To foster the creation of a local, sustainable economy in the Willits area by partnering with other organizations to watch for opportunities and vulnerabilities, incubate and coordinate projects and facilitate dialog, action and education within our community.

For a start, let me say that I found myself somewhat confused as to whether WELL embraces an isolationist policy that focuses upon further exploiting remaining local resources or seeks to leverage local opportunities for attracting new sources of income from outside the Willits area. My confusion was increased by a recent presentation on economic opportunities that in some way was based on what sounded like the Chinese 5 Element Theory.

To be clear, a local, sustainable economy in the Willits area will either reach out to greater markets or turn inwards towards a subsistence model that will devolve to Medieval standards. A dwindling number of logging operations, a handful of ranches and a few vineyards produce much of what is now traded to the world beyond Willits for its sliver of the contemporary lifestyle.

By contemporary lifestyle I mean a daily existence based upon the interlocking triad of cheap energy, industrial metals and widespread electrical distribution. Currently, Willits is not partnering with any organization providing these, except as a consumer.

As the United States economic bubble continues to shrink, Willits will be challenged as a community to produce enough of value to meet the increasingly inflationary demands of a national policy of money debasement. This is the reality of economic collapse.

You see, the primary raw material in the Willits area was the timber harvested by the Rockefeller oligarchy and that is all but gone. The ranchers that followed occupied vast tracks of land in the effort to make beef production profitable. Compared to the vineyards and orchards of Sonoma and Napa Counties, similar local efforts seem meager at best.

The so-called fall of the Roman Empire resembled more a long term transition to what became known as feudalism than the series of catastrophes commonly presented in fall of the Roman Empire scenarios. As what passed for Roman economic policy debased Roman money, people fled the city of Rome to take up subsistence farming with the large land owners. These evolved into the feudal keeps so familiar to fans of the Middle Ages.

Those living through the transition from American Empire to whatever comes next will witness the birth of new institutions. One remarkable difference between the American Empire and previous empires is our unprecedented urbanization and integration with high technologies that are not land based but based upon the triad I mentioned above.

Unlike ancient Rome, most of the citizens in North America will not be able to return to the land to support their lifestyles. That option does not exist for the vast majority.

Willits is somewhat central to producing medical and recreational marijuana. This situation needs to be put into perspective.

Most of the large grows function as isolated and self-contained operations remarkably independent from local economic conditions. After a successful growing season, most of the product, as well as the profit, leaves the county.

Marijuana is not grown in the mountains because it is optimal for the plant. Marijuana is grown in mountainous Mendocino County because the growing scene there overwhelms local law enforcement.

It is grown by opportunists, in some cases the third generation of opportunists, who take advantage of local conditions and leave with their bounty, investing next to nothing in the local economy.

Can WELL keep the marijuana growers in the area long enough that some of that money gets spent locally? Can WELL develop new markets for local products beyond local borders, establishing contact with retail customers?

It seems odd to me that these issue cannot be found on the WELL agenda. Perhaps that is the source of my confusion.

Government economists promised us endless growth. Everyone would have their own property, their own investments – everyone would be a capitalist.

You took out loans to get degrees for jobs that did not exist, took out mortgages you could not afford, racked up credit card bills pretending that you, too, were middle class.

Now it is clear. There is no room for you at the top. Capitalism is a pyramid scheme that has run out of ways to expand.

People are

• rioting in Greece,
• striking in France,
• occupying schools in England.

All North Africa is in revolt as the effects of the recession sink in.

This wave of uprisings will reach the United States last of all, maybe, but it is on its way.

The ruling order will seem unshakable until the day before it collapses.

Sure, the basic mathematics and societal relationships that Raw Materials Economics makes explicit holds true, proved every day in the fallout and collateral damage from its abuse. Small joy in this victory.

One thing not factored into Raw Material Economics, it seems to me, is how certain psycho-classes of individuals predictably seek to meet their psychological needs. As accurate as Raw Material Economics may be in expressing the fundamental relationships of a raw materials for money economy, it seems to presuppose the existence of a monetary system.

History indicates that monetary systems, all known monetary systems, come along with a certain amount of baggage. This is to say that no monetary system ever functions as smoothly or efficiently as economic theory predicts.

