Do you hop on the newest online marketing bandwagon all the time or do you stick with what you’re doing?

With all the hype about this or that new product out, lots of marketers barely get going on one project before they hear about something new, an easier way yet to earn their millions online! All for just $7 ($47, $97, $997, whatever the price may be).

Just look at all the different ways people talk about earning money quickly. AdSense arbitrage. Clickbank. Scraper sites. Resale rights. Private label content. Feel free to add to the list.

Certainly each of these has worked for some people. The trouble with them is that over time they can quit working. Well, perhaps except Clickbank, since there are so many different ways you can promote products from there.

One of the best tactics for online success is to plan for the long term. Don’t keep changing what you’re doing and don’t plan your sites for obsolescence. Building sites for quick income then a search engine ban just means you have to keep building new sites and hoping they don’t vanish too quickly. It really makes more sense to me to build for the long term.

I do not mean for you to ignore all the trends. Some great ideas do come out. But you are often far better off seeing how these things can be added to your current strategy than to drop what you’re doing.

One of the best strategies right now is to encourage your users to help generate your content. If you can build a solid blog or a great forum, a part of the attraction will be what other people are saying on your website.

Neither is all that easy to build. It’s not easy to get people to start commenting on your blog and really discussing what you say. It may be even harder to build a great forum, although paid forum posting companies can help there.

Having your users generate your content still requires your participation. It is not a shortcut. It’s simply a way to encourage people to come back.

Of course, you don’t have to have your users participate. Great content helps whether or not anyone gets to say anything about it. But since it takes so little to allow it to happen, why not?

And of course, don’t rely on a single stream of income. Take a look at what you’re earning from AdSense, for example. How could you earn more from other companies. Sometimes you can get inspiration just from seeing what others are advertising on your site. Don’t click your own ads, of course, but it’s generally quite easy to see what is being offered. Know what companies you could offer products from and think about your offline options too.

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