Which marketing method was a waste of money?

[nursingmom]

I want to avoid making costly mistakes.

[barose]

::

[Mama Dragon]

I know radio was a joke!

[kokonutmama]

I never had any success with MSN search advertising, and it cost me for a while. I'd stick with Google.

I can't think of anything else that was a waste, I did magazine ads, and they were expensive, but I think I came out on top as far as sales generated. I still get calls from people who saw ads a year ago. Forum ads have been good, adwords...

Oh, I did a couple of directory ads, and those didn't work, in fact one of the directories just vanished and I couldn't find them to get my money back... scam.

If you really want to avoid costly mistakes, though it's WAY off topic, don't ever ever ship anything before you have payment. People Will Rip You Off and as a startup there's not much you can do about it.

[Heirloom]

I agree, Radio was a joke as well as postcards to target audience, and newspaper inserts. If you are an online business, I would stick with online advertising... adwords, SEO, article marketing...