Choosing to work fire your boss and hire yourself to work independently is a fantastic feeling. Knowing that you are free from the confines of another person's desk, hours and vision is metered by the realization that you can't slack off during the day and still grab a paycheck. Now you will work harder than ever before to earn your money. However, in most cases, especially online, the rewards are both financially and spiritually enormous. But to market online successfully can you approach it with honesty, or will you turn into that proverbial ?used car salesman??

Depending on your approach, it could be the most honest thing you've ever done.

The internet is a wonderful place that is littered with creepy people who insist upon behaving badly. Because it is so anonymous, it then becomes difficult to trust anyone who is asking you to give up your credit card number. You start to think that in order to succeed, you are going to have to turn to the ?dark side,? and become one of those creepy marketers too. But the opposite is actually the goal. In your online marketing business, your integrity is your best attribute, and building trust is your greatest aspiration.

Holly Mann is a perfect example of someone who started out on the internet by affiliate marketing for The Rich Jerk. Eventually she tired of his slick, pompous sometimes questionable ways, and set out to build her own ?Honest Riches? empire. Both players may still get the bucks, but Holly has built trust in her affiliates, so they keep coming back to her for more. This means that when she fires off an email saying that she's found the next great thing for her people to get involved in, her people usually bite?and Holly makes money. On the flip side, when Rich Jerk fires off an identical email, it feels pushy and gimmicky, and the email often gets deleted. There is much to learn from these two styles.

The end goal of online marketing is to build a solid base of passive or residual income. In examining the two styles mentioned here, we see that Holly Mann's built-in trust meter far exceeds the long-term earning potential over Rich Jerk's one-time visit business model. While both have freely shared their secrets for their online success, Holly is the person you feel more of a friendly connection to, and that trust translates into dollars for everybody.

By cooking up your online marketing business, throw in a dash of integrity, and a sprig of honesty, and plan on building a list of people that will follow you. When you do this, you not only create that dream ?make-money-while-you-are-sleeping? income for yourself, but you also give back by providing a product or service that people are proud to market for you. In accomplishing that, you have helped one more person step away from behind someone else's desk.