Having been through a good number of websites today looking at how people advise those just starting out to get themselves started in making money online.

Don’t get me wrong there are people out there who really have cracked the method and got the technique off to a tee and they do very well out of getting other people started, one of these is Ed Dale who teaches a very effective method in The Thirty Day Challenge.

So why am I having a dig at the new people starting out with telling other new people how to do it? Because they miss the important factors by just skimming over them. What do I mean? OK I have just been on a blog post of someone who is telling others how to start making money online and it was an 8 point method that went something like this:

1. Find a niche
2. Keyword research
3. Get hosting
4. Find or Create a Product
5. Create your Site
6. Set up and auto responder
7. Marketing
8. Wash, Rinse, Repeat

Now there was a little more to it than that but basically that was it. Here is the thing on point number one there were three lines about going to Yahoo answers and to be quite honest yes that is a good place to do some niche research but if you leave it at that your going to find it hard going to make money online.

Research isn’t just about your keywords. You need to know a whole host of things before you go ahead with your campaign. For example if you were thinking about getting involved in the niche of Dog Training you will come up against some of the masters of internet marketing, if you want to get involved in the make money online niche then you will be committing online marketing suicide and most of the people who are desperate to get you involved in internet marketing do not tell you this.

Research is where the game is won or lost and making sure that you know your niche, know your audience and know the product that you are selling. Test to see if you have an audience that wants to buy something within that niche. Imagine you were looking for information on sausage making and someone sold you something on roast dinners! Wouldn’t be happy would you! This is why you research everything completely before you start.

It would be criminal of me to say that the third point in this 8 point technique that I found was correct, there are literally hundreds of Web 2.0 websites such as Weebly, Squidoo and Blogger where you can set up a site with content about your niche. These are all FREE no need to get hosting until you are sure that you are getting a good return on your product and you are then looking to create and promote your own product.

These are just a few of the points that worry me when people advise others in getting involved in internet marketing and affiliate marketing. I call it the field of dreams unfortunately the internet is not a farm in Iowa with a baseball field.

Make sure you get good advice when you are researching getting involved and don’t think just because a website tell you its a great idea it is.

Good luck