Most things have a fairly clear start and end.

But internet marketing is like a Mobius strip: it doesn’t really have a beginning or an end.

There are so many places to start that it can become confusing and you end up stalling rather than doing anything at all.

Part of the problem is that internet marketing covers just so many things:

• Affiliate marketing – somewhere that a lot of people start as there’s less risk because other people have already developed the products you’re going to sell. You could review products, build squeeze pages and encourage people to join your list, sell Amazon and other product ranges on commission, choose pay-per-lead offers so that the road bump between getting a prospect and getting some income is smaller.
• Creating your own products – something I like to do but you need ideas and a group of people to sell those ideas to. You also have to choose between digital and real world products and whether they’re one-offs (think sites like Etsy) or products you can duplicate relatively easily (digital products work nicely for this but other things like CDs, DVDs, craft style products and a lot of other things can also work.
• Selling products that have already been created. These could be resale rights digital products, second hand products (vintage clothing anyone?), brand new products that you’ve bought in wholesale quantities and sell on sites like Ebay and Amazon, brand new products that you sell by arbitraging between different prices on different sites (sounds easy, gets complicated fast as prices change).
• Creating or joining a community and soft selling once they begin to trust you. This used to be using forums and that can still work nicely. But it can also mean a Facebook group or even a bunch of people following you on Twitter or Pinterest or LinkedIn.
• Teaching or coaching or helping other people. Gone are the days where tuition had to be in person. A lot of things can be done over the web. I know several people in the self help area where they work around the globe using Skype to “meet” with their clients. The same can work in other areas and doesn’t even have to be done in real time. Once you’ve set up procedures, you can send out pre-written and pre-recorded sessions to cover the basics and stop you getting bored delivering the same thing over and over again, freeing your time for higher end, higher value content.

That list is big but it’s just scratching the surface of what you could offer in your internet marketing.

Which is where the problem of where to start comes in.

It’s just an overwhelming level of choice.

A bit like going into a Chinese restaurant for the first time, except the “menu” of things you can do is ten times bigger and everything is tempting and so many of the options sound so easy in the sales letter you just read.

And we’ve not even touched on the niche yet!

A niche is the sub-set of a market because not even the biggest supermarkets could sell every food item. They specialise in selling what most people want most weeks. They cherry pick the range and leave it to specialist stores to drill down and cover the niche aspects.

You’ll only find the better sellers – or the ones that manufacturers have paid to list in the hope that they’ll become a good seller.

You won’t find every single item, so you resort to your local specialist for those hard to find spices or ingredients or your favourite blend of tea or coffee. Or you use a site like Amazon that seemingly stocks everything available in the world.

Selecting a niche can be top down or bottom up

I prefer to start at the top (the big area) and drill down.

Other people like to start at the really micro level and work up until they find a big enough market to work with. It’s unlikely that you’d be able to create enough business to conquer people’s fear of heights and earn enough to make a living. But if you stretched that to encompass things like fear of flying then you might be able to.

There are several large areas that internet marketers are generally directed to as being big topics that you can drill down in:

• Health
• Money
• Relationships

All those are super-big areas and there’s no chance you’d be able to crack them in this lifetime.

So you need to drill down.

It also helps enormously if you’re interested in the topic you want to concentrate on.

And if you can relate to it.

There’s not much point in targeting the teenage market if you’ve just been downsized from your job because you’re the wrong side of 50.

They’re a race apart – you won’t speak their language, even though it’s technically English for both of you.

You won’t know the current trends.

And you’ll just be an old fogey.

That said, you could always twist it round – granny or grandpa’s tips might work. There could be a coolness in being shown things by the older generation who’ve been there, done that.

But it’s still likely to be an uphill struggle.

Far better to talk to people in your generation – you’ll automatically know their problems, you’ll share a lot of the same things and experiences.

Going back to the teenage market, they weren’t even born when Back to the Future was first filmed.

The moon landings are ancient history to them.

Which makes the references you use awkward at best.

I see this in real life all the time with much smaller age gaps. When I take my Scouts on activities and they have an instructor who’s maybe 5 or 6 years older then them, the instructor is using references (usually films or music) that “everyone” knows and the Scouts just have blank looks on their faces. They don’t recognise the references.

