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Starting out in Internet marketing is very much like taking drugs. The only difference is that marketing can be far less rewarding and dangerous for your health, and tends to cost an aweful lot more.

Like drugs, Internet marketing can be highly addictive and can start to comsume your life so much that you can start to forget to do other normal things - like washing, feeding the dog or picking up your credit card after you've bought groceries at the store.

Just as a drug addict has his pipes, lighters, syringes and so on, so do Internet marketers have their accessories - most notably a computer.

This may be either a desktop - so called because it is used on a desk. Or a laptop - so called because it's also used on a desk because it becomes so hot within moments of turning it on that it will take the skin off your legs if you tried using it on your lap.

Remember - a lap is either something done by a lycra-clan athlete at the Olympics or a pvc-clad dancer in a seedy bar.

Neither involves burned thighs (except maybe friction burns if someone gets carried away at the seedy bar).

There are two important pieces of software every Internet marketer needs on his or her computer.

The first is an email client so you can receive spam, viruses and ezines about how much better than you everyone else is doing.

The other is an Internet browser. This is a device for viewing popup windows, and allowing your partner to see you've really been looking at porn all evening rather than finishing off that report from work you told her about.

Parental controls are of course available to limit what can be viewed online but generally the parents soon get annoyed with the limitations so their children have to unlock it.

The latest tool in the arsenal of the Internet marketer is the blog, which can be defined as a piece of software designed, when used properly, to get you banned by Google as quickly as possible. Ideally within a few weeks. Days is a real achievement and should be celebrated by sending our a slew of spam emails.

Internet marketers live a strange double-life working during the day at their job and running their business at night, hoping some day to be able to quit the job altogether.

The problem is that if and when this finally does happen you won't have an excuse to take your secretary out to dinner and might actually have to converse with your partner - however distateful it may seem to you right now.

Some marketers try to merge their two lives - sneakily reading Internet marketing information at the office when they should be doing their job. If you opt to do this just make sure you don't do something silly like putting the PDF about "How To Fire Your Boss" in his intray, while the new sales figures get taken home for your bedtime reading.

Indeed the best definition of a newbie Internet marketer is someone who spends all day slogging their guts out at a job they hate to earn a few dollars, only to come home and spend the entire night on the Internet getting fleeced for it by people smarter than themselves.

It's a sad fact that newbie Internet marketers come in only two styles - those with money to burn and those who have been in the game for more than a few days.

Indeed it's not long before you find yourself working twice as hard as you ever did before you got into marketing and ending up with half the money you had before.

It's a bit like going out with Paris Hilton as opposed to the ugly fat bird with the lisp and the lazy eye that you see down your street sometimes (generally known as your "wife").

One day, after all your efforts and investments, you'll receive one of those delicious emails all we experts received once upon a time telling you that you've just made a sale.

You'll be leaping and jumping around the house like a madman, whooping and yelling with excitement at having spent the last 3 months of your life and half your annual salary to finally get a commission of $1.22.

That is, of course, until you wake up the baby, who wakes up your partner, who after a lengthy and heated discussion about responsibility, thinking of others, getting up in the morning and other equally dull and pointless topics will give you the silent treatment for the next week to try and teach you a lesson.

This, however, has the opposite effect as it gives you even more time to spend on the Internet as you don't have to try and look interested in talking to your partner.

Unfortunately the edge is slightly taken off the excitement about your commission when the order is refunded two hours later as it was made with a stolen credit card. Even worse when you discover it was the one that you left in the grocery store just hours before...

Copyright 2006 Richard Adams