Everybody makes mistakes, but nobody likes to talk about them. We feel silly and foolish, even though we could not possibly have known. I know I have made many mistakes during my online business career and it's embarassing! While my rational brain knows it is not really true, my irrational brain thinks that the whole world has seen my mistake and is pointing and laughing at me.

One of my biggest mistakes was not getting the account information when I first registered my domain. That may sound silly to some, but as a beginner I had no idea how to register a domain name or what I might need the login information for. I had my host register it and everything worked fine, great! Eventually, when I wanted to change hosts, I started to think about how to access my registration account. I had to ask the host and luckily they gave it to me with no problem.

Another early mistake was uploading web pages with graphics that included the wrong path. I know a lot of people do this when they start. You want to include a graphic from your hard drive on your web page, so you select it and it looks gorgeous. Great! You upload the page. Unfortunately, people online can't see the graphic because the web site is looking for it on YOUR hard drive! Worse is when your helpful computer supplies the image from your hard and you don't realize that the rest of the world can't see it!

SPAM. Almost everyone sends some SPAM when they start, mostly without even knowing it. Replying to ad confirmation emails is not allowed, who knew? And buying a list to send ads to is also SPAM. Those people didn't say, "Cathy, send me your ad," so they cannot be considered an "opt-in" list. Again who knew? Outblaze STILL won't let my mail get through to some domains! To this day I wonder how list sellers can get away with it.

How long did it take you to realize you must always include mailing list addresses in the Bcc (Blind Carbon Copy) field of your email message? Not long for me! I had people writing me hate mail immediately because I was displaying their address to everyone on my list! One kind, but snide, person clued me in to using the Bcc field.

How about posting an ad with no URL? Come on! You've done it! I've done it, too. :)

Less common mistakes I've made include editing a bit of ad copy that had finally made it to the first page a huge site. That little boo-boo put my ad at the end of the list, totally burying it again.

I tried a loading page once. One that said "Please wait while the site is loading" so that viewers would see the complete page at once instead of loading bit by bit. BIG MISTAKE! Nobody ever bothered to wait.

I've changed hosts and forgot to include subdirectories when I uploaded the site to the new server.

I've had various bugs, bad URL's and web site snafus that are really too numerous to mention. I have grown to hate cgi.

I don't know if this is really my mistake, but it sure looked like one to a brand new client. My hard drive crashed right in the middle of emailing back and forth with him. It took me several days to repair it and I never heard from him again.

I hope this will help you to avoid some of the most common online business mistakes. If you've already made them, at least you know you are not alone.