Managing Frustration

Lessons in Managing Frustration

The last two months since Twitter shut down my ads account has been a huge struggle. Only when I step back to write about it do I figure out it has all been about managing frustration. At nearly 63 years old, you would have thought I had this stuff figured out.

My investing coach always used to say

Keep doing what is working and stop doing what is not

Booting Twitter Ads

Twitter was giving me a strong message that something was not working. The hard part is that they do not give you any details. They just shut you down. In my last blog post, I laid out some options, one of which was to appeal the ruling. Well I did and appealed on “first time offender” grounds, without even really knowing what I had contravened. They thought about it for a few days and turned down the appeal just saying I had contravened their (broad and general) policies. That had me between a rock and a hard place.

• Give up.
• Appeal again.
• Break their rules and use one of my other profiles (I have a few).

I have spent my whole life working in a free market economy. In this world, the customer is king and suppliers who do not support that do not deserve a second chance. Only I know what I could spend in a month on ads – they got a sniff and stuffed it. So stuff them.

Back to What’s Working

So that brings me back to my investing coach. Stopped doing that and I went back to investing matters which was working really well with markets rising. And then the China trade discussions hit a wall and the Trump man started the next round of his every nail needs a tariff hammer crusade. Things started to work not that well on that front too.  At least I have been writing about that. You will now find my blog posts are automatically posted here under the Investing Blogs menu item. You can read about the trials and tribulations and successes in the blog posts – I have been writing.

Solo Ads and Blacklists

In my last post, I did mention that my solo ads programme had stalled on delivering its leads. I did prod them a few times with support tickets and leads did flow. Whew!! They delivered around 500 leads in the first cycle according to their numbers. When I check my autoresponder I find a bunch missing. Time to be the IT geek and compare the two lists. First thing I notice is a lot of .ru addresses = not exactly tier one countries. I compared the two lists and separated out the ones that did not arrive in the autoresponder. Load up a few manually and find they are blacklisted by the
autoresponder supplier – that jacks up the cost per lead. And it opens up another rabbit hole of potential work – see if one can get value out of them.

The grand idea of buying solo ads is to get a flow of activity based on someone else’s work and then see if your own follow up sequence is sufficiently matched to win some sales. Well the emails are going out and click rates are at 1 per 500 though unsubscribe rates are also low. the emails are just not getting opened. Either they do not read English or they are not interested in my subject lines or they are rubbish leads. That brings me back to my investing coach – stop doing what is not working and find something that is. That got me distracted to thinking about pitching other stuff to this list as well as a way of testing if they are rubbish leads. I have been treading around (dabbling might be a better word) a few other niches. I got hooked into a few PLR pitches in one niche – weight loss. Well that diversion became a rabbit hole as I discover a lot of holes in the software that runs my existing weight loss site. Deep rabbit holes to do with versions of PHP and Cron jobs and SLS and Proxies. So deep was the rabbit hole that at one point I nuked my website entirely. And then I discovered the backup tool would not work the way I hoped. So my website now has gone all the way back to the trusty WordPress “Hello World” post and I have gone back to my investing coach advice. Stop doing what is not working. It can wait – I had some great ideas too.

Managing Frustration

Lurking behind all of this story is a thread which you will not guess – other then the blog title. I have a website which is called “Yes But I Have To – Dealing with Persistent Depression“. Depression is a complex subject and my idea was to share stories to try to help strugglers. It is a struggle – a big struggle. The last two months has been a spiral of decline for me as depression has stretched its black claws into my lack of achievement. Dumb really as my investing activity has been working and orchid spotting photos have been good and I even saved a few of my house orchids from the wreckers yard. But that is the way depression works. It preys on any weakness and magnifies it. Each day I look at one click out of 500 and the stonewall Twitter policies = perfect prey says the black dog of depression.

The worst part about depression is it undermines you. I know what to do. I know how to make this work. I know that I know this stuff:

• But you cannot dream up the next blog post.
• But you cannot fix the email sequence to get to 1% (which is only 5 out of 500).
• You have so many great ideas but you cannot execute one good one.
• Other people are succeeding selling the same stuff. What about you?

That is how it works. The black dog of depression. It has been so bad that it has been a struggle to get out and do what I love = ride my bike. That said I did go each week and walk to find orchids and I found orchids in flower every time I went. Here are a few. The black dog has a favourite ploy – it isolates you from the outside world. Seeking out orchids does help but it keeps one isolated – the black dog likes that.

Finding and Making Friends

That brings me to another point. A Facebook friend asked a question the other day about how one finds friends outside of school or work. My reply was to get a hobby. I have a few that the black dog loves – orchid spotting alone in the bush; riding a bicycle on a quiet road – no people to help you live a great life. Just you in your misery. Now a big part of this story is of my own choosing probably because of a long history of being bullied. I do choose to avoid people and I do live something of a reclusive life. The black dog loves that. Cycling has been one of the ways that I have built friendships outside of work or school. Well school and university was forever ago but that is where cycling began.

Meet My Friend – Marko Baloh

This week, Tuesday, one of my cycling friends, Marko Baloh, starts his 10th Race Across America (RAAM). I met Marko in Oceanside, CA in 2014 when I shared a house with him and his wife, Irma and our host, Vanessa Swaine. Here is a picture from those times.

I was crewing for one of the RAAM competitors while Marko was racing in the Race Across the West (part of the way). Marko struck me as a real gentleman and for sure he is a great competitor who has held a number of endurance records (and still does). I have followed his racing career closely since and in the 2019 edition, his 10th, I am sponsoring one of the Time Stations. Not any Time Station but the one that goes into the finish line at Annapolis, MD.  MarkCarrington.com will be there. I feel confident that Marko will be there too as a winner – maybe overall; maybe as a 10 time finisher; maybe breaking his own best time; maybe as winner in his age category. He is the current world champion in 24 hours events in his age category (50-59). They say endurance cyclists improve with age – I do. Marko has too.

Race Across America is billed as the world’s toughest bicycle race. The race is non-stop from Oceanside, CA to Annapolis, MD. The solo riders will be riding 8 to 10 days drawing on no more than 3 or 4 hours sleep a day (if that much). This is solo riding – drafting is not allowed. No hiding for days on end like we see in stage races. There are mountains and deserts to cross. The weather will throw everything at them – wind, heat, rain, cold, wind, maybe a tornado. The solo racers start on Tuesday, June 11 from 2 pm Pacific Time and should arrive in Annapolis toward the end of the next week (say June 19). You can follow the race through this tracking link – Marko is rider 279.

You can still sponsor a timestation on his website – the finish line is already taken by MarkCarrington.com

Full Circle – Focus

Now this comes back full circle to what my Internet Profits mentor talks about all the time.

Focus and Consistent Effort wins.

That is what Marko Baloh does every time he gets on a bicycle. That is what I was doing before Twitter gave that a kick up the jack (a good old South African expression = one sits on one’s jack). The automated processes and solo ads have kept me in the game but not the way the script writer said it would be. More like the way the black dog said – loser always. It is time to merge these two pieces of advice – do what is working; fix what is not working; be consistent and focused. And lastly my long time ago business partner always reminded us that the day you stop learning is the day you start dying. I have some new things to learn and to start doing consistently. And the field for that is video and video marketing. I did buy some new shiny objects and they are going to rock. There is no choice.

I was reminded today too by Paul O’Keefe whose email got me onto this path. His consistent efforts are getting him results. He has offered to help me reignite the passion and the focus.