Discouraged newbie "has seen too much!"-

Focus on one thing until it works, every IMer's victory is unique. Believe it or not but you're now coming up against your internal sense of limitations, which you will break free from if you don't stop at this critical moment.

You've come too far to stop now. Stop expending your energy kicking yourself and redirect it into profitable action.

Very interesting-
Maybe that's what's happening here too.

[I was selling a service to list them on Google local listings (and maps). But again, I chose 3 small shops to do this for free (i would just get bragging rights for future "paid" customers.]

Focus, focus, focus. Pick one thing to start with and one thing only. It is just way to easy to "think" that something is not working only because you have not given it enough time. Part of the problem is the hype that leads people to believe they can get rich overnight.

Well that about sums it up...

Like pretty much everyone that's gone before you, you're looking for a quick fix solution, without truly understanding the problem.

First off, I make my own sales, affiliate sales, adsense commissions, recurring sales, build lists, have top rankings, my own affiliates, and have darn near done and seen it all. This is just my experience along the way.

There are two basic ways to make money online.

Through marketing, or through mass traffic generation. (when you can do both watch out!)

Most people don't truly "get" marketing and go for the "easy" kill (mindless traffic generation). Example - Adsense sites, link bombing, mass site creation, super mega backlink packets, etc...

also known as throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks

The trouble for most with that general idea is that you need to hit the buyer traffic, and most isn't, or else gets heaps of junk traffic worth only pennies (adsense).

This is actually not that bad to use free methods to get lots of traffic over mass amounts of keywords as long as you keep track of the referring site, or keyword, and know when you've found a winner...but it's hit or miss and requires persistence and thought.

So what now?

Online, there are two basic extremes of mentalities of users... information searching and surfing, or knows what they want and buying. Info searchers can be on a sliding scale of zero intention, some kind of vague intention, to full specific intention (ex. "buy xyz brand product"...

I have experience in all levels...but knows what they want and buying is awesome! I have an e-commerce site that has done over 6 figures from one basic keyword and it's handful of variations.

But you ought to see the laundry list of keywords in my analytics that NEVER generate sales. They have some intention, but I either fail to offer what they want, or they just weren't serious enough.

Quiet frankly, with such a hit or miss strategy trying to find the extreme end of the spectrum, your odds are stacked against you my man...

That is, until you can learn marketing.

Marketing is basically about learning to convert the information searcher, or the non-buyer, or not sure buyer, into your buyer.

Examples... Offering freebies to get on a list, one time offers, targeted reviews, bonus offers, special prices, webinars, product launches, persuasive articles, jv's, building authority and trust, etc...

Now, at the very core of marketing, is knowing the type of audience, how to communicate with them, creating value to match their wants/needs, and then persuading the sale.

You are probably not really putting in the effort and thought into understanding the product and the targeted buyer, and subsequently matching them up.

This can be quite the mystery, even to seasoned veterans. People are weird, and unpredictable at times.

You must learn to create or communicate value, answer and remove objections, and all to the appropriate audience.

In short, you're looking for methods, but skipping the actual marketing. It's understandable. nobody teaches "marketing" anyway because nobody buys it. You usually only find it hidden in the trenches of products behind the flashy methods. People don't want to think, they generally just want some method to blindly follow. So you probably won't find this type of info in too many IM products.

As suggested, you should probably look into some physical books on marketing, and selling.

Once you get it, the quick fix is easy.

Another example, I could no doubt make a product this afternoon, and sell it in the WSO tomorrow and make money, but that doesn't mean anyone else can do the same. See, the method itself isn't the answer. Without knowing the marketing, the audience, or what they value, a WSO could be a giant flop.

As for the consulting...that further proves the point. If you can't market free stuff, you're failing at the marketing.

Finding what people want is easy...selling and marketing the thing is harder.

Once you understand this principle than you can use about any method you want...

But if you're not answering the right questions to the right person, you're failing at the marketing, and all you can do then is try to hunt down the few folks that know exactly what they want and are ready to buy right now, regardless of persuasive copy and all that.

And they are much more elusive.

Keep working, the money is out there by the tons...I've got heaps of sales emails and customer data to prove it.

You're trying to learn, and that's a great start.

It's time to change the niche.

Niche products you are promoting must have too much competition and less buyers.

Select a hot niche.

For example : Justin Bieber is very popular on Twitter these days. Someone took his misspelled name as a domain and listed on Flippa.com for sale. You know what a domain costs.

Take a look at this listing :

http://flippa.com/auctions/93893/Jus...R3-Domain-Name

Buyers are ready to pay $16,500+ for this domain. You can calculate the profits now.

Selecting a hot niche is very important for all online money making methods.

You can use Google trends, Amazon bestsellers, eBay pulse and Clickbank marketplace top gravity products for that purpose.

One more important thing newbies don't do is spying on the successful competitors. If your competitors are ahead of you, you can't make money online. You have to do either better or equal quality work what they are doing.

Good Luck.

Hey i was in the same boat as you ontill i got a coach/mentor its the best thing you can do if you want to build an online buisness set up a blog get you readers get them to leave comments find out what they want to learn from you before you make money you have to no how to build and run an online business then you can start making money
hope this helps

thanks
Davy