Holy Wasted Money Batman! Shiny Object Syndrome

byautumn56

2.8K followers

8 years ago

Hi everyone!

For those who follow me I realized I have been really bad about keeping up with my posts but things just keep coming up which is a really bad excuse since I know plenty of people go through illnesses, family problems, etc etc and still manage to get things done - well guess what ! yall are better than me

So I have sat down and tried to do some soul searching as to which project I want to focus on for the next few months fully without splitting my attention all over the place. I have multiple income streams but none of them are to brag about but THEY COULD BE if I would take the time to focus, grow, and expand it before I jumped on to my next project.

OOOOOOO Shiny..........LOOK BUTTERFLY

Then I had a massive epiphany on just how bad my problem was. I do make money - I def make enough to cover the cost of WA which is a community I never plan on leaving but when I keep track of my costs I tend to not track the extra products I buy. I will be the first to admit that if someone says YO LOOK AT THIS GREAT TRAINING GUIDE TO *insert platform, product, etc here* that I tend to pick it up with full expectation of looking at it later. FYI I probably have a training on anything you could think of sitting in my inbox *shame on me*

Well I went through my emails last night. The first thing I noticed was that as I made it few the first couple of thousand (which only got me to last year by the way) that I had a lot of receipts for products I had purchased that I HAVE NEVER ONCE looked at. Some of them I dont' even remember what they were, I had to go back and actually look up the product to see what the fudge I had wasted my money on.

What brought the email cleaning out in the first place was that I am on a few lists of some of the members here (ie I am subscribed to their sites) and I realized that a few of them give the same message over and over again. Stop jumping around and actually focus on doing one thing super duper well. Which is of course emphasized here as well.

Apparently I am a massive impulse shopper - IE an internet marketers dream customer

And I bet I am not the only one here that falls into that category. When I started adding up the cost of all the stuff I JUST HAD TO HAVE (at the time) I realized ouch! What a hit to the account that was and I didn't even notice because it was 10 dollars here or 20 dollars there but it is literally wasted money because I didn't even download the product let alone read it. Simply to protect my ego I wont give you an exact price but lets just say it easily hits four figures and that is money that could have been going back into my successful ventures and making them better /sadface

Which brings up a bigger problem

Lack of focus has a lot to do with shiny object syndrome. For some reason whenever something even tugs at you a little - a new way to build your site, a new way to find niches, a new way to market, using social media, that guy is doing that and doing really well I should do that tooo - I know quite a few people here in the WA community have it and have done the same things I have. To be fair I am pretty sure parts of them I products I bought to review for my bootcamp site but obviously I forgot to do even do that part /facepalm. Something about only work on one thing for even 3-6 months just drives me bonkers. Which is why I have a number of sites all bringing in sales but nothing to quit my job over at the moment.

In the spring I was convinced I was ready to finally focus on specific projects and after getting sick, I felt defeated and just kind of started my hopping around again. Then of course I look in my amazon dashboard - one of the sites I was super passionate about it the beginning and only did 4 posts on started making sales. IF I had followed through with my original plan for it I know it could be doing a lot better. I def stopped working on it to soon and I have no real reason why.

Pick a Goal/Focus and STICK WITH IT

So after reading multiple emails from people I truly respect (again from networking in WA) I have finally accepted I have a problem. I know what I need to do to fix it. and that is my goal for the rest of this year. Focus solely on what I have going on and not purchasing anything new whether this be themes, plugins, training, WHATEVER. Sites will always need to be improved and tweaked over time but if I cant get down focusing on one site then it doesn't matter all the other stuff I pick up because chances are at this time I would only be doing it half assed anyway.

So I have picked the social media platform I want to be sure I master first because I have already started using it with a site with some great success but I know I can do it better. I have picked the sites I want to focus on. I have help on board and dedicated friends to make sure I keep on schedule. I have printed out calendars for each month and written down what I would be happy accomplishing each week and they will be checking in with me to make sure it gets done. Not to mention I have a self publishing business which I want to expand. I KNOW that sounds like a lot but its not as much as I was working on before and I have help who can do what I need done as long as I show them how to set things up.

For everyone starting out or those who aren't making anything yet or for people making some here and there but not as much as you want or as quickly as you want. Don't jump, don't lose focus. Treat what you have as a baby and nurture that thing until it grows into what you would call a successful venture. If you want to learn social media marketing don't jump around to all the social media sites and learn them all at once. If you want to try paid ads for the first time I would suggest learning how to do them in one place first instead of trying facebook ads, google ads, bing ads, etc all at once. Master one thing and then move forward.

TAKE ACTION

Oh and if you are like me and do what I do and pick up multiple things here and there and realize you never put them into action. TAKE ACTION. Anything you do buy or take the time to learn whether its from a bunch of free youtube videos, a udemy course, or even trainings here on WA make sure it is something that you can put into action right away and not something that you are just daddling with in case you need it later - just come back to it later and spend your time being productive on what you are working on AT THIS MOMENT.

Special thanks to kyle, carson, vitally, leoemery, nathianell, Vicky, alexsol, and everyone else who always has such great advice even if it doesn't always sink in ;)

FYI I still plan on hitting that 10k from the new site I started - its one of the ones I picked to focus on LOL Ill be sure to let you know how that goes by December.

Sorry for the long post for people who made it this far! And sorry about the lack of pictures...my browser is really bad for stuff like that hehe

Jean

Best wishes to everyones success