Ok, first things first. I think it is fair to say that the main reason that the majority of people are not successful with their online (or offline) business is because they fail to take action and did not think about their home based strategies to make income at home.

Taking action is THE most important thing you can do to get your business off the ground and to continue to grow it. You can buy all the eBooks/videos and other info-products you like but if you don't take note of what they tell you do to AND actually DO IT, then you will fail.

I get a lot of emails from people that tell me they have purchased every single eBook there is about Internet marketing but they are still no closer to finding the 'secret' and starting their own business. Truth is that there is no secret and the reason that so many eBooks and other products repeat the same thing over and over again is because this is what works. You don't need to be searching for the latest 'best thing' because the vast majority of the old 'best things' still work and this is what you should be doing and you should avoid those common mistakes made by those working online from home.

If you are not prepared to take action, then stop buying products - save your money! Info-products will only help you if you actually do what they recommend.

Of course, there are also plenty of places that you can learn completely free of charge!

One example is my forum website. There are over 20,000 posts on the forum and it really is a goldmine of information. In fact, I am sure I could create several saleable eBooks from the content of the forum alone. Don't ignore it - it is a valuable resource.

Ok, the next thing I want to cover relates to traffic. I was doing a bit of checking on some of my competitors this week and I noticed something which may well apply to a lot of online businesses. I noticed that several of my competitors appear to rely solely on paid advertising to drive traffic to their websites. Now this is fine when you first launch a site and it is usually the quickest way to build up a few visitors but as a long-term solution, it is not ideal.

I am not saying that you shouldn't use paid advertising but it should only be a part of your overall traffic generation strategy. The cost of advertising (for example pay per click etc) online has increased considerably over the past few years and this will continue as the Internet gets more and more competitive. Therefore, all webmasters should be using other methods to bring traffic to their sites.

A few options (all of which I use myself and have done for several years) include optimizing your website so that you gain free search engine listings, writing articles that are published on other sites and that have your link at the bottom, exchanging links with websites that have relevant content to your own, using an affiliate program to get other people to send you traffic and arranging joint ventures with other website owners.

Some of these options will take many months before they are generating any worthwhile traffic but once they are, the traffic is regular, relevant and free. Any good business person always has the 'long-term' in mind....

And while I am on the subject of longer-term planning here's another point that I have mentioned before but I think is worth bringing up again. As with so many things, it is important not to put all your eggs in one basket with your online business. By this I mean, don't rely on one single website to generate all of your income.....

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a website owner that I have known for some time. He has one website which generates his entire income and it has brought in a very good income for two or three years now. However, over the past six months or so he has noticed a dramatic drop in sales. Of course he is doing everything he can to turn this situation around and I am sure he will succeed but it has been a worrying time for him.

Now imagine if instead of having one website that generated 100% of his income, he had ten websites that each generated 10% of his total income. Even if two of the sites stopped earning altogether he would still be bringing in 80% of his original income.

Spread the risk - don't rely on one business website - build ten or even more!

Think about this for a moment:

If you can build one small website that generates an income of $300 a month (which is actually not that hard), then why can't you build ten small websites each making $300 a month? And if you can build ten, why not twenty.....?

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