IntroductionPerfectionism is the belief that perfection can and should be attained.In an extreme form, perfectionism is a belief that work and productsthat are anything less than perfect are completely unacceptable. Thatlater of which is actually what they call in psychology, a maladaptivebelief, and often causes problems in day to day functioning. Manybusiness owners in the world today can be described, and are oftenself-described, perfectionists.The epidemiology for internet based business owners is not different.Perfectionism can be a driving force for success, but in the fast pacedworld internet businesses, it is truly a double-edged sword. It canserve to push forward the business, or it can serve to destroy it. Theinternet based business owner must learn how to weld this weaponwell to succeed. The purpose of this article is to encourage all internetbased business owners to avoid these maladaptive behaviors and tospend their time in taking action rather than thinking about it.Internet based business owners spend countless hours puttingtogether information products for consumers all over the world. Thesegood range from E-books, and reports, to software and services. Theyare often required to produce a large amount of information andservices in a short amount of time. A major hitch in this system ariseswhen the business owner buys into the concept that all products andservices must be perfect before released or before another service orproduct can be started.If one would take a look at some of the most successful businesses inthe world today, they would quickly see that this is not the way thatthey do business. Successful, money making businesses release theirproducts before they are perfect, because they know that theproduct will progress along the line towards perfection at a muchquicker pace if consumers are involved in the process. Think of it thisway, how many minds are better at perfecting a product, one or two,or one or two hundred? By overcoming this concept of perfectionism,internet based business owners can actually increase their profits anddecrease their time commitment, while at the same time producing abetter product.3The temptation for many internet based business owners is to try toget everything right on the first try. This simply defies logic for manyreasons. The first of which is that it totally negates the majorunderlying learning theories. That is, people learn from repetition andfrom making mistakes. Its called the law of approximations. Productsimprove as the approach, or approximate perfection. Just as onerewards children for even the approximations of good behavior, sodoes the consumer reward the business owner when they approximatecorrectly.Consumers are forgiving and want to be involved in the producing of aproduct that they will enjoy. Its call buy-in. Consumers buy-in to aproduct when they are allowed to provide feedback. When consumersfeel apart of the process, that translates into profit for the businessowner! That brings up the next reason; perfection is in the eye of thebeholder. This will be examined more in detail in the precedingparagraphs, suffice it to say here that a producer can not know what aperfect product is until she has received feedback from the consumer.The goal is this: to release products in a timely manner as to receiveconstant feedback from consumers. This will allow for the producer tothen get a better picture of what the consumer thinks is perfect, andto adjust accordingly. If product hit the mainstream only seldom, thereis little feedback that can then be put back into the production system.It is the old theory of priming the pump. One used to have to put alittle water in the well pump to get it to pump out water in return.The same principle works in the internet based information productworld. It is ideal to release a product, get some feedback, rework theproduct and release again. Or even learn from the feedback receivedfrom one product to aid in the production of another product. Literally,the more perfect an internet based business owner tries to be with aninitial product, the more likely it is not to be a perfect product.The following paragraphs will serve to illuminate some of the commonperfectionists traps that internet based business owners typically fallprey to. It is not always easy to recognize them, especially in oneself.But the following paragraphs seek to help one look inside himself to ..................................