It is not an unusual sight to see a full-grown man, face buried in his device, happily clicking away like a child let loose in a toy store on Christmas Eve. Each new click adds to the excitement, and the cyclical arrangement of the internet ensures that his clicking won’t be ending any time soon. Perhaps this is you online, in a virtual world where one click leads to another. The first click is always the easiest, the last click is always the hardest.
Let’s repaint this picture in the context of war, which is what this really is. You’re in a field with landmines buried inches beneath the ground; they are out of sight and sprawl across the entire field. You take your first step into the field and nothing happens, you take the next and nothing happens, then the next, and the next, and the next. Six steps away from where you started, everything is fine. But you’re still extremely cautious and sweaty with each step you take because you don’t know what the next step will cost you, you are fully aware that it could be Step 7, right foot, left foot and Boom!
Online advertisers estimate the average cost per click across industries to be $2.3—that’s what it costs them, not you. The truth is, you don’t know what the next click will cost you. It could be Step 3, right click, left click and Boom! The internet is a field of landmines, and each time you get on it, every click you make is a step deeper into it; very few things will help you like having a sporadic click restraint. Companies have lost millions of dollars because one man ran out in the field and never got to run back in, he stepped on a landmine and that was it!
The wise online are slow to click.
Marching Orders
- We are just a few clicks away from the next attack; your job is to make sure those clicks don’t come from you.
- Think before you click. Don’t make the mistake that many make; take your mind with you when you go online, you’ll be needing it there, and besides, no one else can use it here while you’re away.
- Count your clicks as you would count your steps in a field of landmines, and when you find yourself in what I call Spiral Surfing, where one click leads to another and to another and to another, then you must have a threshold point at which you abort and break the chain.
- Have a single digit provision for the number of permissible clicks in any uncertain direction when you’re online.
- Sound the battle cry to those around you—“Connection established? You are now in a field of landmines.”