Internet Marketing For Beginners
Synopsis
What is Internet Marketing and Who Can Do It?
You have heard the term bandied about a lot. You have probably read a lot about it too. People speak about it as though it is the best business opportunity in the world today. But, what’s the real dope? Is it really as good as it is made out to be?
You must have realized – we are speaking about INTERNET MARKETING.
To understand whether Internet marketing really has what it purports to have, you first need to understand what the concept is all about. Let us make our start here.
What is Internet Marketing?
In a very broad sense, any method that helps you make money out of the Internet by publicizing a product for sale is Internet marketing. If you have a software application, for example, and you sell it on the Internet to make money, then what you are doing is Internet marketing.
It is not necessary that the product should be yours. There are many ways in which you can acquire products from others. Getting resell rights to products is one way in which you do this. Becoming an affiliate for some website that is selling a product is another way to do this. Here you are not selling your own product, but you are publicizing it on the Internet all the same. That is why it fits within the definition of Internet marketing. Affiliate marketing is a subset of Internet marketing.
Of course, there is a lot more to Internet marketing than meets the eye. It is not as simple as this definition suggests. There are several tactics and strategies that you must use, different ways in which you can go through Internet marketing, and many different levels at which this work. This eBook will help slowly unfurl these various layers and try to make you understand the various aspects that are involved in it.
Who is Internet Marketing Meant for?
You will be surprised to read this – anybody and everybody that has a computer with a reliable Internet connection can enter into Internet marketing. There are no qualifications or, in most cases, eligibilities needed here. If you think investment could be a problem, then you are mistaken there too. In most Internet marketing ventures, you won’t need an investment at all. In most others, if you have about $100 floating in an online account, it would more than cover your initial expenses.
And you don’t even need a mentor. Most people who are successful in Internet marketing today have been self-starters and even self- learners. You could do it too. This eBook and other similar resources can help you unleash the potential of Internet marketing.
So, read on. There’s a lot more to be learned and understood before you make the start in this grand opportunity.
Concepts of Web Traffic – Why Internet Marketing Cannot Do without It
One of the most important terms that you will repeatedly come across when you are dealing with Internet marketing is ‘traffic’. Basically it means the number of visitors that arrive at a particular site. When a website says that it has traffic of a million per month, then it means that a million people visit that particular website each month.
But then there are some things that you should understand as an Internet marketer. We consider some of these aspects here:-
Hot and Cold Traffic
The concept of hot and cold traffic will soon become very important to you. Simply put, people who just arrive on your website and go away doing nothing are cold traffic. It is on no use to you. On the other hand, the people who come on your website and take some action that you want them to take constitute hot traffic. Needless to say, it is hot traffic that you should be striving for.
The cold traffic is that which you have achieved from simple untargeted methods such as Google searches. These people have probably got your website when they were looking for a particular keyword on Google. They did not have any inclination to visit your website particularly, it just turned up. They visited your website without any expectation. You should not expect them to take any action either. The conversion rate of these people is very low.
Hot traffic comes on your website through some targeted methods. They might have arrived because of some of your efforts such as blogging or article marketing, which we shall discuss later. Naturally, these are the people who mean the most for you in terms of business prospects. They come to your website with some expectation, so you can hope for some business from them too.
Monetizing the Traffic
Traffic is important, and we shall see methods in which you can bring in the traffic to your website, but what are the basic things you will need to begin monetizing this traffic? Monetizing means converting your traffic into money. You have to make some efforts not just in bringing in people to your website, but you have to also make sure that you make money off these people. Here we see what it takes.
Making the Preparations
You need to have a website. That’s an absolute must. This is nothing short of an office space. It could be your virtual corporate office. This is what people who don’t know you will see and build an impression about yourself. One of your primary needs is a good website. Of course, there are tons of ways in which you can make money from your online endeavors without a website, but if you have a good website, it will be a completely different story.
If you feel you don’t want a website just as yet, you could at least have a blog. Today, blogs are being considered increasingly better than websites because they are interactive. You can keep in constant touch with your audience through the blog. The best part is that blogs are free. Using tools such as Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/), you can build your own blog within a matter of minutes and have it up and running. If you don’t want a free blog (the only reason you might not want one is that you will have to contend with their ads on your blog), then you could go for a WordPress (http://www.wordpress.com/) blog, which is paid but is ad-free.