The reason that no monetary system ever functions as smoothly or efficiently as theory predicts is that they are invented and run by people. Moreover, people only invent and run monetary systems to enable trade between strangers and potential enemies. Capitalism is just a very efficient barter system, perhaps the most efficient human ingenuity can invent.

Throughout history, anthropology, sociology and whatever other account of human activity to which you may be willing to lend your belief, people never needed a monetary system for trade among friends and family. If allowed to live their lives unmolested, people seem to naturally evolve into gifting societies.

Gifting Societies

You see, just the existence of a monetary system in the first place assumes a hostile trade environment. In this environment, populated by strangers and potential enemies, distrust, deception and seizing an unfair advantage come as a matter of course.

Gifting societies evolve out of the human feeling for reciprocity, common societal obligations traditionally felt among friends and family. Several long term human societies, some in the Pacific Northwest, survived for literally thousands of years as gifting societies.

Compare that to the few hundred years that capitalism has dominated human activity and the chaos in human affairs that has resulted. Dominated is a very accurate word to use here because the domination of strangers and potential enemies followed the historical expansion of capitalism.

What can one reasonably expect in a society built around capitalist assumptions that everyone you trade with is a stranger or potential enemy?

For one thing, this sure makes it hard to maintain traditional relationships among friends and family.

It is no cosmic coincidence that the disintegration of traditional families and communities built around the shared interests of friends has advanced along with the advance of capitalists monetizing virtually every aspect of human affairs. Indeed, it is hard to think of any basic human need that has not been monetized, especially in the United States.

On a global scale, what we have seen is the replacement of societies based upon mutual obligations with society based upon distrust, deception and seizing an unfair advantage. Few seem to appreciate the inherent ironies in groups professing a return to family values and friendly communities while retaining the power to profit at others’ expense.

Ford gave you higher wages for obedience and mandatory acceptance of Ford sociologists’ intrusions into family life and traditional activities among friends. Now the demand for obedience and further intrusions into private affairs comes with lower wages.

And with these lower wages, just as Raw Materials Economics predicts, capitalism itself grinds to a halt. Capitalism seems to have become overburdened by the efficiencies and successes of alpha capitalists, even as it is strengthened by the expanding political power of alpha capitalists. After all, this is just Fascism, and everyone who has seen the movie knows what comes next.

The more success capitalism claims, the more the environment it depends upon for its very survival deteriorates. In the end, Raw Materials Economics will likely find its ultimate use as a forensic tool in the examination of capitalism’s corpse.

Of course, there are those who will argue that this is not really capitalism, that the word “capitalism” has been hijacked by monopolist and banksters. Perhaps, in a far away land, in a secret Ivory Tower, true capitalism exists as pure theory and the relationships proven by Raw Material Economics guide the perpetual advancement of humanity.

In reality, capitalism has not been hijacked by anyone. We are merely witnessing what happens when a few capitalists achieve their dream of conquering the markets, eliminating the competition and acquiring unfettered power.

History proves

1. governments run by unfettered capitalists are no more stable than
2. governments run by unfettered generals.

Human society seems to need to learn that lesson again, this time on a global scale. Without a deep, psychological, understanding of compulsive repetition I found it difficult to understand the history and current state of human affairs.

It is easy to blame the courts in the United States for not maintaining the balance of power. Who else can we blame for an executive branch run-a-muck with delusions of grandeur and a legislative branch for sale to the highest bidder?

Is pointing at judges

1. appointed by the executive branch and
2. approved by the legislative branch

really the best we can do?

It seems to me that this rather obvious conflict of interests was built into the system in the first place. We certainly cannot blame all the little hopeful capitalistic entrepreneurs everywhere educated to make their nut, distrust, deception and seizing an unfair advantage just comes with the turf.

That is why Capitalism Is Doomed.

Statue of Liberty National Monument

Emma Lazarus’ Famous Poem

A poem by Emma Lazarus is graven on a tablet

within the pedestal on which the statue stands.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Who will give contemporary United States of America citizens the same welcome? Not an issue? Think again.

Posted in Truth by lancefreeman76 on April 5, 2010

Americans, I have some bad news for you:

You have the worst quality of life in the developed world – by a wide margin.

If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you’d be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.

I know this because I am an American, and I escaped from the prison you call home.

I have lived all around the world, in wealthy countries and poor ones, and there is only one country I would never consider living in again: The United States of America. The mere thought of it fills me with dread.

