The first word of advice that I'm going to give is about advertising. Nothing in this world is free. You're going to get what you pay for. Don't jump at every advertising offer you get once you get going. You'll just end up chasing your tail, and throwing your money away. When you're just starting out it's better to sell information, or small ticket items rather than harder to sell big ticket items.

Everybody talks about search engine ranking , and there's nothing wrong with having a high search engine ranking, but for me, I'm more concerned about getting high volume, targeted traffic to get me going, than how high I'm ranked on Google, or Yahoo. Sure a higher ranking is going to give you more business, but lets just get established for now.

I've never been much of an automobile mechanic, but about 25 years ago an old friend instructed me in mysteries of how to find out why my old car wouldn't run.

"You see," he said, "when an engine won't run, it's got to be one of three things. It's not getting enough gas, air, or spark, because that's all an engine really needs."

He taught me to check simple things, like pull a spark plug and see if it sparks when starter turns over. Or pull off air filter and see if I could smell gas in carburetor. (That was before most cars were fuel injected!)

I can't count number of times over last 25 years that those simple words helped me during times of car trouble, especially in younger days with cars that were old "beaters."

If you think about it, Internet marketing is just as simple. All you really need is gas, air, and spark:

1. Targeted traffic - fuel that powers an Internet business.

2. A product that people really need or want - something you can present as being as necessary as air they breathe.

3. Sales copy that will sell - spark that makes targeted traffic want that product as badly as air they breathe.

Okay, so maybe that still sounds a little tough, but hey - it's only three things! Even though I'll probably never be a skilled auto mechanic, I can comprehend and check three things. And you can catch on to just three things too.

Number 2 and 3 are probably easiest to master.

There's no shortage of great products and great ideas for things that people really want. It's easy to find out what people really want with tools like: