The Cheap Internet Marketer

If you’ve read any internet marketing books or reports, you know that they all talk about niches, and finding your niche.   And they’re right, finding a good, paying niche is vital to your online business.  But how do you do this?

First, what is a “niche?”  A niche is a small segment of a larger market — for instance, “eBay” is a large market and “selling antique lace on eBay” is a niche.  “Selling Books on eBay” is a sub-market of the larger eBay market, but ”Selling Cookbooks on eBay” is a niche.   And a smaller sub-niche example would be “Selling Italian Cookbooks on eBay.”

Or “Dogs” is a large market, and “Dog Training” is a sub-market in the larger Dogs market, and “How to Potty Train Your Dog” is a niche in the Dog Training market.  Do you see?  Dog Training is not a niche, it’s too large.   To get to a niche you have to drill down into the subject.

If you need more help on what is a niche and what isn’t, I have a free report called “Simple Niches” that explains the difference.  Fill in your First Name and your valid e-mail address in the form below and hit Submit for a free copy.
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So why does this apply to you?  Well, if you’re starting an internet marketing business, you need to decide what market you’re going to target — what product or service are you going to sell?  And in most cases, you’ll have more success starting out  if you specialize in one small area in a broad market. 

You can’t compete with Amazon.com or eBay or any other large, established online retail outlet or service providers – and you don’t want to try.  You want to provide something that the mega sites can’t, you want to be the person who fills the more individualized need.   It’s all about focus, and building a client base.

So start your business doing one or two things, do them well and make your customers happy.  Find out what other related things your customers want, and expand to these areas later.  Find the need, and fill it.   Start small and grow.  That’s why you need a niche.

There are a lot of ways to make money on the Internet, which is great because it allows you to try different methods of selling to find out what’s comfortable for you.  Try to find a method that suits your personality, the way you think and the way you like to work — if you do, then working will be fun and you’ll be more likely to stick with it – if you don’t you’ll have a much harder time staying motivated and working your plan.  (Yes, you’ll need a plan!)

And please remember this — no matter what someone tells you when they’re trying to sell you their latest and greatest product to make you millions of dollars — Internet Marketing is WORK.  And anyone who says they can show you how to make money without working is lying. 

When you start in IM you can expect to spend quite a while learning, no matter how or what you sell.  It takes time.  It’s like learning any other job skill — you’re not very good at first, but if you keep trying and learning, you will get it. 

Now for some methods — Do you like surfing around eBay?  Then buy a couple of good books on selling on eBay, learn some of the different methods, and give it a try.  It’s really very inexpensive to list auctions, and eBay is very good about telling you all the different charges that will apply.  Listing my first auction on eBay cost me all of $0.35 — yep, 35 cents.  Second one cost the same.  Neither one sold, but that was okay because I looked at it as a great learning experience — I knew I had no clue what I was doing, but I learned a great deal very quickly, and a lot of the things I learned apply to any type of selling on the Internet.  And you can’t complain about the cost — 70 cents — what a deal!!   (Yes, my third auction did sell — and I’m still improving and getting better and better results.)

Do you think you want to sell Affiliate products?  Then get a couple of good affiliate marketing books, start reading, and in the meantime go check out ClickBank and Commission Junction.  And go read my article on Affiliate Marketing, in it I tell you about a couple of seriously good websites that you’ll really enjoy exploring.  Affiliate Marketing is the way most people get started selling on the internet — why?  Because it’s simple and doesn’t require a lot of money or resources to get started. 

Want to sell ebooks?  Do you plan on writing your own books, or are you going to sell other people’s books?  Check out my article on Resale Rights and PLR eBooks – it’s not difficult to get started, and again, doesn’t require a lot of money or resources.  You’ll need your own web site, but don’t let this scare you, you can get good web hosting for as little as $5 to $6 per month.

Interested in AdSense websites and PPC?  These are more complicated and do require some money to get started, but if you’re careful and set a budget, they’re very doable.  Check out my articles on these, and definitely buy a book or two and do your research BEFORE you attempt PPC — but if it sounds fun to you, go for it, there’s money to be made here.

These are just a couple of ways you can get started in Internet Marketing, there are more, so read and learn some, then think about what appeals to you.  Pick one method to start, and Get Started!