I live across the river from New York City and on the days I make my way over there, the one thing you immediately notice are the smells of the street. No... not that smell. I'm talking about food.

You'll find all sorts of vendors selling food on the streets. But you won't see 20 different hotdog vendors crowded onto one street corner.

Common sense tells you that you won't make much money when you are competing with a bunch of other vendors on one corner who sell the same thing.

Yet that is exactly what has happened to the internet marketing "how to make money" game.

You are crowded into one street corner trying to sell the same hotdogs as everyone else and you just won't make much money because their is just too much darn competition.

So then you try to outdo your competitors and develop ways to make your "hotdog" stand out from everyone else. And your competitors catch on to this little trick and they start doing the same, making the technique ineffective.

You start offering fr-ee toppings with your hotdog but your competitors then also offer those same toppings and even include toppings that you don't offer.

You counter that by doing a little tweeking. You move your hot dog stand a little over to the left, and a little over to the right to see if it can increase your sales. But gosh darn it your competitors start doing the same and you spend more time dancing then you do making sales.

You then implant an edible micropchip that makes hotdogs talk... "Eat Me!" but everyone else then does the same thing and everyone's hotdog talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk. (Ok, I know I am getting carried away here)

But then a light bulb goes off in your head... you start selling grilled hot dogs instead and become a "niche" within the hotdog niche. But then your competitors do the same and that silly street corner just got crowded again.

And in the end... no matter how you cook 'em, or market them, you're still trying to sell those darn hotdogs that everyone else is selling.

There is just way too much competition for the average Joe to make any "real" money in this type of competitive atmosphere.

It's time to find your niche my friend. Forget the hotdog business. While everyone else is slaving away trying to sell hotdogs...

Use the marketing knowledge you obtained trying to sell those hotdogs... and apply it to sell something else instead, like pretzels.

You'll find that street corner has just gotten a lot less crowded and your making more money to boot. And you'll be laughing all the way to the bank too as you pass by all those poor hotdog vendors who don't know what you know.

The money is in the niche...

Al Martinovic has been successfully marketing non-marketing related products online since 2001. You can see his main business over at http://www.ineedsmokes.com and subscribe to his F-R-E-E weekly internet marketing newsletter at http://www.milleniummarketers.com