[Business Finances] Buy This And Buy That: Offer Overload And What To Do About It
December 4th, 2007
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by BobTheTeacher · Filed Under: Productivity · Rants
Beyond the typical spam, my inbox is filled this week with two types of emails from people I usually want to hear from.
They are offers to promote their new product, or emails promoting those products. As a person who thought he had this email thing under control, I’ve come to realize that the last two weeks have been incredibly LOUD in my inbox, and as the big holidays approach it’s only getting louder.
I’m not talking about lousy, too much hype products that aren’t worth the email paper they are written on. This is especially difficult right now because there are some really great products being released all at the same time.
Here’s how I try to handle the overload of products being released right now (or at any time for that matter).
Email Overload Management Part One
First, I have more than one email account. I have a Gmail account that I rarely give out, and I don’t use it to subscribe to any new lists. So this email account helps me get the emails I really must get: communicate with my support desk, Paypal communication, family, and mastermind partners. Top level clients of mine also have this email address.
Then I have several other email accounts that are used to subscribe to most of the lists, product registrations, etc. These email accounts are important to gain access to in order to confirm registration of a product/subscription, and then look at a few times per week at particular times of the day.
I recommend that you use a similar system. Use Gmail (I find it much better than hotmail, yahoo, and other free services) for your personal and top-level contact. And then set up 2-3 other email accounts.
One email account for free advertising tools that then get bombarded with additional offers. A second extra account for products you have actually purchased, and a third for products you are getting for free.
(By the way, if you have no idea how to set up your own email account, make sure you get your free video at DiscovercPanel.com.)
Email Overload Management Part Two
Now, once I have my emails filtered, I try to regularly unsubscribe from those lists that I no longer feel fit my needs. I do this about once per month.
This leaves about 25 people I get emails from that I want to hear from in the internet marketing world. About 3-4 of those I open up pretty much immediately. The others I read when I can.
So when it comes to getting all these promotions, what can you do?
Well, first of all realize you have a limited amount of time in the day. Focus your energy on email during specific times of the day, get as much done during a defined period of time, and turn it off.
When evaluating products to promote, I take a look at several things.
First, I try to evaluate the product itself if it is available. I take a look at the common questions that I get from clients and subscribers from this blog and think how will the product address their needs. This takes care of a fair number of products.
Second, I look to see what’s the likelihood of the product actually being easy to implement (or worth the effort and price) for the majority of people I’m teaching. Sometimes this means that I may miss the minority, unfortunately. But I also can tell that if it won’t work for me, it’s not something I can share with credibility.
Third, I reflect on how respectfully the product owner treats his or her customers. Will they be barraged with useless emails after buying? Or will they be taken care of. This is not necessarily about frequency… I certainly write more frequently than the average person. It’s about quality of content, usability of information, and candid communication.
How I Pick What To Buy
On the other side of the coin is my decision making process to buy a product.
Just like you, I’m still likely to get distracted by shiny things, want to find additonal ways to grow my business, etc. But I’ve learned something about what I’ve bought in the past.
If I buy too many things at the same time, no matter how great each one is individually, ALL of them fail to produce results.
It’s only when I buy one thing, and apply it with complete focus for a few weeks or months that I get real results from any particular products.
With all the barrage of products, it’s difficult not to see the value in each software product, ebook, home-study course, or seminar series. And the temptation is that getting them all will explode your business.
The reality is buying them all will IMplode your business instead, no matter how good they are individually. Frustration results, and more debt accumulates for no good reason.
So, what’s an internet marketer who loves learning supposed to do?
Ask yourself these questions constantly before you make another purchase.
- What was the last product I purchased?
- What have I done to implement it?
- Have I used it to its full potential?
- Am I ready for another product to move forward?
If any part of my answer is too many, not enough, not quite, or probably not, then clearly I shouldn’t buy the new gizmo.
Trust me, this is very difficult to do consistently. I know a lot of the people releasing these products. I know the quality of work they are putting out there. I get review/draft copies of many of these things ahead of time now, and I can tell you that they are usually really great products.
