There is nothing more precious than time. Not money, nor love. Without time, the others don't exist.

Knowing that, how do we spend our time? Do we recognize its unstoppable passage and make the most of each valuable moment?

Some do. Most of us, however, do not.

If we were to equate time spent frivolously with money lost, would we spend it more wisely?

Maybe - maybe not.

When I started my eBusiness in 1998, one of the first things I did to get traffic was to submit my site to Yahoo! Back then, Yahoo! listings were free, the directory was much smaller and getting huge traffic numbers from them was easy.

Pretty soon, my site was generating sales left, right and center.

So what did I do? Did I follow suit with another hot, marketable topic? Did I I repeat the process many more times to take advantage of Yahoo!'s free advertising and lack of competition? Did I solidify my future as an Internet marketer by building my nest and lining it with golden sites?

No, of course not!

I was too busy enjoying the proceeds of my minimal labor - buying clothes, furniture, property, and a pretty new car. When I wasn't spending it at home, I was jetting off to exotic locations.

A couple years went by before it crossed my mind that more money would be even more fun, and that building another site or two would be an easy way to get more fun money.

By then however, the Internet had changed. After site Number Two was built and ready for promotion, Yahoo! had started charging an annual listing fee of $299 for commercial sites. Thank goodness mine wasn't adult in nature - those were being charged $600 per year. Not just a one-time fee, but per year!

Thankfully, Yahoo! 'grandfathered' all its old listings and my original listing still keeps sending traffic to my site for fr*e.

Wow! Didn't that make me want to hit myself upside the head for being slow to build my business?

Not hard enough, it seems.

Not long afterwards, another of my favorite traffic generators, Overture, raised its minimum bid from a penny to a nickel. My existing listings were grandfathered at a penny, for which I was again grateful. However, again I chastised myself for not having added thousands more keywords and phrases that would also now be grandfathered.

I could see the writing on the wall, and cautioned myself to put the past behind and take advantage of present opportunities.

Did I take my own advice?

Barely. I added just a few more sites and relevant keywords, and Overture's mimimum bid was again raised, this time to a dime.

So I kicked myself, hard.

If Overture's tendency to increase their prices according to U.S. coin denominations is any indication, their next mimimum bid may well be a quarter.

So, will I learn from the past, or will my bruises and missed opportunities continue to mount?

That choice should be easy for any of us.

Learn from history to put time on your side. Start building your Internet business now to take advantage of today's lower prices and competition.

Don't put it off until tomorrow, because after all, tomorrow never comes, and time IS money!