Pitfalls for Newbie- Programs and Products to Match your GOAL

Previously I have written on budget (time and money) and also on organising your email routine. I touched on basic tools needed and would like to share a little on browsing. I would like to share today a 'heads-up' or caution on selecting what you are trying to build and how you go about it.

Looking back over the last few months, it has become abundantly clear that I have ‘blown' money unnecessarily. Hind-sight is after all 20-20! The main reason this happened is the planning I did at the outset was flawed - I did the planning, but being a ‘newbie', I did not have all the facts or best practices to hand.

A recommendation to you is BEFORE you even sign up as an affiliate or recipient of information that might cost you money is to determine very precisely what it is that you feel is the direction you would like your business to follow.

Personally, I have my ground rule: Any Program or Company with Which I become involved MUST be ethical, fair and dependable. I will share tactics and ideas on marketing and promoting your business in later articles.

Some of the areas where you can generally group your business efforts are below:

· Affiliate marketing - here you will be promoting products or services for another company and earning a commission based on your sales. This is probably the easiest base to work from initially as there is generally minimal cost and you don't have to get tangled up in some of the intricacies of Internet Marketing. While setting up here, you would get a good feel of where you would like to be. Affiliate programs are in as many guises as there are products - travel, education, health products, real estate, cars, - you name it. It is best to try and select a company that has a product in which you have an interest initially.

· Network or recruiting programs - these can be lucrative for the longer term and well worth entering early so that you are able to build up your members over time. Unfortunately, there are some companies who are less than stable, so be sure to have a good look at the life of the company - it should be long-term and stable as your number one priority. A lot of the affiliate marketing companies - particularly those in the digital product arena, have very good residual income programs that tie in well with their affiliate programs.

· Own Product Marketing (digital) - this would be the next logical step from affiliate marketing - think about it - 100% of the profit or sale is yours. Before going into this arena however, you should take care to do a lot of market research and competitor research or your efforts could come to nothing. Here you will need to have guidance initially and access to good training.

· Niche Site or Product development - this is definitely where you will be able to create a good deep business. Find a niche or specific topic that interests you - hobby or whatever - and develop a website and product around that. Some online business are doing very well out of model trains, parrot food, dogs, fly-fishing etc - so don't restrict yourself - if you have an interest you can be GAURENTEED that there will be someone else with the same and they would be willing to pay for your information, product or service.

· HYIP - this is a very grey area - some swear by these High Yield Investment Programs and there are equally as many who would not touch them with a barge pole. These are normally programs where you can invest an amount of money and after performing some action (maybe surfing or similar) you should get a very high return on your investment. These do work BUT there are even more scam artists in this arena than in any other so BEWARE! The returns are often very good so the temptation is definitely there. If you do decided to go this route, start very small and learn as much about the company beforehand as possible.

If I can leave you with one thought for today: Be clear as to what you want to achieve - money, time, benefits etc - and then try to match your strategy to your GOAL to the business you wish to develop.