It may seem like an oxymoron, but why would you need to create a filing systems for your online business? "Online" somehow suggests that nothing is offline. If ever there was a case for a paperless office, a business that is entirely on the Internet seems like the ideal case. Is it?

Let me ask you something: What would happen if you lost your internet connection? You say that that couldn't possibly happen. You have guarantees with your supplier. You have a dedicated line. Your signal arrives via fiber optics. Or maybe you get it by satellite.

There are no end of ways that you could lose your connection completely, and you need to think about what you'd do if that happened.

There could be a brown-out. That's journalist-speak for a widespread loss of electricity. It's not uncommon in some parts of the world for thunderstorms to knock out the power, snow or ice to start pulling down power lines.

A heat wave could cause you to lose your electricity. When everyone starts running their air conditioners, that puts a huge strain on the electricity grid. In Britain, there used to be a noticeable dip in the nationwide electricity supplies when everyone made a cup of tea. It's true.

Another way you could lose your connection is if your ISP was hacked. Big sites have this happen all the time. There are numerous rogue programmers who like nothing better than to break into the most high profile sites; and some of them, who have an axe to grind find themselves at the mercy of a group of people who are determined to crash the site. The entire anti-virus industry, by-the-way, began as a result of malicious programs roaming around the Internet.

Or, may be a careless workman cuts your line while digging up something else. Less frequent, thankfully; but it happens. I can remember a time when an underwater cable across the Mediterranean, I think, was cut in half. It was weeks before the Internet was available for thousands of people.

Another possibility is sunspots. These are known to disrupt communications. Atmospheric disturbances can occur for no apparent reason, too. It just isn't possible to know.

And if you just happen to have all of your computer files, you know, the ones that you used to back up onto the hard drive on your desk, in an Internet cloud, then you're at risk of not being able to access anything.

Have you ever wondered how to decide what to outsource in your online business? It's probably more difficult than doing so for an offline one. That's because so many Internet-based businesses also happen to be one-man-bands and, as a result, you end up doing all of it anyway. But you know as well as I do that you can't do it all. So how do you decide what to do?

Before you can do that, you need to understand the difference between core and non-core business. Core business is what your customers pay you for. It's your expertise. It's what you give them that enables them to solve their particular problem.

Non-core business is everything else. And to the extent possible, you should be doing only core business.

Obviously, that is the ideal, and online entrepreneurs - especially when they first start - seldom have the money to outsource as much as they would like.

Maybe you're in the same boat.

Even so, here are some guidelines that will help you to get started.

The number one activity that you need to do more than anything else is to create your own products. The most successful online entrepreneurs do. It's true that there are some people, called affiliates, who sell other people's products and who do very well at it, but they are few and far between.

Apart from the advantage of keeping all of the profits for yourself, another good reason to create your products is that you have complete control over the quality of the information. Have you ever bought a product that purported to deliver something really valuable, only to discover that it failed to live up to your expectations or that what was promised was blown out of all proportion? I certainly have.

When you create your own products, you can make sure that this doesn't happen to your customers.

There's another activity that you probably ought to do yourself, at least in the short term, and that's marketing. Writing articles for this directory is a case in point. Unless, and until, you've written a lot yourself, you won't really know how to write them in such a way as to make them attractive to your readers.

Once you do have the hang of it, then if you want to, you can create a template and outsource the activity.

The rest of what you do can be left for someone else; but that's a subject for another article.

If you want to secure yourself in business online or offline, you have to provide for yourself the opportunity of bouncing back, like a life-line, when one of your business crashes. The way to go about it is to create multiple sources of income.

In affiliate marketing, you cannot depend on one source of income, because if the business fails, you become bankrupt and helplessly traumatized. Though, some go into affiliate marketing as a source of earning residual income to support their white-collar jobs. Most successful affiliate marketers believe that building multiple streams of online income is the best option.

Before you start creating multiple sources of income, assess yourself; your resources and assets. What are your strengths and weaknesses? How good are you in creative writing? Can you communicate with people effectively? Do you have good managerial skills? Can you efficiently make sales even when the market is on a downward course? Do you have any exceptional talent, skill or capabilities that others do not have?

Answering the questions above, sincerely and without narrow-mindedness, will help you decide on the businesses you can do extremely well. Importantly, your assets can help you in creating multiple sources of income, for instance, working with a laptop is better than a desktop or going to a cyber cafe, because using a laptop is more secure for privacy, it is portable which makes it easier for you to carry and work anywhere, from your bedroom, your kitchen, to your office, you can take it to WiFi hotspots and connect to the internet for free. Also, a smart phone can be a very powerful resource, as you can use it to take pictures of the products you want to promote and place it on your website, check your email for responses from your potential clients, chat with your fellow marketers on forums and social networking sites for the latest tips and hottest products to promote and monitor your business in real-time. With an I-pad, your work becomes easier because you can use it as a laptop and as phone and turn it from becoming a liability to an income generating machine.

Calculate all the time you spend watching movies and playing video games on the internet, you can use that time to research and find more affiliate marketing programs that you can sign up with and start promoting their products and referring potential customers to them. You can make friends on many social networking sites and market the products through banners that have your referral id and make money. It is wise to improve on your marketing skills by finding training materials, attending seminars and workshops in order to be current with the latest trend in the marketing world.

Conclusively, there is nothing wrong with having multiple streams of income because promoting more than one product gives your potential customers a variety of products to select from, it protects your business and expands your scope, and you will not be affected if one of the merchants you are promoting his or her product closes his or her program.

You have probably discovered already that your online business generates a lot of paper. Funny that. So, how do you create an offline filing systems for your online business? How do you keep track of all that paper that seems to come spilling out of your printer. You know that it's important; so what do you do with it?

Hands up if you have as much space on your desk to work as you'd like!

That's what I thought. I don't have enough room either. And one of the most annoying things is that the family seems to think that the mail and anything else that they can think of ought to get dropped on your desk as well.

How can you create a place for everything you need without losing it before you even get started.

Here are some suggestions.

1. Decide what categories will be easiest for you to remember.

Obviously, you can't have a separate file for everything that you print. That means that you need to create categories for similar documents.

2. Products

You probably will want a file for each of your products. That would include all of your development notes and any information about your prices.

3. Web pages

You may want to print each of your web pages and file them as well. If you lose your connection, these backups will enable you to see what you have. You may also want to keep a list of all of the URLs you have, the login pages with their login details. This would include your web host, autoresponder, shopping cart, and blog. Few things are as frustrating online as not being able to login to a site that belongs to you.

4. Suspense files

This is something I observed when I was in the US Air Force. The unit clerk had a folder for every day in the month, numbered from 1-31. Whatever was due on a particular day of the month was put into that folder. Then each day, the contents of that file were taken out.

All of us were able to use it. I used it for, among others things, to remind me to ready various regulations so that I would stay up-to-date on current and new policies. But for your online business, it could be to remind you to review your analytics, for example.

5. Other activities

Files for marketing, list building, or ideas for follow-up messages could go here.