By Terry Barrett
So you have seen, read and heard all about Internet Marketing and feel
you'd like a piece of the action.
There's no doubt about it - a lot of money can be made on the internet
and if you have the right knowledge, a piece of that pie can certainly be
yours.
And that is where the problem lies... The right knowledge.
You see, if you search for "Internet Marketing" on Google, you
will get a massive number of results - I've just done it whilst writing this
article and got 34,700,000 results.
Now getting on for 35 Million results is an impossible amount of
information to sift through - and do all of those pages tell you how to make
money on the internet? I don't think so.
Here's a scenario - you come across a great web page, it promises to
share the "secrets" of internet marketing success. It sound great -
for less than $100, you can have the "secret" and start making money
right away - by this time next year, you'll be bringing in over a million
dollars - the sales copy just pulls you in and you take out your credit card...
But once you have paid your money and downloaded the eBook, software,
video etc... that is going to change your life, you then realize that it isn't
such a wonderful product after all.
You see another great offer and out comes the credit card again...
Sound familiar? You're not alone - I've been seduced by great sales copy
more times than I can remember.
Don't let me put you off though - there are some good guys out there,
that will share their knowledge with you for a fair price. A good mentor will
guide you through the pitfalls and advise you where you should be channeling
your efforts.
So back to Internet Marketing...
When you hear the term "Internet Marketing" what do you think
it means?
There are many aspects to Internet Marketing, but it can basically be
broken down into the following areas:
Niche Marketing
Affiliate Marketing
List Building
Generating Traffic
Email Marketing
Now these five things are not really separate "modules" but
more "ingredients" - like the ingredients of a cake, they all come
together to make the finished product.
With Niche Marketing, you will find a niche within the market - What's a
niche? I like to think of it as a market within a market.
For example, Golf is a large market, but left hand golfers who want to
improve their swing - that's a small section of the golf market - a niche.
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And the product can be a physical thing such as an instruction book or
DVD, or a digital product that the buyer can download such as an eBook or video
file.
Affiliate Products
To make money on the internet - you need to sell something, So what do
you sell? The easiest thing is to sell other people's products for a commission
- that way, you don't have the hassle of sending stuff out.
In the above example, you could sign up as an affiliate for Amazon and
sell instructional books or DVDs. For digital products, I'd go with Clickbank -
find a suitable product and promote it.
Once you have identified a niche, you find a product to feed it - if no
product exists, but the market is there - create your own product and make a
killing.
If you HAVE created your own product - then you can have others sell it
for you as your affiliates. It works both ways.
List Building.
To target potential buyers within the niche, you need to get them onto
your list. List building is probably the most important aspect of Internet
Marketing. Because people that subscribe to your list have actively shown an
interest in what you have to offer.
And if they have already bought from you, they are far easier to sell to
again.
Generating Traffic.
But to build a list, you need to get traffic to your web page so that
visitors can opt in, which is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.
Search engines are used to find things online and produce results based
on rules. These rules are very complex. Search Engine Optimization takes into
account these rules and enhances your position in the search engine results.
To get visitors to your site - you need the right keywords that the
search engines will find. With a niche market, the keywords will be searched
for by smaller groups of people, but there will be less results for those
keywords in a Google search and so less competition.
As an example, I've just searched Google for "Left Handed
Golf" and got 97,000 results. Compare that with the results when I just
searched for "Golf" - that gave me over 335,000,000 (335 Million). So
the left handed golf search result was less than 0.03% of the overall golf
market.
Now golf is a massive market - and I have probably over simplified the
percentage - but imagine using the same principle on smaller markets.
Email Marketing
Once you have build a list of people interested in your niche, you send
them regular emails - not always with a selling proposition, but that's the
ultimate aim.
Send a regular newsletter or bulletin about the topic of the niche and
when you have a new product they may be interested in, send them an email about
it with a link to the sales page.
If they don't buy, send a follow up email - if they do send them a thank
you email - offer an additional product at a discount.
Keep in touch with your subscribers. Quite often a subscriber will be on
your list for several months before he or she makes their first purchase. By
keeping in touch, you'll build a relationship with them so when you do have a
great offer for them, they'll think "I know this guy - he's OK..."
and you will have more chance of making a sale.
You can see how the five "ingredients" interact:
To build a list you need to get traffic to your opt in page.
To get traffic, you need the right keywords.
To get the right keywords, you need to identify the niche
For email marketing, you need to build a list.
Before selling affiliate products, you need to know the niche.
This is a general overview of Internet Marketing and it goes deeper -
for example copy writing - you need to have a great page to convince your
visitors to opt into your list. And of course there's Google's AdSense and
Adwords... But to benefit from these you need traffic - back to one or our main
ingredients...
Luckily there are some excellent tools available to help you make a
success of internet marketing, but it's not a get rich quick thing - despite
what you may read. Sure, there are the big boys who can make a million dollars
in three months, but even they had to start at the beginning and work their way
to the top - it won't happen overnight.
If you are looking to make a good living from the internet, you need to
start slowly and build it up over time. There will be a very steep learning
curve, after a while you will feel like giving up - there will be a period
where you are having money going out, but none coming in - but stick with it,
apply the right knowledge and you will be successful.
Article Source: EzineArticles.com/?expert=Terry_Barrett
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