The first question you need to ask yourself: "Exactly why am I reading this article right now?" If you are anything like I was, then you must be very desperate for money. You are looking for advice, answers, a recipe to success and all of these reasons need to give an instant result - right now!
I am going to start with with the truth. There is no such a thing as instant money! Unfortunately the internet industry works pretty much the same way as out there in the "real world". Even though one can have huge opportunities to make money on the internet at the fraction of the costs of starting your own shop, the fact is it will take some time, effort and commitment before you will reap your benefits. Your prospects or potential clients need to get to know you and you need to build trust in them before they will spend a penny on anything you have to offer. Unfortunately there are people in cyberspace that enjoy telling newbie's differently. They advertise their products as "easy money makers" or "instant cash".
When we as humans are all emotional and desperate, we fall for it, the marketer gets his pound of flesh and you, spending money believing in something that does not exist. These lies are exactly what causes 95% of internet marketers to fail and give up. I have been there. I have fallen for the "easy" or "instant" words, I have been disappointed when it did not work out and simply keep up within two weeks of starting these programs. These words explained in me jumping from one opportunity to the next, spend huge amounts of money I could not afford to spend, hoping that the next opportunity will be the kicker and I'd be making instant bucks right away.
After all, after feeling very sorry for myself and believing that the whole internet exits out of nothing more than a load of rubbish and scams, I decided to give this "internet business thingy" one more chance. I spend weeks on research and reading on other people's experiences and what worked for them. As it turned out, many people advised absolute failure and cautioned in their blogs that internet marketing is a load of scams and do not work. Then there were a lot of the "overnight" money makers and in amidst all the guff I finally found a couple of extremely useful articles, from successful marketers that made sense. Some felt freelance writing worked for them, where as others sent their time writing product reviews or filling out surveys for cash, and then of course, there were the affiliates.
The best advice I found in amidst all of these articles, was to start by choosing a product that actually gives you work to do. For example: Becoming a Freelance writer. Once you have started with this and are well on your way, then only do you look in to affiliate marketing. Doing paid work, actually means you are providing a service for immediate pay. Unfortunately the pay can be rather low, but it's extra money coming in and much better than nothing at all.
Affiliate marketing on the other hand, will take much longer before you will actually generate any form of returns. A lot of effort is going to have to be put in to marketing, writing reviews and articles on the products you are marketing on behalf of others. So by earning extra money on one hand from services you provide to others, you can take your time in setting up to become an affiliate marketer. You do not feel the actual stress of not making any money at all. After about three to four months worth of commitment things should start changing for you and money will initially be generated from all the marketing and effort that went in to your affiliate marketing business. I would like to caution you: Even though many affiliate programs out there offer superb commission, it will take a while longer before you actually make a decent income from your affiliate venture.
If you can understand and accept the truth about internet marketing, then there is absolutely no reason why you should not succeed. With the right attitude you can open a whole cyber world full of opportunities!