Is success possible? OR wishful thinking??

Well, if you give up then you absolutely will not succeed.

My advice is to try something small, keep trying until you see some success, and then build up from there. Once you've seen that initial success, you'll feel better about the whole thing. But if you go whole hog into some big project and it doesn't work out, you'll just figure that you will never succeed at IM.

Just take a few minutes to look around this forum and you will see that success is possible.

Thank's Rob for the advice. How long have you been at it? Are you making full time living at internet marketing? What daily / weekly tasks and activities did you do to create the small successes you're talking about.

I've been doing IM seriously for the last few years, but it is not my only source of income. I also have a few small offline and online businesses that I run.

What I like to do is come up with a concept, sketch out the basic steps it would take to implement, then tackle each step one by one as time permits. My ultimate goal is to create a self-sustaining income stream that requires little or none of my time, or at least something that I can outsource. Some of these projects may take a few hours, some might take weeks. But as I've advised, I would start with something small and go from there.

How do I come up with the project ideas? Sometimes I get them from an ebook, and sometimes I just come up with them on my own. When I get them from somewhere else I always try to put my own spin on them to differentiate myself from everyone else doing the same thing. A lot of times I get ideas just from poking around on the Web.

I'll give you the obvious example that is popular right now, article marketing. I don't do this myself, but here's the basic steps I would take:

1. Find a niche product on Clickbank. I would stay away from the IM field at the beginning and go for something with less competition.
2. Set up a blog with information about the product you've selected and your affiliate link.
3. Write several articles pertaining to that niche and submit them to EZA and other article directories. I recommend Big Mike's ArticleBot, it's super cheap and does the job well. Include a link to your web site in your byline.

Okay, that's a simplified list and it's nothing at all new, but it is a very easy way to get started with minimal effort. Once you have a few sales, you can invest that money into other marketing methods such as PPC. Or create videos and put them on YouTube. Read this forum and you'll get tons of ideas.

The key is to start simple and build up. You might bail out of a large project before completion, or the whole thing may seem too daunting to you and freak you out. If you work at it and are persistent, you'll do well. Expect some setbacks, they happen.

To paraphrase Henry Ford, "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right."

YES YOU CAN SUCCEED ONLINE.

Here is what I did. I focused on one niche and one niche only. Some people can be in many things, but not me, I dropped everytyhing and I focus full time, gave that one thing 200% of my attention. Once that was up and running really well, then only move on to the next.

FOCUS ON ONE THING ONLINE AND DO IT REALLY WELL

Author Michael Jeffreys personally interviewed 15 top motivational gurus in 1997 for his then upcoming book. After talking to gurus from Brian Tracy to Dr. Wayne Dyer, he distilled 8 Secrets to Success they all agreed upon. These secrets are still good today and are as follows:

1. Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life - In a society where people blame everything from their parents to the government for failure, those who don't buy into this mentality or succumb to the "victim" thinking succeed. To blame something or somebody outside yourself is saying they have control of your life and not you. Someone else's opinion of you doesn't have to become your reality.

2. Live Your Life On Purpose - What separates motivational thinkers from the unsuccessful is that they believe they're doing what they were put her to do. The difference between this and just living, is that the latter is just getting through the week with the least problems. But when you live your life on purpose, your main concern is doing the job right. For the entrepreneur this means finding a cause you believe in and building your business around it.

3. Be Willing to Pay the Price - Be willing to pay the price for your dreams. Wanting a big house, a luxury car, and a million dollars in the bank is all very nice, and everyone wants these things - but are you willing to pay the price to get them? This is one of the major differences between the successful and unsuccessful.

4. Stay Focused - Every day we're bombarded with hundreds of tasks, phone calls, messages, and everyone competing for our time. Focusing requires giving up something in the present because you are investing your time in something that will pay off big-time down the road. Jack Canfield and Mark Hanson were turned by 30 publishers when they submitted the first "Chicken Soup for the Soul" book. Instead of giving up, they stayed focused on their goal and did four or five interviews per day for radio, TV, and newspapers, for five days a week for a whole year. Eventually, a small publisher decided to take a chance, and of course now it's a best-seller that spawned an entire series that have sold more than 10 million copies.

5. Become An Expert in Your Field One striking factor all successful people have in common is how seriously they take their profession. They strive to be the best at what they do, and do almost anything to improve. If someone followed you around all day with a video camera at your business, would it be a tape you'd be proud of or embarrassed about? Make the decision today to work at being the best in your field. How? By finding out what the "best" in your field are doing, and do what they do.

6. Write Out a Plan for Achieving Your Goals - Write out an action plan/map for how you're going to achieve your goals. Trying to reach your goals without a plan is like trying to drive from Los Angeles to Chicago without a map. A goal that isn't written down is merely a wish or fantasy.

7. Never Give Up - Never, never, never give up. When you're fully committed to achieving your goal, giving up is not an option. You must be willing do whatever it takes to make it happen. The power of perseverance is an awesome force. As someone once said, "inch by inch it's a cinch". Think of the lowly inchworm - if it pondered the length of the trip from start to finish before it started, it probably would never move. To a worm's point-of-view, the garden path must look like a trip to Mars. Never give up! Keep on going like the Eveready battery bunny, and pretty soon you're there.

8. Don't Delay - Nobody knows how much time they have left to accomplish their dreams, and we must remember that we don't have forever. The clock is ticking, and sooner or later your number comes up and you're gone. Successful achievers know this too, but they don't view it as a "negative". Achievers use it to "spur them on". They go after what they want as energetically and as passionately as possible, for as long as they have.