syndrome

Business owners should be more like doctors. Forget selling and start asking your customers where they hurt. Broken leg? Ulcer? Empty wallet?

You've had a long day. You're tired from working all day long and tired of having to watch every penny you spend. For the millionth time, you wonder what it would be like to work from home and make good money while you're at it.

It's Saturday afternoon. Your partner has taken the kids to the park. You have a whole hour to write. Instead of which, you sit, staring out the window like Rodin's Thinker in jeans and a yellow sweatshirt. Why aren't you writing? A tiny item called Perfection Syndrome. You want whatever you write in this precious hour to be perfect.

People don't like to talk about it, but it's time somebody did. Chances are, you or someone you care about suffers from it. It's Webmaster Guilt Syndrome, or WGS.

Business owners should be more like doctors.

We see literally hundreds of ads every week that arrive by email, are published in Ezines we subscribe to, or possibly banner ads on web sites. Most of them fit into the "click away" category and are not even read. Every now and then however, one gets our attention and we visit their web site, or request further information by email. First, let's examine the "click away" varieties. The best shot for a "click away" is sending multiple offers (unsolicited commercial email) advertising the same thing. Face it - if we didn't "bite" on the old scam of earning millions to help get money out of a South African country, the odds are we won't now. Sending the same or similar messages every day will get them automatically filtered out or simply deleted.

If you're a creative, the chances are high that if someone is making a buck from your talents, it's not you. We writers, artists and designers aren't good negotiators. We love our work, and we're happy that someone wants to pay us for it. It takes us a while to realize that while everyone else is doing nicely from our work, we're not.