Observing the activities of many people on the Net, I have a feeling that they all have one common feature, and it is a lack of discipline. It is mostly spammers but not only - new people starting on the Net as well.

There is a couple of obvious reasons:

- for some people it is difficult to adopt and maintain discipline without colleagues, a team or at least a manager

- some people do not even know or realise that discipline is necessary to achieve success on the Net.

Different forms of discipline are necessary for any behaviour in a society, and when we talk about success - and not only on the Net - discipline is vital.

Many people do not have enough information on what to do on the Net and how, they just catch isolated pieces of information, do not differentiate between the right and wrong, complete and incomplete pieces, and just do something. For instance spammers: they just heard that email is a very powerful means of marketing, so they send out emails.

Unlike the offline world, on the Net a person is taken out of his environment of supportive colleagues and everything he does is up to him only. He is isolated with the information he gets, the way he processes it, the conclusions he makes, the opinions he forms, the strategy he adopts, the responsibility is his, and consequently the success and the failure.

However, the demand on discipline is much higher on the Net. All of the above requires a very responsible and mature person. Many people are used to work in a team where everyone gets only a piece of responsibility if any at all, mostly only limited decision-making rights and a limited share in success or failure.

In many cases, especially if such a person comes to the Net from employment, does not realise much or anything about the overall conception of a successful company, especially the /from 9-5/concept is very dangerous for success, and he is suddenly overwhelmed by the enormous amount of information, countless opportunities, tens and hundreds of so called gurus offering and promising all the blue skies and rosy gardens without doing anything.

It is so attractive and it must be true, so many people say it !!!

However, the Internet success needs a highly disciplined person, fully aware of all the dangers, misconcepts, demands, it needs a new, completely different way of thinking, especially if you come from employment, you have to live for your success, not from 9-5, all your time. It may sound horrendous but your own family could easily become the worst disruptive element on your way.

You have to develop your exact overall conception, plan and strategy, full details and stick to it. It consists of seemingly unimportant items like your working hours. For instance, many /gurus/ say that the charm of your Internet business is in your own working hours, no one forcing you to work, working 2-5 hours a day and similar nonsense.

Or your friends and family: one day they invite you to a party, you do not have to get up in the morning, no one forces you to work, you can skip your work for tomorrow. Or your family thinks there has been quite enough of your playing on the Net, and you should do something useful around the house.

These are just tiny but very dangerous and very disruptive elements, and you have to be very disciplined to fight it. Because you have to fight it - within you for your new person and with your beloved ones for your space. Once you believe in your success, you have to achieve it because you rob you and your family of your presence, of the time together, of money you could make elsewhere or of help. And there are more.

So, it is in the name of all of it and your success that you are strict to yourself. The first thing you should do is to set firm daily working hours, offline and online, and stick to it. And not only. For each day, prepare a set of tasks, and every day before you finish, check whether and how you completed the set of tasks for the day and set a new one for the coming day. Never say: just once, nothing happens if I skip once. Of course, it happens, all the bad happens: you will see that nothing really happens for once, and you will say it again, once is never, twice is a habit - and this is exactly the way to lose all your discipline, responsibility and all your dreams.

Similar it is with the countless attractive opportunities. Most of them are not opportunities at all, just clever tricks to get you involved, to rob you either of your money or time, to make you build someone else/s success. Be careful and all the time think about your own goal, your dreams you want to achieve and live it all.

In the scope of this article I cannot mention all the dangers nor all the necessary steps to fight them. Just one more to close this: and it is the moments that you come to think that all the Internet is a big scam and hype and you want give up. Do not give up!

Do not give up: first, you can never say how near or how far you are from your success and second, you are responsible to yourself, to your family for all you have spent up to now - money, time, efforts. Money is always involved, even if you do not pay anything, you paid for your computer, the energies, the Internet access, you paid in the form of your time, devotion, hours of your life that no one can give back to you, and the list goes on.

You have to consider all these aspects before you start, once you set on the path, there is no way back - unless you can live with the word FAILURE till the end of your days. Everyone and everything will remind you: you in the first place, your family in the second ... shall I go on?

No, I have an answer for you: DISCIPLINE