Just go over to Google or Yahoo and enter "people search" and you'll discover instantly why this is a highly attractive niche. People searching accounts for nearly a third of all the searches done on these two largest search engines. Whether looking for a missing classmate or just trying to get the lowdown on somebody, the activity is enormous and non-stop. And this particular niche is expected to continue to expand for a long time yet to come.

How can you get started in this lucrative business? Well, you could come up with your own search engine, but that would take a long time to develop (probably years). Or you could hire someone to create it for you (would take a lot of money to do that). The easiest way by far is just join someone else's existing program. There are lots of affiliate programs out there that provide you with this very opportunity.

It's pretty easy to find these affiliate programs, but how do pick a good one? Well basically, it should contain three elements: easy navigation, easy setup, and great training material.

Your program should have provided you with ways to market your new people search engine. But if they didn't, let me just recap some of the most common and most effective ways to market.

Article marketing takes time to develop, but it's effective and it's also free to do. There are thousands of article sites and directories where you can submit your articles. But why do it at all? Well, the reasons are many first of all, some of the article sites are very attractive to the major search engines like Google and Yahoo, so your article can appear there very quickly, sometimes in a matter of days. Plus, many of the services allow others to use your articles as long as they credit your name and copy it exactly, including all your links. This can result in you getting many, many back-links, just what you need to drive traffic to your site.

There are tons of free advertising sites on the web; just do a search for "free ads" or "free advertising." This method is free, but it does have some drawbacks. On free sites your ad won't stay on the first page very long, so you will need to repost it frequently.

Forums generally will not allow you to post advertising messages, unless it just happens to be an advertising forum. It's a great way to network with others, though, and you're usually allowed to post your link in your forum signature. And always, always, read the forum rules before you post anything.

Next is the topic of paid advertising. The most popular form of paid advertising is paid-to-click with Google and Yahoo being the biggest and most well-known. However, if you are a beginner at internet marketing, proceed with caution, because you can spend a lot of money doing this. And you might lose a lot. Get some help with this by reading some free online articles about Google Adwords. I would also suggest that you sign up for some free newsletters as well. In the meantime, it might be best to stick with free or low-cost advertising as described above.

Buying traffic is lame. It might get your Alexa ranking up, but it definitely will not make you any sales. The majority of sites that sell traffic do not send real actual people to visit your website. The traffic is all fake -- it's produced by an autobot. So, no, do not do it. Not ever, not ever, not ever.

The hardest part about any online business is just getting started. I hope my suggestions have given you the motivation to do just that.