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If you're about to step into this industry for the very first time then you're probably brimming with confidence. You know that it's easy to make money in this industry and you know that all you have to do is build a gallery or two ... or even a free site or two ... and the money will just roll in.

From that point on your future is assured. All you have to do is build a couple of galleries or a couple of sites a month and the money will keep on coming and you'll be in easy street for the rest of your life.

Of course you've seen people like me talking about just how hard it is to survive in this industry and you've heard rumblings in the distance of legal problems and how times are getting tougher but you know that's not how it really is. You know those people are just whining and complaining because they really don't know how to make money here.

You know that you can and will succeed because somehow you've got the magic dust that you can sprinkle around to make things happen while those nay-sayers haven't got a clue. You're going to succeed and all you have to do is sit down and throw together that first site or gallery and it's all going to happen.

Hmmm, yep, I've met people like you ... in fact over the years I've met lots and lots of people just like you and invariably people like you just fade away. Some don't even last a week.

More than one person that Steve and I have helped thought that all they had to do was build just one gallery and they'd make a fortune and wanted to know why they should bother starting on a second gallery the day after they had finished the first.

Basically if you want to survive in this industry then you need to overcome that confidence that you may have when you start. It's misplaced, it's dangerous and while you've got it you're on the skids right out the door and back to whatever it was you were doing before you thought that adult marketing was where you were going to make your fortune.

Self-doubts
If you're wise, and you do ditch that confidence then a new problem quickly arises. Without that misplaced confidence doubts begin to arise. You start to see that online marketing isn't just about throwing a gallery or two together; it's hard hard work and there are so many things that you need to learn if you want to succeed.

You'll need to learn the difference between entertaining and marketing. You'll need to learn the right words and the right concepts to use in your marketing. You'll need to learn how the industry really works, how traffic works and how search engines really work. You'll need to learn about cash flow, the taxes you have to pay and how to survive the lean times.

It will all seem like way too much for you to absorb if you really do want to make it in this industry. You'll come across words and ideas that you simply don't understand and you'll face some very real self-doubts that will make you wonder if you weren't totally crazy to think that you could ever make it in this industry.

And now it's time to let you in on a little secret. Nearly every one of us who have been in this industry for years have faced those same self-doubts; some of us have acknowledged them and got on with making money while others have really wrestled with them before we reached the point where we are today.

But whether we've merely acknowledged them or spent long dark hours wrestling with those self-doubts we have over come them and you can too. All the information that you need to survive and prosper in this industry is out there just waiting for you to find it.

It certainly won't be all in one place and it may not even be in language that's easy to understand but it's there waiting for you to find it. Once you do find it you may have to spend time working out how to apply that information. You may have to work hard to even understand it ... and there will be times when you'll throw your hands in the air and declare that it's all too hard and you will want to walk away.

That's the time when you will know whether you have what it takes to make it here because, if you come back to it and stick at it you will know that you really do have what it takes and your self-doubts will disappear. They will be replaced with a quiet confidence that you will begin to understand all those things that have seemed so foreign and that, unlike so many others, you will last the distance in this crazy industry.