A funny thing about internet marketing is that people think it’s an “easy” way to make money. Why? Because internet marketers sell it that way.

Visit an affiliate sales page and I’m sure you’ll see all the popular trigger words – INSTANT, FAST, AUTOMATED, PUSH-BUTTON, SECRETS REVEALED, AUTO-PILOT. Throw in a couple of Clickbank screenshots along with a story about how they make money while they sleep and it’s a tempting offer.

Internet marketers sell it this way because it works. People don’t always want to hear the truth. They want easy. They don’t want to buy something that tells them with hard work, long hours and a bit of luck you MIGHT succeed in 9 to 18 months. Don’t believe me, try it yourself.

The truth is that once you succeed in internet marketing, it can be easy. Things can be automated. You can make money while you sleep. The hard part is getting to that point.

If you want to SKYROCKET your chances of succeeding in internet marketing, develop the 5 qualities listed below.

BE LASER FOCUSED

How will you make money online?

If you can’t answer this question immediately, you’re in trouble. If you want to build a business with a serious income, you better start treating it like a business.

It’s not a hobby. It’s not something you’re trying out. You are building a business and you need to treat it that way. Yes, there are exceptions to the rule, but they are exceptions for a reason – they don’t happen very often.

Successful businesses have a clear focus. Figure out what your business is all about and how you’re going to make money. Ever consider a business plan? You might want to.

What will people pay you for? You have to give something of value in exchange for money.

What are you offering that people will be happy to give you money for? And after they receive it, they feel like it was more than worth it.

There are a lot of different ways to make money online. Are you going to set up a bunch of affiliate sites? Are you going to offer consulting? Are you going to start a blog? How will you monetize the blog? You need to think about these things from the very beginning.

The more focused you are, the more likely it is that you will succeed. A lack of focus can lead to poor execution, and wasted resources. If you’re all over the place with your ideas, how can you decide the best way to use your resources? The more focused your business model is, the easier it will be to spend time on the things that will produce the best results.

SUCCESS IS YOUR ONLY OPTION

Building a business from scratch takes a lot of time, energy and resources. If you don’t have a very high level of desire to make it work, it will be a challenge for you.

This is why so many people tell you to do what you love and figure out how to make money from it. You need passion and desire to make a business work. When you enjoy what you’re doing every day, that’s a very good incentive to make it work – so you can keep doing it.

You don’t have to do what you love to succeed. It might help, but it’s not necessary. Some people simply have a very strong desire to make money. It doesn’t matter to them what they do, it just matters that they succeed and make money. If your strong desire comes from your desire to make money, that can work just as well.

Hitting rock bottom is another way to develop a powerful desire to succeed. If your choices are become homeless, or make this business work, that’s a strong motivator to succeed.

On the other hand, if you have a comfortable job, you try to do a few things in your spare time, it doesn’t really matter whether it works out or not – that’s a recipe for failure.

Do what you need to do to create the desire within yourself. Don’t hope for success. Don’t wish that things work out. Don’t TRY to succeed. Succeed. Get it in your head. Know what MUST be done, you WILL do it and there is no other option but to succeed. Period.

VISUALIZE YOUR SUCCESS IN DETAIL

Okay, I’m not talking about “The Secret” here. It’s a similar principle, but I think you need a little more than “wanting” something to actually make it happen. That’s where the execution comes into play below.

Visualization comes into play in a few different ways. First, it’s related to focus. If your business is not focused, you can’t visualize the success of your business. You need to see everything from the structure of your website, to the products that you’re selling, to the payments coming in and to the continued growth of your business.

There will be times when you might think your business is doomed and nothing seems to be working. Maybe friends and family members tell you that your idea won’t work. Maybe you just aren’t getting the results you want, as fast as you want. Visualize, in detail, how you will succeed and remove the doubt from your head.

This might sound like a bunch of BS, but the truth is that your mind can’t tell the difference between fiction and reality. Whatever thoughts you create in your head become your reality.

For example, have you ever heard a noise in the middle of the night and instantly you think someone is in your house? What happens to your body? Your heart rate increases, your breathing becomes heavier, you become very alert.

Even if it was just your refrigerator making a funny noise, your mind told your body that the reality was someone is in the house. Your mind and your body responded as if the reality was that someone was in your house, even though that wasn’t the case.

It’s the same thing when you tell a sad story or a story that makes you angry. When you tell that story to other people, you relive the experience. The reality is that whatever made you angry or sad has already happened. It’s over. But, your mind is reliving that experience and so you experience the emotions just as if the experience was happening now. Your mind creates your reality so make sure that your mind is filled with your detailed vision of success.

Michael Jordan was big on visualization. Before he ever played a game, he saw his team winning the game. Before he took a shot, he saw that shot going in. He knew he was going to succeed because he saw it in his head over and over again.

Jim Carrey, the actor, did something to help him visualize his success. Before he was ever famous, he wrote himself a check for $10 million dollars. He put “For services rendered” on the memo line and post-dated it about 5 years in the future. He carried the check with him all the time and would look at it to keep himself focused on what he had to do. He visualized his success over and over and made it his reality.

EXECUTE DAY AFTER DAY

You can enroll in the best internet marketing courses in the world, that doesn’t mean you will succeed.

You can read 5,000 of the best eBooks on the market, that doesn’t mean you will succeed.

You can be the smartest person in the world but if you don’t get out and execute day after day, nothing will come from your knowledge.

If you ask internet marketers how many people actually achieve great success after going through their programs or reading their ebooks, the number will be very very low. The reason is – people don’t execute what they learn.

It’s one thing to have the knowledge. It’s an entirely different thing to implement what you know and make it work. There is a big difference between theory and actuality.

Let me give you an example. Have you ever seen a romantic comedy movie? There are a few really good ones, but there are a lot that flat out suck.

In theory, it seems so simple to create a good romantic comedy. Have two likeable characters, throw in some funny stuff and there’s your movie. Unfortunately for the movie-going public, it’s not that easy to make a good movie.

If you write a screenplay, get a production company involved, fund the movie, get a studio involved, have the screenplay rewritten, have the actors demand rewrites, physically produce the movie, edit the movie, and market the movie, you will realize that many things have to come together to create a good movie. It’s not as simple as it seems in theory.

The same thing is true with internet marketing. It seems easy in theory. But, until you actually start creating websites, and content, and using SEO and analytics and creating products, and collecting payments and providing services, you won’t understand the best way to succeed.

When you take action every single day, you can learn from your mistakes. You get better at creating content. You figure out the best tools to use for your business. You find out the best ways to get traffic. You learn how to succeed by executing to the best of your ability day after day.

When you execute, you take steps towards your goal. It’s not about learning. It’s about executing more and more based on what you learn. It’s important to learn and educate yourself, but executing what you know is what will bring in the money.

BE TENACIOUS

Let’s face it, there will be obstacles when you start your own business. Maybe your servers crash during your first product launch. Maybe you run out of money before you start generating revenue. There will be challenges.

If you want to be great, understand in advance that challenges will arise and you will break through them without hesitation. Not just break through them, but use them to improve your business and grow even bigger. That’s being tenacious.

Being tenacious is not being discouraged easily. If you haven’t made any money after 4 months, that shouldn’t matter. Be persistent. Success is going farther than most people want to go. If it only took a month to be a huge success, a lot more people would be successful. Success is rare because most people aren’t persistent enough to reach it.

HOW TO SUCCEED IN INTERNET MARKETING

There are lot of things involved in the internet marketing process. If you want to succeed on an epic level then you need to educate yourself and develop some good habits. The habits that most internet marketers don’t like to talk about. Improve these qualities and prepare for massive success.