At first I thought Monster was just another .com company that was making a few million dollars, but after analyzing their income statement, I realized that I was wrong. The company was actually earning hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

• Solve a unique problem
• Be scrappy
• Don’t get too comfortable
• Have a marketing plan
• Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
• Don’t be afraid of your competitors

Although I made a lot of mistakes with Advice Monkey, it still could have succeeded. The problem was, I didn’t learn from my mistakes. If I realized them when Advice Monkey was still around, I could have made the necessary changes to improve upon it.

Neil Patel , author of this story, is the co-founder of 3 Internet companies: ACS, Crazy Egg, and KISSmetrics.

Read more about his first business AdviceMonkey.com did not succeed from his blog post.

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