Wednesday 29 April 2009

Information Overload

When I first started to look for alternative income opportunities, I definitely felt overwhelmed by the information provided on the internet. Looking into all the possibilities of launching an online company was terrifying in so many ways. Where do you begin, what do you do, what do you want to sell? How do you know what to do if you don't know what to ask?

So began my search for an online business. But the more I researched and surfed, the more overwhelmed I became. So many choices, too many choices. I finally read an article on the internet about how paralyzing it can be when you become overwhelmed with choices and in this instance with knowledge. With the rise of the internet and the extensive information on every subject matter, it's difficult to maneuver through the pages and links of information. My mind ran in circles and I couldn't think straight.

Finally, I decided I just needed to do something (advice provided in a daily newsletter that I signed up for called "Early to Rise"). I'm not recommending this website and all the offers and promotions they provide in their newsletter, but I do get some pearls of wisdom from them from time to time. I connect intuitively with the reasoning. It's better to do something and learn from any mistakes or successes made than to not do anything and learn nothing.

With that input, I decided to purchase a money making system called NicheBlueprint. It's expensive and since my purchase of this system in November, it's costed me close to $2k to set up a website. The basis of this system is to research a niche that gets enough traffic but has less competition. They suggest using Market Samurai to check online traffic and competition. If you follow their direction, you will end up with a niche that has a minimum traffic of 500 searches per day and less than 50,000 website competition. The product has 9 modules and each module provides instructions on how to research a niche, find a domain name, set up a hosting site, set up your website, get traffic etc.

Since I've been working full time and taking care of a family, I've had little time to dedicate to this project. I started in November. At this stage, I've set up a hosting site with a domain name, found a niche, and began calling wholesalers. I have yet to do the following before launching the site:

1. establish dropship wholesale accounts
2. finish setting up the website to include products, taxes, return policies, etc.
3. setup paypal and credit card on the website
4. and SEO planning

Today, I feel completely overwhelmed. Even though I try to remember that in order to get past this feeling, I need to focus on what to do, it's a difficult task while working full time. Even though I'm getting laid off, I continue to feel a duty towards the company to complete the projects assigned to me and leave on good standing. In the meantime, it's time consuming to research wholesalers and call them about dropshipping. Regardless of my awareness of the paraylzying effects of "Information Overload" it still happens to me at least once a week.

I'm also terrible at processing things quickly. Sometimes it will take me a good day to realize that I'm paralyzed in Information Overload before I recognize it and put in the steps to pull out of it. Writing my thoughts here helps to expedite that processing time. I had set out a date to launch my website on May 1st. I am pushing to maintain my target launch date, but we will see if it can be done.

No comments:

Post a Comment