I am not scared of work, I have been known to approach it within arm's length on a number of occasions.

How often have you heard these remarks?

To a lot of people, the word 'Work' is more than just a four-letter word. It is something that takes up more than a third of their life, something that has to be endured to provide for the family; to put food on the table and to pay the rent and taxes.

To some others, work is something that they look forward to and are not happy when something comes between them and their passion.

The first group of people are, as a general rule, people who work for wages. I was going to say that they work for other people. That would not have been true. No matter who you work for, yourself or someone else, it's the money at the end of the week/month that really matters.

The other group is comprised mostly of people who run their own businesses.

The sad thing about this second group is that over thirtyfive percent of the self-employed fail within the first three years of starting their businesses.

IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY.

Let us look at starting a business on the internet.

There are hundreds of thousands of people who would like to start a business capable of giving a boost to their basic income. Another few hundred dollars a month is all that they ask.

There are the others who need a full time income. They are people who are desperate to get away from state handouts; honest God-fearing folks who are down on their luck.They would like enough money to live comfortably without having to constantly count the cost.

At the top of the list are those who insist upon nothing less than a six-figure income with plenty of time to spare to travel or to pursue their hobbies.

Whichever section you belong to, there are some things that apply to you all.

· Firstly, you will need the incentive to succeed.

· You will also need the will to succeed.

· You will then require the knowledge to succeed.

That is just the basis, but if you can relate to the above short list you are almost half way there.

Don't think that it is going to be easy. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.

You have to work hard during the initial stages. Once you have it all set up and running, it will get easier.

Let us start with the basics. First decide what you want to sell. Then decide how you are going to sell it.

Do you have a product of your own to sell? Or will you be selling another person's product on commission? Perhaps you will be offering a service.

With a little experience, you may decide to develop your own product. Or maybe purchase one that you can sell and keep all of the profits from it.

Whatever it is, you will need to advertise. 'How?' There are so many different ways.

All that I can do is to explain the various ways that I use.

Everyone has their own preferences. I have tried most of them and have settled upon the following:

E-zine adverts. Choose a selection of e-zines that are relevant to your product or service.

You then have the choice of which type of advert to use. If you are a bit short of cash, the free ads will appeal to you.

Use them by all means. Free ads are better than no ads at all. You will get a reasonable response. It will also give you good practice in writing adverts. If you can produce an advert that gets a good response in the free section, it will surely get a much better response in the paid advert section.

As soon as you can afford it, I would recommend that you start doing top sponsor adverts on various e-zines. I have found these to be one of the best ways of promoting your product.

When using e-zine advertising, it is most important that you are extremely selective in the ones that you use. Just because a particular e-zine does not have a big readership it does not mean that it is not worth advertising in. It is the quality of the readership that counts not the quantity.

My favorite way of advertising is writing articles for e-zines. This is recognized as the most effective method of reaching hundreds of thousands of interested readers.

Your article is placed in a pool where the producers of e-zines look for free content for their publications. They only take articles that they feel will be of interest to their readers.

They publish it on the condition that they also publish your by-line at the bottom of the article. This by-line tells the reader a little about yourself plus the all important links back to your product or service.

If you write a more general article, it will be picked up by a wider range of e-zine publishers. This often means that you will continue to get a response for a long time after its first publication and the readership will not be so selective.

Remember, e-zine articles are published at no cost to you, and you can reach an audience of hundreds of thousands who will see your by-line with its link back to you and to your product.

If you can compose an article every month aimed at ezines relevant to your website, you can be assured of a steady stream of prospects who are interested in what you have to sell.

Footnote:

If you decide to use 'free ads', whatever you do, don't use your main e-mail address. You are sure to get a flood of trash e-mail.

Set up a spare e-mail account especially to receive the replies.

Best wishes. Bob..