The first thing that new marketers have to concentrate on doing is building a list. Lead generation is the absolute prime directive. Why? Because without a list of people who know, like, and trust you, you won't get very far online. It's a big, scary place for most newbies, and they hear so much from so many that they're afraid to make the wrong purchase. So, it's important to build your own army of interested buyers and to work with them until your credibility and trustworthiness is established.

But, in reality lead generation always needs to be a central focus. There's so much going on out in cyberspace, and so much in the Internet marketing community that it's hard to keep that focus and not be distracted away from it.

How can you do it?

The first idea is to just get a big whiteboard. Write the things you need to accomplish on it: Buy a domain, set up an autoresponder, build a squeeze page, come up with an ethical bribe, send traffic.

Then, break down what needs breaking down. For example. For the squeeze page, you'll need to write copy, create a web form at the autoresponder, and upload the page to your hosting account. Each piece of the puzzle can be broken down into smaller chunks.

When you look at all you have written down, you might be overwhelmed. It might look like a whole bunch of stuff to do, and you may not know where you want to start. That's easy. Just pick one thing and do that. Just pick anything, and focus on that one part of the puzzle.

Before you know it, the whole puzzle begins to take shape. You will have the project completed and be building a list. This is all you need to do when you're first starting out, after picking a niche, of course. But lead generation isn't something you can afford to put off. Just follow the advice above and make it happen.