Copyright By © Patricia Brucoli
One of the most interesting phenomenon I have experienced as an Internet Marketer, is business opportunity addiction and Internet marketing tool obsession.
We are Opportunity Junkies. I have experienced this first-hand, as well as witnessed otherwise perfectly sane people becoming compulsively obsessed with the ‘kid in a candy store’ mentality. Born to Shop!
It’s like the excitement becomes the addiction! Every time you speak to them, it goes like this: ‘Hi, how are you doing today’? ‘Oh, just GREAT, I just joined XYZ.com’, ABC.com, and QRS.net, wow, I‘m stoked.’ ‘Oh’.
I have been rehabilitated and now tease a few of my friends about this and even subtly scold them, of course, followed by giggles or written LOL’s, so they don’t think I have over-stepped the line on what a friend may say.
I am so happy I have learned to articulate exactly how this problem manifests, as well as the repercussions, so that I can attempt to do an intervention, before they are hopelessly lost like I was. (If you wanted to kill me in my weakened state, you would just have needed to start explaining one of those 3×9 forced matrices here, and if you were particularly cruel, you would include a graphic representation).
I know how it started with me. Somehow I got the phrase ‘diversify’ in my head, and that was what I thought I was doing. The rationalization was I would find out which one works. If I tried enough things, at least one had to work.
I will have one of these, one of the blue ones, and a couple of the red ones. Now I know these are called Niches. Wow, only two months in this business and I was a real empire builder. Domains! Yes I shall be master of all my domains! Cyber Monopoly! Woo-Hoo!
Multiple streams of income - there’s an alluring, addictive phrase. There are many other tempting nouns and verbs that are a part of this wonderful world of Internet Marketing! For instance, ‘Massive action’! Yes! Make my day! Well, I did need more than ‘work at home in your pajamas’ - somehow that was not very exciting to me.
How about ‘blaster’ - now here is where we are getting into dangerous territory for sure, and this one can easily translate to ‘spammer’. You can see where I am going with this one, maybe the sandbox, maybe even jail! Beware of anything with ‘blaster’ in the name.
What are the dangers of this harmless flirtation? Aside from the hundreds of dollars I wasted on memberships in all these dissociated programs, and tools that I never had time to follow through on (use), there are the reams of paper I wasted printing out every screen, every detail about each opportunity; followed by the eye-strain and a condition well-known as ‘information overload’.
Diagnosis: LOSS OF FOCUS! One must return to a logical state somehow. I was so overwhelmed after my first 6 months, that I just had to ‘step back’. It took a long time of just going around thinking, ‘what do I do next’, ‘where do I start’. I am not exaggerating here.
It took me a couple months of doing almost NOTHING, but I did know I was committed to this dream of having my own business on the Internet, and that is the only reason I didn’t just throw everything away and get another dead-end day job!
My return to sanity: I found a program that had everything all put together for me - a very affordable, free website, including legitimate, proven affiliate programs, training in marketing strategy, tools and resources, sales copy, and a support forum.
The latter has especially been a Godsend, in that working at home alone navigating a brave new world, it sure is good to know I am not alone. The cost was unbelievably low. No bait and switch, either, it is still the same after 2 years. This would give me the cohesive foundation to build on, one brick at a time.
I had to promise myself, if I spent another dime or joined one more program, I would have to quit a corresponding number of things in order to generate the money it would cost. So I weeded out all the expensive things that hadn’t worked, that had lousy instructions, lousy support, or that were too technical, etc.
Recovery: As I became more and more ‘recovered’, I still held on to a few pet IM tools that would surely help in my new venture. Slowly I have let them go too, but it was hard. I had withdrawal symptoms = ‘you have already spent this money over the past several months, are you just going to chuck it all’?
Then the saying ‘throwing good money after bad’ came to me, and I said ‘cut your losses already; WHY keep doing something that hasn’t worked’? I feel another saying coming on, ‘Definition of a crazy person: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results’.
Half-Way House: This is not to say that once firmly established I could not begin to add on more Niches to my portfolio of websites. (I had secretly hidden 5 more domain names in a half-way house) and do have plans for my network of companies that I have begun to build on slowly. However, my MAIN FOCUS is the one core program which will be the prototype for developing my other businesses in the future.
About the Author
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Patricia Brucoli will help you to learn how to focus
on only the best work at home opportunities
http://www.the3rdpartynetx.com
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Tags: Internet Marketing by Patricia
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