It’s just easier to stick to age groups you can relate to.

Of course, if you went into the parenting niche that might be different. But you’d probably be aiming at the parent, not the child, unless you were writing a story book.In that instance, it would be best to be a parent yourself. Ideally one who had children the same age as those of the parents you were targeting.

That kind of thought process is how I’d suggest you find the niche you’re interested in.

There’s a good chance that there are enough products to monetise anything you care to home in on.

Some markets spend money more freely than others.But even “being frugal” markets spend money – maybe on recipe books showing them how to create meals for less money, how to re-use items or repair them, cutting down on bills, creating your own cleaning products, all that kind of thing.

There’s usually a trade-off between the size of the niche and the money spent.

There’s not a gigantic market for Cessna jets but if Amazon sold them (all I could find were models) then the commission would be very nice.But actually that could be a niche – models of them, books about them, etc. If you’re a plane enthusiast then you could turn your enthusiasm into a profit by tackling the niche and creating a good site or forum or Facebook page catering for fellow enthusiasts.

Drop in some Amazon links and you could be earning a niche income from your hobby.

Hobbies often turn into internet marketing nichesThis comes back to the idea that you should pick a niche that you’re interested in.You’ll be creating content to attract visitors to your site or Facebook page or whatever other method you’ve decided to use.

More content than you ever imagined when you first decided to take up internet marketing.

Because the web has an insatiable desire for content.

YouTube has 300 hours of content added to it every minute.That’s a scary figure.

And that’s just for one website.It also explains why your video may not appear on the front page!There’s a lot of competition and that competition is increasing.

After all, those thousands of hours of videos that have been uploaded since you first started reading this page haven’t disappeared. They’re there until the uploader deletes them or YouTube decides they were spam. But most of them will be there for the forseeable future.

You need to break through the clutter.

That’s the clutter that is the internet.

And it’s also the clutter that is in your mind.

The more you can clear your mind and focus, the more likely you are to win at internet marketing.

Picking your niche and then picking where to start in that niche are essential.One way to do this is to brainstorm.

On your own or with an understanding partner.Pick a time when you won’t be disturbed.

Grab an old fashioned piece of paper and a pen.

Set a timer for 15 minutes.

Start writing down any and every idea that comes into your head for potential niches and potential ways of doing internet marketing around those niches.

Don’t censor anything at this stage.

Just dump the contents of your mind onto that piece of paper.

And don’t stop until your 15 minute timer is up.If you stall, keep at it.

Your mind will bubble with ideas and will relish the thought of not being constrained.

Then set that piece of paper aside – ideally overnight but if your enthusiasm is too high, at least for as long as it takes to brew a cup of tea or coffee or go out for a brisk walk.

Then come back to the list and give each item a score.

Remember they can’t all score equally – this is not a democracy!

Some ideas will be more equal than others and will merit a higher score.

Any idea that crops up more than once, even if it’s in slightly different variations, is worth paying extra attention to because it’s your subconscious subtly directing you.

Once you’ve done that, either pick the top three choices to research further or just pick one choice and run with it.

There’s a lot to be said for both approaches.

But a lot of people use the further research side of things to procrastinate and never start.

So if that’s your normal modus operandi then just pick one topic.

Then run with it!Start a website if that’s what your concept needs.

Put up a listing on Ebay if that’s appropriate.

Join a forum or a Facebook group and contribute.

Whatever it takes to shift from an idea to something that’s actually happening.

Stick with it for at least a month.

That will give you enough time to find out whether or not you can regularly create “stuff” in that niche and whether or not you really enjoy it or whether it was just one of those things that seemed a good idea at the time.

Whether or not it works out first time isn’t actually too important.

Because you’ll have gained valuable skills and you’ll know a lot more than you did a month ago.

Sure, you’ll make a few mistakes.

We all do.

But chances are you won’t make anywhere near as many mistakes as you thought you might and chances are that any you do make won’t be the end of the world.

The important thing is to start.

Because even if it doesn’t work out, you’ll have a much clearer idea in a month’s time than you do now.

And don’t be afraid to fail fast.

Not everything works out as planned.

Some things work better than you ever dreamed they could.

Other things are like New Coke and would have been best left on the drawing board.

And if you’d like help with all of this, check out this page.