The real secret to making money on the Internet is simply 
figuring out what your audience wants and offering it to them. 
It's no more complex than that.

You don't need a particularly glamorous product.  You don't need 
a particularly expensive product.  You just need to find out what 
people are looking for... what they are willing to spend money 
on, and then you offer it to them.

You can also do this in a surprisingly crowded market and do 
very well just by "mixing it up" a little. Let me give you an 
example... My most recent issue of Word Tracker showed that 
"recipes" was the 76th most search for term on the entire 
Internet. If you throw out all of the adult-related terms, it's 
probably in the top 20. When I first noticed how popular that 
term was back in 1996, I simply positioned myself in front of 
that audience. Now, if you search on the term "soul food" on any 
of the major search engines, I'm in the top 10... and usually in 
the top three search results. My site is at 
http://chitterlings.com/

This is a perfect example of positioning yourself in a very 
crowded market. The fact that the market is so crowded PROVES 
that the demand is there.  Offline proof… is the fact that you'll 
find dozens of cookbooks positioned near the checkout counter 
at any major American supermarket. People NEVER get tired of 
searching for new ways to fry chicken :-)

Having made my point above, I will share with you my real secret. 
It's positioning.  You can do very well in a crowded market if 
you just figure out how to make your product seem unique.   In 
the  brick-and-mortar world, there are probably hundreds of 
different brands of jeans. Yet, if I were to ask you to name 
a brand of jeans, there's a very high probability you'd say 
®Levi's.  It's all about branding and positioning!

There are thousands of niche markets very similar to the cookbook 
market. I'm VERY well positioned in a number of them. I won't 
mention most of the others simply because it wouldn't be prudent. 
I've branded myself as the soul food cookbook guy, so I don't 
worry too much about eroding that market. To discover others, you 
only have to do a little research using a tool like WordTracker. 
You can get a free trial subscription at: 
http://williecrawford.com/FreeWordTrackerTrial.html

Another tool you can use to find out everything about a given 
niche is at: http://williecrawford.com/SecretSEOWeapon.html 
With this tool researching all of your competitors, and 
potential joint venture partners, is a breeze!

Let's stick with the cookbook example, but I do encourage you 
to find your own niche :-)  Just how difficult is it to write a 
cookbook?  You simply pull together a themed collection of your 
favorite recipes, type them up in ®MS Word, take or purchases a 
few photos, and you're just about done.  MS Word integrates with 
some of the common PDF creation software, so you can actually 
output you Word file to PDF and have a cookbook ready to market 
in no time.

It's even easier that that. At my site, 
http://writeacookbook.com/ I offer the recordings from a 
teleseminar I did on how I, and two other cookbook authors, wrote 
our own cookbooks. We share our experiences with you. On top of 
that I GIVE you 30 pre-written cookbooks. Many of these come with 
html websites that you can just insert your order links into. You 
get the raw MS Word version of many of the manuscripts that you 
are free to change. What could be easier.

Now, here's where we "mix it up" a little.  You see, I purchased 
the master resale rights to those 30 cookbooks. Then I packaged 
them with my recorded teleseminar to create a killer product. 
That's how EASY it is to come up with a killer product that will 
make you money hand over fist.  It really doesn't have to be 
complicated.

There is one other piece of the puzzle that's a challenge for 
some.  It's the copy on your website that converts traffic to 
buyers. Writing good copy is a challenge for some, but it just 
takes practice.  To shorten the learning curve, just grab a copy 
of Yanik Silver's very comprehensive course at: 
http://www.ultimateonlinecopymanual.com/

If you've already written your copy and want it critiqued, you 
can get a professional copywriter to do that for FREE.  I have a 
friend who's written copy for the likes of Jay Abraham and Agora 
Publishing.  His name is Kelvin Parker and you can request a free 
critique, and a copy of his free report "714 Ways Pro Copywriters 
Boost Response and Make Millions of Dollars" at: 
http://williecrawford.com/copywriting.html

Ok, I've just revealed to you how easy making money online can 
be. The key is to find a market with proven demand, and then 
carve off your piece of that market.  In order for your product 
to do really well you do need to figure out a way to make your 
product be perceived as unique. Otherwise, your product will just 
be a commodity and not command a very high price. The key to 
making your product stand out is just branding and good 
copywriting.

Now "the ball's in your court." 

Willie Crawford is a corporate president, published author,
seminar speaker and host, tele-seminar speaker and host,
retired military officer, karate black belt, master network
marketing trainer, and lifetime student of marketing. He
shows people how to actually generate substantial income
on-line using very simple, easily implemented systems. An
example of such a system that you can study and utilize
is at: http://sendoutcards.com/willie