Nowadays the online world is full of network marketers, home business owners and people who wants to simply make quick cash on the Internet.

If you are one of them and your goal is to create substantial income online that will keep growing month after month providing you with better living, then you need to know a few facts before you get to work on it.

If you take a closer look at internet marketing, you can find loads of marketers following one common trend which is promoting their products all over the place. Well while this can't be blamed and ignored it shouldn't be the only thing to focus on.

A way more important thing is to promote yourself. When people get to know you and if you provide them with valuable information they will be more likely to trust you and to express their interest in your offer.

When it comes to self- promotion, you may find a few effective ways to promote yourself online.

1. Social networking.

That's right. Social networking sites such as Myspace, Yuwie or Facebook are great places to meet new interesting people and build relationships online. Also these are great places to promote yourself as an authority in your market.

However many network marketers forget about one important thing using Social networking sites as a way to promote themselves. They forget about promoting themselves first before they start promoting their products.

What they do is they build a list of friends and then aggressively attack them with advertising of their own products. Well for sure the strategy like that will bring them rather more “enemies” than prospects or potential customers. People won't impulsively buy anything from someone they don't know.

That's why when you use social networking sites as a way to promote yourself you need to remember:

- To promote yourself first by telling people your story of who you are, where you come from, what are your interests and what kind of people you are looking for to network with.

- To interact with people, contact them, build relationships without mentioning your product at the first stage. Once you establish relationship with people you may gently present your offer.

- To provide value for people in the form of free information they can benefit from, this way you will position yourself as an expert and get more of your online friends to trust you.

2. Article marketing

Article marketing is another powerful and free way to promote yourself. By writing articles on the subject you have experience and knowledge in, you can position yourself as an expert as well. By submitting your articles to article directories, your blogs and websites you will get more people to read them and consider you authority. You need to remember that people seek for information and giving them what they want in the form of articles you might get more prospects to your primary business.

3. Video marketing

Well, video marketing is consider a great way to promote yourself even more personalized way as people not only can hear you but also can see you as a real person ready to help them.

However video marketing is a strategy that must be used smart. Too many people tend to pretend someone they're aren't. They put themselves in front of the camera and claim to make millions dollars online without showing any proof of that and all of this just to get you in their scammy business opportunity.

Well the best way to promote yourself using video is to provide some valuable information in the form of tutorials that people could enjoy. This way they will associate you with value they get from you and this way you promote yourself as an honest guy who wants to help people instead of ripping them of.

People will surely appreciate that and this way they may be likely to join your business even without the need of you calling them to do so.

Promoting yourself online is all about showing who you are, how much do you know and how you can help people. Promoting yourself online might be a long process, however it may bring you loyal and lifetime business partners in the future.