Motivation Tips From Video Games
Terry
Sometimes it’s tough to stay motivated when you’re in business for yourself.
When you’re just starting out, it’s tough to BELIEVE you’ll see the results. You might work on your business, and not see any results from it for weeks or months. You ‘re going through the foundation building process.
Successful entrepreneurs face a similar issue. One you get to certain levels in business, it’s easy to get satisfied. You’re happy with where you’re at. It becomes difficult at times to keep things moving and advancing. And yes, I know this because I deal with it at times. I’m quite happy where I’m at in business, so it’s tough at times to find the motivation to push forward, learn more, and advance.
When you deal with internet business, you’re ALWAYS learning more.
How do the masters of motivation do it?
I’m not just talking about the big self-help speakers and business leaders, although they’re obviously masters of motivation to do what they do.
What about other industries? Video game companies for example are absolute masters of motivation.
I like to play games at times (I own an Xbox 360, PS3, and have a separate game computer).
The entire industry is based off of getting you to spend more time playing their games. They have to “motivate” you to keep playing so you’ll keep buying.
Their industry makes ours look like child’s play.
For example, you here a lot of people excited about big million dollar product launches. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold 4.7 million copies in 24 hours (that’s $310 million in sales). That’s a nice product launch.
What about continuity income? Well, World of Warcraft boasts of 11.5 million subscribers paying in the neighborhood of $15 a month each (they have several subscription plans). That’s serious business.
How do they keep their customers paying them month after month?
Do searches online and you’ll find there are a dozen plus sites targeted to helping people with “World of Warcraft addiction.” They’ve built a game that people play so much that it’s called an addiction (whether or not that is true is not the point of this article).
What have they done in their game that makes people so motivated to play it and ignore the rest of their lives (which of course is obviously bad)?
It’s all about the carrot on the stick.
Players keep playing day-after-day and month after month to get to that next level for their character to get another piece of armor for their character. They’re receiving constant little rewards. They get more rewards the more time they spend playing.
That’s how they keep their members for months and years. What about a one time purchase game like the Call of Duty? They’re considered a big game for playing online against other players (and co-op playing together). As someone plays online, they earn experience for their accomplishments and unlocks additional options such as weapons, character upgrades, etc.
So they’re applying the same type of reward system. You’ll find this common through the majority of popular games today.
How can you apply a little of this concept to your online business?
When talking to Glenn Livingston one day, he gave me an idea that helped working with Adwords. He said to think of Adwords as a video game. You’re trying to improve your score in all the major areas (better conversions, CTR, quality score, etc.) Each day when you’re playing the game, you’re keeping track of these scores.
Not only that, but you’re playing pvp (player-versus-player) on Adwords because you have all these other companies in your industry trying to beat you at the game.
If we added the carrot on a stick idea to this video game idea, that would mean we’d also add little rewards for reaching specific “levels.”
How do you reward yourself for the accomplishments in your business? Instead of just listing some ideas here, I want to hear from you. Have you built any rewards into your business? What are they?
If you want to get motivated, check out this video over at Meet the Giants. It removes ALL excuses and rights to complain about your situation (plus you can sign up to get a load of additional motivational tips while you’re there).
Note: The above is an affiliate link.
Posted on: Monday, February 1, 2010 at 1:53 pm 
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