Natural Progression For Business Growth

Howdy Folks!

I have question, which I hope is an easy one to answer, which is...

In your opinion, what would be the natural progression for someone to move their business in, after starting off their IM business with a free blog account, promoting CB products and doing some basic article marketing, and along the way, making some extra cash from adsense?

After you start seeing some success there, what's the next logical progression for growth?
Or does such a path even exist?

Me personally, I'm assuming a more progressive approach to expand on a somewhat successful business growth would be to go out and get your own domain and web hosting; install wordpress, along with all the necessary widgets to make your life easier, and continue to find either those select 'hot niches' and compete for traffic, or go after the more feasible 'low hanging fruit', by finding those over-looked niches, doing some article marketing, expanding to Squidoo Lenses and start getting familiar with what we know as "Web 2.0".

I ask this, because a friend of mine asked me about getting involved with IM and after trying to outline all the possibilities, they stood there looking at me with the old fashion "Deer Caught In The Headlights" look....So, in an attempt to better outline a somewhat do-able plan of action, I was hoping some of you more successful IM's could offer up some tid-bits on how you progressed your business from it infancy, to where it's at now, and what minor 'tweaks' you made along the way.


Your thoughts, opinions and suggestions, as always, are highly appreciated.



Thanks,



Ray Erdmann