When I first came to internet marketing I just thought I would fling up a quick site, join an affiliate program and watch the internet traffic flood to my web site. I think I may have got it slightly wrong......

After a few weeks of nothing happening I realized that no one even knew my site existed, let alone wanted to visit and buy anything. So I read a few e books and marketing sites and started to buy internet traffic by using pay per click programs (like Google Adwords). Guess what? I got tons of traffic. And still no sales. Perhaps my "friends" were right - "that thing will never work" they said.

What had happened was I had picked what I thought were great keywords based on their incredible popularity. In other words I was thinking that they would generate so much traffic that I would clean up on sales. The penny gradually began to drop as I really studied the e books and sites I was reading. They all talked of niche marketing and building internet traffic based on very narrow ranges of keywords.

Well eventually I realized they may be right (I never said I was quick did I?) and so started to buy internet traffic based on very tight niche keywords and my costs plummeted and my sales went crazy. Yippee!

I still was after that Holy Grail of inline marketers - free targeted internet traffic. If only I could get my sites and affiliate programs to the top spot on the search engines for nothing I would clean up. I started learning about search engine optimization and all kinds of "secret" methods of getting free traffic. But none worked for me. I guess if I had a couple of years free time I could learn that stuff - but hey - life's too short.

So I stuck to my cheap pay per click traffic building methods. After all it was bringing in a nice income and I had resigned from my job to do this full time so it must be OK. However that nagging thought kept haunting me - "you could be making a LOT more out of this if you really tried".

Then I stumbled across writing articles and submitting them to other sites. These articles have links in them to my sites and after a while they tend to spread around the net in a vuiral fashion. The reason people see them is that the sites they appear on are already at the top of the search engines! So I don't have to spend a penny on optimization or pay per click!

In fact you are reading one of my articles now so it proves that this thing works! Just think how you came to be reading this. If you are reading it then so are many others. If I can write a few hundred words and get people to read my articles - so can you! And before you say you can't write - that's what I thought. It's amazing though if you just sit down and type away then after a while it just becomes second nature, just type how you talk, nothing fancy.

So give it a go. It's free, easy and it works!

Gaz Hutchinson

I am an internet marketer living in the south of England. I am 43 years old and married and resigned from my job of 27 years to become a full time internet marketer :O)

I have several websites and belong to many affiliate programs.

I remember when I first heard of internet marketing that I thought it sounded exactly what I wanted - but it also sounded too good to be true! I had never heard of this form of business but was looking for something I could do from home - and get me out of the rat race. Sound familiar?

Well I was surfing around the net typing in vague things like "make money at home" and "make money using my computer" and just came across a whole new world.

I became an information junkie and just absorbed as much as I could by reading e books and other people's sites. It wasn't easy but boy - was it worth it!

I now work from home as an internet marketer and can only see my income going up and up.

I would recommend anyone gets involved in affiliate or internet marketing - but make sure you don't try to re-invent the wheel. Spend time and money learning and you will succeed.