Biggiest business mistakes you made?

Biggiest business mistakes you made?

>open up Etsy shop selling handmade necklaces and bracelets for women
>first 5 months only average $80/month
>decide to jack up prices 400% or so because it wasn't really worth my time anymore
>start averaging $2100/month
>facepalm that i wasted 5 months being retarded

any mistakes, or specifically "mistakes that turned/caused good result"?

if pure bad:
I was one of the victims of one of the biggest online scams that ever occured within online marketing communities.

Long story short a guy with a very established and positive track record (how involved within community, how long, various proven successes, lots of high rankers trusted/vouched/even became victims, him etc etc)

he posed a joint venture with an ceiling goal before he stopped accepting - when the goal was finally met he continued accepting more and more people (privately, anyone who would read the offer and get in touch) and avoided publicly saying the goals reached and/or close the offer.

3 months was his "guaranteed return of cost". He was shady through the entire thing, very lacking in contact with investors, and little to no progress or updates were ever given. Lots of people started expressing concern (me included) and began attempts to get back the invested funds but it was too late, and he engineered the plan very well so it was near impossible to get it back anyway.

Eventually he went dark and everyone finally realized this was indeed a scam. Someone that had a long friendship with him prior discovered his actions and posted chat logs between them post-scam, with the friend trying to talk him into giving it back, then scolding him and denouncing him as a friend and joined efforts to undo the situation

well over 10k was lost in total, If I remember right he actually made off with 50-100k usd based on how many people verified publicly they invested and how much. I personally got hit for 300, and sadly my gf of the time joined in with me as her first steps into IM and ended up losing 300 as well.

On the other hand, that gf later left me for another man and due to how she decided to end things, wound up destroying my online empire and emotionally/mentally fucking me up hardcore, so i do owe him a thanks for fucking her over I suppose

anything you got mate

This is what I'm worried about with a Kickstarter I'll be launching with a partner in a month or two. It's in the area of consumer electronics and we're putting the retail price at just over 30% margins.

My partner is convinced that we'll make more money overall because more people will order them if the price is lower than if we raise prices to actual reasonable levels. The other thing is that people perceive more expensive things as higher quality, so we may be double-fucking ourselves by making it so accessible (ie "well if it's a high quality product, why are they only selling it for that much?").

>On the other hand, that gf later left me for another man and due to how she decided to end things, wound up destroying my online empire and emotionally/mentally fucking me up hardcore, so i do owe him a thanks for fucking her over I suppose
>your gf breaking up with you destroyed your online empire

The only legitimate reason for that is if you were running a cam site and she was your only camwhore. Otherwise, are you serious?

>one of my business ventures starts doing ridiculously well
>making thousands
>get overcome with these meme "entrepreneurial spirit" and try to explore other money making opportunities
>decide i want to sell supplements
>don't know shit about supplements or the law
>see this supplement called "ostarine" is really popular now
>contact the first guy on google to make and bottle some ostarine for me
>buy 300 units for $7,000
>comes in the mail
>start googling legality of ostarine
>start googling FDA regulations
>realize this is completely batshit illegal and retarded
>throw all $7,000 of the product away

Moral of the story: stick to what you're good at

Ouch. I think a better moral would be "Do adequate research before you spend more than $20 on something you don't yet understand."

I'm gonna be launching mine in a month too!
I dont expect you to tell me what you're making, becasue theres no way I will tell anybody what I'm making, but good luck non the less.

>theres no way I will tell anybody what I'm making
What do you mean by this? Making money off of what exactly?

You can't be good at something you don't try, better advice would be don't be retarded and spunk money into an unknown product.

I mean I'm not going to tell anybody about what my kickstarter project is. I will not reveal the product until I launch it.

obviously

Yeah, the guy didn't know what I meant

how easy is it to make money off of etsy OP? Should I try it?

It's as easy as running any business.

First you have to ask yourself do you have the talent to create hand-crafted jewelery, or obtain it locally?

If you answered not really, then etsy would be very difficult. They've been cracking down on people who flip chinese goods.

How much would you consider paying for pic related?

nothing. no offense, but why would I want that?

Why would someone want an overpriced bracelet they could get from Ali baba for a few bucks?

I thought Etsy was huge because of hipster retards paying large sums for unlicensed gaming paraphernalia. Pokemon bracelets and shit.

Link to your shop

not really that hard.
I saw my ex-girlfriend who liked to make necklaces, bracelets, and other ornaments just for herself as a hobby. I decided to learn from her and monetize it. I've learned other stuff from watching youtube tutorials.

You should have done step 10 & 11 before you did step 7.

>Why would someone want an overpriced bracelet they could get from Ali baba for a few bucks?

hipster white faggots who think they're special snowflakes love this shit... it affirms their "specialness"

...

i'm not your target market and would never buy that. but if this was the price is right i would say $30
it could sell for anything. OP demonstrated that.
he valued his items at $x, but people were willing to pay 400% more.

You should have gotten some people together before you went out and did it all by yourself.