A common misconception about internet marketing is that most people suppose it will just happen. They believe there is a magic formula that allows them, just because they are on the internet, to somehow produce a constant cash flow in to their bank accounts for doing practically nothing. Little do they know that they are setting themselves up for disappointment and failure.

Not so long ago a good friend of mine put up his first website. He is a perfectionist. Everything had to be just perfect before it would appear on the face of the internet. And it was. He launched in style! His site looked much nicer than any of my sites had ever looked and yet, I was making sales and hadn't made a penny? Something didn't sound right. I said "what do you mean you didn't make any sales?" and he responded saying "I don't know. Zero sales!" I asked him if he had advertised and he said he had run an adsense campaign.

Now, I am not a strong believer in adsense but with the amount of advertising he did, something would have had to give. Here he is advertising a great product at a great cost and unless he is making an immediate sale by pure luck, he is kissing his hard earned money goodbye without ever seeing a penny of it again. After shaking my head at him, I told him that he was making a huge mistake. I said "Not only are you wasting your money on advertising, but you are also wasting your traffic. If you had built a list, you could benefit from the expensive traffic week after week, month after month for years to come."

You see, once you build a list, you will realize that it is your most valuable asset. Building a list is key in any internet marketing venture. It is the list that will allow you to make cash on demand. A couple weeks later I talked to him again and asked him how his site was doing. He tells me he took it down because he wasn't getting any sales. I was shocked.

His site looked much nicer than any of my sites had ever looked and yet, I was making sales and hadn't made a penny? Without it, 90% of your business is missing out, big time! If setting it all up scares you (it can be complicated), plug in to a system that has it all set up and is ready to go. There is a few decent ones out there, you just have to look for them. Whatever you do, not ever, at any expense, neglect building a mailing list. It is a virtual gold mine. The bigger it gets, the more bling it allows you to have on demand.

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