I wholly agree with you. Most of us started to venture into internet marketing without a proper approach and guide. When we fail to understand the basics in the first place then we'll falter on the way. What it takes and how to get going, which marketing aspect or niche that you want to delve in?

Ask yourself these basic questions:

• Are you ready to take this path (IM)?
• What do you want to achieve?
• Have you make up your mind?
• Are you ready to work hard?
• Do you really believe in IM?

Then you'll have to choose what's the best marketing area that you really enjoy doing. Ask yourself and be honest, is it:

• affiliate marketing
• article marketing
• creating membership sites
• blogging with ads
• adsense marketing
• arbitrage marketing
• selling info products
• doing auctions in ebay, lelong
• etc, etc, etc....

Once you've made up your mind and identify what you want to do then the rest of actions that you need to do will become much more clearer.

Believe me, adsense marketing is not the same as running membership sites, selling info products is not the same as affiliate marketing, hyip and forex are totally different subjects - all are different from each other and have their own strength and weakness.

It's difficult for novice and newbies to decide because they are bombarded by all sorts of marketing email and advertising day-in and day-out.

Yes, most of us need a step-by-step guidance, and hand-ons guide is the best. However every now and then we're bombarded with home or self study guides at exorbitant price. Heck!

As a complementary to what pauljun has recommended on Stuart Tan IM course, you can download a free ebook by Jim Daniels from my blog at do-you-have-the-right-mindset