Mark over at TheKeywordAcademy.com nailed it.
And that’s probably what spurred my thoughts along these same lines. Oh, and also perusing BackyardChickens.com for an hour last night.
Mark basically says most people looking to make money online have an information addiction (the ease of publishing on blogs surely hasn’t helped):
The reality is you read blogs because it’s a mental escape. It gets your mind off your job, your bills, your stress – your life. It does all the same things for you that xbox live does for 7th graders. Why is this so dangerous? Because time is not only your most precious resource, it’s the one you can never get back.
I believe I also have an information addiction with a different twist. I want to become an expert before I take any action whatsoever.
I’ve been reading Omnivore’s Dilemma and now would like to raise my own chickens. If you don’t want to want to start raising your own chickens, then do not read that book. As always, with any new undertaking (whether it’s making money online, or raising chickens), I begin gathering my information online.
And I gather…
and gather…
and gather…
and gather…
And I guarantee I won’t be gathering eggs at this point. I’ll still be gathering information. I want to know how everything works, from A to Z, before I even remotely get started actually doing something.
Did you know you need to rotate an egg an odd number of times each day while you’re incubating it? Two times — you’ll likely have a deformed chick. Three times and you’re golden. Did you know pine shavings are best for the floor of your chicken coop? I didn’t either. And there’s a whole lot more information out there that I could ingest before it finally becomes so scrambled in my brain that I forget completely what the heck I’m even doing in the first place.
You don’t need to know everything before you get started. You can figure things out as you go. Learning by doing.
What’s the best headline? How do you increase your conversions? How do you grow your list? What type of product should you sell? How should you do fulfillment? What’s the optimal price? Where should you truly be spending your time (short answer: where you add value).
Your questions will be endless. And, as bad luck would have it, with the advent of the internet and one-click publishing…information is endless as well.
The phrase “proceed with caution” still has a very important word in there: proceed. Move. Keep going forward. Don’t just stand around attempting to become an expert without doing anything.
Now…I’m off to find a chicken coop vendor.
2 comments On Becoming an Expert Before Taking Action
Hey, are you planning on eating the chickens or the eggs? If you are going to raise and eat the chickens…? Here is some more interesting info.
The amount of food needed to raise a chicken is doubled and more expensive compared to the that needed to raise a rabbits and a rabbit weighs an average of 22lbs were the chicken will max at 7lbs. Which will provide more eatin’?
We’re going to raise them mainly for the eggs.