Consider this: you are the only people in the developed world without a single-payer health system. Everyone in Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand has a single-payer system. If they get sick, they can devote all their energies to getting well. If you get sick, you have to battle two things at once: your illness and the fear of financial ruin. Millions of Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical bills, and tens of thousands die each year because they have no insurance or insufficient insurance. And don’t believe for a second that rot about America having the world’s best medical care or the shortest waiting lists: I’ve been to hospitals in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Singapore, and Thailand, and every one was better than the “good” hospital I used to go to back home. The waits were shorter, the facilities more comfortable, and the doctors just as good.

This is ironic, because you need a good health system more than anyone else in the world. Why? Because your lifestyle is almost designed to make you sick.

Let’s start with your diet: Much of the beef you eat has been exposed to fecal matter in processing. Your chicken is contaminated with salmonella. Your stock animals and poultry are pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics. In most other countries, the government would act to protect consumers from this sort of thing; in the United States, the government is bought off by industry to prevent any effective regulations or inspections. In a few years, the majority of all the produce for sale in the United States will be from genetically modified crops, thanks to the cozy relationship between Monsanto Corporation and the United States government. Worse still, due to the vast quantities of high-fructose corn syrup Americans consume, fully one-third of children born in the United States today will be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes at some point in their lives.

Of course, it’s not just the food that’s killing you, it’s the drugs. If you show any sign of life when you’re young, they’ll put you on Ritalin. Then, when you get old enough to take a good look around, you’ll get depressed, so they’ll give you Prozac. If you’re a man, this will render you chemically impotent, so you’ll need Viagra to get it up. Meanwhile, your steady diet of trans-fat-laden food is guaranteed to give you high cholesterol, so you’ll get a prescription for Lipitor. Finally, at the end of the day, you’ll lay awake at night worrying about losing your health plan, so you’ll need Lunesta to go to sleep.

With a diet guaranteed to make you sick and a health system designed to make sure you stay that way, what you really need is a long vacation somewhere. Unfortunately, you probably can’t take one. I’ll let you in on little secret: if you go to the beaches of Thailand, the mountains of Nepal, or the coral reefs of Australia, you’ll probably be the only American in sight. And you’ll be surrounded crowds of happy Germans, French, Italians, Israelis, Scandinavians and wealthy Asians. Why? Because they’re paid well enough to afford to visit these places AND they can take vacations long enough to do so. Even if you could scrape together enough money to go to one of these incredible places, by the time you recovered from your jetlag, it would time to get on a plane and rush back to your job.

If you think I’m making this up, check the stats on average annual vacation days by country:

Finland: 44
Italy: 42
France: 39
Germany: 35
UK: 25
Japan: 18
USA: 12

The fact is, they work you like dogs in the United States. This should come as no surprise: the United States never got away from the plantation/sweat shop labor model and any real labor movement was brutally suppressed. Unless you happen to be a member of the ownership class, your options are pretty much limited to barely surviving on service-sector wages or playing musical chairs for a spot in a cubicle (a spot that will be outsourced to India next week anyway). The very best you can hope for is to get a professional degree and then milk the system for a slice of the middle-class pie. And even those who claw their way into the middle class are but one illness or job loss away from poverty. Your jobs aren’t secure. Your company has no loyalty to you. They’ll play you off against your coworkers for as long as it suits them, then they’ll get rid of you.

Of course, you don’t have any choice in the matter: the system is designed this way. In most countries in the developed world, higher education is either free or heavily subsidized; in the United States, a university degree can set you back over US$100,000. Thus, you enter the working world with a crushing debt. Forget about taking a year off to travel the world and find yourself – you’ve got to start working or watch your credit rating plummet.

If you’re “lucky,” you might even land a job good enough to qualify you for a home loan. And then you’ll spend half your working life just paying the interest on the loan – welcome to the world of American debt slavery. America has the illusion of great wealth because there’s a lot of “stuff” around, but who really owns it? In real terms, the average American is poorer than the poorest ghetto dweller in Manila, because at least they have no debts. If they want to pack up and leave, they can; if you want to leave, you can’t, because you’ve got debts to pay.

All this begs the question: Why would anyone put up with this? Ask any American and you’ll get the same answer: because America is the freest country on earth. If you believe this, I’ve got some more bad news for you: America is actually among the least free countries on earth. Your piss is tested, your emails and phone calls are monitored, your medical records are gathered, and you are never more than one stray comment away from writhing on the ground with two Taser prongs in your ass.