But buying great products won’t transform your business.
It’s taking action on what the products can teach you or do for you that makes the difference.
So this week, with all these great products coming out, ask yourself those questions above. And before you plunk down another $17, $47, $497 or more, carefully decide which ONE product (if any) would be best suited for where you are right now, and where you want to go.
Buy it, shut off all the other offers, and beat that product to death putting it to work for you.
Bob Jenkins
p.s. I’d love to hear what you try to do in order to decide what to buy and who to listen to. Post it below.
Article Series - Business Finances
- How To Find Over $200 Each Month For Your Business Or Bills
- Buy This And Buy That: Offer Overload And What To Do About It
38 Responses to “[Business Finances] Buy This And Buy That: Offer Overload And What To Do About It”
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| Bob Jenkins is an internet business marketing teacher, with ten years experience teaching teenagers and teachers. He is the creator of several online training courses that teach you how to get better customers and increase your profits. Specializing in social networking strategies for business and creating information products from teleseminars, Bob can help you use internet marketing tools and strategies to promote your business online. |
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Great advice, Bob. I am sorry to say I am in email overload. Embarrassed actually. I should know better…
I unfortunately did not discriminate between important email and stuff I need to filter out.
I will definitely heed your great advice. Thanks.
Stay well.
albert
You are so right on Bob… way toooo much email full of products that “I must have or my business is down the tubes,” right.
Many are good but not everyone needs everyone of these products. You make a good point regarding thinking about the last product you purchased and what you did with it. Did I really do anything with it??
As for one who did a small launch during the past week, something else comes to mind that I’m sure you have faced each day. How does a marketer with a good size mailing list handle the requests for JV’s? Many of the marketers that I have met in the past year or two, when contacted about helping with my launch where way over booked already and not able to help.
It seems to me the problem is only going to get worse in the months ahead as many new people who learn some things in the IM niche tend to stay here and try to compete rather than learning the steps and moving on to other more fruitful markets where their new understanding and skills can often be better used.
Maybe a good teacher needs to put together a coarse like, Niche Development 101… yeah you can steal that if you want… just let me in on the JV program when you launch. Someone needs to really help train folks how to identify other non IM niches and develop products in them. Maybe that would help cut down on the emails and product launches over here in IM Land.
PITCH LIGHT ON:::
Oh, if anyone is looking for some great training and products, I’ve got a sale going on to help pay for our daughter’s December 29th wedding. http://www.joannasweddingsale.com
Thanks Bob, have a Blessed Holiday Season.
Henry Griner
Technology Consultant
http://www.whoishenry.com
Very true
The last weeks my inbox is being hit by the “top gurus” all promoting similar products costing huge sums of money. I have developed a habit of scanning the sales letter and just checking out the price first at the bottom of the sales letter.
If the price looks reasonable i then try to read the sales letter. But ive decided not to buy any of them no matter how good the products are. I need to develop my own business plan first
Great advice and certainly I have adopt some of your recommendation. Need to focus and be organized.
I was very nervous with your link to Joanna’s wedding, there Henry! I figured I would have known about it before it appeared on my own blog. :)
As for Niche development, I truly think that’s what my business building training of the Eight-Fold Path is really all about. But instead of discovering what’s out there for you to exploit, it’s more about finding what’s in you that people will pay you to learn. I’ve found that’s a much clearer path to success. And trying to sell making money products before you’ve made any money — well forget that!
Bob Jenkins
That’s a great advice. I am using gMail so it would be easier to filter out emails that I don’t want to read. ;)
Hey Bob,
Great post. It is awesome to see you back in form. This is where you are the master.
I am so thankful I have crossed over that buy everything point.
I am actually going to save money this year because I asked myself the questions first and weeded out the not needed.
Time to go reorganize my email boxes. Thanks for the refresher.
Hi bob I agree with what your saying, and find that it is confusing and also kinda relegates the so called guru to more of an amateur in essence, while I agree that I love getting stuff from you , Mathew Glanfield etc I do kinda get numb from seeing so many buy me , buy me . In a way Im also getting very nonchalant about products that are a step above the norm. For example the Squidoo Queen product I cant find any squidoo lenses she has done , and so cant really tell if shes any good or not , Tiffany Dow says she is but I really need to see it with my own eyes.
