Aspiring Internet Marketers are an unusual breed. You and I among them.

We struggle, we learn, we press on...and often, instead of getting to that place where finally our internet business sort of runs automatically, we just give up!

Many of the frustrated souls just quit. Some just continue to struggle.

I sympathize ladies and gentlemen. It still happens to me. It doesn't stop me anymore, though. It might slow me down but I keep pressing on until I understand and can handle it.

Talk about small details causing big problems...listen to this. I almost had to be hauled to the looney bin when I struggled with a paypal button for an entire day and part of the next. But, in a moment of clarity, I got it. I'm past that.

And it's a good thing...try making money online without being able to be paid!

Damn the obstacles! If you want to be an Internet Marketer, do this...pick the first thing you need to know and practice it until you know how to do it. Then go right to the next thing.

Action is the key to success.

For me one of the biggies was learning to build a simple salespage in an HTML editor. I chose NVU because it was free, someone I knew also used it, and I had a good tutorial for it!

I had such a good experience with the tutorial and NVU webpage bulder that I took the tutorial and other information and built a master resell rights package out of it.

Now, my customers who need to be able to build a webpage, can chose to get all the information for about seven dollars and use it for themselves, or they can get the rights and license as well and have a product to sell to help others.

Things happen! I wanted to be able to build a webpage. I was tired of being afraid of the idea and it was a skill I really needed. So I pushed.

I ended up building one of my first websites with content on "How to Build Webpages" and a business opportunity back end sale built in. Plus a list builder. My first business.

That online business happened sort of organically and that can happen to you.

You just start going down the road of acquiring the skills and tools necessary for IM success and you'll pass by something that gives you an idea.

I say, think like a marketer. (Someone who likes the idea of selling on the 'net). That can be you. Just do it! Don't quit.

You know, it has to be that some people quit at a point where, if they changed just one thing, they would hit the home run.

Could it be that you are worried you don't know enough? It doesn't matter. Do what you know now - and then when you hit an obstacle, learn what you need to know to get around that obstacle. A lot of learning the basics, maybe most of it, is learning by doing.

You see, right now, you don't know what you don't know. Want to know something kind of hairy? Neither does anybody else! How could they? They don't know you!

But, my point is that you should do what I did after I studied the "basics" for a few months. I threw together what had to be one of the most amateurish websites in history and built an opt-in page because I know that a good online operation has to have a list to re-market to.

I started building a list and re-marketing to the people on it.

Then I started writing articles for traffic! Get this though... the articles served a purpose I should have seen, but didn't. It wasn't just traffic!

It was much more than that. It did double duty. I wrote an article that drove traffic to my salespages and, more importantly, I learned, really learned, what I needed to know.

Just like back in school, when I was in university, when you really needed to learn something you would research the topic and write a paper on it. So it turned out that the writing of articles with my link to my webpage, was the mechanism by which I was learning! And getting traffic! It works!

Worked for me...and I'm still doing it and learning what I need to learn.

That which you research and write about becomes your actual knowledge base! It's real.

So there is one sure way to get started. And that is to just start! And write about it as you go along. It's all I have ever done!

So get started. Rededicate yourself to learning what you need to learn. Improve along the way. The Internet is the perfect place for not getting it right the first time.

That's right! Failure will teach you more than any ebook! And failing on the internet is very inexpensive compared to the rest of the world and it's just plain cheap regardless. Don't fear failure...that, the fear of failure, is what stops most people.

So, pick a niche (a market). If you are having trouble with that consider joining an online Internet Marketing School and they will show you how to do it.

Here's to your success,

Riley West - An Internet Marketer in the Making.