Once you have decided you want to earn money online, you get pretty excited about it. The slick advertisers paint an appealing vision of their internet lifestyles – everything, from their fabulous mansions, luxury yachts and exotic vacations to their fast cars and designer T-shirts, has fallen into their laps while they sleep, and they never have to do a lick of work because they have it all happening on automatic. You can’t wait to join them.

And it’s true – they do have those things, and their businesses do run on automatic, but not because they did not do any work. Believe me – you have a lot to learn and a lot of work to do learning it and implementing what you learn.

So get started.
Know this and save yourself time and money – You will need a training program and a mentor.

I will say it again – You need a training program and a mentor.

Now first off, I am assuming you have basic computer skills, and if you don’t, you need to get yourself off to night school or after school classes and learn. There are plenty of online classes as well. Do a Google search for “online computer training” or something similar. You need to know how to copy and paste, how to manage documents and folders, and how to do simple internet navigation. A basic understanding of common computer and internet terms is pretty necessary as well (note to self: include a glossary on this blog). After all, if you ask someone for help, it’s good to be able to understand his/her responses!

OK, back to choosing your training program.

What are the choices?
There are membership sites you can join, and in weeks to come I plan to review some that I have joined in the past and learned a lot from. The good thing about a membership site is that you can join for a monthly fee and not be hugely out of pocket if you decide it’s not for you.
A good membership site should include a members’ forum where you can get help from other members, have discussions, voice ideas and share opinions. The forum should have a positive and encouraging feel about it. The site should provide you with tools and resources necessary to conduct your business. Watch out for the ones that require you to keep buying stuff once you have joined. Some of these are just vehicles for the owners’ affiliate products.
If you are dying to get started and don’t want to wait for my reviews, the membership site I enjoy the most and have learned the most from is Wealthy Affiliate.

You can purchase a Home Study course. These can vary a lot in quality and price as well as how they are delivered to you. Some may be accessible digitally, either directly online or downloadable to your computer, others may be hard copy delivered by mail. They can consist of either written material, audio or DVD, or a combination, and these days most will include video demonstrations of the technical stuff, and workbooks to monitor your progress.
The best ones will offer some sort of support – if you are given an email address for a support team that’s great. Some will have a support ticket system. Either way, I used to get frustrated because I did not know enough to be able to articulate my questions so that the support people could understand what I wanted help with! If you find any program that offers one on one coaching, that’s priceless!
The disadvantage of a home study course is that you are faced with a one off payment that can be pretty hefty.

Middle of the road, and the route I have chosen, is finding a mentor with a proven system for success, who is prepared to teach you his/her system step by step, and to offer support until you have learned it. I have chosen John Thornhill’s Personal Coaching Program. We are currently in week 3 and I am “totally geeked” (quoting a friend who is more techie than I am).
I am learning step by tiny step how to do one thing well. There are a lot of components to it, as there are in every method or system online. When I can follow John’s method well, then, if I still want to, I can look at learning how to implement other systems. What I am learning now will be a solid foundation on which to build more.

How do you choose?
Research is the key here. Do some research in forums and on review sites. Google “internet marketing forum” or “internet marketing training review”(including the quotation marks – if you put your phrase in quotation marks, google will only return searches that include the exact phrase) to get a look at what’s there, or, if you want to learn about a particular product, google “product name” + review or “product name” + forum. In the forums, people will discuss products pretty frankly, and if you find a forum you like the look of, sign up and ask the question. You should soon get a few answers.
A word about reviews – remember they are written in such a way as to finally encourage you to buy. There is even a tactic used where the reviewer will deliberately start out by criticizing the product, then gradually turn his/her opinion around by finding more and more reasons why the first impression was wrong! The final twist is that the product turns out to be the one thing you must buy immediately in order to unlock the vault of all those fabled internet riches! These reviews are written by affiliates, whose goal is to get their commission. Look for honest reviews that describe the product, how it helped the reviewer, and why he/she liked it. Yes, these reviews are written by affiliates also, but some affiliates are straight up and will only review stuff they feel they can genuinely recommend.

What to avoid
Stay away from any product that promises all the work done for you – website provided and so on. Unless you know what you are doing, you will still be likely to have difficulties managing the so-called business.
Avoid over-hyped promises of instant wealth for no effort – there’s no such thing.
Do yourself a favour – invest your time, effort and money in a reputable internet marketing training program that will give you a solid foundation in the basics. If you have a job, keep it until you are seeing some result from your online endeavours; if money is an issue try to find a part-time job to take the pressure off while you learn.

Stay focused
This post is already too long. If you are still here, thank you. The topic of focus is worth a post on its own, but briefly put – focus your effort on learning one thing at a time. No ebook or training program is going to help you if it sits on your hard drive gathering virtual dust!

Toward a rewarding internet journey,

Sue