One of the main tenets of internet affiliate marketing is the belief that all you have to do is offer your downline an easily duplicated system, and they too can be successful.

I'm asking you to climb out of that box and offering you another one to think in for a while.

What's wrong with the easily duplicated system? First of all, the word "easy". My experience with using the words easy, computer, and internet in the same sentence is that whatever the sentence expresses will be true until it isn't. In other words, your statement will sooner or later prove false.

Case in point: I went to my bank yesterday, to make a "simple" deposit. It's always very simple because all I have to do is approach the teller, tell her what I want to do, give her my bank card and the cash, and she does the rest. Easy.

Enter the computer and the internet. Turns out that yesterday the computer system was down. Not only that, but it was nationwide. Not only that, but it wasn't just my bank, other banks were experiencing the same problem. Can you spell "hacker"?...what was easy the day before was still easy, but the big unknown was when the system would "know" that my money was there and send it where I wanted it to go. Easy to deposit, not so easy to pay the rent.

A few days before that, it was a hacker into my website's server...no website for a couple days...you get the idea here. No guarantees.

Now for "easily duplicated system". The word easy is subjective, what's easy for you may not be easy for me. I can't argue with a system being duplicated...but the ease and success rate cannot be guaranteed. Not only that, but the element of serendipity is in there also, which is basically being in the right place at the right time, and that quality is immeasurable. It can change at any time. There is absolutely no way of knowing until you aim and fire whether you will hit that target or not.

There are so many variables that it boggles the mind. So basically what you are left with is Russian roulette: the system will work, until it doesn't.

The new box I'm offering you is empty. First we're going to fill it with a few babies.

Babies' you say. What the...'

You've heard the term "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater". Babies and bathwater is what I call all the advice you get from the experts, the mentors, those who have gone before and accomplished wondrous things. I'm asking you to think of what they offer not as The Gospel According to Joe Blow, but as babies and bathwater. You have to sort out the keepers from the disposables.

If you read the advice of many many many "gurus" you will hear a few things said over and over...the value of developing and marketing your own (often information) product; developing an opt-in list; marketing via autoresponder to this list; identifying a niche market; aligning yourself with one, then another, ultimately a few good affiliate programs that fill the needs of your niche market; building a website that offers information and affiliate links to this market...and then the big unknown...staying on top of trends, learning to identify what the next big trend or product or service or tool will be and getting in on the ground floor...maybe creating that floor.

A big part of the serendipity is actually sensing where you want to be in the near future and getting there before the crowd arrives. Following your intuition, based on knowledge from studying, asking, listening, evaluating and making an educated guess, may be your most important business tools, and this is not easily duplicated. Once you receive a message from your intuition, you set yourself a goal, decide on a series of objectives that will culminate in reaching your goal, develop action plans to reach each objective, and then get started.

Once you reach your goal, you say aha! Success! (if you're lucky) Now I have a duplicatable system I can market to wannabees.

Only problem is, there are no guarantees. The crowd can get there faster than a speeding bullet. Someone can move the target.

Duplicatable systems have their uses. They help newbies get their feet wet, provide the guidance needed until there is a sense of "how things work." It's this "sense", intuition based on knowledge, that is really what an affiliate marketer wants to develop. No one can give this to you, but a good teacher can give you a baby or two to put in your box.

My elderly father talks of life before refrigerators; as a boy he watched ice blocks being delivered by horse-drawn wagons. His older brother was born the same year (1903)that the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane (the longest flight was 59 seconds.)

My mind is boggled by the changes my father has seen in his lifetime. "Progress" has progressed at an incredible rate of speed. What will we see before we are elderly? Obviously the key here is imagination...

The mark of a true mentor is being able to nurture the apprentice's ability to study, ask, listen, evaluate, interpret, and hear and listen to his OWN inner voice. A true mentor builds courage and stimulates imagination and creativity. A true mentor walks his talk...he just keeps going and growing.

A pretty interesting box we've created for ourselves, eh?