The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made
We all make mistakes from time to time, in fact I’ve posted on making mistakes in the past. But I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned the biggest mistake I’ve made. That is, deleting old member accounts.
I know, this sounds like such a nonsense mistake right? It’s old, they won’t come back, right? wrong. Jon Olson has been preaching this for years, but as stubborn as I am I thought it was just a nonsense way to inflate your numbers. Boy was I wrong.
Google Analytics Shows Increase In New Members
Accidentally this started happening the past few weeks. I couldn’t figure out why the membership numbers were stalling out. Google was showing an increase in new members per day, yet my total member count wasn’t even moving. I was really confused.
But the member count wasnt!?
Then today I received an PM from a member who told me it was crazy that I’d delete his wife’s account for inactivity. He said that him and his wife stopped surfing for 3 months for various reasons, and they are back to surf but his account was there and hers wasn’t. It mysteriously disapeared.
That’s when the light bulb went on.. Oh no! The script to deactivate accounts was deleting accounts! Yikes! That’s why we’ve been getting all these support tickets asking where their account went. I really thought everyone was clicking the new delete account link in the newsletter because I added that at the same time this started to happen!
Now is that my biggest mistake? Actually, no. My biggest mistake was that I used to have the policy to delete inactive users. You see I was very strict, I thought if they didn’t keep surfing then there’s no point in slowing the database down with useless information.
What I didn’t realize is that a good chunk of people do come back, and some even upgrade! If they can simply log back in and start surfing, they’re very greatful. If they can’t, many get frustrated and simply don’t bother signing up again.
At one point I remember purging thousands of member accounts from the database. That was back in the day when I didn’t know anything about optimizing MySQL. In my mind the only way to make it faster was to purge the old stuff. I didn’t realize it was designed to handle millions of rows.
So I’ll never know how much this mistake has actually cost me. I can estimate. And I don’t know how much this recent mistake has cost me either. But what I do know is that I’ll never go back to the policy of deleting old accounts just for the sake of cleaning up the database. And yes, I did find the problem, fixed it, and heavily rewarded the person who helped me figure out the problem!
Hi Tim,
Wow! I am sure glad I wasn’t deleted at the times you did this because I have been inactive in the past for personal reasons! Thanks for not finding out! LOL You just did!
Bill
Thanks…I needed a reminder to check out Google Analytics.
And I’ll remember this if I ever decide to start a TE (which I strongly doubt) ;)
WAY too much work!
Paul Livingstons lastest blog post..Wow, 34 Targeted Leads in 18 Seconds!
Not only is Tim’s comment valid for TE’s but any list for any business venture you migh be involved with. Remember that these are contacts that at one time had value, even if just “kicking the tires”. Eventually it means “buying a car” and if you’ve established some kind of a relationship your bound to benefit from it down the road.
Ernie
Realizing now is better than never – we all learn from our mistakes -lol
I don’t have a whole lot of time to surf either, so DON’T DELETE ME for inactivity! :)
Good advice. I’ll try to remember that.
Brad Pollinas lastest blog post..The Focus 40 System
Some of us wannabees start, stop, start, stop, start again hoping for this time. I’ve stopped for at least a year at a time! It is nice to be able to return to familiar ground on a re-start.
Yes, I don’t have all that much time to surf, but when I can I certainly do. Please do not delete me either. I do enjoy this TE and the chat line.
Thanks again for the info as I was thinking the same thing – but this changed my mind – keep them coming Tim
I deeply resent TEs that delete me for inactivity. Yes, sometimes it will take ages before I get back to them, but if I signed up it means I have an interest in what they’re offering. I don’t sign up again if they deleted me. There are only so many hours in a day and I periodically give preference to certain TEs because of bonus credits, referral contests and so on. I want to be allowed to be dead wood (lol)
silveroses,
Praise the Lord! While untimely unplaned, hospitalized, I was holding my breath that you would not delete me for inactivity. I had a half hr. limit to a public computer and tried to let you know. When I finally got home and got my “surf-board” up and running, YOU WERE THERE! Enjoying playing at Catch=up ever since.
