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There are definitely times when I wonder about my brain. I know it's certainly right where it should be ... between my ears ... and I know it works because I do think ... well I think I think. But sometimes the way my brain leaps from one thought and on to another has me puzzled.

Take just a few minutes ago for example. I had just left the bank after depositing a couple of checks and was in our SUV and heading back to the office. The radio was on and I was listening to a report about the increasing number of bankruptcies here in Australia.

There's a widely held belief here in Australia that only very poor people or very rich people go bankrupt. One group goes bankrupt because they have no money while the other group goes bankrupt because it's an easy way to protect their wealth.

But the reality here in Australia is much different ... at least it's become different in the last few years. The people here in Australia who are now going bankrupt are middle-class people ... professional people ... people who once had money and credit but now find that they can no longer keep up their credit repayments because the cost of living has increased and they now have a choice ... they make their credit payments or they eat.

From that story my brain suddenly jumped to thinking about all the people who were around when I started in this industry. There were heaps of them and small affiliate marketers building free sites and galleries were everywhere ... but how many of them are still around today?

The answer to that question is ... not many. I could probably count the number of people who were in the industry when I started and who are still around today on the fingers of both hands. Most of the people I knew back then have faded away and, of those that are left, most have grown their business well beyond the one-person business they started off with.

Now that's as it should be and over in mainstream bricks and mortar businesses it's a fairly well-known fact that if you don't grow your business then you stagnate and run a very real risk of not surviving. The world moves on but stagnating small businesses don't.

Unfortunately while that may be a well-known fact in some circles most small business people who start a business don't know of that fact. They think that they can start their business doing whatever it is that they do well and they will make enough money to go on being their own boss, with none of the hassles that comes from running a bigger business, for the rest of their working lives.

Some manage to achieve that goal ... but not many. They may do well for a year or two but then the struggle to survive begins as costs go up while income stays about the same and they gradually go under. If they were wise though they would be growing their business ... continually expanding it ... so that their level of income continued to increase.

Unfortunately few small business people are that wise and the survival rate for small business people is really dismal. For every ten small businesses that start operating today only one will still be operating ten years from now.

Yes, that's how bad the odds are for small businesses and even though we may be selling a vastly different product here in adult to what those over in mainstream are selling we have almost the same failure rate. Things may go well to begin with and we may see our income climbing but after a year or two we begin to stagnate.

So even as you start your business ... whether it be here or in mainstream ... you should also be starting to think about how you can grow it. Steve and I started off with the idea that we would run a small paysite built around me and supplement our income from that by building free sites and galleries but then we were lucky in a way ... we never like to sit still ... we're always looking for ways to expand into new areas.

So while others who had similar business plans to our original one saw their growth curve reach a plateau and were left scratching their heads we were building out into new areas. Now we're somewhere we never thought we would be when we started in this industry all those years ago.

So I would encourage you ... whether you're just starting out or you've been in the industry for a while ... not to look at being an affiliate marketer building free sites and galleries as the pinnacle of your small business career. Instead look at it as just the start of a journey to something that's much bigger ... much more exciting than you ever dreamt of ... and the key to your survival because that's what it will be.

In this industry if you're not growing you're going to die and there's no point putting in all the hard yards at the start if you're not prepared to go on growing your business beyond what it is right now.