# How To Reverse Engineer Your Success
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The best and fastest way to learn how to make money on the Internet is to buy the marketing books of successful web marketers. You can find a selection of marketing books at these sites:

http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/
http://www.freezineweb.com/mktg-books.html
http://www.free-ebooks.net/
http://www.ebookdirectory.com/

But there's also another way: study their web sites and reverse engineer their success.

The great thing about the Internet is that everything is visible - nothing is hidden. If it's working for them, you can find out exactly how they're doing it by studying their site.

=> Subscribe to their Newsletter and examine their Welcome Message.
=> Analyze their Newsletter and see exactly how they use it to generate income.
=> Sign up for their free autoresponder course and find out why it produces sales.
=> Check out which affiliate programs they promote.
=> Read their free eBooks and discover how they bring in new customers.

Here are some examples:
(1) Recently I signed up for the Newsletter of someone who makes $130,000 a year just from affiliate programs. I wanted to see how he was doing it. What I noticed was that he doesn't even try to sell the affiliate products - he tells his readers how much he makes from those programs. Naturally, they join (through his link). The result? He has an army of sub-affiliates who do the selling for him.

(2) In another Ezine I recently saw a 40 word ad that interested me. I clicked on the link, and instead of taking me to the home page of the product, it took me straight to the order form. Very clever, and very effective.

(3) A few weeks ago I subscribed to a free autoresponder course - 12 daily web marketing lessons. Many people never finish these free courses. They unsubscribe half way through.

But this marketer made sure that people finished his course - he announced in the first lesson that the 12th lesson contained the download link for a very useful free eBook that I wanted. Naturally, I stayed with it till the last lesson.

(4) Last week I signed up for a marketing guru's 15-day free autoresponder course and I was amazed to see how easily it had been put together. Each module was simply a freely-available article by a recognized web marketing expert, with a sprinkling of affiliate links.

To sum up, when you visit the website of a marketing expert, pay close attention to everything you see. Ask yourself "Why is s/he doing that?". Everything is there for a reason.

If you make this a habit you'll quickly learn the art of making money on the Internet.

# Instant Success or Gradual Improvement?
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We live in a culture of instant success.

This is especially so on the Internet. Everyone wants to become an 'Overnight Millionaire', 'Retire
Quickly', 'Get Rich Quick', and so on.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work - except in rare cases.

But here's a system that does work - it's called evolution or Gradual Improvement and Nature has been doing it for millions of years.

Nature operates through trial and error. It's constantly experimenting, testing. Each generation produces new mutations. Some succeed, some don't. Those that succeed become the basis for the next advance, and so on.

And that's also the secret of successful web marketers - trial and error. They constantly test. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When they find something that works, they improve on it. Each tiny success becomes the platform for the next success, and so on.

In fact, people who succeed in any walk of life do so not because they discover a 'formula for success', but because they learn how to deal with failure.

Thomas Edison, when asked if he felt discouraged by the 1,073 failures he had before inventing the electric light bulb, replied "I did not fail 1,073 times, I found 1,073 ways not to do it"

Remember, there's no failing, just learning.

# Beware The Online!
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Anyone with a lick of entrepreurial spirit and a brand new home computer has wondered at least once how to put both to work on the Internet making money.

The online world beckons more than ever with the promise of instant riches for the next "million-dollar" idea. For those who can't think up their own product or service to sell online, thousands of business opportunities tout themselves as the path to online riches.

To cash in and get your piece of the pie, they explain, all any self-motivated, self-starter needs to do is hand over a couple of hundred dollars and they will instantly find themselves in a "proven, turn-key" business on the World Wide Web.

Many online business opportunity sellers, "bizz-oppers" for short, fail to mention that the real money for them lies in getting people to sign up for the opportunity itself.

These bizz-oppers have multiplied like fleas on a stray dog, and can open and close up shop online faster than a con man with a card table at the local flea market.

Though many online opportunities seem legitimate, many represent little more than ideas that might work if you devoted every waking moment to working them.

If you want to use your computer to make money from home, asking the following questions should help you actually choose a business opportunity with a fighting chance for success.

NOTE: Though some of these questions may seem a bit abrasive, I'm tired of seeing people get ripped off.

1. What is the business's target audience? Realistically, how many people can and will actually buy the product or service?

2. Why do they need you? Why don't they just do it themselves and keep all the money? (This usually exposes businesses only interested in signing people up.)

3. Is there a sign-up fee? If so, what does the fee buy you? Technical support? Marketing materials? A website address?

4. If the business involves using their website, can you modify the site or is it static? You won't benefit much from a site that looks like a thousand others if you plan on using the search engines to promote it.

5. How do they track your customers as opposed to another affiliate or distributor? Sites that use cookies to track visitors and commissions only work as long as the customer retains the cookie on their computer.

6. Will the company solicit your customer for other products and services? If so, will they pay you a commission on additional purchases?

Use common sense when investing in an online business opportunity.

Don't come across with any money until you've had a chance to talk with at least ten people who have bought into the opportunity, as well as ten people who were unhappy with it and quit.

If the opportunity promoters won't give you names of happy and unhappy clients you need to keep looking.