How exciting is it to join that first affiliate program or set up that first web site? The adrenalin is really pumping. You've found a product that is just so good that there is no question in your mind that you are really going to make some big money on this one!

So you get it all set up. You check the details two or three times just to make sure you have the right affiliate ID and the correct payment details. Then you sit back, relax and wait for the sales to come in. You check your affiliate stats every hour. Nothing! After a few days you decide just to check them maybe once or twice a day. You're sure to get a sale some time. Still nothing! By the third or fourth week you are wondering what you did wrong and why the millions of potential customers aren't all snapping up this great product. In the meantime, you became impatient didn't you? You went searching the Internet for more astounding products that are just sure to sell. You registered more domains, set up new web sites, joined membership sites. But at the end of it all, it seems that all you managed to do was increase your incoming email by 40 or 50 a day!

Sound familiar? At some point you get that feeling in the pit of your stomach. You know, the one that you get when you realise that you've been spending money on advertising, new products or services for the whole month and you don't actually have any income yet. The credit card is nearly maxed out and if you can't start making some sales soon things are going to look pretty bleak.

Such is the Internet marketing roller coaster. Unless you've managed to develop a reasonable and regular income you will be hitting multiple peaks and troughs on an almost daily basis. When I look back at the money I've spent ...no .. wasted on products and services I really wish there had been someone there to say

STOP! YOU'RE DOING THIS ALL WRONG!

I made the same mistake that the majority of Internet marketers seem to make. I tried selling a product. It didn't sell .. so I bought another, and another and another and ended up in this continual cycle of buy, try to sell, buy again. This was partly due to inexperience and partly due to this little voice in my head that kept telling me that other people were making thousands every day so I must be doing something terribly wrong. I figured if I was doing something THAT wrong .. well ... I should be able to fix it myself! But you guessed it. I was wrong.

I had reached the point where I had pretty much exhausted three credit cards and all it took to get me off the roller coaster and back on to a more even path was one simple word.

FOCUS!

I was so busy buying and trying to sell new products that I didn't take any time out to stop and actually plan how I was going to make a living on the Internet. If you can identify with some of what I have said and you are still on the marketing roller coaster, then you need to slow things down for a while and start planning. Here are some of the things I did which totally changed my marketing life:

1. Choose a product. ONE product. Get to KNOW the product. It's a lot easier to sell a product that you are very familiar with. You know all of its advantages from first hand experience.

2. Build a targetted mailing list. In those gigabytes of ebooks and products that are now on your hard drive you probably have some very good list building information which will tell you how to build a list of people who are interested in the type of product you are selling. Read it. Use it.

3. Track the results. There are a host of free tracking services out there. Learn about split-testing and continually improve your sales page(s).

4. Promote your web site every day. You only have to spend 20 or 30 minutes each day. Write articles, submit to niche directories and post on forums. If you do post on forums, participate for a few weeks before you start telling people about your product. People will get to know you and then they will trust your advice and your product.

5. Network. Internet marketers aren't supposed to be social outcasts. There are a host of very good IM forums out there on the Internet and literally thousands of successful marketers who are more than willing to help you along. Networking is probably the most important thing you need to do after you find some focus.

Once you've slowed the pace a little and start to develop a proper sales and marketing plan, and you've participated in some of the forums you will find that everything starts to fall into place. You will know which pages or sites are performing, roughly how many sales to expect from a particular product, and what you need to do to increase your sales. You'll be able to ask others to critique your latest sales copy and maybe get a few other gems of wisdom from them as well.