Learning From My Mistakes: An Analysis of the PLR Giveaway

It’s only a failure if you don’t learn from it, to paraphrase Malcolm S. Forbes. And that’s a good way to sum up how I feel about my birthday PLR giveaway now that it’s over. It was a success on some levels because I learned a lot, but it wasn’t as successful in terms of hard results as I’d hoped it would be.

In the end the lack of hard success boils down to one major issue: lack of promotion. Even though I emailed, tweeted, and blogged about the giveaway I didn’t do all the other stuff that my coach suggested I do to get eyeballs on the pages. I didn’t social bookmark the daily posts; I didn’t mention it on facebook after about the first day or two; I didn’t do any article marketing (which is kinda touchy when PLR is the subject matter anyways); and I didn’t do video after the first one. Yes, I know better. Yes, I know that in reality the ratio of promotion to content creation should be 80/20. And yes I know I should listen to my coach because he’s a success and I’m not… yet.

But I’m going to rectify that. The blog is staying up (with the freebie links removed, but more on that in a minute). My next challenge is to take the promotion aspect of things more seriously than I have been. So I’m going to be doing the social bookmarking, creating some squidoo lenses, and definitely some video marketing. My new goal for the PLR blog is to get the daily visitor count up to 100 a day.

My second big mistake was that I didn’t ask for help. It wasn’t that I thought I could do it all alone… I knew that it was a lot to take on. It was more a case that I’m not very good at asking for help even when I know it’s necessary. It’s also that I’ve been away from IM for a long time and so having no list or other asset to leverage, didn’t feel like I had anything to offer in return. This giveaway was my way of re-introducing myself to the community and making a fresh start.

Lesson learned. As soon as I’m in a position to start building a team of helpers and partners, that’s what I’ll be doing.

There were a lot of positive aspects to the experience too, and these are what made it a success for me.

• I discovered that I can stick to a topic and a blogging schedule when I really put my mind to it.
• I discovered that I really love sharing information and resources that have the potential to make a difference in someone else’s life. I always suspected this but was too afraid of being a failure at it to really try.
• I learned that I still have some work to do to overcome my fear of failure.

I also learned that I’ve come a long way from the last time I tried to build a list and run a newsletter. I don’t take things nearly as personally as I used to. I used to cry and hurt for days whenever someone unsubscribed or sent me less-than-flattering email. I know now that I saw each unsubscribe notice as a personal rejection and a validation of my former abuser’s claims that I was worthless and that no one liked me or cared about anything I had to say anyways.

If you don’t know my story (an you probably don’t because it’s not something I’ve really talked about much) I am a survivor of domestic abuse, both physical and mental. By the time I got out of my last marriage, my career was in tatters, I had absolutely no friends left, and I thought that I was lower than pond scum. It’s taken me ten years to claw my way back to feeling even a smidgen of the self-confidence I used to have. So for me to look at the unsubscribe column and not feel like the world is ending is a major accomplishment. And for that reason alone this last month has been a huge success for me on an emotional and psychological level.

Would I do it again? You betcha! In a heartbeat. I had a blast finding things to write about and choosing the products to give away every day. I’m actually thinking of making this an annual thing.

As for what happens next, I’m planning on moving all the download links into a password protected area this week. You will get the password as soon as I get it set up, and it will change every month. I plan to keep adding to the gifts collection whenever I can. I’m also planning on setting up an affiliate program and you’ll be the first to know about that as well. I have the software, I just have to find the time to install and test it.

I want to thank you for being a part of this for the past month and hope that you enjoy all the experiments yet to come.

Thanks for being here!

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