Those of you in the US have your version of the Apprentice and we in the UK have our own. I really like the show but the number one reason I like it is not the the contestants nor the tasks they are set but rather the laser precision, super clarity of Alan Sugar’s analysis of the proceeding.

How many times have we heard him say “You didn’t do what you were asked to do !” or “you say you are a salesman but you didn’t sell !” etc etc. This man knows 100% what he needs to be doing and what his business needs to be doing. The contestants complain and disagree but eventually they realize he is right.

A good friend of mine from the Netherlands recently emailed me about a business opportunity he had found and I just wanted to share some thoughts with you that were kind of triggered by my recent watching of the Apprentice.

First of all I’m not posting to belittle my good friend Anton. Far from it, I just want to make an important point to any Entrepreneur that is maybe starting out on the Internet looking to change their life. Some people just want to make little extra but I believe that most people are looking to make a substantial life changing amount of money even if they don’t admit it.

Anton told me about a scheme that was kind of familiar to me and to anyone that has been involved in Internet Marketing online for a while. The scheme involves you receiving emails that contain links that you click to generate traffic to business web sites and you get paid for your clicks. It is multi-level so you get paid of the leverage of other people you introduce. Great idea in principle (although the businesses that are paying for the clicks to generate traffic must have lost the plot because it is not traffic you need it is conversions), and similar to many others I have seen. I have even done a few similar things in the past - remember auto-surfs ? Lost money on those I don’t mind admiting and it was all part of being an Apprentice Internet Marketer.

What is my point?

If you are very serious about becoming an Internet Entrepreneur and to build a business asset that lives for years and pays you for years then you need to develop the focused mind set of Alan Sugar (or Donald Trump) and know exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it. Decide what business you want to build and ensure that it has the potential to be a real business that offers real value to real people. Carefully craft your business and define in your imagination and then on paper what your business will look like when it is built. If this is what you truly want and you are able to create a blue print for your future then and only then will you have the clarity to truly be successful online.

What destroys Entprepreneurs and does so by the thousands every day is a lack of clarity and purpose. They run from business opportunity to opportunity such as this email marketing auto-click thing (no disrespect to those that do it and maybe make money with it) but never see it through and more importantly don’t have a framework in which they can insert it as a part of their business or allow them to evaluate whether it makes sense to look at it at all.

If it doesn’t fit it must be filtered out - there is just too much stuff happening nowadays and the noise levels are getting louder and louder. If you can develop this framework with a set of filters to evaluate what is going to add value to your online business ambitions and what is nothing more than a distraction, then you will have gotten over a very big hurdle indeed. (This killer took me years to beat so please take what I say seriously)

The good news for anyone online now is that if they can begin to think this way they will have a head start on the many millions (billions ?) of wealth seekers that are still to get online. The competition and the casualty rate online will only get ever bigger in the years to come so for those at the head of the game make your time count.

Shaun O’Hagan is the CEO of Internet Marketing and Technology Company KeyPageMedia.com Currently his company is focussed on Web2.0 strategies for traffic generation