Let's start with what Internet marketing is not. It's not being a con artist. It's not being a spam king. It doesn't just mean selling on eBay or having your own website and products.

In reality, Internet marketers can pick and choose from a whole host of options available to help them make money. Your opportunities are virtually endless, and include one or more of the following:

• Selling digital downloads (information products like eBooks)
• Promoting other people's products for a commission (affiliate marketing)
• Selling on eBay or other auction sites
• Running a membership site
• Selling your online services (writing, graphics, etc.)
• Owning a website that sells dropshipped or wholesale items

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Being a newcomer to Internet marketing, you might be worried that you don't have anything to sell. That's okay – most people don't start out with anything, and you never have t stock a tangible inventory if you don't want to.

Internet marketing creates no gender or age boundaries for you. There are teenagers who have launched multi-million dollar companies as budding Internet marketers whose ideas sprung to life and catapulted them to instant success.

You don't have to do anything unethical or shady to succeed at Internet marketing, and in fact, launching a respectable business with a solid reputation is the secret ingredient that will allow you to hatch an empire on the ‘net to fulfill all of your dreams and those of your family.

You should try to realize that some people will just never understand what you do. Try to explain it the best way you can, and if it doesn't work, accept it. Some people just won't get it. If the in-laws or your spouse are nagging you because your money isn't yet streaming in, and you feel pressured, put together a simple presentation that answers all of their questions and puts their minds at ease.

Explain to them that you run a website (or websites) and you place advertising on that website. Every time someone clicks an ad and purchases something, you receive a commission. If you make most of your money through AdSense or selling advertising on your sites, you can simply tell people that you place advertisements on your websites, and you charge advertisers for that ad space.

If you want to, you could show them some of your sites or blogs to illustrate the point. Some people feel more comfortable just telling people they design websites. If you're a decent website builder, this will probably really impress people, but be prepared to get requests from people asking if you'll make them a site, too.