Okay, so you want to get started with Internet marketing, but like most people who want to start making a living off the Internet or who want to earn extra income, you are simply totally confused. Well, that was my experience and I am convinced it must be the experience of the majority of people who are exploring the Internet for opportunities to make money.

Let me put your mind at ease; it is perfectly normal to be confused, in fact, it is a logical consequence of an Internet search for anything related to home-based or work-at-home jobs and businesses. The source of this confusion is simple: information overload. As we surf the stormy waves of the information superhighway, we are being flushed down into all sorts of directions with innumerable ads and websites offering work at home opportunities, promising lucrative and sometimes instant financial benefits. So, again, it is totally natural to experience confusion to a frustrating and often paralyzing degree.

The consequences of information overload or an excess of information are well-documented; you are at risk of either shutting out (throwing in the towel), or storming frantically into the chaos.

My goal with this hub as a newbie to Internet marketing myself and from the lessons I have learned, is to prevent either of the two (throwing in the towel or storming into the chaos) happening to you.

Here is how to go about:

Decide on the type of marketing and the nature of the product

Now, this is very important to help you sift through all the confusing offerings on the net and will steer you on a course. Once you have decided on the nature of the marketing and the type of the product, you can easily discard everything else that is not in sync with that.

Start off with Affiliate Marketing

At this point I take it for granted that you don’t have your own product and that you want to become a marketer for a company’s product, in which case you will become an affiliate of that company and help that company to market its product or products for a commission on the sales that can be directly attributed to your marketing. This is how I kicked off and is the route that I can recommend, especially if you are new to Internet marketing and you still have to learn the ropes.

The first beauty of affiliate marketing is that you can do marketing for an established company and market products that have already been tested in the market. In other words, you know there is a demand for the product. The ground work has been done and you simply become an instrument to help getting the word out about the product and getting people to buy the product from the links and ads you have placed on the Internet.

A second major advantage of affiliate marketing is that you don’t need your own website, nor do you need to have a website hosted. This is all done for you by the company whose product you will be marketing and they will let you have you own link to their website. This is how the sale from the company’s website is attributed to you – through your own unique link through which a client has accessed the company’s website from where he/she bought the product or service.

The third good reason why I would recommend kicking off with affiliate marketing is that you will be guided by the company in the marketing process. It is important to the company who you will be representing as their affiliate that you will succeed. Your success is their success and therefore they are going to provide you with the tools and procedural guidelines to be successful. What remains to be done by you is to work the system.

The first product and company that I joined up with as an affiliate I discovered on a Review Site of Internet related home businesses and jobs. From there I selected what is rated on this site as the #1 Online Home Business and everything became clearer and I was ready to start marketing. All the information about how to market their product was set out clearly and step-by-step with invaluable information about free advertising as well as pay per click advertising. And if you think pay per click advertising is going to cost you an arm and a leg, not so. They have a comprehensive bonus module about advertising on Google included in their information package and if you know what you’re doing you can benefit tremendously from a Google ad campaign with a small financial investment.

However, paying for advertising is not essential when you start off. The opportunities on the Internet for free advertising are legion. I have started with free advertising only until I had enough seed funding to invest in a Google pay per click advertising campaign.

Consider Some Affiliate Network Marketing Opportunities

Affiliate Network Marketing or Multi-level marketing offers excellent opportunities to develop passive income streams into retirement. Network marketing can be differentiated from uni-level affiliate marketing in that the former also offers commissions on sales achieved by affiliates you have recruited into the network to market the products or services. The number of levels down from you on which you will receive commissions vary, but earning revenue 5 levels down from you is not uncommon.

Network marketing requires hard work and perseverance to establish your first two levels or so and to assist your "down-line" as their sponsor towards successes in their marketing efforts. However, once you have succeeded in establishing a strong network two or three levels down from you, your business and flow of income go onto auto-pilot and you benefit from passive residual income, which can be into retirement. To combine Internet marketing with network marketing offers you an immensely powerful opportunity and should be part of your portfolio as an Internet affiliate marketer. (The diagram above illustrates the income potential from different levels)

Selecting the right affiliate network to join is very important, since you don't want to join a company of ill repute or with dubious products and services where the focus is more on building the network than on the marketing of the products/services. If it looks like a pyramid scheme without credible and marketable products and services to sustain the network, shy away! Apply some selection criteria for choosing your affiliate network. (I have provided a link at the end of this Hub to my HubPage: Choosing An Affiliate Network: Essential Selection Criteria)

Market the type of product or service for which there is strong demand

Once you’ve decided that affiliate marketing is the route to follow, you need to decide on the nature of the product. It does not need to be something you personally want, but you should be able to identify with it and it has to be something that many people want. It’s got to be something with a track record of demand and you must have evidence of that.

Personally, I was not interested in a physical product to sell. Imagine the logistics involved in packaging and shipping etc. etc. If you believe that information is a valuable asset and that it has a monetary value because it provides in a need, why not market and sell products and services that can be electronically transmitted? I decided to go with such information based products as I referred to above, which has not only opened new doors for me; it opened a new world to me.

Review Sites of Work at Home Businesses and Jobs

Perhaps you are looking for a different type of Internet related marketing job, because of your special interests or circumstances. In that case the best way to go about is to read reviews of Work at Home businesses and jobs offered through the Internet. A Site that appealled to me is the No.1 Review Site Online. Jessica Miller’s mission is to review the work from home opportunities offered on the net and present us with the ones that come up tops as legitimate with real and substantial income producing potential.

A Last Word: You have to Work it

I am very skeptical of quick-rich programs and offers of easy money through Internet marketing jobs. I don’t believe in easy money unless you are exceptionally lucky and have won the lottery or something similar. At the end of the day we have to work for an income and the Internet marketing opportunities I have alluded to above are no exception. But it does offer relatively easy income opportunities and I can personally guarantee that if you work the system as it is clearly described for you in the programs I refer to, you will reap significant financial benefit. Moreover, once you’ve mastered the basic and initial steps of Internet marketing, you learn of more and more opportunities the Internet has to offer for free to enhance your potential for success and wealth.