However with the uk to American exchange rate things are now basically half price lol
Even with three or four specific email addresses, I was spending too much time just selecting what to open and read or what to delete – really non-productive time.
So I recently decided to get up an hour earlier every day and spend an extra hour on productive work BEFORE opening my email.
I’m now a lot less stressed over the stuff in my email inbox.
Bob,
As always your Teaching Background shines through.
Being “new” to the Internet Marketing World,
I quickly found myself Overwhelmed with Product Information…
Down-side I wasn’t working on my personal product creation and follow up with my already strong customer base.
I really appreciate all of you Pros sharing so much.
This Off-line Marketer is appreciating the Internet more Daily.
I Interviewed Mike Paetzold a while back and his advice, like yours “straightened me out”
Iwas able to re-organize and get one of my Products completed.
My audio The Master Key is available and also as an Affiliate Program
Great tips Bob,
It’s been about 6 months now since I decided to strip my inbox from dozens of newsletters. I went on an unsubscribing frenzy.
The majority of them were time wasters. I’ve got a couple people that I will probably never unsubscribe from, but like some of your other commenters, I ignore even their emails.
I can see right through the vast majority of internet marketers that are just looking to make money and could care less about their list.
They promote like crazy and you know that they haven’t even looked at the product themselves. So how can they give a solid recommendation?
Relationship building with your list is key. Connecting with them and learning what it is that they would like to see more of from you will not only make your business more profitable, but also more enjoyable. You will get much more out of it.
You’re doing a fine job of connecting with us and providing the information that is most helpful to us. Great work!
I follow your techniques with separate email accounts and designating certain times of the day to check them out… it works for me.
A couple weeks ago I made my first purchase of an IM product in a very long time. It’s a pretty good product and there were some great tips to implement.
I love the questions that you have us asking ourselves. Implementation is key. That’s why I haven’t purchased anything. I’ve been busy implementing.
Keep up the great work Bob!
Scott Tousignant
http://www.UnstoppableFatLoss.com
Bob,
I think we all recognise the problem as you can see from the previous comments.
RichardP has one solution – but that seems to me to be giving in to it by giving it more time. You allocate specific times to your email which puts it in its place without giving it more time.
Myself, I worked out that I am most creative and productive in the mornings. So I don’t do any routine stuff in the mornings. Just go and do those things that leaped out of your subconscious as you got out of bed or are already in your development plan.
Leave the routine stuff, including clearing your routine email to your non-productive time.
Regards
What really irks me is getting the same email from a dozen or more people all using the same potted email.
wouldn’t you think that they would rearange it at least.
I have one gmail, which I can never remember.
3 Yahoo for the free advertising and some of the paid that choke the system and this one.
Oh and I have a Webmail with my ISP, filters everything out even the messages I send to myself.
Yep I talk to myself, well not really I just copy urls and the like and send them to myself so I can keep them seperate and find them easyly much easyer to copy and paste than to type it all out again and again.
I have been having a ball lately though and with the greatest delight , delete delete delete.
Declared Bankrupt and so have no credit card,
can get a debit card but why bother this way I am free.
This Friday I have to see the throat specialist , suspected cancer .
Now if it is all clear I figure that I have another 12 years so I might rebuild my system,
[I was hacked and lost most of my stuff ]
On the other hand if it is not good news , I might just reformat , fill the disk with lovely kids games and give the damned thing to the Autistic kid in the next street and take off into the wild blue yonder or at least get out and smell the roses.
I am on the wrong side of 74 years footloose and fancy free and I figure who needs the hassle anyway.
Shirley V. Livesey.
You die if you worry,
You die if you don’t.
So why worry.
Bob
Good article and just in time.
I should take your advice and seperate
all of my incoming mails.
You are so right about all of these new
programs coming out at once. It distracts a lot of people and they end
up wasting a lot of time reading all of this.