And that’s just physical freedom. Mentally, you are truly imprisoned. You don’t even know the degree to which you are tormented by fears of medical bankruptcy, job loss, homelessness and violent crime because you’ve never lived in a country where there is no need to worry about such things.

But it goes much deeper than mere surveillance and anxiety. The fact is, you are not free because your country has been taken over and occupied by another government. Fully 70% of your tax dollars go to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon is the real government of the United States. You are required under pain of death to pay taxes to this occupying government. If you’re from the less fortunate classes, you are also required to serve and die in their endless wars, or send your sons and daughters to do so. You have no choice in the matter: there is a socio-economic draft system in the United States that provides a steady stream of cannon fodder for the military.

If you call a life of surveillance, anxiety and ceaseless toil in the service of a government you didn’t elect “freedom,” then you and I have a very different idea of what that word means.

If there was some chance that the country could be changed, there might be reason for hope. But can you honestly look around and conclude that anything is going to change? Where would the change come from? The people? Take a good look at your compatriots: the working class in the United States has been brutally propagandized by jackals like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Members of the working class have been taught to lick the boots of their masters and then bend over for another kick in the ass. They’ve got these people so well trained that they’ll take up arms against the other half of the working class as soon as their masters give the word.

If the people cannot make a change, how about the media? Not a chance. From Fox News to the New York Times, the mass media in the United States is nothing but the public relations wing of the corporatocracy, primarily the military industrial complex. At least the citizens of the former Soviet Union knew that their news was bullshit. In America, you grow up thinking you’ve got a free media, which makes the propaganda doubly effective. If you don’t think American media is mere corporate propaganda, ask yourself the following question: have you ever heard a major American news outlet suggest that the country could fund a single-payer health system by cutting military spending?

If change can’t come from the people or the media, the only other potential source of change would be the politicians. Unfortunately, the American political process is among the most corrupt in the world. In every country on earth, one expects politicians to take bribes from the rich. But this generally happens in secret, behind the closed doors of their elite clubs. In the United States, this sort of political corruption is done in broad daylight, as part of legal, accepted, standard operating procedure. In the United States, they merely call these bribes campaign donations, political action committees and lobbyists. One can no more expect the politicians to change this system than one can expect a man to take an axe and chop his own legs out from underneath him.

No, the United States of America is not going to change for the better. The only change will be for the worse. And when I say worse, I mean much worse. As we speak, the economic system that sustained the country during the post-war years is collapsing. The United States maxed out its “credit card” sometime in 2008 and now its lenders, starting with China, are in the process of laying the foundations for a new monetary system to replace the Anglo-American “petro-dollar” system. As soon as there is a viable alternative to the US dollar, the greenback will sink like a stone.

While the United States was running up crushing levels of debt, it was also busy shipping its manufacturing jobs and white-collar jobs overseas, and letting its infrastructure fall to pieces. Meanwhile, Asian and European countries were investing in education, infrastructure and raw materials. Even if the United States tried to rebuild a real economy (as opposed to a service/financial economy) do think American workers would ever be able to compete with the workers of China or Europe? Have you ever seen a Japanese or German factory? Have you ever met a Singaporean or Chinese worker?

There are only two possible futures facing the United States, and neither one is pretty. The best case is a slow but orderly decline – essentially a continuation of what’s been happening for the last two decades. Wages will drop, unemployment will rise, Medicare and Social Security benefits will be slashed, the currency will decline in value, and the disparity of wealth will spiral out of control until the United States starts to resemble Mexico or the Philippines – tiny islands of wealth surrounded by great poverty (the country is already halfway there).

Equally likely is a sudden collapse, perhaps brought about by a rapid flight from the US dollar by creditor nations like China, Japan, Korea and the OPEC nations. A related possibility would be a default by the United States government on its vast debt. One look at the financial balance sheet of the US government should convince you how likely this is: governmental spending is skyrocketing and tax receipts are plummeting – something has to give. If either of these scenarios plays out, the resulting depression will make the present recession look like a walk in the park.

