In any business that you embark on yourself, there will be a time where you come to a point where you need to make a decision regarding the growth of your business. This could be anything, ranging from web development to fabricating custom vehicle parts to plumbing to internet marketing. Any successful business is going to get to this point, and you will need to make a decision for growth.

What are your options? I believe that the growth options can be summed up in a few categories. I will touch briefly on the first two, and expand upon the third.

While this article certainly goes into some detail about why you shouldn't rely on search engines for your traffic and monetization completely, I don't think that there's a 100% way around this. Most people use search engines to find things. There's a smaller amount that click on links from their friends. And, there's some percentage that clicks on links within articles they read.

My thoughts on 55% of David Walsh's 9 Signs You Shouldn't Hire THAT Web Guy:

• #1 - In my mind, not only has the term "webmaster" been diluted, but it also seems to be thrown around by the make-money-fast-on-the-internet crowd.

Let's just say I have a really great idea on how to make money. Let's also say that I'm using this method to actually make money. If I was making $1,000s per month (or DAY!), why would I share it? Would you share it?

While Superman will always defeat Lex Luthor, unfortunately, the bad guys tend to win in the world of marketing (Internet and otherwise).

Okay, here's the scenario:

You've got two guys trying to do the same thing, let's call them, "Evil", and "Good". They're trying to make money on the Internet using an affiliate program. Let's say they're using the same exact affiliate program, using different techniques.

I'm probably a lot like you in some ways, and unlike you in others. For the most part, I'm just a guy that's trying to keep his family fed, and keep the bills paid. Until a couple of years ago, I made money by the traditional means, with the typical 9-5 (plus some) job, with a boss, and a few people above him in the hierarchy, with no real say in what the direction my work was going to take, nor much explanation of the purpose of it. I've worked mostly in the computer field, specializing in internet-based large systems development, architecture, and integration for the past several years.