I was going to do the my usual “month in review” this month — until I realized I hadn’t done that much with the holidays around the corner and what not.  I haven’t even begun to plan what I am going to be doing for next year — other than what I already have going on.  So instead, I decided to address a question a reader sent me.  In a nutshell, she asked me why I promote things like Google Sniper and over pieces of “done-for-you software” when it comes to blogging and stuff.

She’s tried it (and has yet to succeed) and thought it took too much work.  After I reminded her that making money online is work and that there is, what I believe to be, a very good reason.  When I first got started online, I was told that one of the things you never want to do is put yourself in a position where someone else has control over your earning potential (like a job, basically).  I didn’t get it until something bad happened to me.

When I first got started with affiliate marketing, I used free sites for years and years.  The pages on these free sites were easy to set up and ranked really well in the search engines.  It was awesome — until they started changing their rules.  They got considerably more strict about the kinds of things you could promote and how you could promote them.  After a while, my income dried up because of all the changes (many of these sites eventually just disappeared).

After this happened, I had a decide if I wanted to keep at this or just give up.  I obviously kept going and eventually learned how to use things like WordPress and such, but I also learned a couple of valuable lessons.  1) Regardless of what you do to make money (online or offline), there are going to just be some things you have to learn if you want to survive in the industry.  If you’re one of those people that just hopes to learn one thing and is never adapt to changes, you will become obsolete.

2) Never ever give someone else the controls to the major components of your business.  If you do, they can screw you over — and there is nothing you can do about it.  If you’re serious about making money online, you need to say “no” to all that software crap that promises to do things you can easily do yourself and “yes” to acquiring the knowledge and skills it takes to build a sustainable business.  Rant over.

Until next time…