Focus on ONE project until you are successful. when you lose focus, you lose money.
Hi Bob,
You are so right on again, I just love it. I have been trying to figure out how to cut down on my emails, and this was like an answer to my pondering….
Time to go do some filtering.
Keep up the great work. We all love it.
Ed
Hi Bob,
It’s not a joy admitting it but I am a sucker for buying programs. I get about halfway through one and start another.
It is about time I stopped this constant learning binge and started putting the information to work.
I am using this post to your blog to make a commitment to finishing every program I have on my computer before buying another.
It is the time of year to be joyful and giving. I will be concentrating on giving value not only to my clients but to myself.
My next step is to take action in the direction of increasing the value of the information I am sharing with others by putting into action the value I am receiving.
I hope you and all your visitors have a very happy Holiday.
H Bob,
Excellent advice.
As far as I’m concerned I have given up buying all those products for a while.
There is no point buying when you don’t
“beat them up”like you said.
Most of the time, those products are just come on. And their prices are ridiculous.
”
asGerald Njuguna // Dec 5, 2007 at 1:32 am ” said:” I have developed a habit of scanning the sales letter and just checking out the price first at the bottom of the sales letter.”
Marie
Thank you Bob, for this excellent advise.
I’m burned out from all of these e-mails that make me feel like a dumb marketer IF I don’t buy their limited-time-offer-never-seen-before-I-won’t-make-it-without product. Sometimes I wonder if those marketers really care about “helping people” or just are out there to fill their pockets bombarding us with their latest gizmos. It would be TRULY helpful if they would devise a way to help us implement their product effectively BEFORE trying to sell us a new one. I know some of them are doing this, but the majority are not, sadly.
Thanks for the tips on email management.
I am definitely going to try them and see if I can bring back some normalcy to my life.
And you are so right, the flow of emails it do have a loudness to it. LOL
Have a wonderful season!
Sincerely,
Marsha Anderson
Good post Bob.
If there was ever a person who fell for shiny stuff, that was me.
What I do now is read the enticing email and then think about it for at least 1/2 a day.
I also keep tabs on what I have purchased, the date, the price (and when I should receive it if it’s not an instant thing), username and password etc.
I review my list every week to see if there is a pattern, am I falling for junky offers or am I really purchasing useful stuff?
Hopefully this stops me from over buying in the future.
With time, I think we have all forgotten what we have purchased, just my way to organize the gray cells.
Thanks Bob
Cheers
Maria
Hello Bob:
As always, your advice is ’spot on’!
You are speaking about info. overlaod on the net. It strikes a chord with me, as I can be so easily distracted. At times it has been hard for me to keep the FOCUS of my mission so to speak.
I am sure all of us (or many of us) here already own many assets(programs) that we may not be using fully because we wander & are distracted.
I find that if I try & do too many things (opportunities) I do none of them well & therefore have little, if any success.
I believe it is key for those of us ‘newbies’ to find 1 or maybe 2 things & Concentrate on them until we start to have some sucess. Then possibly one can expand from there.
Thanks again for your great advice!
Matt Geib
I feel just like you do Tammy and as a newbie, bashed and bruised and feeling like i will never really be that successful because if I don’t have all the latest, your dead in the water!
When you do purchase something, I don’t know about you but God I expect service that being ‘how to implement’ the darn thing! Half the bloody time i can’t even write to the seller of the product as their is no contact, why do these guys ‘hide’ why aren’t they contactable????
What really pisses me off is the cost of stuff for us buying from New Zealand, always a third more, which makes a hell of a difference!
Is this what joint venturing is?…all these ‘list moguls’ getting on the phone together and offering the same product but with varying ‘bonuses’ if you buy from me????
The down side to me of the whole internet based world is that people are becoming so ‘reclusive’ non communicado unless your in the ‘know’ with the guru’s. I mean I lnow people and including me that never even get emails back after spending hard earned money with these guys who are making a fortune…absolutely sucks! Now I understand why certain people I know aren’t game to go to these ’seminars’ for fear they will ‘hurt’ some of these takers in more ways than one, but you mark my words, unless attitudes change with these ‘big dogs’ there will be trouble. I can see it coming!
