Unfortunately most of us focus on the wrong things when we start our Internet home businesses. These things include spending a lot of time on Twitter building follower lists or on Facebook. They take up your time but in and of themselves make little if any money.

Forums are a good thing but unless you really learn something valuable you can spend a lot of time chatting and the return is not commensurate with the time spent.

Neither of the resources I have mentioned are bad in themselves. They have their place in Internet marketing, but that place is not at the front of the list of priorities.

So what activities should you prioritize when doing business on the Internet?

1. One good thing to do is to develop products and services of your own. These can be physical or digital products, or a set of skills that you can offer as a service. Either way, you need to make your mark by offering something of your own.

2. When you have developed a product or service set up an affiliate program in Clickbank.com or PayDotCom.com. Once you have done that setup a great sales page, e-mail newsletters, banner ads, thank you page ads and a whole range of other resources to encourage people to sign up to your affiliate program and market your products.

3. Research new skills by doing off-line as well as online reading. If you take your business seriously you need to invest in it.  You can find books written by successful marketers at Amazon.com or at your local bookstore and these can be a great investment. Even if you only read five or six books a year, you will be putting yourself ahead of the crowd in terms of acquired knowledge and insight into Internet marketing

4. Joint ventures with other successful marketers can also be a great thing. You will need to find marketers who are successful and who offer products that are complementary to your own so that the two of you can put together an
attractive joint package.

5. Outsource time-consuming but necessary tasks. For instance, if you don’t like writing articles or e- books, or you don’t feel you can develop original products of your own, then by all means find somebody who can do that for you. This will leave you free to concentrate on promoting your products and services.

Outsourcing will cost you money, but it will also save you a lot of time and increase your productive output. Nearly all the most successful Internet marketers that I know employ other people to do things for them. If you try to do everything yourself you will ultimately be holding yourself back from achieving the success that you desire.

Consider these suggestions. Set priorities for the important things and focus on the important things. Only spend a little time each day on low priority items such as social marketing. Manage your time wisely. If you maintain your focus you will see your Internet home business grow and you will become a successful Internet marketer.

One of the major problems that newbie affiliate marketers are facing today is competition. So even though affiliate marketing is a great way to run a home based business on the Internet you need to learn how to face the competition.

The reason for this heavy competition is that the company efforts are focused on getting as many affiliates as possible signed up for their program. As a result the most popular affiliate products on the Internet have literally thousands of affiliate marketers competing against each other to earn commissions on sales. That’s great news for the product designer, but not so hot for the new affiliate marketer who is trying to make his or her first sale on the Internet.

How can a newbie affiliate marketer get over this problem? Let’s look at some possible solutions.

1. First of all, if you are getting into affiliate marketing for the first time, do your research before setting up your online business. There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there catering to all manner of niche markets. So look out for a niche market that is big enough and lucrative enough for you to make money in. The niche market should have several affiliate products for you to promote, should have a reasonable amount of competition but not be saturated with too much established competition.

2. Find a way to offer something unique in addition to, and ahead of the affiliate products that you are planning to sell. In other words, don’t simply try to sell the affiliate products on your website. This could be a unique niche product of your own, or it could be in the form of information, such as an audio or video production, or an e-book or e-mail course. As a matter of fact, I’m currently working on a free ebook to give away.

The more of these unique “front end” products that you can offer the more likely you will succeed in selling affiliate products on the “back end” as follow-up sales.

When you offer something unique you are setting yourself apart from the competition. You are showing your market that you have the expertise and the ability to produce something that is unique and is also relevant to the needs of your market. This will help yougain credibility in the eyes of your potential customers.

3. The Internet is all too often an anonymous and impersonal space. Just think of all the websites that you visit where you have no idea who the owner is. It’s a good bet that much of your competition are trying to sell products from websites full of impersonal sales hype and zero personal input.

You should be different. Let people know who you are. People like to buy from people who they feel they know and have something in common with. So be brave, put a photo of yourself with your real name on your website. Even better, if you have a web cam, make a two minute introductory video in which you introduce yourself and your business to your website visitors.

Above all give your visitors clear contact details so that they can follow-up with any questions that they may have. If they can’t contact you, chances are they will never purchase anything from you. By making yourself available to them you are offering them a service which will foster contact and will become something your customers come to appreciate.

.If you want to move ahead of the competition, and I’m sure you do, take the time and make the effort to master these basic techniques. If you do, the chances are far greater that you will have success with your home based Internet affiliate marketing business.