At some point in your business building process, you have to QUIT BUYING EVERYTHING. True, you will always be looking for ways to improve your business and your bottom line, but buying everything you see is not the way to build a business. It won't solve your problem of not making money on the Internet.

There are two main reasons why 95% of the people who start an Internet business fail to make any money at all. The first is that they don't actually work at it. If you really want this to be true, you can convince yourself that there are ways to get into a business for less than $10, do absolutely nothing, and make over $10k the first month. All you have to do is start searching for opportunities, and the promises of easy, fast, riches will soon fill your screen. For those who think this way, I have no real solution. Time and money will eventually teach you that it doesn't work this way. Until you learn that lesson, you will almost certainly fail.

The second reason why Internet businesses fail, and the subject of this article, is that people get onto the sliding slope of trying to find the magic bullet, the single product that will instantly put it all together and start the money rolling in. This, however, takes your attention and efforts off building your business, and puts them toward something else. In an experiment to see where this might lead, I played a hypothetical game called "TheGreatOpportunity." I "joined" and determined to make it work. This opportunity promised "22 streams of income," and offered a zero cost start up. Sounds good, right?

Wait a minute. The 22 streams of income are affiliate programs of one kind or another. You make money with each of them by referring others into the company. Each one was actually a business of its own, requiring its own kinds of efforts. However, in order to make any money with any of them, I would have to pay something. Not a single one offered to pay me if I personally didn't bring in some cash. I could have spent around $350 to $400 just getting myself signed up to make some money. So much for free.

I then went to another opportunity. All I had to do there was sign up, get my own replicated website ("just like this one!"), and then get some people to visit it. No problem. Just get people to visit my site. How I do that was not answered.

So, that left me where many new Internet marketers find themselves. Free isn't free, and getting visitors isn't as easy as it sounds. What did I do? I started thinking that if I just had some tools-- ebooks, autoresponders, software, anything-- I would get the visitors I needed. There must be a thousand people who have "The Shocking Truth," or "The Secret They Don't Want You To Know." In thirty minutes, I read eight sales pages. Each one promised to solve my problem for the Incredible Price That Won't Last Long Because I Can't Offer This Forever. I could have spent $750 to have all my problems solved and been on my way to Successville. I had purchased one of the products a year or so ago, and I went to it to refresh myself with it. I had paid $97, and inside there were "recommendations" for at least five other programs I should get to make it all work as it was designed to work. Each one of them would create more money for the product's owner.

Sound familiar? You start your new business with great resolve, but when the money doesn't roll in as fast as you had hoped, you start spending your money on another tool. This, then, has an affiliate program which you can promote, and it turns out to be another business in itself. Soon, you are spending all of your time in activities that don't produce revenue. Spend as much time working your business as you spend looking for ways to build it, and you will be much farther ahead. Dance with the one that brung you. Once you start a business, stick to it. Don't get distracted. Spend your time and money trying to build that one business. Working on a single product or a single business will always produce more results than "The Next Great Thing.