You have to have a particular level of faith living in the bush of Australia. You have to believe that the rains will come, that the grass will grow, that bushfires will happen somewhere else and the beer will be cold in the pub.

But that level of faith is only going to get you so far. You know in the depth of your soul that the country side is still wild and unpredictable, and although you may love her dearly she’s never going to be tamed, so all you can do is prepare for everything and hope that nature likes you, for now.

You have to stockpile feed for when it doesn’t rain, dam water while it’s still falling from the sky, sell stock while the prices are good and don’t assume that the good times will still be here tomorrow. You have to believe that there will be good times, but you’re not daft enough to think that those good times will be tomorrow, or that they’ll last forever.

In many ways, the net is the same. There are booms for those trying to live off it, surges of popularity, unexpected stumbles and all the rest of it. Then there’s the rest of the time where you’re struggling for recognition, yearning for comments or desperately seeking feedback. There are the highs and lows, and you have to learn to live through all of them and just keep working at it.

Of course, it never hurts to have your backup plan ready and waiting, so keep that fast horse nearby.

If you’re not doing something you genuinely believe in, then you’re never going to make the best choices about it. You may be trotting along just fine, but you won’t actually be getting anywhere. You’ll be thinking of fast, short term, patch up solutions and not your long term benefit, to the detriment of your websites and your state of mind.

In the real world, take the foolish practice if winter shearing as an example. Wool is worth more in Winter because everyone is cold and wants more woolly jumpers and socks to keep nice and warm. Wool is normally shorn around Summer, when nobody wants woolly jumpers and the sheep are glad to lose their thick fleece.

There are those out there, who probably don’t like their Merino’s terribly much, that think “Why don’t I shear these darn sheep in winter, get more money for the wool, and the ewes will be cold so they’ll seek out shelter for their newborn lambs. More money and more lambs means more profit!”

They forget to realize that the now freezing cold ewes have been stressed by this decision, and now have less energy to put into milk, so lambs are more likely to die. Less lambs means less sheep in the future. So ultimately, it’s a stupid decision to make.

The same applies to online endeavors. If you constantly scrabble for quick bucks, then you will lose some of your credibility, and potentially many or your repeat business. Pay-Per-Play advertisements which play automatically, and PayPerPost sponsored posts cheapen your website and aren’t long term strategies when it comes to increasing visitors and earning a quid on line.

You have to do what’s right by your website and your visitors, and they’ll do what’s right by you in return.

If you dig deep enough, for long enough you will find your reward springing up all around you. The water is there, somewhere, so there’s no need to go digging in the same place as everybody else. In fact, if you are digging in the same place as everybody else, it’s going to be very crowded, and there’ll be hardly any water left to wet your whistle.

The only solution is for everybody to find their own space, and get going with it. I don’t need you in my personal space, and you don’t need me in yours.

This is one of the concepts behind the ‘niche marketing’ belief. If we’re all writing the same thing, then the pickings are slim because we’re all sharing the same water, and there’s never enough to go around. Compare the flocks of make-money-bloggers all digging together to that one, lone writer blogging about their hat.

So put on your hat, and dig up that water. Just make sure you can swim when you’re up to your armpits in it.