What's required?

Get a mentor or somebody who can help you. You cannot be successful totally alone. You need to have at least one person who knows what is he/she is talking about and you can trust. A good mentor can put you on the right track instantly (saving you lots of frustrations, trials and errors) and/or guide you to the next level.


Be very picky about who you get your marketing advice from. This is something I wish I would have done a long time ago (I would've saved thousands of dollars and who knows how many frustrated hours). You know when I was first starting out I listened to this guy and then listened to that guy, I listened to every guy...and of course got nowhere. Even more I heard from some ghostwriters that there are some "gurus" who are intentionally not telling you the whole picture so they can sell you more...So be very picky!


Have a proven plan or "blueprint" that you can follow. This is another very important point in my opinion. You must have a proven plan to follow because if you don't have a plan you'll get distracted...and distraction is the worst enemy of your online business (Just to clarify: You'll still get distracted if you have a plan but a LOT less. How do I know? Because I have a very concrete plan I follow and after several years of making money online I still get distracted sometimes...You're not alone :)


Automation and centralization. You must automate (and possibly centralize) everything you can in your online business. Time is your most important asset, almost everything can be bought but you can't buy more time, right? And if you like it or not you have only 24 hours a day...so automate and centralize everything you can.


Focus. If you can't find a way to focus your efforts, you will not make money online. Plain and simple. Once you start finishing your projects, whatever they may be, creating a product, building a website, writing sale copy etc. the money will start coming in.


Know your limitations and accept them. You must know what you can and cannot do and concentrate on the things you're good at. For example I'm not a big Adsense whiz (though I've a great theory :) so I do not do much Adsense. I concentrate on the areas that I am good at and that work for me like traffic generating, list building, email marketing, product creation etc...


Create your own products. You can make some good money as an affiliate but I believe that you must create your own products to make really good money online. Moreover I believe that even if you want to make the big bucks as an affiliate you still need to create your own products (remember those big affiliate bonus packs - those are almost all of their own products). So, you must create your own products - whatever it takes!


Take action. Develop a habit of taking action as soon as you realize what action you need to take. If you're missing a piece of the puzzle, don't stop doing the parts you can do now. Even a poorly formed plan of action that's acted upon is better than a perfect plan that sits there, unused. Do not allow ANYTHING to stop you. If you can't do something right now skip that step or try to replace it with something similar that you CAN do. DO what you can! Start selling something right now. How many order buttons do you have on the internet right now? The more order buttons you have the more money you will make. Just DO what you can and skip (or replace with something) what you can't...for now.