People with *any* experience in AM, what are your biggest lessons from your newbie 'failures'?

[Kerr_DigitalSolver]

For people who have been in the game 20 years or 20 days, what are the most important lessons you learned from your initial failures? Every lesson is valid, no matter how big or small!

For me, it was two things:

1. Split testing ads - I would spend a long time trying to get one advert to be the best I could make it and then send that out, and then be disappointed when it didn't do as well as I'd hoped. The biggest lesson was to put out maybe 4 or 5 ads, then get rid of the ones not performing, while tweaking and improving the ones that were, then testing those - improving incrementally until I was satisfied with the results.

2. Stick to one strategy - Most strategies work, but you need to get to know them well and all the nuances involved. I would try something once, decide it didn't work or wasn't good enough and move onto the next glamorous strategy. I was trying always trying to find the 'best' one. The best strategy is actually to just pick a solid strategy and then stick to it and become really competent with it - only then to move onto incorporating more strategies into your tool-belt.

So, what were your biggest lessons?

 

[Graybeard]

Mainly technical: Server administration in SSH and building dynamic content and scripted websites.
Before I started i had 25 years of sales experience in a few fields.
Learning the difference between strategies and tactics. Strategies don't pivot, tactics do