How figuring out my business model has helped me progress?

Hey Folks,
When I first started in the field of Internet Marketing, after the initial skepticism of IM, I was super excited to explore this fascinating discipline. As often as it happens, with unlimited enthusiasm, a world of inexperience, no guidance and a desperate buyer's frenzy, I started buying products left, right and center. I would feel so thrilled after buying a product that I would immediately read the ebook or watch the videos to experience the 'high' I was looking for.

However I would do nothing with the information I learned, because I was distracted by a string of other SHINY THINGS available that triggered the same buyer's frenzy. I still remember my early days, when I eagerly used to watch every second tick by on the launch of a major product as I was super excited and I did not want to miss out on that product by any means whatsoever- constantly pressing the F5 button and swearing when the sales page took an eternity to load.

It was almost like waiting in line on the early mornings of Thanksgiving making sure that I was the first in line. Needless to say what happened over time was that my PC hard drive had swelled with so much material that I had to get an external hard drive to transfer all these products.

It was not that I NEVER TOOK ACTION. Sometimes, I did but what really hampered my progress was the constant distraction and the temptation towards the latest shiny things. For example, I would buy a product to learn the 'Conduit Method', build a blog with reviews and before I could start seeing results, I would shift to another product. What's worse was that most of the time, the next product would be completely unrelated to the previous product like how to build a successful ebay business and before I could see results from this business model, I would shift to another business model product.

My action steps and work plan made no sense. I would shell out a thousand bucks to buy a product but would think ten times to have a landing page designed for a hundred bucks. The 'high' I got out of buying the products was not the same as 'taking action'.

WIERD BUT THAT'S HOW IT WAS.

What's worse, I worked more than before, stressed myself out by spending about 14 hours in front of the computer, but could get no work done. Why? Because I would check my email a hundred times a day, login to my clickbank account to check if I had any sales, learn how to design a webpage to save a few bucks, buy another product to satisfy my buyer's frenzy, watch videos on youtube related to Internet Marketing and the pattern continued- day after day, week after week, month after month without making an inch of progress.

In simple words, I was the BIGGEST ENEMY of my progress. Luckily for me, it did not take me long to realize my mistakes and more importantly, I failed very fast in a very short time. It is like learning to ride a bicycle, no matter how much theory you learn on the way the bicycle works, the functions of each part of the bicycle and memorize the best of instructions on how to ride the bicycle, you are NOT GOING to learn it unless you get on the bicycle and try it for yourself. There are times, when you will fall and the more you fall, the faster you will learn because you don't want to hurt yourself again.

What really helped me the most was figuring out my business model. It was basically a conversation with myself with a realistic approach to my strengths and weaknesses.

First, I asked myself what are the various streams of making income online.

1. Affiliate Marketing

a. Article Marketing
b. PPC
c. List Building
d. Designing Conduit Websites
e. Selling products on ebay, amazon, clickbank etc.
f. CPA offers etc.

2. Be the Merchant- Sell Products

a. Information Products- ebooks
b. Information Products- Audio/Video Courses
c. Information Products-Printed Books
d. Home Study Courses
e. Teleseminars
f. Seminars etc.

I decided to focus on one and ONLY ONE. My strengths are writing, presentation and marketing. My weaknesses were aplenty- limited time, money, resources, no mentors, no networking, no JVs and short attention spans on projects.

Taking into consideration all the above options, I shifted my model from being an affiliate to a merchant and to work on selling ebooks online as it suited my strengths and presented a low risk factor in terms of failure.

And sticking to this business model has helped me a lot. Over the past 6 months or so, I have immensely cut down on buying new products almost to a 99%. What was once absolutely impossible to ignore is now very easily dumped into the recycle bin in my mind. In other words, I won't buy any products even if they are offered for FREE that doesn't fit with my business model. And even among those which do speak to my business model, I will not buy them if they don't fit into my budget or plan of action.

And finally I am working on my first information product and though it has been quite some time in the making, I am quite happy with the progress I have made. I am just a couple of weeks from launching this product on Clickbank. I could have never ever got to this stage of my progress had I not figured my business model and stuck to it.

After wrapping up this project, my future goal is to release an information product on Clickbank every month. It is quite a loft goal considering the fact that my first one took over 5 months in the making. But I have learned a lot of things during the making of this information product that I will be able to save a lot of time on testing markets and designing new processes to get the work done.