The author gives an easy to follow 12-point guide and advice to all new Internet marketers and online business owners to help them excel in this very interesting, exciting, rewarding and yet challenging business venture. 1) It has been reported that there are about 600,000,000 people on the Net world wide at the moment. And the annual growth of the number of surfers is exponential! You can imagine the potential market for Internet business is immensely huge. The chances of your success in the business online are tremendous. Your journey towards that would be a very exciting and rewarding one indeed. 2) Plan your work and work your plan. Like any other forms of work, you must have a plan for your Internet business. Set an achievable short term, medium term and long term objectives, prepare a budget and stick to them as far as possible. Carry out periodical checking to determine any deviations from the plan and take the necessary remedial actions. 3) Do not ever try to spam i.e. sending unsolicited e-mails to unexpected recipients under any circumstances. I get very annoyed when I find chunks of unwanted e-mails plugging my mailbox resulting in the e-mails from my friends and business associates being “lost” in the midst of these junks mails. The frustrating process of deleting them is enough to drive me through the roof! If you insisted on “spamming”, you’d very likely have your name terminated by the server. It is therefore not worth the while because eventually your business would suffer. 4) Do not try to be a Jack of all trades. Choose only a niche product or service or something where your own expertise lies in. Then consolidate your business by focusing on what you do best. Many Internet marketers have developed very enterprising, lucrative and rewarding online businesses doing what they enjoy and love best i.e. hobbies. 5) Respect, understand and always keep abreast with the advance of technology because it could help you achieve your business vision and personal goals. The ever changing technology provides us with countless tools with which we could use to enhance our businesses. A very good example is the advent of BLOGs. The software used for this today is so simple and friendly that old hats with rusty and somewhat retarded brains like me very often find the process of blogging as enjoyable and relaxing as a breezy walk in the park! 6) Design your webpage or blogs with quality content that would exert yourself and your business as an authority in your field. You should have a content that is not only attractive but also informative to advise especially the first-time visitors what benefits they would enjoy from your products or services. It should be able to persuade customers to keep coming back to your website to repeat their orders and convert casual visitors to prospects and prospects to customers. 7) You’d be tempted with countless of seemingly very attractive offers and promises from the Web to help improve your business. Do not fall into the trap of some of these promises. Just stay with a handful of strategies that work and stick with them. For example, if you’re submitting articles to drive free traffic to your sites and it’s showing positive dividends, stick to it and continue with this strategy while improving and fine-tuning others. 8) By all means, study your competitors, watch their activities and every move. But love thy competitors, not hate them. Do not “knock” them into oblivion. Unlike conventional business, you should always find ways to work along them if not with them. There are many online organizations, big and small, working very closely together even in the same product or service market sectors. Very good examples are the joint venture partnerships and link exchanges among the so-called competitors. 9) Do not be too “innovative” by creating and marketing new and unproven products or services that the market is not willing or ready to buy. Conduct a web research to identify products which command good market and offer them to the hungry and ready market. You could do some modification to improve it in order to have product differentiation and hence enjoying better comparative advantage over your competitors. 10) In Internet marketing, always remember three very important words. They’re…LIST, LIST and LIST. Also, do not forget the popular Internet adage “The Gold is in your LIST!” This means that a big chunk of your time, effort and concentration should be directed to getting the right strategy to drive traffic to your site. Advertising is therefore of utmost importance. 11) Although this is a home based business with all the freedom in the world, it’s prudent to have some form of discipline. Once you’ve decided to sit in front of the computer to start working online, you must stay focused and do not allow any distraction to affect your concentration. Treat it as your business and not a hobby. It would be nice to stick to a schedule which is also made known to other members of your family so that they’d know when to leave you alone. However do not get carried away and spend too much time in front of your PC because your loved ones, including your pets also deserve your attention and time. 12) Internet marketing is still one of the best businesses one could venture into especially when there is no demand for big capital outlay. With this huge and expanding audience coupled with the fact that marketing and advertising can be done on the Internet so easily and at only a fraction of the costs of traditional methods, we now have a fantastic opportunity to be successful in online business. Many companies have now positioned themselves profitably with the Internet which has created many new paradigms in the past few years. Passive incomes are made available to people from all walks of life. You can now make money online with simple and proven formula used by many to earn multiple streams of residual income. However, like any other conventional businesses, there would be times when you would encounter failures and disappointment. Do persevere as this is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Time, effort and some financial input are necessary. It would take a while to see the fruit of your effort. Use any failures to your advantage by learning from them. See success in every failure and opportunity in every threat.