Making money on the Internet is possible. It's often not easy and not simple, but it's possible. There are many internet marketers out there that are making a ton of money following various approaches. Indeed, there is not such thing as "the way" to make money on the Internet. It depends on what you're offering and how you promote it. However, there are certain standard rules that apply.

First of all, people who surf the Internet are real people like you and me. If you're trying to promote a silly product or idea that nobody would even think of buying offline, what makes you think they're going to want to buy it online? Furthermore, since the Internet started as a free network (ok, it started as a military network but then evolved to a more academic network) many people expect to find things for free and are reluctant to pay for many services.

So whatever it is you will be offering, make sure to do some market research first to see if there are any free alternatives for it, that will probably take away most of your customers. Keep the above in mind, when thinking of a product you wish to create (e.g. an e-book about a subject you know well) or when choosing an affiliate program to promote. In fact, most marketing courses out there currently teach pretty much the same thing. Find a good affiliate program (or more than one) or create an e-book about a subject you know well. If you create your own product, you can use affiliate networks such as Clickbank to promote it for you and earn a whole lot more than if you were just one of these affiliates promoting someone else's product, assuming that the products will have more or less the same demand.

The biggest issue about Internet Marketing, however, is promoting your product. Promotion means traffic. You need to let people know that your product exists and offer a way for them to buy it from you. The greatest product or affiliate program in the world means nothing if people don't know about it. However, a so-so product will still generate sales and profits if you put it in front of enough people. And by people, I mean people even remotely interested in that product category. Would a young healthy person be interested in buying pills online? Probably not. That doesn't stop spammers from sending these e-mails though. Is it worth the trouble? Again, probably not. There is a whole better (and legal) way to attract customers to your site. Notice that we are now talking about customers and not people in general. And the way to acquire customers to your site is not just random traffic but targeted traffic. People who have expressed an interest to the product or to an area where your product applies.

So how does someone express interest in something, and how do you know about it? Opt-in lists? Been there, done that and it's not too effective. Not to mention the cost and that there will always be people not remembering opting in and accusing you of spamming them. The best way by far, to attract targeted traffic to your site is through search engines. And if you're thinking "yeah, right, how do I get on the Top 10 results with millions of competing pages" then you're WRONG! It's not as bad and as tough as you might think it is. There are still many areas where you can handle the competitions. There are also profitable keyword phrases that are not targeted by many sites. And by that, I don't mean that you get a small number of Google results. The search phrase "buy low cost affordable XYZ service" may still return a million results, but if you carefully examine the first result, you may see that the page is optimized just for the word "XYZ service" and that with little effort, you can beat them for the above key-phrase (but not for "XYZ service").

If you're thinking that no-one enters such long key-phrases you are again wrong! In fact, the more keywords a search query contains, especially if "buy" is one of them, the more likely it is that you have a determined customer. And you can really make an income with 10 or 20,000 highly targeted leads per month on your website. Also bear in mind, that people searching for "XYZ service" are not necessarily determined to buy that service, they may just be doing research, contrary to the ones using "buy low cost XYZ service" that will have a much higher conversion rate to actual sales!

So, there you have it, the general principles of earning money online. Forget the get-paid-to-surf or stuff-envelopes or whatever scams there are out there! In subsequent articles, I will mention more about how to optimize your site for specific keywords, and how to locate good keywords (no point being ranked number one for the "invisible enterpreneurs" key-phrase which is searched once per month or so...). In the mean time, you should definitely familiarize yourself with terms such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and tools such as WordTracker, SEOElite and Good Keywords. If it starts to seem like actual work, then that's because it is.

Do you really believe that a company that claims you don't have to know about computers, you don't have to know about the product, you don't have to talk to customers, actually needs you so that they have someone to send a check to? To make money you either have to put in your knowledge and expertise, your time or your money. Usually all three, but certainly not zero! If a company claims otherwise, then it's probably a scam and most likely it has a start-up or subscription fee (which means that in the end, you're still giving something, your hard-earned cash). There are no free lunches in life and the Internet is not an exception.