It's always a good time to review what's been working or not working for you in your marketing efforts. Take the time to be honest with yourself about whether or not you're moving forward.

There is no such thing as failure. You have to take action to do what people call "failing." If you take action you'll learn something. If you apply what you learn then you didn't fail and you learned a way to not get where you want to go. You learned something you know to not do again.

What have your actions taught you? What's moving you forward and what's holding you back?

There are different ways to build a profitable online business, but a few rules apply to everyone. No matter how you're working on your business always remember the basics:

1. The bigger your own personal opt-in e-mail list is, the more money you'll make. The guru's say the magic number is 10,000 subscribers. I began seeing results after I passed 3,000. Nothing is more important than building your list. All of your efforts should be directed towards building your list.

2. If you sell your own product you'll make a lot more money a lot faster.

3. The more you believe in what you're selling and how it will help others, the more money you'll make.

4. If you're in it just for the money, you'll have a hard time. It's no different than someone who works a commission sales job trying to sell a product they don't care about.

5. A business is not a get rich overnight proposition. The longer you stay in the game the more successful you'll become. Business online or offline is business. It's a marathon race, not a sprint.

6. Don't re-invent the wheel. Find the biggest online successes and copy what they're doing. Change what you need to in order to make it fit what you're selling, but market exactly like the pros if you want to get their results.

7. Know why you're doing this. If you don't have a big reason why you're doing this you'll quit when you start to have a hard time. The most successful network marketing leader I've known once told me he would literally jump out a window if he had to work in an office behind a desk all day. Knowing how bad he didn't want to do that led him to doing whatever it took in his business to succeed. He now makes over $10,000 a month in residuals from work he stopped doing 4 years ago with a network marketing company.

8. Test, test, and test again. What do I mean? When you run an ad track it to see if it's working. Ads with one word changed in the headline have doubled responses. Try running your ad in the same places with one or two words changed to see if it increases your response rate.

9. Build relationships with other internet marketers. Get free advice from other people who are doing what you want to do. Most successful people charge for their advice, but if you build a relationship and ask a question here and there in an e-mail, the answer may be the golden nugget of wisdom that you need. Don't bug them, but internet marketers are a pretty friendly and helpful bunch of people.

10. Invest in your self and in your business. You can run a business online for under $100.00 a month. Even if you aren't making money with it this won't keep you from paying your rent or mortgage. Invest the extra money you have on products that teach you how to make the most amount of money in the shortest period of time. Listen to tapes and CDs, read books, get on free tele-seminars. Do everything you can to learn how to do this right so you don't waste years trying to figure it out.