The internet is the perfect place for anyone to make a steady income yet many people fall victim to all the hype and loose focus of one main goal that is easily attainable to make money. Sure there are affiliate programs and other ways to make money online but if you really want to make big money on the internet you need to start your own website. Its simple to start and once the money starts coming in you will never want to stop!

When I first started on the internet nine years ago I fell victim to every money making plan you could think of and spent a lot of money. Yet it is the experience that has helped me find my path to my internet fortune. It all begins in your mind and you must follow through with what ever idea you have cause you can make it a reality.

1.Make or resell your own product on the internet where you get paid 100% of the profits. The reason behind this is if you sell affiliate products you only get a small part of the sale. For example, if you sold product as an affiliate for $29.99 you might get a commission of $14.00 per sale but if you owned the product you would get the full payment of $29.99 to you.

2.Get a domain name and set up web hosting for your website. This can be done at a very low price. Dont get a website with free hosting cause many companies are not dependable. Godaddy.com has a very reasonable web hosting package for any budget and great customer service 24/7.

3.Get your own merchant account! This would be the most important part of your business to control the money you make. Sure you could use third party merchant accounts like Pay Pal, Storm Pay etcBut you would rather have the money you make deposited right in your bank account. If you make $1000 in one day it is deposited in your bank account for easy access to your profits the same day!

4.Make sure you are able to capture your website visitors e mail address and first name. Then you could run your own newsletter and inform your customers of special deals and refer them to other websites where you can earn affiliate fees. That way you can follow up with customers to come back to your website. For example lets say that you want to run a half price sale on a product exclusive to people on your mailing list. A Dear Diane, heading would be read more than just a general Hey look at this! So always capture the persons name with an e mail address so you can personalize the e mails you send.

5.Design your website to sell! Make sure you give all the information about your product and always state the benefits of you product. Make sure every aspect of your website is functional and that you are ready to begin taking orders.

6.Register you website with the top 10 search engines with keywords related to your website. The top ten as of this writing are Yahoo, Google, Teoma, Snap.com, Netscape Search, Wisenut, MSN, Gigablast, AskJeeves, AltaVista. Registering with search engines is important for people to find your website online.

7.Link you website to others of similar interest. For example if I sold guitars I would want to link to a site that sold musical instruments. Link Scout is a good program that can bring you a steady flow of target traffic to your website that would only click on you link if they are interested in your product.

8.Get the word out to as many places as you can! Submit messages to forums. Write articles about your product and submit it to Article Banks that are related to your product or service. A good source for customers is the number one site on the internet Yahoo. Yahoo groups has a large database of people interested in specific things. Example, if I sold a credit repair book I could join and post messages about it in all the groups that are related to getting out of debt and you could reach thousands in a matter of minutes! I use this same technique daily and have hundreds of people visit my site just from posting messages at Yahoo Groups. Advertise in ezines related to our product for more exposure.

9.Use joint ventures with other website owners that offer products similar to yours! This is a great way to expand the reach of your website. Always get a recommendation from your joint venture partner and work out a deal where both of you will profit from exposing each others websites to visitors.

10.Use offline marketing! This is highly overlooked on the internet I dont know why but print is forever! If you place a good ad with your website in a magazine or newspaper it will last forever as long as the publication is in good condition. You could be getting thousands of customers from an ad you placed in January to your website throughout the year this works!

Last but not least Start your own affiliate program. Thats right now you pay people to sell your product and pay them a commission. Imagine having over one thousand people promoting your product. This is one of the fastest was to have a jump in sales and all the money is coming to you. In closing theses steps are not hard to implement and any one can have a successful website operating on the internet. We are living in a period similar to the Gold Rush of Califiornia and the internet is changing the way we do business everyday. You can contact millions of people and with the right product money can be made. It doesnt take any special skills except a desire to succeed and your fortune on the internet is only one click away.