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One of the hardest things that most small online marketers have to grasp is that the rest of the world is not like us. In many ways each of us is completely unique and that comes right down to the very basic things like our hopes and desires.

While there might be some people out there who share the exact same set of hopes and desires the majority of people that we want to sell stuff to won't. While there may be a few people who live their lifes in exactly the same way you do the majority of people that we want to sell stuff to won't.

Not even people within your family group will see and do things exactly as you do. The goals that motivate you may do nothing for them and the pastimes that you might enjoy may leave them cold.

Yet most webmasters who are involved in marketing don't seem to realise that. We tend to think that if we work in a certain way then lots of other people will do the same. We tend to think that if we like a product then everyone else will too.

That's something that was highlighted for us just recently. Two of our kids work online but work as employees for other people rather than for themselves; one is a web designer and the other is a systems administrator. Undoubtedly both are very good at what they do - and that's not just the talk of proud parents.

So if they do similar work to us we automatically presumed that they were attached to their computers by their umbilical chords just as we are. To our surprise and horror we found that they aren't. These two might work online and with computers for eight hours a day but for them that's it! Knock off time really does mean the end of computer time for the day for both of them.

One of them is so totally different to us that when she moved house recently she didn't eve bother to have a phone line connected so she can't access the Internet from home at all! Shock! Horror!

To make matters even more humiliating one of our other daughters told us that she hadn't looked at her email since before Christmas. Yet these are our kids - these are people just like us ... or so we thought.

But they're not like us, they aren't physically attached to their computers, they're right into the whole computer scene, they're wired and in touch just like us ... but they're also quite different to us.

And so is everyone else out there ... and they're quite different to you too. In fact, even though Steve and I work just as hard online as you do and for just as many hours as you do, we're different to you too.

What appeals to you won't appeal to us and what appeals to you won't appeal in exactly the same way to most of the people who visit your site. That means that what you might think will sell may be a complete and utter flop. None of your visitors may want to buy the product you like at all.

That can be a very hard lesson to learn - especially if you have invested a lot of time and money in a product and a site. Even in adult where you may be marketing a sponsor's product you can still lose money if you've invested in traffic and site design.

So be aware that it's not all about you. What you like and what might look good to you is really of little or no consequence. Instead you have to get yourself in tune with what the consumers want. You have to put yourself inside their heads and learn to understand what makes them tick and you won't do that if you're looking at the world through your own filters.

Instead you have to get out there and find out what experienced marketers are saying about the market place. Because we work online you need to find out what people are searching for and what they're talking about online.

There are tools out there that will help you do that and some are better than others. Some are free and some are going to cost you money; some are obvious and some are less obvious. Lots of adult webmasters will suggest that you use the Overture tool and that's a good start but also think about using Google Trends - google.com/trends.

Google Alerts is also a useful tool that can provide you with some great insights into what your market is saying about the products you want to sell. Think about Google Analytics too - that can give you a real idea of what people are interested in once they arrive on your site.

But above all, remember that what you like and what appeals to you has little place in what you should be selling. It's all about what is important to the people you are selling to and that means that it's not about you.