On almost a daily basis, I come across people trying to make money from Internet Marketing. One of the forums that I am quite active in has a large number of people who are either brand new to this game or have a bit of knowledge and want to progress further…

Many, many times I have seen comments such as;

… somewhere I have a program or maybe I didn't purchase but saw it …

Well, this person doesn't know whether or not he owns a particular program - in this case it's a tool for searching out keywords.

Now, I know that the person who wrote this is a good guy who works damn hard to make a success of things - and yet, this 1 line of text, tells me that he is one of those people who have been seduced by more experienced Internet Marketers (aka "Guru's") to buy up all the software affordable in the hope that something will work to make his life easier/do the washing up/increase adsense to $∞ per day - we've all seen the promises that these people make.

A challenge to you, my reader

Have a look at your Start Menu. How many of those programs do you use on a daily basis? How many on a weekly basis? I suspect that most people will have lots of programs that are not used hardly ever. Why not delete them.

Have a look at your past purchases of products. Did you use them? If not, why not?

Know what you need

Sometimes, in fact most times, it makes sense to only buy the stuff that you really need. Next time you see a product for sale, ask yourself one question;

Do I really need this?

If the answer is "no", then save your money. If the answer is "yes", then think about getting your own version coded up, rather than pay someone else. Why would the answer be yes?

• Saves you more money than it costs
• Saves you time by automating a task
• Something else?

Try to get to the Features of a tool, then look at how those FEATURES will BENEFIT you. Don't worry about what someone else might be doing with the same tool - the testimonials that you read on Sales Pages are usually made up, and done by the vendors sycophant friends. Did you know that there is a "round robin" of Testimonial providers? They're usually a steaming pile of BS.

Think only of YOUR needs, and how THIS TOOL will answer those needs.

There is no "Silver Bullet"

As Oli showed, no product will give you the Silver Bullet. The sales copy might seduce you into thinking "if I own this, I'll be able to earn three times as much in half the time" - but it's generally NOT true. All these products have a learning curve, and all of these products need user input.

KNOW YOURSELF.

KNOW YOUR SPENDING.

KNOW YOUR PRODUCTS.