In today’s internet, it is not unusual to hear of someone who gets started online one day and has his first sale the next day. What is even more common is someone who has been online for awhile, learns what works and what doesn’t, and starts a brand new site, does everything right, and makes a lot of money online in just a few weeks.

So, how do they do it?

1) You must have your own web site. Not a free site with advertising and pop-ups and everything else that comes with free. You must have your very own web site, where you control all the content. You must also be able to look at web traffic statistics to know what is working when and how. If you do not know how to program (and most people getting started online today do not) there are plenty of good site builder type programs out there that literally allow you to type in what you want to appear online, click once or twice, and you are online.

2) You must have a lead collection system on your web site. Use an auto responder to send these leads a welcome message and a series of ‘get to know you’ messages in the days following. Treat these leads like they are gold. They are---you will develop a long term relationship with the people on your list, teaching them what you know about your field, sending them useful information, and they in turn, will send you money to purchase your products. Know that this is a give and take area. You must give them information first, then they will order your products. They will not order your products blind.

3) Once you have a lead collection system in place, you must send traffic to your site. Some people like pay per click campaigns like Overture, Adsense, or MSN’s new one. You basically pay a bidded amount each time someone clicks on your site. Others still like to buy banner ads or other targeted ads. The key with those is to send large amounts of traffic to your site and expect low returns. Personally, I like to write articles and submit them to the various article directories. They promote my articles for free, and the readers who click through to my site are already pre-qualified---they like my style or they probably wouldn’t have read through my article!

4) After you begin developing a list, you must develop a relationship with the people on the list. Send them useful information. Do not send sales messages. Simply send them useful information and a link to your site. If they like your information they will pay for your products. If they do not get anything from your letters, they will not buy from you.

5) At this point, I am assuming that you have already identified a product to sell. If you do not, consider affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you promote another person’s product and they send you a commission when they sell something to one of your referrals.

6) Get started! If you haven’t already started the process of developing a business online, you must simply start somewhere. Start with the information you already have. Subscribe to my Ecourse and learn more about marketing online. Learn as you go. But get started. Once you get started, it will be easy to rearrange how you do things, or add in new things, or even delete things you don’t like. But you must get started.