Quit your job, pack up and restart your life online. Create a website selling your talent and latest invention. To jumpstart the motor, spend a few hundred dollars on an online marketing course teaching you how to turn your business from a home based venture into a million dollar enterprise in half a year. But after one year in business you are nowhere close to being the online marketing guru that your course promised, you are tipping the scales on the wrong side of bankruptcy and it finally dawns on you that it was never meant to be this way. You were meant to have had a fledging business by now, customers spanning the globe and a virtually unstoppable money-making machine. Sounds familiar?

I have heard this story time and over, unfulfilled promises and lost dreams on the internet.

The reason that so many of us, even after hearing of such scams still put our foot forward and get caught in this web is the lure of easy success and quick money. We are drawn to this proposition of the perfect deal that we can only dream of. Such stories of wealth and success will always hold our sway and each story by some internet guru detailing how they were able to make a killing on the Web with the new formula for success that they just discovered brings a familiar tingle each time we happen to read it.

What such people seek to have us believe is that if we had their secret formula behind us, we would be making the same money on the internet in no time. With this twisted idea of reality we end up believing that achieving success in Cyberworld is as easy as buying a success formula, leafing through the pages and having it rolling in. Sad to say, the reality is a bit different, it is a harsh world out there.

I will share some insights that I have learnt in my time on the Web. Just like achieving success

I remember reading in an article written by a leading internet marketing guru "Earning money via the Internet is EASY, and it is also an extremely SIMPLE process."

This is as far away from the truth as can be. I do not wish to discredit anyone already making their fortunes on the internet but I would like to convey a clearer picture of the truth than these marketers would have you believe.

After the initial stage of learning and experimenting, it is quite possible that you might start making some nearly effort-free cash on the Web, this however, calls for great input in terms of targeting the right market segment, planning, following up on potential customers and good customer support. In simple terms, you will need to master the principles of marketing before you start making the windfall that your marketing guru’s course promised. I hope that you have the patience it takes to learn, and the diligence to apply your knowledge, but most importantly if you have the heart to seek for success, and rise when you stumble, it shall be yours.

Charlz Wachira, the Online Marketing Alchemyst, runs http://www.e-gnorance.com, an online venture aimed at marketing entrepreneurial endeavors online. He also writes on a variety of issues related to entrepreneurship, e-commerce and online marketing. He can be reached at charlz@e-gnorance.com