One last analogy for family members since many of mine are involved in sales. If you are familiar with sales, you are basically finding people interested in buying the services your company has to offer. You may not make the product directly, but you represent the makers, and get a commission for selling their product or service. This is the same process for Internet Marketers. Get yourself in front of people that may be interested in your product, show that you're not there to scam them (establish trust), and try to make the sale. If it goes through, great - everyone should be happy. If not, move on to the next interested client - it's a numbers game.
The main difference is that the numbers game is very different. Instead of selling a million dollar project a few times per year and getting a small percentage, you want to sell a $30 product a few thousand times per year at around 50% commission. This is possible because rather than using all of your time engaging with a few clients (there are only so many hours in a day), you try to drive tens of thousands to millions of people to your product. They can both make you great money if you succeed, and I would argue that Internet Marketing is more stable because the sales are much easier and you know how much you are going to sell with a given number of impressions thanks to google analytics. However, just like in sales, if you are not good at it, it may not be enough to survive (especially at first), and you may find yourself quickly moving onto other things. Not everyone is cut out for sales, or the delayed gratification that is required (work six months on a project and don't make a cent, then move on to the next one hoping it will work). This can and does happen, but it happens a lot more to the uninformed, misinformed, and under-informed.
Correct knowledge applied is power, and my goal is to provide you with the full knowledge to succeed in this business should you decide to take it on as a hobby, part-time job, or full-time job.