, sites, everything was done from my master computer and I just had my laptop – so the parts I needed, weren’t accessible. And to make it worse, after being in Canada, I was heading straight to the internet marketers cruise, then to the UK, then to Ireland. I am gone until mid February. Really… This had to happen now!
My year started with an amazing sales and marketing plan, all raring to go – and my business is destroyed – non existent.
I was asked by my kids who of course saw what was happening (they are home schooled via the internet so they saw from my husband’s perspective what was going on.)
So they skyped me – “What are you going to do?”
What was interesting, is you really have the choice at that moment to do anything you want. Do I want to continue to be in internet marketing? Do I want to be just an author? A scriptwriter? Go to the theatre? Become just a speaker, not a platform speaker? What did I want to do?
It was a reboot moment.
Fresh start…. So what did I want that fresh start to be?
Internet Marketing – how cool is that!
Even with the massive hurdle. The collapse of what I had built. The string of errors that caused me to not have a sufficient backup. The reliance I held with the hosting provider, and what that cost me. I want to be an internet marketer.
In fact, starting again didn’t even scare me.
I know what I am doing. I know exactly the steps needed to start again. I know how to list build. So I am here to start again.
It is a wild and crazy adventure into which I am standing at the front door, ready to quantum leap my way back in business.
It was massively empowering to know that the real power of my business, is me 🙂
Enjoy the journey – and remember, you don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going.
Tracy Repchuk
Your Recurring Riches for Life Coach
PS – The site that I did attach to aweber, in case I wanted to sell it, is still alive. Go now, and start the greatest journey –
Internet Success University
