How To Beat The Shiny Object Distraction
Everybody’s talking about bright shiny objects today and for good reason. As more people come online to make money, there are more people there to blast us with offers of one sort or another.
The biggest percentage of new people coming online now, and throughout the years I’ve been online come to think of it, are entering the ‘make money online’ niche. It’s no wonder then that we are getting offered more ways to make money than ever.
The problems that presents for us online marketers are information overload and more importantly bright shiny object syndrome.
Every day there are dozens of WSO’s being launched plus all of the new products on JVZoo and other marketing platforms. Now I’m not suggesting for a minute that all WSO’s and JVZoo launches are rubbish and should be avoided. I often buy a WSO or product on JVZoo so what am I saying?
To answer this question we need to take several steps back and look at your reasons for coming online.
Having discussed this with lots of my subscribers and fellow marketers at the mastermind groups that I belong to, the reasons that people consider starting a business online fall into these basic categories;
1. They have no job and think that they will make money online
2. They have a job or business but it doesn’t pay enough
3. They are earning enough money at their job or business but want a different way of earning money that gives them freedom to choose when and how they work
Do you fall into one of those categories? I’d be surprised if you don’t but if you don’t place a comment below and tell me why, I’d be very interested to learn.
Assuming you do fall into one of those categories, let me cover each one separately and tie them into our question of how to avoid shiny object distraction.
1. You currently have no job, are not earning any or enough money to live on and are struggling. You have almost certainly been given the impression that it’s easy to make money online and see this as a quick way of getting out of the difficulties you are facing right now.
Sad to say that I’m hearing this type of story more than ever these days. I get very sad when I hear stories like this because I know that there are uncaring, unscrupulous people online that are happy to play on the desperate situation that more people of all ages are facing today.
The truth is that it isn’t possible to make money online from a business easily and quickly. The only way to make money reasonably quickly is to offer a service of some sort. If you have a skill that you can sell then that is what you need to be concentrating ALL of your efforts on.
For you the ONLY products that you should consider buying are ones that provide help with making money on Fiverr or through the Warrior forum on the Warriors For Hire section.
Spending your time and money on anything else will only delay you getting to the point of making some money. So that’s how you avoid the bright shiny object distraction.
You focus on just providing a service now, to make money now and when you are making money, and only when you’re making money, start to think about where you want to go next. That’s the time to come back here and look at item 2 or 3.
I have a free booklet that I give away to people that subscribe to action today that covers this in a bit more detail. You can get a copy at actiontodaynewsletter.com
2. You have a job or business but it doesn’t pay enough. If you need to make some extra money now because without it you are going to face real difficulty, then you also need to look at whether there are services that you can offer now through the channels I mentioned above.
Once you are at the point of making enough extra money to meet your needs, then you can start to think more long-term. You can begin to consider building an online business which I discuss below in answer to item 3.
3. You are earning enough money at your job or business but want a different way of earning money that gives you freedom to choose when and how you work.
You are in the best position to take advantage of the opportunities that the Internet has to offer but only if you approach it in the right way. You’re already making money so it will be easier for you to put making money out of your mind.
You see, the biggest obstacle to making money online is putting all of your focus on making money. Now I can already hear people, and maybe you, saying that it’s alright for you to say that when money isn’t an issue so let me explain what I mean.
Firstly, I’m definitely not saying that money isn’t important, of course it is important. When you’re broke and don’t know where the next rent payment is going to come from or money to put food on the table, money is very important. What I am saying is that when we concentrate all of our thoughts on not having enough money, on lack, than we attract more lack into our lives and cripple our ability to think about how we can generate the money we need.
Zig Zigler said that if we help enough people to get what they want, we’ll get what we want by default. That’s why my answer to the first scenario was to look at providing a service for someone else. Apart from the fact that the only way to make money virtually immediately is to trade your time (and skills) for money, when you help someone else out it boosts your self worth, helps you to look to the future hopeful that things will soon turn around for you. Believe me, when you take this approach good things soon start to happen for you.
So, back to this scenario where you have come online to find a better way of making an income than the one you have at the moment.
The first thing you must do is decide what you want to do online. What sort of business do you want to build, what interests you enough to spend the rest of your working life doing it.
There are a multitude of different ways to make money online and you have to decide before buying anything from anybody which way interest you most. There are many more ways than just joining the thousands of people trying to sell make money online products.
The make money online niche is extremely competitive and getting more so by the day so what are some of the ways you might to consider?
Do you want to run an online store? There are hundreds of niches that you could set up a store for. You could create an Amazon store and just sell Amazon products from it. There are many people becoming millionaires just doing this.
Do you want to earn money as an affiliate and let the merchant take care of all the customer care? This is just about the easiest and cheapest way to get started online and there are hundreds of niches to choose from.
Do you fancy becoming a self-publisher? The Kindle market is huge not to mention expanding into paperback versions as well. A good friend of mine banks in excess of £90,000 a month as a self-publisher and does very little else. Her business also runs on virtual auto-pilot now too.
If you feel you would like to build a business that provides services to other Internet marketers, there’s loads of scope there.
The point I’m making is that there is a wide range of things you can do that would take up your total focus for a long time before you need even consider anything else.
What you need to do is review all of the different ways, decide on the way for you and focus on that. That means that you totally ignore anything that doesn’t help you progress your chosen route to business success. The latest greatest way to build squeeze pages may be fantastic but if it isn’t something that your business needs right now, ignore it.
While making your decision it is also important to consider your own abilities. What are you capable of doing yourself and what would you need to outsource. It’s all too easy to get carried along by a slick professional sales video but before you go ahead and buy into the opportunity consider carefully whether in order for it to be successful as the sales video shows you relies on skills that you don’t have.
For example, you may have seen some of the opportunities to be had from marketing to local businesses. These opportunities normally involve phoning up local businesses and selling them web services like websites, hosting or SEO. There are real opportunities there but if you are terrified at the thought of picking up the phone and cold-calling local businesses and selling sends shivers down your spine, there is no point you buying them.
Yes, there’s money to be made there, and yes people are getting rich doing it but you need to look elsewhere for something that matches your skills and that you’d be happy doing.
Do you hear what I’m saying here?
One of the reasons why so much digital dust is collecting on hard drives is because people buy stuff that that sounds great at the time but they quickly realize after the event that there’s no way they could consider implementing.
The way to kill shiny object syndrome stone dead and drive you forward to online success is to follow the steps that I’ve outlined above.
Follow my advice above first then in the future when your chosen business is running successfully and you have free time to consider something else, that will be the time to look at other business ideas – but only when your first one is successful.
I hope this has been useful. Has this been useful? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Is there an area of doing business online that you need help with? Let me know below and I’ll do a post it in the future.
Until next time,
Trevor
