Internet Marketing for the “Newbie” in You

Even the most experienced Internet marketer has his or her “Newbie” moments. Sometimes it’s just drawing a blank about something they’ve done before; other times it’s something new that has come up. With the Internet technology changes that occur every day, it’s becoming more and more common.

The principles of Internet marketing are quite simple: find a niche, find a product, sell the product. The strategies that are used, however, can be the difficult part. It’s the “how” of doing that can get new online business owners in trouble. There are so many “things” that must be done, such as building a website, optimizing the site, getting a product to sell, and the list goes on.

Many people say that you don’t have to have your own website to be an onine marketer. I disagree. If you are just promoting someone else’s site, you’re missing out on your fair shair of profit. Even affiliate marketers should have their own website, not only promote a “free website” that was “given” to them from the product owner.

One reason that I want my own site is that I’m a big believer in the saying, “It’s in the list.” You can’t always depend on the visitors of your site buying the product you are selling. If you have a mailing list, you can keep them coming back by “announcing” a new article or feature that you’ve added to your website. If you don’t have your own website, you won’t have anyplace to put your subscription form for your newsletter. There’s an Internet marketing rule that specifies that a customer normally will not purchase a product until they’ve seen it between 5 and 7 times.

Your website should look professional. There are some people that get away with have no graphics and no real structure for their sites. I don’t know how they do with sales, but their websites are plain ugly to me The other extreme are those sites that I call “banner farms.” They have no real informational content, just a bunch of affiliate product banners flashing all over the place. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use ANY banners, just be selective.

Another part of Internet marketing that can be confusing is SEO or search engine optimization. What is it? Well, search engines have a ranking system for the millions of websites that rank those that have the best quality in content that is relevant (to the site domain and page names). It all comes down to using keywords. You have to find those particular keywords that will bring visitors to your website and name your site (your domain) and the pages of your website using those keywords. The search engines see those keywords and list them in their browser system. They are looking for websites that provide value for the “real” people that visit them.

So, you can see that there are a lot of small, and not so small, aspects involved in Internet marketing. Educate yourself as much as you can and try to keep informed about the new methods that are introduced. That will help you make your marketing efforts more profitable.