I’m writing this on Black Friday, it’s appropriate to ask whether you’re using a shopping list or a bucket list for any bargains (real or imagined) that you’re aiming to buy.

Because the same question applies in your business – not just for those (usually optional) extras that you’ve been thinking about but also for the products and services you’re offering.

Personally, I tend not to buy anything specifically on Black Friday for much the same reason as I didn’t wait for the January Sale in my younger days.

I’ve always been fairly cynical about the supposed bargains on offer and never really seen the point of queueing up to buy something just because it’s cheap. Nowadays even less so because the general retail climate is one of almost perpetual sale prices so I can get the same bargain for near enough the same price any day of the week.

In your business, the shopping list versus bucket list applies to both sides of your business:

• The things you think you need to run it
• The things you’d like to sell to people

The things you need to run a successful internet marketing business are surprisingly few:

• A website that’s hosted somewhere (even that’s optional but you’ve got a more solid business if you’re in control of your web presence)
• An affiliate deal or your own product so that you’ve got something to sell
• Probably an autoresponder to keep in touch with your list
• Apply the 80/20 rule to the things you do in your business so that you’re as effective as possible

If you’ve not grabbed a copy of my Internet Marketing for Busy People and followed the ideas in it, now’s the time to do so by clicking this link!

For your potential customers, use the same kind of thinking.

Most of the world (or at least the chunk of it that spends money on the internet) is time poor. Too many things to do, too little time to do them.

The last thing you want to do is give them what seems like a million and one choices because the natural reaction to that is to stall and do nothing.

That’s why most of those shops home in on a handful of offers for Black Friday rather than a blanket reduction on everything under the roof.

Focus and direction is something people will pay for.

There are simply too many choices. Latest figures suggest that 6 out of 10 apps in the App Store have never been downloaded and even if the app makes it past that hurdle, around 1 in 4 apps that do get downloaded never get run. Spotify has similarly big figures for music that has never been listened to. And one of the UK’s largest online newspapers admits that most of its articles never get seen by more than a handful of people.

That last point is some consolation if your website seems to be gathering virtual tumbleweed.

In the past, we’d find new things just by browsing a newspaper but it’s different online as we’re not flicking the pages and catching glimpses of the headlines.

That’s a topic for a different day – the web is “push” (search) driven rather than being pulled by headlines or advertisers.

But being narrowly focused is good because you’re talking to people who are interested in the topic you’re describing.

Hone the list of products you’re offering so that you can become their personal shopper, saving them time and effort. You’ll be rewarded by more loyal followers who’ll spend more.