Remember that it is not just about bringing people to your site or blog. You have to hook their interest so that they are coerced into taking the action you expect of them. Hence, attractiveness is an important point. But it is also very important to impress them with meaningful content.
The Actual Monetizing Process
To actually start making money what you need is an ecommerce solution. If you have a product that you are selling, having a shopping cart on your site is a great addition. The shopping cart retains the purchase of the customer as long as the money is paid and keeps account. Since payments would be through credit cards, shopping carts also have encryption.
But if you are using a different route for monetizing income, such as you are allowing them to download an eBook as their purchase, then you need to allow them an option such as PayPal (http://www.paypal.com/) payment or wire transfer for collecting your funds.
Note that monetizing does not just mean collecting the money, but it also means the whole process. If you are trying to interest your customers in an opportunity today so that they might become customers tomorrow, that is monetization too. We shall see how you can use landing pages and lead capture pages (also known as squeeze pages) to make this happen.
Building Residual Income
For any Internet marketer, the best thing that could happen is the start of a residual income opportunity. This happens when the marketer has a business set up that keeps paying even though he or she is not putting any active efforts in it. This is much like the royalties that are earned on a novel that is once written and published. There are some ways in which such residual income opportunities can be created on the Internet.
One of these ways is to have an eBook on a popular blog page or web page which people will keep downloading and paying for. This is a residual stream of income. If your eBook is good, people will talk about it and more people will keep purchasing it. This is what is known as viral marketing. Even if you don’t feel like working for a while, your residual income streams should be good enough to tide you over for a while.
Concepts of Ecommerce You Will Need
Ecommerce is an umbrella term used to describe all the transactions that take place on the Internet. In the Internet marketing scenario, this is definitely a very useful term. The buying and selling routes that you will have to set up on your commercial website will need to be done through an ecommerce solution. This is actually a software program that can provide you various features according to your needs.
In order to have an ecommerce solution on your website, you will need to hire a suitable ecommerce hosting service. These ecommerce hosting services handle various tasks right from building the ecommerce website to helping with the credit card processing,
providing payment gateway integration services and adding shopping carts to the website.
The following are the top 10 ecommerce hosting sites in the world today:-
Go EMerchant (http://goEmerchant.com/)
3DCart (http://www.3dCart.com/)
Volusion (http://www.volusion.com/)
Core Commerce (http://www.corecommerce.com/)
Yahoo Merchant (http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/)
ProStores (http://www.prostores.com/)
Network Solutions (http://www.networksolutions.com/)
GoDaddy Quick Shopping Cart (http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/ecommerce/cart.asp/)
PrecisionWeb (http://www.precisionweb.net/)
Fortune3 (http://www.fortune3.com/)
Your ecommerce solution is not just for the convenience that it provides. There are many other things it involves, which are crucial to your business.
The first important thing is the shopping cart feature. This is where any member of your website can add the products they are interested in. Shopping carts can “hold” various products till the person makes the payment. Thus, if a person wants to check out your entire product range before making the purchase, you don’t have to worry that they will forget to buy the first ones they saw.
Also, the encryption is a very important thing. Since people will be using their credit cards here, it is the responsibility of the site developer to make sure that their identities are not ripped off. Most ecommerce sites use 128 bit SSL protection, though some ecommerce solutions could provide a much higher value of encryption.
Blogging for Building Internet Marketing Traffic
Blogs work amazingly well in bringing in the traffic in our present Internet age; even the search engines are predisposed toward giving more prominence to blogs in comparison to mere websites.
What are Blogs?
Blogs are chronicled websites, i.e. they are websites where you post content and it is maintained in the order of the dates that you submit. A single piece of content that you submit, which is no different from an article in its size and structure, is known as a post. Visitors are free to make comments on your article. You can reply to these comments. Hence, a blog is a very much interactive tool. Moreover, a blog provides you with the possibility of posting your business website URL on your post, which helps in the traffic generation. If someone likes the post you have made, they will want to click on this link and visit your website for more information.
Blogs are known for their regularly updated, meaningful content. People are looking for some information here; it could be about how to do a particular thing or some interesting facts and figures on something, or some reviews about a product, etc. It is a great place for you to advertise your business in a subtle manner.
How to Make Blogs Work
The first step is building the blog. Using tools such as Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/), you can build your own blog within a matter of minutes and have it up and running. If you don’t want a free blog (the only reason you might not want one is that you will have to contend with their ads on your blog), then you could go for a WordPress (http://www.wordpress.com/) blog.
