Years ago, before the Internet turned the world on its head, if you wanted to make some money, perhaps run a business of your own, the place to go was the library.

There, you could search through newspapers, periodicals, books on subjects that interested you. (Surely you were interested in something).

I remember that 25 or 30 years ago, mail order was the great thing. There were two ways to go in the old days. Buy things and re-sell them, or join a large company who'd drop ship for you. There were the huge mail order firms that sold everything including the kitchen sink.

It wasn't so different then as it is today, in that you needed a niche market to work in. Even then, although they'd drop ship, you still needed to buy samples of whatever you were selling. You needed to buy samples at least of whatever you were marketing.

So now we're in the age of the Internet. From my very limited experience of this medium, it seems to me that there are two ways you may go.

You can find a niche market. This is fine, but there's a little more to it than random choice, or going along with an idea promoted by other people. Sometimes they work. The trouble is that lots of other people read the same thing and saturate the market.

The great advantage of selling something like E-books is that it won't cost you anything, until it comes to advertising. But there are other ways you may go.

Article marketing is excellent and if you find something without too much competition, yet with a definite market, you could be onto a winner.

The other way is to find a large corporation and tie yourself to them. The problem here is that it can cost a lot of money initially. That's the big drawback.

But on the plus side, if you find an outfit that deals ethically with its members, then they give excellent coaching and you're underneath their umbrella of expertise.

Both these methods, selling a niche product and allying yourself to a big corporation, are both affiliate marketing - tying yourself in with someone else to sell their product(s).

There is a third way, and that's to sell your own product. You keep all the money you earn, unless you decide to have affiliates. Even so, it does entail a lot more work; any shipping that may be involved, customer complaints, taking payments and paying your own affiliates if you have any.

Personally, I prefer the affiliate side of things, and a bit of both; making it the best of both worlds. Joining a big corporation and flying solo with a single product.

I would imagine that people who are very computer savvy wouldn't require the coaching that someone like I must have. Even so, building the sort of Websites that the big boys have, takes a great deal of time.

Once you recover from the shock of the original outlay, this is a good way to go. Equally, however, there are some very good companies out there that give you the wherewithall to build your website for nothing, and you're led by the hand in so doing.

These days, there really is something for everyone. Not everyone likes Internet marketing, which is probably a very good thing. But if the idea does take your fancy, you're bound to find something out there in which you can deal.

Copyright (c) 2009 Mike Bond