Billionaire Richard Branson, the entrepreneur behind the Virgin brand, is one of the world's most successful and adventurous businessmen. Not being satisfied to run several highly profitable businesses Branson also engages in occasional feats of courage, or stupidity, depending on your stand point!

I read his autobiography recently and discovered something that perfectly sums up what it takes to achieve success on the Internet.

To set the scene - Branson had called a meeting a few hours before he and his co-pilot were due to embark on an attempt to fly from Japan to America across the Pacific non-stop in a hot air balloon. The attempt would be fraught with countless difficulties, challenges and life-threatening risks. One last pre-take off meeting was held to talk through all eventualities of the flight and to discuss what Branson and his co-pilot needed to do to survive in each case.

After an intense 3-hours' briefing, covering everything that could go wrong, on this, one of the most complex and risky aviation record attempts in history, Richard Branson came away having written just eight words into his notepad;

"Keep the fire burning - that's all that matters."

How incredible is that? He's faced with almost certain death and has just been briefed on the technical details of which levers to pull when, which buttons to press to escape crashing and which actions to take to prevent the capsule from decompressing and yet all he writes down is "Keep the fire burning".

Why? Because that's all that matters! As long as he keeps the fire burning the balloon will stay in the air and he will eventually make it across the Pacific safely, nothing else matters.

So what has this got to do with Internet marketing? Let me explain..

** Do You Have The Energy To Keep The Fire Burning?

Being honest now - how many times have you stared at your website and thought;

"What ONE thing can I do to get more sales?"

You've probably thought this a few times right? Well, you're not alone. Unfortunately though, too many people make the mistake of thinking that;

- The one thing is getting a high search engine rankings

- The one thing is getting more subscribers

- The one thing is getting more traffic

- The one thing is getting accepted by Yahoo!

- The one thing is getting an article published

- Etc.

But the point is that none of these are the right