"Would you rather have one candy bar today, or two tomorrow?" That's what child psychologists doing a study asked schoolchildren back in the 1950s. Upon analyzing their answers, they noticed that poorer children tended to prefer the "candy bar today," while the majority of the richer children preferred the "two tomorrow." The psychologists named this phenomenon "instant gratification" -- and concluded that it was an affliction that affected only minorities and the poor.

I wonder what they'd have to say about instant gratification today. Of course, it should be said that TV as we now know it didn't exist in the 1950's - or radio as we now know it, and certainly not the blogopshere. But between 24-hour news channels, mobile text messaging, and a crumbling educational foundation, the fact is that attention spans are getting shorter while the hunger for instant resolution is getting stronger.

A perfect example of this is what happened to United States government official Shirley Sherrod. While in her car, she received messages ordering her to pull over and text in her resignation because a video was found of her making controversial remarks in a speech. The national media piled on in a feeding frenzy – and it turned out that the video had been deliberately edited to make her (and by extension, her political party) look bad. Days later, Sherrod turned down an offer of reinstatement in favor of working on a defamation lawsuit.

Both Sherrod's superiors and the media went the "the candy bar today" route. The administration of U.S. president Barack Obama decided it was best politically to quickly dispose of Sherrod, while the networks avoided getting “scooped” by running the story uninvestigated. Neither bothered to perform the most basic due diligence -- getting Sherrod's side of the story. Doing so would have given them TEN candy bars the next day: The actual truth, and righteous moral indignation at such a crass politically-motivated smear attempt.

As an online marketer, I’ve discovered that instant gratification can be as much of an enemy as laziness and disorganization. We’ve gotten so used to having problems resolved before the next commercial break, we can no longer want to plant the seeds of success and wait for them to grow. The Web sites I have in the top spots of the search engines, and the money I’m starting to make, are the results of months of planning and work.

Nine out of ten aspiring online marketers give up, and I’m willing to bet that nine out of then of them give up too soon. You should take the time to learn legitimate online marketing techniques. More important, it's a very smart passive income idea to give your online marketing efforts a few months to blossom. Then you'll end up with more candy bars than you can carry!