If you are just starting out and are bombarded with the unscrupulous marketers, and there are a lot of them, you may become confused or distracted. Everyone tells you if you just buy their secret product or secret method you will make money in 30 days or even faster!. Before you know it you are chasing your tail.

Trust me, that is not how it works. You build your business over time. You take small steps that will really add up. It is just like building a house. You have to build it one step at a time and build on the previous step. Once you buy the plans it could take as long as six months before you start pushing dirt. Then build the foundation then and only then can you begin to frame it, put the roof on, etc. You will make many changes during this process. You may not move into the house for a year and a half after you started.

Making money online is very similar. Sorry to be the barer of bad news but it is the truth and you really knew it deep down. The good news is you can build a solid online business and make great money. The key is to focus. You have to pick two or three ways you are going to market your business and stick with it. Don't become distracted by the next sales pitch and change your whole strategy over night.

I'm going to share with you a non-secret. It is a non-secret right in front of your nose and it has been there forever. This non-secret will make you rich in your online marketing business.

This non-secret gets covered up and hidden from view because we live in a world of instant gratification. We get instant credit, instant loans, instant cash, fast food and faster information. That's not how wealth is built and it's not how an online marketing business is built.

The online business builder is just like a gardener. The gardener will plant a seed, water it regularly, fertilize it and nurture the plant until it is established. The gardener will not abandon the plant because it is not grown and become established in a week. The gardener knows the eventual outcome. The plant will grow and bloom where there wasn't one if the gardener stays focused.

This is the exact same way an online business is built. The online business owner must stay focused on each seed that is planted and nurture those marketing strategies that produce results. The online business owner can't get distracted every week and change those marketing strategies that have been planted.

If you have not already realized it, the wealthy people in the world do not become wealthy overnight. It is through years of consistent effort that most people do not see. When interviewed, the overnight successes will almost always tell you they have been at their career for many years.

Consistent focused effort is the key to success!

Without traffic to your website you will fail. Let's plant some seeds to drive traffic to your website. We will use article marketing as an example of one way to drive traffic to your website. Writing and submitting articles may be a chore for you. Let's say that for each article you write and submit you receive ten hits per month on your sight. If you are thinking, who cares, ten hits a month doesn't do anything for me. You are dead wrong.

Let's do the math. That article you just wrote may produce 10 hits a month for five years. Add it up, 600 hits over five years with a ten per cent click through rate will generate about $1,500.00 for low ticket items. OK, that doesn't pay my hosting costs. Hold on, because here is where you'll find the secret.

Successful marketers will write and submit 200 to 300 articles a year. Now do the math. Have you figured in the back links? The search engines are now putting more weight on back links than onsite SEO. With thousands of back links, remember your article can be submitted to hundreds of directories, your search engine ranking will go way up. Now you are getting even more traffic. Because you are getting more traffic your search engine ranking goes up again.

I hope you are beginning to see that what you planted six months ago is having an effect on your traffic and your income today and the future. The little steps add up very quickly. That's the secret and you now know what to do. Staying focused works with all kinds of strategies.

Stop chasing from one marketing method to another and focus on one method and consistently work at it and you will yield your fruits in due time.

One last note: If you ever wonder why most find it hard to succeed online, it's because they do not stay focused long enough to see the fruits of their labor. And they go on buying from one opportunity to another in the hope of a faster method only to end up back to square one.