=> Get an anchor client or product

You need an anchor client. This is a client who brings in a quarter of your earnings --- you may need three or four clients to achieve this. These are regular clients, bedrock on which your business is based. They pay your expenses, and keep you in business.

If you’re a writer or designer, you may also have an anchor product. This may be a book which brings in royalties every six months, or artwork you've sold under license for which you receive royalties.

It's worth working sixteen-hour days for a few months to create an anchor product. Once you've created it, anchor product works for you.

=> Follow up on slow/ no payers

You can't afford to let people owe you money indefinitely. This means that you’re providing interest-free loans. Worse, if someone owes you substantial money, you're an unsecured creditor. If they go down, they'll take you with them.

Chase up slow payers. Send a friendly reminder email or fax once a week --- every week, until they pay.

=> Don't pile up debt

Try not to go into debt. It's not worth it. It's better to work part-time for someone else, or to cut back on expenses, rather than go into debt. You don’t know how long slow period will last, and saddling yourself with debt is a dead-end solution.

It IS possible to run your own business, and be relaxed about it, knowing that you can survive bad times. If you need to go and work part-time, don’t look on this as failure --- it's a win. You're doing what you need to do, to keep your business viable until sun shines and good times roll. You can do it.

*** Resource Box ***

To read more articles by Angela Booth, visit Digital- e Web site--Information for writers and creatives. Ebooks, free ezines, Creatives Club. Love to write? Turn your talent into a business! http://www.digital-e.biz/

LESSON #4

In same realm as free web host, email address is also a free web email address. Where is credibility?

With so many scams and crooks online, people simply do not trust their money with businesses that appear to be fly-by-night in their organization.

LESSON #5

One link: extreme-dm.com

It is important to have statistics for your website. You should know how many people are coming to your website, how many pages they view, which pages they view, and how they found your website.

When you are hosting your site on a free web host, you will not usually have site statistics. As such, a few companies have sprung up to serve needs of people looking for site statistics. Extreme-dm.com is one such company.

Extreme-dm offers a paid package and a free package. Most new webmasters do not think too much about catch of free package --- they are simply happy to have site statistics. The catch of free package is Extreme-dm logo provides a direct link to your statistics that anyone --- I mean anyone --- can view.

By using free version, you are permitting your competitors to come and look at your proprietary site tracking data!

LESSON #6

As a follow-up to Lesson five, I want to share a nifty piece of information with you.

The Extreme-dm program offers their paid program for a monthly subscription. Their paid plan is on a sliding scale. The base package runs $5 per month and permits up to 10,000 page views. For most people this might be more than enough. Each additional 10,000 page views is another $3 per month.

Let us return once again to Lesson #3. How much money is "too much money" to invest in your own success?

Sure, it might only cost you $5 per month to hide your site statistics from prying eyes of your competition --- but how much money is "too much money"?

Then again, if you buy your own domain name and purchase web hosting, then you will discover that your web host will provide site statistics as part of your hosting package.

IN CONCLUSION

Don't be lulled into false sense of hope given by "pray-to-succeed business strategy" of free websites and free services.

Geocities and all other free service providers are making their money from all of YOUR hard work. Why should your service providers be only ones to benefit from your sweat and tears?

Spend a few bucks to do your online business right way. Pray-to-succeed is for birds.

John Calder is the owner/editor of The Ezine Dot Net. Subscribe Today and get real information YOU can use to help build your online business today! http://www.TheEzine.Net

The Ezine DOT Net RSS feeds are available.