Whether the collapse is gradual or gut-wrenchingly sudden, the results will be chaos, civil strife and fascism. Let’s face it: the United States is like the former Yugoslavia – a collection of mutually antagonistic cultures united in name only. You’ve got your own version of the Taliban: right-wing Christian fundamentalists who actively loathe the idea of secular Constitutional government. You’ve got a vast intellectual underclass that has spent the last few decades soaking up Fox News and talk radio propaganda, eager to blame the collapse on Democrats, gays and immigrants. You’ve got a ruthless ownership class that will use all the means at its disposal to protect its wealth from the starving masses.

On top of all that you’ve got vast factory farms, sprawling suburbs and a truck-based shipping system, all of it entirely dependent on oil that is about to become completely unaffordable. And you’ve got guns. Lots of guns. In short: the United States is about to become a very unwholesome place to be.

Right now, the government is building fences and walls along its northern and southern borders. Right now, the government is working on a national ID system (soon to be fitted with biometric features). Right now, the government is building a surveillance state so extensive that they will be able to follow your every move, online, in the street and across borders. If you think this is just to protect you from “terrorists,” then you’re sadly mistaken. Once the shit really hits the fan, do you really think you’ll just be able to jump into the old station wagon, drive across the Canadian border and spend the rest of your days fishing and drinking Molson? No, the government is going to lock the place down. They don’t want their tax base escaping. They don’t want their “recruits” escaping. They don’t want YOU escaping.

I am not writing this to scare you. I write this to you as a friend. If you are able to read and understand what I’ve written here, then you are a member of a small minority in the United States. You are a minority in a country that has no place for you.

So what should you do?

You should leave the United States of America.

If you’re young, you’ve got plenty of choices: you can teach English in the Middle East, Asia or Europe. Or you can go to university or graduate school abroad and start building skills that will qualify you for a work visa. If you’ve already got some real work skills, you can apply to emigrate to any number of countries as a skilled immigrant. If you are older and you’ve got some savings, you can retire to a place like Costa Rica or the Philippines. If you can’t qualify for a work, student or retirement visa, don’t let that stop you – travel on a tourist visa to a country that appeals to you and talk to the expats you meet there. Whatever you do, go speak to an immigration lawyer as soon as you can. Find out exactly how to get on a path that will lead to permanent residence and eventually citizenship in the country of your choice.

You will not be alone. There are millions of Americans just like me living outside the United States. Living lives much more fulfilling, peaceful, free and abundant than we ever could have attained back home. Some of us happened upon these lives by accident – we tried a year abroad and found that we liked it – others made a conscious decision to pack up and leave for good. You’ll find us in Canada, all over Europe, in many parts of Asia, in Australia and New Zealand, and in most other countries of the globe. Do we miss our friends and family? Yes. Do we occasionally miss aspects of our former country? Yes. Do we plan on ever living again in the United States? Never. And those of us with permanent residence or citizenship can sponsor family members from back home for long-term visas in our adopted countries.

In closing, I want to remind you of something: unless you are an American Indian or a descendant of slaves, at some point your ancestors chose to leave their homeland in search of a better life. They weren’t traitors and they weren’t bad people, they just wanted a better life for themselves and their families. Isn’t it time that you continue their journey?

Over at Club Orlov some people left revealing comments on the re-post of this article:

Update: Judging from a lot of the comments, many people seem to think that the rest of the planet might not offer any good places for American former middle class persons to continue to pretend that they are successful. I don’t find this particularly relevant; the life of a refugee is rarely comfortable. Some people even think that the US military is somehow going to be helpful moving forward, (by stealing other countries’ oil, I suppose). I can’t think of an occasion when it was helpful, being incapable of victory and a huge waste of resources. Apparently, to stay in the US is to stay in denial; perhaps that is what it takes to make the continuous psychological trauma of living in this country bearable. The one encouraging sign is that this condition is curable: not a single expat has voiced anything but complete and enthusiastic agreement with this article.

The research behind a follow up to last month’s Money post grew past expectations. The history of the U.S. since 1934 involves complex and complicated financial creativity that appears challenging to break down in to understandable units.

I will persevere. IMHO, this history represents a significant force bearing upon our society.

Also, a follow up to First Four Steps To An Online Business is in the works. A hint: it all revolves around the capacity to produce content.

But recently, two revelations seem to have hit me in the head simultaneously. They both involve revealing limits of control and expanded freedom.

First, meditation upon the idea that maybe the universe we live in proceeds as a stochastic process, as opposed to a deterministic one, presents new understandings of the universe to me. For a moment, think about how a non-deterministic universe would work.

