By which I mean the “Internet jungle”. This jungle is pretty impenetrable unless you have a plan, a map, and a mentor to guide you. The trouble is, there are thousands of so-called plans, maps and guides which promise you easy riches, so easy in fact that your grandmother could do it. They promise you that with only a few hours of your time each week, their blueprint for success will automatically pour money into your account while you sleep.

Incredibly, I fell for this. Not just once, but many times over a three year period. The only reason I am willing to confess to my stupidity is that I now know for sure I am not the only one! 

Like many others, I became addicted to buying information products that might help me learn how to tap into the internet marketing riches that would supposedly be mine if I bought into this or that plan. Occasionally, I found something that was actually useful – just enough incentive to keep me hooked and looking for more. I was mesmerized by slick sales copy; my mouse hand was constantly veering off towards the “buy now” button.  I was an Internet Marketer’s dream customer.

Eventually, I made myself stop buying stuff. Heck, I had enough material stashed on my hard drive that I will never be able to read it before it is out of date (or I die). I was on more lists than I have had birthdays. The money is in the list, right? Well, I am living proof that this must be true – I contributed thousands of dollars to all those lists. I’ve never been brave enough to add it all up.  

But I was still a sucker for the emails that daily cluttered my inbox, and I still compulsively downloaded every free offer that came my way. Of course, to get the free stuff I had to hand over my email address, so I got onto more lists… you probably know how it goes.

When I found myself  spending more time reading emails from people wanting to give/sell me stuff than I spent on any other activity, I knew I had to do something about it. I had spent heaps (time and money), and earned nothing; I was spending so long at the computer that I started to gain weight, and developed a stiff, painful right shoulder from struggling to keep my mouse away from all those “limited time” offers. 

To complicate things, I now had “information overload”, no sense of direction, lack of focus (you can’t focus if you can’t see where you are going) and was paralysed into total in-action.

I know (from reading forum posts and so on) that this is a common situation for those new to the internet marketing world. If you are still reading this, you can probably identify strongly with what I am saying. I took drastic action, which I’ll tell you about in my next post.