Some people who start businesses from their home office do it part time, while there are plenty of home business owners who work full-time at their businesses. There are many home business opportunities that can provide a high level of income, so the idea of working from home is appealing. This has to be tempered with the reality that most people who try to make money from home fail in their attempt and give up before they see any real money generated.

Two main issues are the usual causes of home business failure:

* No experience in the business

* No marketing skill

If you want to succeed at building your own home business and becoming the “captain of your own ship”, you only need to pay attention to these two things and you will be rewarded. If you ignore this, your chance of success is nil.

Ignore these two basic issues and your home business will not survive. Let’s look at each and see why you need to consider and pay attention to them.

First, going into a business in which you have no knowledge or experience. It is surprising how many people take for granted that they can be successful at something they know nothing about but for some reason they don’t think it’s important. Education and/or experience should be paramount when starting a home business. That’s because when you’re working from home, usually you are working alone and don’t have a team of people to rely on and probably not a lot of money either. Also, if you don’t consider the money or effort the business will require, you will become bogged down. So, it’s important to know what you’re doing from the get-go.

For example, let’s say you want to start a business selling stuff on eBay. Even if you’ve sold a few things on eBay, that’s not the same as doing it as a business. It’s more than just the technical stuff, like taking and uploading photos, answering emails from buyers, and writing a description. We’re talking about the business side of it:

* How will you source the stuff you will be selling ?

* How much money can be made ?

* Will you inventory your products ?

* How will you receive payments ?

* How will you ship the items ?

* How will returns be handled ?

* Do you have a bookkeeping system ?

So there’s more to just knowing a little bit about something to make a business from it. eBay is a good example, because people are aware of eBay as a place to sell stuff, but do you recall the many eBay businesses that were established around the country? Most of them failed, because the owners only knew that eBay was a place to sell stuff, and didn’t have the experience or knowledge about the other things they needed to know.

The other major item that is the cause of home business failure is a lack of marketing knowledge. In fact, this is probably the least understood and insidious problem faced by home business owners because they usually don’t consider it as much as they should. Many inexperienced business owners “think” they know how to market their business. After all, people feel that with the internet, it should be easy to reach their target market. As in the example with eBay, clueless business owners think that Google AdWords is all they need for advertising their product or service. Again, this thinking usually leads to failure and is the result of the business owner not knowing anything about internet marketing.

Indeed, this is a business that has no match in terms of what it can deliver for you and what it demands from you, because you can go off to a very solid start with less than $200 and a time dedication well below what a regular business or day job will require.

Now, what do you need in order to really make money by internet marketing?

The internet marketing business model require the confluence of three basic ingredients:

1.- A product or service that a great number of people might need or want.

2.- A place to display or promote that product, which involves any form of landing page (a blog, a squidoo lens, a website, or even a simple forwarded domain).

3.- A source of targeted traffic or visitors (that is, people you know are or might be looking for the product or service you are promoting).

The first thing you might ask is, how do I find that very product everybody wants?

Simple, if you go to any CPA or affiliate network, you will usually find information such as gravity (this is a measure of a product popularity used by a network called Clickbank) or EPC (Earnings per 100 clicks, this is used by other networks such as Commission Junction).

If you find a product or service with a high gravity or with a high EPC, you can safely assume that if that product or service is there it is because a lot of people want it or need it.

Once you know this you have a good level of certainty that if you connect targeted visitors to this product or service you will likely get them to buy it and you will make a profit out of it.

However, in order to do this you must have some form of landing page of your own, which can be the website of the merchant whose product you are promoting, or a pre-sell landing page of your own where you may bring some insight on the product or service to help the prospect make an informed decision.

This stage of the process is crucial, because assuming that the prospects are targeted (meaning that they have arrived to your landing page looking precisely for what you have on display) you still need to help them make a decision, and for that you do not need to be a salesman, in fact, I would think it is better if you are not at all.

Indeed, most of us surf the web in search of products or services, and when we do what we are really looking for is for information to let us know that we are making a good decision. If you provide this information it is likely that a good number of people, already with their sight set on the kind of product or service you are promoting, will feel they have no further research to do and go for it thus making you a commission.

Sometimes the landing page provided by the merchant will do the job, in which case you might do well using a simple redirect, but if that is not the case, you must create additional value by setting up a place (blog, lens, website etc.) where your visitor can access the information they need to make sure they are on the right path.

So as you can see, it is not about tricking your visitors into spending money, it is about creating a win-win situation where in order for you to be the winner, your visitors must first become the winners themselves. They probably will not know if they are making you a winner, and in fact it does not matter to them, just as long as you are making them winners through the information and value you have provided.

Here is where I typically post content: YouTube, Blogger, Yahoo Answers, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and of course, EzineArticles.

Using these free resources, I create content and drive traffic to my website so people can see the potential of my affiliate and referral marketing programs. Like anything in business, sharing your message with others is critical.

Consider This Example

A popular sandwich franchise recently opened a new store in my neighborhood. Sadly, the location for this new store is pitiful. The store is located off a four-lane highway, but the storefront faces into my residential neighborhood, rather than the highway.

The result has been disastrous for this business, as the sandwich shop is out of sight to the passing traffic.

This relates to your online business as well. Of all the millions of choices Internet surfers have, if your site faces into a quiet neighborhood, rather than a virtual superhighway, than traffic into your store is going to be lousy. Using the social networking sites I listed above is one way you can leverage your position and increase your visibility to your market.

Beyond that, successful Internet marketing becomes a numbers game.

Play The Numbers Game

If there was one secret above all others, I would have to say that it is to play the numbers game. That is, making money online and becoming a 6-figure money maker depends on how much traffic you can drive to your offers–providing they are legitimate and valuable products and services.

For example, if 100 visitors to your affiliate or referral offer results in one sale that nets you a $20 commission, then by extension, 1,000 targeted visitors to your offer may make you $200 in sales.

Like I said, it’s a numbers game.