Thanks Tim, You do this grandma proud!
silveroses
I once made the same mistake. I activated a cronjob deleting all members that had not logged in their account for 60 days. Lost >50% of memberbase that time. Until recently I had a cronjob running setting members inactive that did not login last 30 days. I reactivated all members last week and deleted this cronjob so all sites with credits rotate and the surfers get presented a greater variety of sites. In fact there is no real advantage for nobody setting accounts inactive. And yes, some members do come back after longer time, so no reason to delete members because of inactivity.
hmmm…that is probably what happened to my account I had 3-4 years ago with you.
Well, Tim, if your exchange wasn’t among the top, I wouldn’t have signed up again.
i have a policy at my exchange to delete members who have not verified or activated their account after a while, but once they are active and verified, they will not be deleted for inactivity.
I want you all to know…I HATE THIS POLICY…I surf and refer for a living and sometimes I see a sight I want to check out but I am really really busy. So it takes me 2-4 days to get around to verifying the account and start using the site. I will tell you the ones that I find i have been deleted from I dont resign up with. I just dont have time to do things twice. I would suggest you give people 1 week to verify for these reasons.
Now…speaking of mistakes…Tim can you please do a blog about link cloakers again. I just signed up at Virul Url, its easy to use and another income stream.
http://viralurl.com/Kayes-Klikks
I found out that up to 50% of referrals/sales are being stolen/highjacked. So protect yourselves and use a link cloaker people.
Kaye Towne
Very good article on the benefits of keeping your customers records. I’ve been deleted from some programs for lack of use. But right now I’m exploring my options and I’ve joined many traffic exchanges and social networks to see what is best for me and see how it all works together.
Gimme A Dreams lastest blog post..Islands Telephone and Telegraph Cable
Hey Tim,
Thanks for changing your tactics and saving us nonsurfing
bums, I don’t get to surf much anymore but when I do i go to Startxchange and Traffic splash.
Have a wonderful day,Tim
Timothy Millars lastest blog post..Paid to Read update #3 Jacob mails
Hope other TE’s take heart to this. I’m in several te’s and sometimes 3 or more have something going on so I surf a lot at them, but do go back to the others. Had one te said I was going to be deleated for inactivity so I just saved them the problem and deleated myself…..hadn’t surfed in 30 days and was getting ready to, but when I got that email……”enough said”
Thanks for the mention Tim but you were not alone. Lots of owners like to delete inactive accounts and then claim they have the ‘cleanest’ lists, etc..
But like it was mentioned above, people come and go in this business all the time.
I will never remove anyone for inactivity. I get sales and purchases all the time from members who joined I Love Hits in 2001 and then send me a message like ‘Wow, you are still online and my account is still here, cool, thanks’….
The extra resources it might take up on a server is nothing compared to the cost of finding new members. I’ll always make sure my current members can log into their account, even if they dont for a year or more…
Weird, maybe, but it works.
I know that this is serious. I am sorry, but, I think this is funny. This is something that I would do. I am glad to see that someone else is human. lol. Thanks for making me smile.
Alice Stanforth
President
Thinkingofyouinc.com
Remember, we are thinking of you.
Good advice as usual. I’ll have to remember that while I’m setting up my TE!
Thanks, your info is great!
Carole
So that’s what happened to my account that had over 60,000 credits. You can just transfer those credits over to my account that I have now. :-)
HeheHe……
Cheers,
Jay
OMG. I just had a flashback.
I sent out a letter saying that i’d be deleting some accounts that were inactive for a long time.(but didn’t actually delete them yet)
only the inactive persons got the message thankfully.
i got an angry response almost instantly – seems quite a few of the inactives had built up a substantial downline, and were only dropping by to assign credits that their downline earned.
had i deleted them they would have lost their downline.
I know I’m late to this post, but just wanted to add that I didn’t surf a TE for like 1-2 years and I ended up coming back later to surf tens of thousands of pages at over a dozen TEs. :P
Solomon Hueys lastest blog post..How To Get More with Less Time … INSTANTLY!