What is Internet Marketing?

We all have heard it too many times, but what exactly is Internet Marketing?

Well, marketing is simply defined as selling and promoting your service or product. It is the thing that drives any business to success. Without it, I’m not sure how your business will thrive amidst the competition. Now, add the word “Internet” into it and you have just stepped out of the traditional marketing and stepped in to the modern times.

Everyone is moving almost anything to the Internet. Gone are the days for yellow pages, hard bound encyclopedia, and traditional phones. I am not saying that they are not important anymore, but people are online most of the time and with the vast information on the Internet people find it easier to run in front of their computers or get hold of their smart phones each time a question comes into their mind. Someone gets a terrible headache and search the Internet for any remedy. A mother who needs to remove a stain from her upholstery will head online to find solution. A teenager who desperately needs to lose weight goes on YouTube to find some exercise videos, a college aspirant can just go online to process her college application, and the list goes on.

Business owners have realized the power of the Internet for their own purpose. It doesn’t just reach the local market, but it becomes global in just a few minutes after a website is published. While a business owner spends millions of dollars for offline promotions, online marketing can only cost between 10 dollars to a few thousands. So how can someone resist the power of Internet marketing?

Most business owners have developed a mix of offline and online marketing strategies. But for some online businesses, it is the only form of marketing being practiced.

Objectives of Internet Marketing

Promotion

Most businesses use the Internet to convey their message about their product or service across their target market. They utilize the power of social media like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn among others. They create their own identity on any social networking sites to improve their online visibility, increase their website traffic (website visitor) and rank better on search engine.

Research

A good and dynamic business conducts research to give the customers what they need. Through their online effort, they are able to gather data about the nature of their existing and potential customer. Basic questions such as demographics, preferences, and changing needs are easily answered through their online research campaign.

Selling

According to Google, Kindle is one of the most searched terms on the Internet. A gadget made popular by Amazon.com, which is a pure online business. And who doesn’t know eBay? These are successful and pure online business enterprises with no physical store to sell their goods. Anybody can sell almost anything on the Internet that even scammers thrive on it.

Internet marketing is not only for business owners. Work at home moms, physically handicapped individuals, and even regular employees have found ways to earn money online. A lot of them have created big fortunes through online marketing that they have to turn their back from their regular paying jobs to switch to something convenient, with higher earning potential.

As more and more people gain Internet access, more and more websites are being created to provide convenient solutions to any user. According to Technoratti, which is a giant directory and a ranking tool for blogs, there is a website born every 30 seconds. With all those websites competing against each other for a page rank on search engines, different Internet marketing strategies come into play.

This section of my blog will cover everything you need to learn about marketing online. Now that you have a basic understanding of Internet marketing, we will discuss further its components, strategies and its implementation, and proven Internet marketing tips.

MAKE MONEY

How to Start an Internet Marketing Business?

Step One: Find a Profitable Niche

To find a profitable niche, you have to consider the amount of users interested on your topic and check your competition. To do that, you can use Google AdWords Keyword tool, which will show you the keywords that people use to find relevant information within your niche. The keywords are important for you to use across your website to make sure that your website or blog will be indexed properly by search engines.

Take note of related keywords to be included within the content of your website as part of its pages.

Once you have decided on a niche, you can start listing topics and subtopics to serve as a guide for your future articles.

Step Two: Start a Blog

You need a platform available on the Internet to promote or market your product or service. A blog will allow you to interact with your future and existing customers through its comment form. It is also a great way for your product to be found by interested users through their search from search engines.

To serve your blog on the Internet, you will need to have a domain which is your website address and a web host. I would recommend using your main keyword for your domain to increase your chance of getting your blog listed on the first page of search results.

To guide you with the whole process of setting up a blog, get a FREE copy of my eBook. I have written Create a Blog in 7 Steps specifically for beginners. Aside from making it very simple to follow, where I have included screenshots, you will also find valuable lessons to make your blog work that most bloggers failed to understand.

Step Three: Start Writing and Publishing Articles

Remember the keywords and key phrases you listed down, on which you built your topics and subtopics? In a few minutes after you set up your blog, you can start posting articles now. To guide you on how to make your blog work, you can check our Search Engine Optimization Guidelines (SEO).

Step Four: Make Money with Your Blog

Most bloggers start with Google AdSense and affiliate marketing to monetize their blog. Setting up an account with AdSense is free and you wouldn’t need a lot of programming background to place ads on your blog. It’s basically a copy and paste process. Google will select the kind of ads they will show on your site and rest assured that the ads are interesting to your blog visitors. To learn more, you can check my articles about setting up an account with Google AdSense.

Another way for you to monetize your blog is by joining affiliate programs. There is also no fee in setting up an account. Unlike AdSense where you have no control for ads appearing on your blog, affiliate programs will allow you to select advertisements that you want to promote. You just have to make sure that the ads are targeted to your readers and relative to your niche. To learn more about this, check out my articles about affiliate marketing programs.

Let me just caution you that you should have at least substantial amount of articles published on your blog before signing up with them since they will be checking your site for approval. As for me, I had to publish 25 articles before I signed up with them.

Step 5: Promote Your Blog

Here’s a quick and easy way for you to promote your blog: