The biggest mistake I see new marketers on the Internet make is they try to compete with people who are massively successful right off the bat. They are trying to jump way to high too fast. Think of it more like being in the Marine Corps. When you first enlist you go to Boot Camp and you are considered a nobody or a recruit until you graduate. Then you are a private and are somebody, but still under just about everyone else.
In a couple years you will probably pick up Lance Corporal and will have a bit more respect, but still have to do everything all the other NCO's tell you. In 3-4 years you should pick up Corporal, it's then when you really start to feel like you are part of the team. Right now many people are starting to establish themselves and root themselves deeply in many of the popular niches.
So if you want to be where they are you still can, it's very possible. But it won't happen in a week or even a month. You'll have to work your way up just like you would in the Marine Corps or any other branch of the service. The best way to work yourself up is to start an SEO Optimized Blog and start posting unique content on a daily basis. If you are working full time and have a job already you can outsource this content for about $6.00 per article. You can use these articles as posts.
You also want to get backlinks to each of your posts and start building a strong blog this way. The more content you generate for your blog the more of an authority figure you will be considered in your niche. If you will be doing this in a very popular niche it could take 1-2 years before you even start to get noticed. However if you can find a niche with buyers that isn't quite as popular you can probably get there within six months.
Setup your Blog to start collecting email addresses from day one. We use aweber but there are a few other good sources out there. Also do some internal linking within your blog in addition to getting outbound links back to your blog. Also link out to a few competitors in your posts and on your linkroll. This may sound like business suicide but the truth is Google will trust your site more if you start linking to other sites. A resource site in the eyes of Google is a lot more valuable than a thin affiliate site.
The main thing is to be consistent with your content and posts. Remember even one post per day when you get home from work is 365 posts within a year. Unfortunately most people will read this article and do nothing. But if you do take some action you'll be very happy with the results within a year or so.