In this economic climate people from all walks of life are turning to the internet to supplement or replace their income. Many don’t have a clue where to start so begin trawling the pages of Google.

I was no different and if you have got that far, you too are probably overwhelmed by the amount of information available and the many different ways people claim to be making money online.

Now internet marketing isn’t something they teach at school or college, it is relatively new of course as the internet hasn’t been around all that long. The way to learn this trade is also online.

Now for the big secret… There isn’t one! There is no big secret to making money online. There are no get quick rich schemes and if you see them be very wary! People making money online have taken the time and put in the effort to learn this business, trial and error in many cases and the techniques will differ from person to person.

What should you sell online? If you are new to internet marketing I would put this a few points down your “to do list”. I spent months before starting out researching and looking for a good product to sell online. Even tried to think of something to invent! The best piece of advice I can you give you now is forget the products and learn the techniques.

I did everything the wrong way round. I wasted money on products then produced a website to sell them from, before learning the hard way that a website is useless unless you can get people to see it.

The underlying principals and techniques for marketing online are the same whatever you promote so this is where you should focus your attention to get this training.

Trust me, you will be offered so many products to promote and sell when you start mixing in the circles with other internet marketers don’t waste your time up front trying to find one before you’ve learnt how you will market them.

People will offer you this help for free. Yes that’s right for free! The reason they will do this is because as soon as you enquire you are a potential customer. You may have noticed everyone wants your name and email before they give you this help; this is so they can market to you. It’s OK though so don’t be afraid to get on a few peoples “lists”, even now I sign up to others to see what they are up to and make sure I’m current in my techniques to market.

The nature of internet marketing; sometimes called network marketing; is why these people will help you. They know you are not stupid and won’t fall for some hard sell so they will all offer you help and value for free in return for your name and email in the hope at some point you will buy a product or service from them. This brings me back to the point about products, even if you are not interested in what they have to offer immediately, at some point they will have another product or service they will want to tell you about.

So get out there, keep positive and motivated in the face of information overload and look for the people that will reply to your emails, answer your calls and will help you. You want to find someone that will take the time to help you, ebooks are great for some things but the 1-2-1 help from an individual that is already successful in that field in invaluable.

Regardless of what niche it is that you are interested in working in online, from dog training to health and beauty, the marketing techniques will have first been tried and testing in the making money online niche. So even if you don’t want to work in this niche it’s a good place to start your training. You may even find a nice little income stream.