One thing about you Bob, (even your emails are too many) you are a giver and sharer my friend.
Have a good one everybody!
I’m enjoying reading this reaction to yesterday’s lesson. I knew it couldn’t be just me that was seeing this as a major problem.
If you’ve read this far, and you have some ideas for how you have personally handled your information overload (besides giving up!), feel free to share it here as well.
Bob
You can’t get to 2, 3 or 4 until you first master 1…but so many new opportunities keep popping up? All this shows me is that there will ALWAYS be plenty of great opportunities,so we should simply just master one project/technique/market at a time.
Besides,probably you won’t be able to implement the so-called new “thing” because it may hinge on you already knowing the first “thing”!
Thanks, Bob, for putting your integrity out front.
Obviously, you are online to make money. We all are… what gets me is that the majority of internet marketers in the internet marketing niche are honestly looking at newcomers as ‘marks’. While cuddling up to readers of their sales page with lines like: “I just want to give back to the community”, or ” I have been blessed to receive everything I dreamed of, so I have an obligation to see YOU get it too”, they are reaching right around you and pulling your wallet out with the whole SENSE OF URGENCY or DON’T BE LEFT OUT or PROFIT ON AUTOPILOT kinds of hype and exaggeration that border on outright lies. A newcomer to the scene has little defense against a slick copy writer who can hit all the hot buttons….
These marketers don’t have a clue where YOU are in your business building when they try to sell you something. Nor do they care. They are simply marketing online, and, if that is what YOU are trying to do, you better become a PEER and not a MARK as fast as you can.
So much of it is just mindset-
1) Remove yourself from the salespage text emotionally, and simply study the marketing style as a fellow marketer.
2) Be aware of this: There are Very Few Marketers out there who are giving you the whole story.
3) Be clear on who knows what is best for your business building at all times…. YOU. Noone else can tell you what you are going to need to do next to succeed, or what product or gizmo is going to ’skyrocket your business’— only YOU know.
4) Decide early on if you are interested in building a long-term successful internet business, or if you are after some (relatively)
quick cash with a short life span…. these are two completely different approaches.
5) Know this: the harder they are trying to sell you something, the more there is in it- for them.
Be skeptical… be cautious… be slow to react… learn from the tactics instead of falling for them!
Remember: No matter how good a product is, or how well it works for some, you still need to add YOU to it to make it work for YOU!
Keith deBolt
http://marketingstep1.com
Hi Bob,
I just loved this post. I thought I was the only one feeling bombarded by offers. Up until now I have always based my decision on whether to buy a new product on whether I had the money. Lately I haven’t had any money to spend on anything so I haven’t bought anything.
Now I can go back to the last thing I purchased and make sure I actually used it and not feel bad about saying “no” to all those great offers. (Although your program is awfully tempting).
I like your comment “instead of discovering what’s out there for you to exploit, it’s more about finding what’s in you that people will pay you to learn. I’ve found that’s a much clearer path to success. And trying to sell making money products before you’ve made any money — well forget that!”
About 12 years ago I wrote a cooking manual about how to save time cooking. I did a few seminars and people paid me for my book. What a concept! Over the past year I have been slowly working on the manual and am almost ready to launch it again. Your comment confirms that I can be successful at this again because I have something to share that people are willing to pay to learn.
Keep up the good work!
Heidi
Hey Bob,
Great Tips… I actually implemented many of them awhile ago using gmail… but took it one step further.
Using thunderbird, I can set up individual email accounts. For those top priority email account, I configured for them to automatically download the email. Thunderbird let’s you know if any new email arrives…
The other low priority accounts don’t automatically download upon opening.
I also limit the number times I check email during the day.
Even unsubscribed from many of the Internet Guru’s newsletter because I got tired of receiving the latest and greatest fad… That cut down on a lot of email.
I discovered if a product or service is really that great, eventually I hear about it.
