I vaguely remember a particular story from my childhood. It had something to do with transporting eggs to market. The main character, a little girl who thought she knew more than she really did, put all of the day's eggs into one basket, and when she tripped and fell on the way into town to sell the eggs, all of the eggs broke. It seems that her grandmother (the voice of experience and wisdom) tried to tell her not to do that, but she wouldn't listen. If she had divided them up into several means of transportation some would have been lost, but not all of them. It was a difficult lesson to learn.

Everyone is familiar with this concept by the time we reach adulthood. It is most often brought up in the field of financial investing. You know, don't invest all of your nest egg in Acme Widgets, because who knows how long there will be a market for widgets. And then where will you be? Or maybe you are told not to invest all of your nest egg in the stock market, but diversify into mutual funds or bonds or real estate or . . . Everybody from the little girl in to above story to your mother to your neighbor to who knows who else eventually comes to see the wisdom in that concept.

So how come it is that we see over and over that people put all of their internet eggs into one basket? They have one product or one program on one website that they optimize for one search engine (probably Google) and if any link in that chain breaks, they are dead in the water. What could possibly go wrong? Glad you asked!

Demand for the product could wane. Maybe somebody comes up with a better one. I used to see a whole aisle - both sides - of garbage cans in my local Target Store. EVERYBODY needs garbage cans, right? I mean you gotta put the stuff out to be collected in SOMETHING! And then suddenly the company that collects the garbage began providing, at no charge to you, specialized containers designed to be picked up with a special mechanical arm on the truck and dumped right into the collection truck. The driver never gets out. There are three colors of cans; one for trash, one for recyclables and one for yard waste. One driver in each of three trucks instead of one driver and one collector per truck. The company paid for the specialized containers and truck modifications with the money they saved on injury compensation claims no longer being filed by the second person who had been lifting all those heavy garbage cans. Suddenly there is no market for regular old garbage cans and in my local Target Store there are very few to be found. I suspect those few are bought to hold sodas and ice at beach parties! Now if you had invested in the company that made and sold all those old garbage cans, you are out in the cold, and you never even saw it coming. Who would have ever thought there would be no more market for something that everybody needs? Don't put all of your eggs into one basket.

I live in a part of the USA where there is a large military presence. Near one base in particular were located numerous fast food restaurants. I mean, talk about a gold mine! Young soldiers, mostly guys with huge appetites, plus families with small kids and it just seemed like an ideal combination. But the soldiers got sent to war and many of the families went "home" where there was moral support during a stressful time and the customer base was gone just like that. Many of the formerly prosperous fast food places went out of business. Don't put all of your eggs into one basket.

Remember the dot com era? People invested in dot com companies, got amazingly high paying jobs at dot com companies, and bought great big beautiful houses and cars with the money they made from those dot com companies. When everything collapsed, those people found themselves making and selling coffee at Starbucks, living back at home with mom and dad, and trying to finish making the payments on those cars that now are a chore to keep running. Don't put all of your eggs into one basket.

As I wander around the internet, I have run into more and more people who had been making decent money with one affiliate or marketing program or another, both online and offline. Then for whatever reason the program changed it's compensation schedule and these people are left hanging out to dry. If this was all they had going for them, they were hurt big time. Only those who had other sources of income were able to make adjustments and keep going. Don't put all of your eggs into one basket.

Many people spend an inordinate amount of time, effort, energy and money optimizing their website(s) for Google. They listen to this or that guru, buy this or that software, and do whatever it takes to get their site to number one on the first page for whatever search terms they are trying to target. As long as their methods are ethical, there is nothing wrong with doing this because they are earning an honest living with their marketing efforts. It only becomes a problem when Google changes the rules. And sooner or later, Google WILL change the rules. The internet is a very dynamic place and nothing stays the same for very long. See http://www.123iwork4me.com/article196.html and http://www.123iwork4me.com/article29.html. If the people to whom this happens have all of their eggs in that one Google-basket, they will have just had the rug pulled out from under their feet and will have gone from top dog to junk-yard dog in no time at all. If they have multiple sites using different marketing techniques promoting different programs and opportunities, they will be able to re-group and re-coup, recover and survive. You know what's coming next. Don't put all of your eggs into one basket.

Sandi Moses has been involved in internet marketing since November, 2003. Visit her sites at http://www.123iwork4me.com http://www.123-home-based-business-works-4-me.com