Long ago it was common for a man to work in the same job field for 50 years and then retire. In truly ancient times, boys apprenticed under their fathers and learned the family trade. Thus one had a single job title, and from these titles came many of our last names because it was so rare for anyone to ever change jobs.

Today things are very different. We must all offer a variety of skills and be prepared to change skill sets many times during life. Often these changes take people off guard, when their job is replaced by a computer program, or outsourced to another company they are lost, and do not know what to do next.

A modern day entrepreneur must be prepared for anything, and that involves intensive diversification. Just as trees have many branches so must a company, even if that company consists of only one person, that person must diversify their skills and interests to encompass many different activities in order to survive.

Making money on line is a wonderful life to be sure. Being self employed in any field is amazingly freeing, but the internet life is unmatched in the field of personal freedom. It is beautiful because anyone can do it if they are savvy enough, but the key is diversification.

While it takes a while to build, entrepreneurs should eventually craft a network of businesses both as on line intellectual property and involving physical products. One should also have at least the potential for an outlet outside the internet. On line money making pursuits come in several categories, including up front and residual income for intellectual property, the sale of merchandise, sale of a product actually produced by the entrepreneur and offering services produced by the entrepreneur.

Which combination of these money making approaches one chooses is based on individual talents, and personal choice, but it is vital to diversify in order to produce both up front and residual income. For example a business person who produces jewelry might market that jewelry on line and also sell jewelry making supplies both on line and in a physical location. They might also decide to write a blog about jewelry making on line and sell ad space on that blog. Eventually they may decide to create many blogs, perhaps about other topics as well as jewelry making, or ghost write for extra cash from time to time. Linking their sites together, and linking them to other people’s blogs will make all the sites stronger, and yield more hits for their sites, but having a wide variety of formats on many different service providers is key to making money. With money they make they might invest money in still other businesses.

Diversification protects the entrepreneur from being devastated if something goes wrong with one or even two of his enterprises. We can no longer just have one trade. We must have a variety of skills, services and products to offer in order to stay afloat in modern times.