It was a CNN documentary in 2002, I sat amazed in front of the television wandering how. How would I be part of it?How could I manage to achieve it? Would I need to be in Silicon Valley for this to be possible for me? Or is it even too late?I knew it could make the difference of me making a lot of money while I am still very young or growing up to be just another worker or even worse job seeker and even if lucky enough, make some money to be able to afford a luxury car by the time I am 40.

After watching a CNN documentary on the Dotcom boom and burst, I made up my mind to go online and make a living.I had no idea what it takes or how to do it, but I only believed I could do it. This was the beginning of my journey.My first idea was to make a website about my country Nigeria and share African music and festival videos with people around the world. I thought all I needed to do was to learn web design and I would make it. I never thought it could take years of research and testing Internet marketing tactics and strategies. May be I wasn’t the only person that watched the documentary that night, or even may be I wasn’t the only person that made up his mind to start chasing an online dream that night.

The truth is before me, and even before the documentary people have been struggling with making money online. May be that night, I was just the next person to join the struggle or even among a set of people that joined that night. Because since the dawn of the internet, as early as 1996, people have been trying to make money online, some have succeeded, some have given up, while some are still trying to make it.Online, it is a bit hard to separate between the hype and the actual truth about making money, especially for the new comers. There are thousands of programs that promise you to make a million, but when you look deep, they are just unrealistic. So is there any big secret about making money online that the online marketing and making money gurus are hiding?

I guess no! I believe all you need to make money online is the understanding. By understanding the online market, what works and what doesn’t, combined with hard work and perseverance, you will automatically guarantee your success online. So how do you understand the market and know what works and what don’t work?

There are two ways you can learn this, the first you go through almost every online lesson through trial and error by yourself or the second, you learn from someone that had been in and out of the struggle so you save yourself a great deal amount of time.

My time, I chose the first option, not because I thought it was the better option, but because it was the only choice I had.After a lot of hard work, I managed to put up a site on a free server, and that was when I began to learn some Internet marketing lessons. I didn’t have any idea on how to get people to my site, I was completely new to the Internet and I already had a website. So I found a start page exchange program and I joined it hoping I would be able to get a lot of people to my site, make some sales and in the end realize my new found online dream.It was never as easy as I thought. Web design became more complicated than I ever expected, getting website visitors became a very hard and time-consuming job and ultimately, making a single sale seemed impossible. Only one thing didn’t disappoint me, myself. I didn’t give up.I kept trying, learning and getting better.

Whenever I fail, I make a list of reasons why I failed and make sure I avoid them the next time I’m trying something out again.After the failure of my first attempt, the main reason that came at the top of my “reasons why I failed list” was the fact that my site was hosted on a free server. Such sites look very unprofessional, and distract the visitor with too many ads.

When surfers want to buy something online, they tend to go to an established online company, so if your site is hosted on a free server like www.yoursite.freehost.com, people wont buy from you. They get annoyed or carried away by too much ads on the site.So one of the first corrections I made was to invest about $20 for a web hosting account and a domain name, so that I would have my own address for visitors to remember and come back anytime and I would be able to post only what I want on the site, which gives a more established image of the web site and a focussed environment so that my prospects can focus on what I have to say and don’t get distracted by flashing banner ads.I was still not making sales even though I now have my own hosting account and a domain name for my online business. So I knew I had to make another list of possible causes. I needed to ask myself what I thought was going wrong and how to solve it.

I was not getting much traffic to the site, just around 300 visitors and the big problem is the source of my site visitors. I had not been indexed by any search engine, so I was using a startpage exchange program for my traffic needs. I soon realized that that was part of my problems. I was not targeting any market, I was driving traffic to my site without asking myself if they want my product or not.My site was a niche web site, but I was not targeting that niche market. The people that actually went to my site were participants of the traffic exchange program I was using. They were all website owners or affiliates they are not my perfect customers for my site being a music site. An internet marketing and website promotion site would do better in that program because most of the participants were interested in we promotion and marketing or just making money online.

So I could have as well promoted a work at home business in the program and made a few sales or sign ups.When I realized that, I knew I had to change my strategy and target only thse that I think would be more interested. So I turned to the search engines to drive more targeted traffic to my site.After 2 months I got listed in Yahoo and immediately saw an increase of up to 200 then 400 site visitors a month, and a month later I got listed in Google and many other search engines like Alta vista, Hotbot, Askjeeves, Alltheweb, Overture and many more.My traffic increased steadily into the thousands. And then I got listed in the ODP.

I started getting hundreds of sign ups and everything got so big that I couldn’t even handle it. And that was just the beginning, because I then had to face problems like selling and selling more and ultimately making money. Look out for the next article on how I discovered the secrets of selling.And if you need any help your online business and how to go by it, let me know and I would be glad to help.

Internet marketing who do you trust?It is really hard to trust anyone online these days, because most of the internet marketing gurus are only interested in making more money for themselves and not willing to share any of their top secrets because they are scared you could beat them in their own game.Afterall there are so many gurus online these days. How can you seaprate the real from the fakes? How can you Identify someone that has made it online from someone that only wants a few bucks from you.For you to make it as an internet marketer, you need not to fall for any crap there is online, If not you will end up spending all your budget on unrealisable promisses.I advise you to only trust marketers who you see real evidence that they are experts, they have done it and helped many others. Then you should have peace of mind to part with some money and invest in their great ideas and make a profit.There are well known expert that have already made millions of dollars online and and have helped others done the same.If you take a look at late Corey Rudls 50 million dollar website. you will see what makes a real internet marketing expert diffrent.You will see all the testimonials of people he has helped to be successful and how much the site makes now even after he is dead.Remember to always check my site for free internet marketing tips.Watch out for my next post, make sure you come back and see what valuable tips I have in the next post.

Google adsense is becoming a very hot way of making money online. Internet marketers are developing startegies after strategies to harvest the fruit of this great program.
From ways the ads are placed to the target market, these fields are constantly tweaked to bring in the best results. marketer usually make $100 to $500 monthly from this program, while others claim to make that amount in a single day, amounting to $3000 to $15000 in monthly profits.

How you can get High Page Rank.
In my internet marketing career, I have promoted many online businesses and websites. Without working on the code or navigation, I have promoted sites to getting page ranks 3 or even 4 in just 3 to 4 months.
And no I dont spend endless nights in front of the computer fundling with sites for page rank.
I have mainly used marketing tools like blogs and forums with a good care and precision to produce these impressive results, and you can do the same.
With fresh articles on your blog or website, you attract search engine spiders. And with the appropriate links you should boost your pr and get higher search engine rankings to drive more qualified customers to your online business.
I write a few articles anytime I have the chance, which I submit to blogs and directories. This gradually builds up pagerank and improves your rankings.
Watchout for my detailed method of doing this that I will publish in my next post. you can syndicate this blog rss to your My Yahoo or MSN.
This blog contains very valuable marketing startegies.

Lately I have seen a lot of stuff about ghostwriters and article networks. The need is ever rising for fresh content, now people are hiring ghostwriters to do the work for them. They pay upto hundreds of dollars to be supplied with fresh articles. Though the articles are usually not as fresh as they should be.
The search engines are hungry for fresh content. And publishers are hungrier to get up the rankings. It's a war.
My advice to webmasters and publishers is that they should form a habit of writing. Write keyword rich articles and post on blogs or publish it to your website. If you are too lazy for that, then you need a big budget to hire ghostwriters to do the work for you. Try and get long articles that will rank well in search engines and submit them to article directories and publish them on blogs with a link back to your site.