Occam’s razor and internet marketing

The other night, while watching a movie entitled “Contact”, the dialogue referenced a principle called Occam’s Razor. Call me crazed, but I’m always pondering the aspects of internet marketing that I hear people complain about most frequently. When I considered Occam’s Razor, I suddenly realized that this principle covers most of those complaints quite handily.

Wikipedia describes Occam’s Razor in this way:

“The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.”

Now, let’s test this principle against some complaints I’ve heard recently, for the sake of making my point.

Complaint #1 seems to be; “I don’t have time for fill-in-the-blank.”

Let’s assume that all of us have about one third of our day to spend on business building activities, which leaves 8 hours for working, if one has a job, and 8 hours for sleeping. If you are inspired to create an online income with a product or business opportunity, you must break down the tasks related to your vision that need to be completed so you can do this into manageable chunks and prioritize them to reach your goal.

Consider your time to be like a household budget. There is only so much time that you have to spend. Sometimes, we begin by tracking how we are currently spending our finite resources. This study can reveal unnecessary “expenses” and provide insights as to how to stretch our constrained resources.

It doesn’t matter if the study is about money or time; the principle that leads to correct action is the same. If you are spending your “free time” on things that do not further your financial goals, you need to make better choices about how much of your time you are investing on those things.

If you honestly evaluate your time, I’m sure you will find that the only thing standing between you and success is yourself.

Complaint #2 seems to be; “This is a scam.”

I’m sure many of you have heard the quote, “There is a sucker born every minute.” As an aside, you may be interested in the history of this quote according to History Buff’s website. For all intent and purpose, the story told here perfectly describes some of what I’ve witnessed with some internet marketing opportunities.

Having learned quite a bit about internet marketing, SEO, and keyword research, I am better armed for checking out any online offer. The first thing that I always do is to find out how many people are offering the same thing to find out if the market is saturated. This can be done quite easily using Google. If this passes my scrutiny, I will invest time in evaluating how I might better monetize the same offer.

Applying the principles of Occam’s Razor, however, the simplest truth is that there are no scams and it is up to us, as consumers, to perform due diligence on any business opportunity, product offering, or other proposal that we choose to accept and pay money for. I’m not necessarily an advocate who claims you must work hard to earn money but hype marketing messages that suggest vast earnings with NO involvement or personal effort always fail the sniff test for me. On the other hand, some free things that claimed to be helpful have really been free and also provided significant benefit.

Complaint #3 seems to be; “I can’t stay focused!”

We are bombarded daily by Skype and Email offers so it is very hard to not get distracted. Although a little rambleitis can be fun and lead us to exciting new ideas we hadn’t previously imagined, it is up to us to ensure that the business opportunities that we choose to join dovetail with our personal or business passions and interests.

Do you have Internet Marketing Attention Deficit Disorder? Are you crazily pursing everything that comes to your attention with the hopes that one of them will be the one that finally works? If you are involved with a dozen different business opportunities that have nothing to do with each other, creating a scenario where you cannot leverage either time or content, how in the world do you expect to maintain focus?

I recommend that you ask yourself these questions about every new idea that is presented:

1) Does the business model make sense?
2) Does this opportunity agree with my needs, passions or interests?
3) Will it be possible to leverage content or knowledge from anything else I’m involved in so I can economize on my time spent building the business?

Complaint #4, my personal favorite, is; “I can’t seem to get anything done!”

Here is where we really can rely on the principle of Occam’s Razor! If we are not getting anything done, there can only be one of two causes:

1) What we think we need to do isn’t important enough to do
2) We aren’t doing what we must to finish it.

The bottom line is, the decision to succeed is ours to make everyday.

Speaking of not getting anything done, I must get back to my work. Thanks for stopping by!

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