Recently I mentioned how I would branch out from affiliate marketing. Not quit... just expand the business into multiple areas. 
And new stuff I have been learning. Namely... that I really didn't know as much as I thought I did about ecommerce. I never realized how much went into ecommerce sites before I started getting involved with my own. Even though my dad runs a very successful ecommerce business from the same building as me, I still had a good number of things to learn.
INSTANT PROFITZOR!!111one
While I was building the site, I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect the site to be instantly profitable - I did. Having paid for millions of clicks (and billions of impressions) via search engine marketing, I figured that I had the whole search marketing stuff down. Call it over confident or whatever you want but now I know that I have more to learn. 
For the last couple weeks I have been advertising my ecommerce site via MSN/Bing, Yahoo, and Google. Surprisingly, many days so far have been at a significant loss to me. Doh! Not what I expected.
So, without further ado, let's take a look at these (dismal) stats.
Right away you'll notice that everything is mostly a loss. This does not include the expensive server or any other bills either. Also, this includes SEO sales. I am already starting to rank in the SERPs for some keywords on bing and yahoo (and noooo where in Google yet).
This brings me to what I have been reminded of recently.
Expect to Suck At First
Not everything you'll do will succeed. More importantly, [and the reason why I am writing this post] not everything you do will succeed right away. No matter how good you are at something, there is almost always going to be a need to tweak and refine your sales process. If you're fortunate enough to be profitable from day one, consider yourself blessed. 
Dust off those losses and stick your nose into every single aspect of every single part of the buying process. What can be better?
That's really what I told my team in a recent email. Go through each step and tell me what can be better. Surprisingly, we realized a lot could be done... so we're doing that.
Personally, I am NOT writing this project off. Every day for the last week or so we have been making modifications to the site. Soon enough I think we will be consistently profitable. As soon as I hit that profitable sweet spot, I can remove budget restrictions from advertising campaigns and scale this site to a nice level.
All of it would not be possible if I were to see the losses, frown and pout about how much it sucks, and start on the next project.
Regardless of losing money and being challenged, I am absolutely loving running this site and overall really enjoying ecommerce. I think it can be a really profitable business model that I will continue to look into as I expand my internet business to new levels.
Have you ever had a campaign that sucked at first but then went on to make you loads of cash? Let's hear some stories.
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