Glad somebody else besides me uses a similar question system before purchasing… but I add one more question
5. Does my schedule permit me time to learn/apply/implement the information
Ann Rusnak
“The Time Diva”
I actually buy very little, so I’m basically quickly reading through offers — going to the price first before reading further — and then deleting like crazy.
I base my decision to buy on where I am right now in my business building. I am niche-researching like crazy and if the product is anything other than that at the moment … no buy.
My last product purchase was a niche research tool.
Bob,
Sounds like you were preaching to the choir … okay, there were a few new members that hadn’t learned all the songs yet [grin /].
I go a bit further than you, in that I create a new email address for each and every offer to which I subscribe. Then I auto-forward them all to my Gmail address. That way, I have a central location with storage that I won’t lose if a hard drive crashes; I have filtering capability for stuff that falls short of interest but could be useful in the future; I have better search capability than any desktop client I’ve ever seen – and I’ve see a lot of ‘em, been online since ‘85; and I have – a *significant* possession – ability to find out who might have _leaked_ (?!?) an email address to spammers.
My biggest problem with the email overload is boredom. 30-50 emails, some of ‘em from supposedly top marketers, with near identical subject lines and near identical content (only the links have been changed to protect the income [snort /]) hit for every product launch or giveaway or purported JV.
Apologies for coming so late to the fray, but, despite my interest in your email subject line, I had a datbase-driven web page to build; income takes precedence over amusement, any day [chortle /].
I’m looking forward to reading the next email, the one labelled as a follow-up.
Make a good day …
… barn
Bob,
What happened? Usually I can click on your email link and bring up your current blog post then click on save and save it to my Bob the Teacher file. This time, it said that webpage can not be saved and I had to copy it into a Word document and save it that way. Too many steps to save your postings. Don’t do this in the future.
Thanks,
Roger J. Daly
[...] may also want to read this other article I wrote, “Too Many Shiny Things,” which addressed another facet of this [...]
I get huge amount of e-mails every day and I spend way too much time browsing them. Sometimes I am really impressed by the products and I keep the mails to refer to later. By the end of the day I totally forget about them because there were 10 other products that entered my inbox, each one is shinier than the other. Since I am low on funds, I typically do not buy them but I cannot let go. I am definitely hooked on those sales letters and shiny graphics that promise to explode my bank account. But just browsing so many of them, I just cannot decide where to go or whom to listen to. So I spread myself all over the place trying Adsense, affiliate marketing, PPC, CPA, Blogging, Web 2.0, article marketing, etc., etc, etc….and moving on from one product to another at the speed of light and achieving ???? nothing, zilch, nada….
I hope to stick to my 2009 resolutions to finally overcome this lack of focus and start building things from start to finish with the required focus and determination.
I’m glad to find I’m not the only one. I am going to un-suscribe to most of these gurus. I wish just one would be honest and forthright and tell us what works and how without asking for money. There is not enough hours to read the mail and work on our sites. Thanks, Bob.
My inbox is too busy as well! But I want to keep up with the latest IM stuff, so I just sort the incoming emails. I try to buy only things I need and promote only things that actually work – by trying first.
Thanks for the post.
Marian
All that shinny stuff, I love it. Just like any other activity that you are going to get good at (make money with) you do have to stay with your desired goal first and trim out any and all the other distractions.
Know where you want to be and when you want to be there. It is amazing how many things want to compete with our goals. We simply have to know that most of the shiny things will not get us to our goal on time.
By Being selective we can get where we really want to be sooner.
Shiny things I like it!
Thank you, Bob!
I haven’t even noticed that I slowly become addicted to new offers and programs. I don’t spend much on them, but I cot caught into endless research. meanwhile the business is just hanging there.
It seems, judging by the responses, that most of us need to be kicked hard to wake up and realize how much time and energy (and money) is wasted without any real result.
THanks once more for the kick!
[...] http://askbobtheteacher.com/blog/too-many-shiny-things/ [...]
Great guidelines to follow!! I always look at this as being an Internet Business Junkie, hooked on searching for next best thing. Your questions to ask before purchasing are excellent!! Thanks for sharing.