Learn to Control Yourself When Doing E-business

I don't know whether human beings are born greedy. Observations and self experience make me believe this is exactly the case. Despite what goal we set at the beginning, we are always tempted to ask for more. Asking for more is reasonable only if we have met all the requirement of time, money and human resources, and laid a solid foundation already. Unfortunately, in many occasions we forget who we are and where we are completely, so our ultimate failure is inevitable. In this post I’m going to analyze several behaviors that may indicate potential troubles would come to you because of your greediness. If you find your experience more or less match the behaviors I mentioned, I strongly suggest you stop and think seriously.

• Search all kinds of promotion techniques. Such techniques might include search engine submission, directory submission, social bookmarking, SNS, forum signature, link exchange, article sharing, and etc. I don't deny the importance of any of the techniques to promotion. What I'm strongly against is trying to apply every technique you managed to find in each corner of the earth. Almost every business activity, including those in e-business, faces the law of diminishing return, which means, the return will reach the peak and then start to decline once your activity passes a threshold. So, it's quite important that you figure out two or three most pertinent promotion techniques according to the specific situation you're currently in. With the time you save from those unimportant, at least in the current phase, promotion activities, you could focus more attentively on your core business

• Maintain a huge amount of accounts, including, but not limited to, blogging, forum, bookmarking, and affiliate programs. So many accounts might be a clear sign that you are trying to monetize blogging as much as possible, that you're posting many nonsense replies in various forums to get your signature exposed, that you're trying to get your new articles linked by as many bookmarking sites as possible, and that you're trying to find those affiliate programs with the highest payout. The list of crazy activities like these will go on endlessly. If not for a solid foundation you've laid out, such as a clear ambitious goal, high-quality content, search-engine friendly, a stable visitor base and etc, I strongly doubt such activities will bring you more return before you're overwhelmed by the huge workload.

• Can't resist the temptation of "free" content in the internet. As said above, some friends would like to monetize their websites or blogs as much as possible, which demands a great amount of content output in a short timeframe. Obviously this is mission impossible for any single human being. Thus, some of them start to steal other people' or organization's content in an irresponsible way so as to fill in the blank of their website or blog empire. As I said in my earlier post: The Ultimate Determinants of Making Money Online, a roughly efficient market would give a normal market return with a reward to time, money and human resource that you invest. So, don't rely on the ill-conceived thought that those copied content will bring you a desired return, if not a punishment in the end.

In summary, I think learning to control yourself is very important in e-business, as well as any other type of business. My suggestions to all of you, including myself, are as follows:

• Apply only those promotion techniques that will bring the most identifiable return to you in any phase
• Set up accounts that are just enough to match the capacity and targeted market of your business
• Understand the importance of both quantity and quality of your business.
• Don't sacrifice your integrity and code of conduct for the sake of satisfying your greediness