Once you have your blog, you being sprucing it up with good content. You mustn’t include any direct links to your website because readers don’t like that. It could seem to be blatant advertising which you should avoid at all costs. However, you can put links in the small byline that follows your name as the post creator on the blog.
Blogs work because the search engines love them. And the search engines love them because people are always visiting them for content. Search engines today, especially Google, are looking for providing people with the best results they can and blogs certainly fit the bill.
So the main things that you need to make your blogs work are:-
Sometimes, giving away free products helps. If you promote a free eBook download, people will definitely be interested in downloading that. When they click on the advertised link, you could make them go through a lead capture page (also known as a squeeze page) where you ask them their email address for verification or to send them more such offers directly. When you get this list ready, you can use it to market your products to them directly. You must realize that this list is of hot traffic, i.e. people who have been interested in your product and even gone ahead with a download. It would be easy to convert them from visitors to customers.
Article Submissions to Bring in Internet Marketing Traffic
One of the commonest – and also the most conventional – methods of building traffic on your websites is through article marketing. There are Internet marketers who do not use any other method except article submissions to bring in traffic on their websites. Article marketing can be free if you wanted and the best part is that it brings in targeted traffic, i.e. it brings in people who already have an interest in what you are dealing with.
What is Article Marketing?
The simple definition of article marketing is writing and submitting articles on online directories with a view to bring in targeted traffic. These articles have a bio box below them, where the author can write a short description about themselves and their businesses and even hive the link, which can bring in the targeted traffic to your website.
The articles that are submitted are search engine optimized with keywords. Authors of submission articles use keywords from tools such as WordTracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/) or Google Suggest (http://suggest.google.com/) in order to find keywords that people are popularly searching and incorporate them in their articles. Because of these keywords, the articles have a better chance of showing up on the search engine results when someone searches with that keyword. This is how you get your traffic through them.
Now, why will anyone search with that keyword? The simple answer is – because they want some information on that topic. And hence, there is a great possibility that they will view the article. Now, if they like that article, they will want to read more to get more information. This is when they will click on the website link. Since these people already have an interest in the topic, there is high possibility that they will help in the conversion.
Using Articles to Bring in Hot Traffic
It is not wrong to say that you already have it made when you are into article submissions. You can be sure that people who like your articles will visit your website and will be very likely to do business with you too. But, you should know where to put these articles up.
What we are talking about here are the directories. These are the places where you submit your articles. There are many free article submission directories on the Internet which take articles on a wide range of subjects. The directories follow their own tricks for search engine optimization too, which will be over and above the keyword optimization you use.
The following is a list of article submission directories that you should know:-
Ezine Articles (http://www.ezinearticles.com/) – one of the most popular article marketing directories, though its rules of submission are very strict.
iSnare (http://www.isnare.com/)
Go Articles (http://www.goarticles.com/)
Article Alley (http://www.articlealley.com/)
Article City (http://www.articlecity.com/)
In addition, there are various places where you can submit articles and make money apart from promoting your business. The following are some such places. Just note that you will have to go through an approval process before you become a writer on these websites because you are likely getting paid for whatever you submit here.
eHow (http://www.eHow.com/)
About.com (http://www.about.com/)
Bukisa.com (http://www.bukisa.com/)
Xomba.com (http://xomba.com/)
FireHow.com (http://www.firehow.com/)
If you have several articles up on these places, you can be sure that you get a steady flow of visitors on your site. But, make sure that the articles you submit are of good quality, language-wise as well as according to the information that they contain.
Internet Marketing and Social Networking
Social networking has become a very important aspect of Internet marketing today. We are living in the world of Web 2.0. This is the age when people are using the Internet not just for information but also for interaction. They are trying to connect with other people to understand concepts, to get information, to read reviews on products and such.
Social networking simply means communicating and interacting with people over the Internet. Many websites allow people to socially network with each other. The following are some names:-
Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/)
MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/)
Hi5 (http://www.hi5.com/)
Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/)
There are many aspects to this:-
Viral Marketing
This happens when someone likes a product and recommends it to others. Remember when a friend ate at a restaurant, liked it and recommended it to you? This is viral marketing. This is the best form of marketing if you have a product, because you are making sure that people are speaking about your product and recommending it to their friends and family. This increases their chances of buying the
product. Viral marketing is done on social networking sites, especially in groups built around special topics. The top websites f
Making Your Internet Marketing Venture a Full-