If one could no longer say, for example, that action “A” always caused consequence “C”, then how would things happen? Well, for a clue, stochastic processes are central to probability theory.

So, you may be able to affect the probable outcomes of a specific situation but not absolutely determine them. You may be able to shift the odds and make one thing or another more or less likely but never be assured of a “sure thing”.

Sound familiar?

1. Nothing for certain,
2. everything ultimately unknown and in a universe proceeding as a stochastic process,
3. unknowable.

How about all the plans of mice and men?

All of a sudden, a world of anomalous events may come out of the closet. And this says nothing about magical thinking.

Correlation was never accepted as causation by dogmatically deterministic mainstream science. But now the entire idea of causation seems out the window.

Activities once condescendingly dismissed as magical thinking have been proven to have a noticeable, but difficult to quantify, affect on situations. Mental causation proves to be a tough sell but mental influence appears to be another issue all together.

Remember, in a stochastic process causation seems out the window. Mental causation becomes a non-issue, misdirection and an example of the illogical straw man fallacy.

In a stochastic process there could never be blame. Nothing and no body could ever be found at fault.

Sure, someone could influence an environment modifying probabilities to favor certain outcomes, even pull the trigger themselves, yet still not be the cause of any specific outcome.

How would it change your life if you understood beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything, even your next breath and the very next beat of your heart, was no more certain than the results of a roll of the dice? Well, needless to say, the theological implications alone are staggering.

I could go on and on about where this particular revelation has taken my thoughts but I need to mention the second revelation. It concerns the psychological dimension and once again challenges the limits of control with the potential for expanded freedom.

I will get around to writing something about that, too, maybe.

Recently, a woman expressed a concern to me that she had “nothing going” and needed to rely on another person. She felt insecure to the extent she was dependent and asked me what I thought she could do.

The resources for a brick and mortar business just were not available and she knew enough about the online world to think she could get “something going” online. Undecided about specific niches in her broad general areas of interest, she “got going” by creating an online persona.

Her first 4 Steps were:

1. Purchase a domain name and blog hosting and set up an email address for the persona
2. Use the persona email address to obtain a Google user-name and password for the persona
3. Use the Google account to create a YouTube account for the persona
4. Create a Twitter account for the persona

This seems like the essential groundwork required to begin vblogging or video blogging. The technical requirements appear minimal, especially regarding media production with the technology getting simpler every year.

Producing a stream of content remains one absolute requirement. This one requirement shows up everywhere online.

Do not blog if you are not a writer.

Do not vblog if you are not a videographer.

If you can get past the 2 month hump, then you have the 6 month hump and the 2 year hump. You get past the humps by being productive.

The possibility of Jumping The Shark looms as a constant threat.

Being productive may include any activity that produces more value than went into it. Some people, for example, make money online by selling artisan food products.

The next step involves understanding and working with Key Words. Since I feel the topic of Key Words deserves its own article, I’ll leave that for later.

Significantly,  we currently see 4 dominant methods to enjoy Internet Traffic.

1. Pay for advertising using AdWords, Pay-Per-Click advertising, banners or any other method that involves you paying for traffic before you sell anything.
2. Affiliates and Joint Venture Partners send you their traffic and their payment comes from a percentage of the purchasing customers they send.
3. Organic Search Engine Traffic, notably from Google these days.
4. Leveraging Social Media and Social Bookmarking sites.

In my mind, their relative desirability ranks in reverse order to my listing. One could start with Method 4 and never need to try anything else.

If you do your part with being productive, Method 3 should take off before Method 4 peaks. These two methods will give you the proof needed to interest useful Affiliates and Joint Venture Partners.

Until you can prove your production sells, useful Affiliates and Joint Venture Partners will not be interested. Once you prove you have a winner, Method 2 can increase your income dramatically.

If your product successfully sells online, then Affiliates and Joint Venture Partners will be interested. Paying for advertising may never become necessary.

With the above 4 Steps in place, you will be in the position to publish content online. Your content will create a following.

Once you have a following you will be ready for the next steps and that will take another post.

In the mean time
check out my article about:

• Mike Masnick
• Seth Godwin
• Trevor Reznik

and the articles by Yaro Starak

Leave your questions in the comments and I will answer them there or in a new post.