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Stop Wasting Precious Time on Useless Activities That Hinder Your Online Business!

Work Smart and leverage Your Time

Peter Webber

March 22, 2007

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The greatest enemy of the online entrepreneur is distraction. More often that not it comes in the form of a red hot email offer telling you to ‘stop what you’re doing and read (buy) this now!’

Here the goose chase begins – so you read the email and are tempted by the amazing offer. You click on the link which takes you either straight to a sales page or a squeeze page offering a free report/trial/whatever in return for your contact details.

But it doesn’t end there – let’s say you sign up for the free download or better still buy the hugely discounted product and are excited about the added on freebies that the email told you about (here’s how you can get this $x amount worth product free by buying some other product through my affiliate link).

So far you’ve opened the email, clicked on the link, read the sales page, taken the intended action, got out the credit card and clicked yes to buy the offer. Now it’s time to fill in the details and download the discounted product and the exciting freebies that the urgent email promised you when it took you away from doing something productive.

But no it doesn’t end there – it turns out that what you just agreed to buy was actually the ‘lite’ version of the product and the page you are on now is for the special one time only discount offer on the ‘full’ version which is only three times the amount of the ‘lite’ version and you will never see this page with this fabulous discount ever again.

Now you’re feeling a bit annoyed at the underhandedness of this up selling technique – there’s nothing wrong with up selling but there is a lot wrong with underhandedness. So you decide no you want the ‘lite’ version because you were only interested in the free $x amount worth product that came with it really and still think it’s a good deal.

After going through the ‘are you sure you don’t want to spend 3 times as much as you were prepared to you’ll never see this discount again’ dance and said – no, no and no again you fill in your card details (and name and email).

At this stage you’re giving your email details to receive the download link for something you’ve just bought so you’re not thinking in terms of whether you want to join anyone’s lists or not – you just want what you’ve paid for.

After filling out the card details and submitting your name and email you’re then taken to another page of amazingly mouth watering too-good-to-be-true offers. You can’t help but have a look because you’re in ‘acquiring mode’ having just bought a bargain.

If you’re not careful you can do this all day long and end up with a huge credit card bill, about 1GB of junk that you’ll never use or read and nothing accomplished for your online business.

Even when you start reading the new product you just bought you can’t concentrate on it because you’ve just got another email telling you to ‘stop what you’re doing and read this now!’ – It’s a never ending circle.

That’s why I don’t subscribe to any of those lists anymore. Some of those mails still get through occasionally but if I see any attempt to create urgency to try and influence a purchasing decision I unsubscribe and delete.

But I don’t let these emails interrupt my productive time anyway – when I’m focused on a task I turn off my email program, RSS readers and anything else that can distract me and break my concentration.

Building a business online requires focus and clarity – there’s too much noise to contend with so if you intend to do it seriously you need some pretty good earplugs. Cutting out distraction from urgent email offers is just one of 5 Ways to Save Time and Money When Building Your Homebased Online Business.

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