Internet Marketing For Online Business Newbies
By Jason Gazaway
Posted Saturday, August 21, 2004
Starting an online business has become very popular among many people of all backgrounds throughout the world. It doesn't matter if you are a high-school graduate, or you're completing your third trimester of your second year in Chiropractic School. Any person with the desire to work from home can start an online business. Especially now more than ever with all the turnkey websites, "all-in-one" marketing solutions and such, one can literally have a business up and running within 24 hours.
It's well known that nearly 95% of all online businesses will not succeed. So what exactly "makes or breaks" an online business? Simply put, the type of marketing used.
Internet marketing is as hard as you make it. It can be very hard getting past the "learning curve", but once you do, nothing will stop the checks coming in month after month.
We'll begin our internet marketing lesson with 7 small, but very powerful forms of advertising that can yield tremendous profits for you if used correctly!
1) Article Submission
Writing articles are one of the oldest forms of advertising on the internet. Whatever kind of business you do, write about it! Most articles written are between 500-1000 words. The way you advertise through articles is by having a "byline" or "resource box" at the end of the article. For an example, please look at the bottom of this article to see what one looks like.
After you have written an article of your business topic, you will then want to submit them to Article Directories or Websites that will publish the article you wrote. Here are some good submission sites:
(http://www.stickysauce.com/wanted.htm)
(http://www.webpronews.com/submit.html)
(http://www.boconline.com/sub-art.shtml)
(http://www.powerhomebiz.com/termsofuse/articlesubmission.htm)
(http://www.promotionworld.com/pop/feedback/submitarticle.html)
(http://www.businessknowhow.com/newsletter/articleguidelines.htm)
These should get you started, but if you would like more, or these aren't towards your business, simply do a search at your favorite search engine for "submit article".
2) Participating in Active Forums
In most forums or discussion groups, they allow you to include a little "signature ad" following every post you make. If you are fairly knowledgeable in your business area and post good answers to help people, more readers will be curious about you and will click on your link and be directed to your website.
Some great forums dedicated to internet marketing are:
(http://www.ablake.net/forum/)
(http://www.howtocorp.com/forum/)
(http://www.williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi)
3) Pay Per Click / Google Adwords
If you're not familiar with this type of advertising, please don't be completely turned of by the title. Yes, you do need to pay for some advertising. And using pay per clicks (ppcs for short) allow you to drive very targeted traffic to your website. With a PPC, you literally "bid" on whatever keywords your potential customers will search for.
Another great way to grab traffic before you have to shell out your money is by utilizing Google Adwords. TO learn more about this, please visit Google Adwords tips at:
(https://www.adwords.google.com) <-- Quick Reference
(https://www.adwords.google.com/select/tips.html) <-- Tips & More
4) Search Engine Optimization
Let's face it.. The best kind of traffic is free traffic, right? There are a ton of ways to get traffic to your website, but in my opinion, this is the most cost effective. After all, it's free! Search Engine Optimization requires a great deal of knowledge of how search engines work, but it's definitely not an impossible feat by any means. The basic rule of thumb is to create a website in such a way that your visitors will want to come back. Also, create a website that will make others want to link to your site, without any required link back to theirs.
Some great SEO (search engine optimization) resources are:
(http://www.highrankings.com)
(http://www.searchenginestrategies.biz)
(http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm)
5) Paid Advertising On High Traffic Sites
Sometimes, you will find a website that allows advertising on their site. For a reasonable price, they will display your link and sometimes a description for a weekly or monthly fee.
One of the best ways to find websites that offer advertising is quite simple actually. You simply go to your favorite search engine, search for your businesses best keyword phrase and look through the results. These are the people you will want to partner with, especially if they receive a good amount of traffic. A good way to know if they receive a good deal of traffic to their site is by a neat tool called the Alexa toolbar. You can go directly to that site and download this tool, or you can simply go to : (http://www.alexa.com) and search for their site. When you get the results, it will say something like "Traffic Rank for ________.com : 2,445". The main thing to remember is, the *lower* the traffic rank, the *more* traffic that website receives.So, a site with a traffic rank of 26,983 receives more traffic than a site with a traffic rank of 76,990.
6) Joint Ventures
A Joint Venture (JV for short) is just that. It's a venture that you do jointly with one or more parties. This method isn't only limited to those with their own product, as many people think. The way this works is by setting up a deal with a person who has a very large customer base already. What you do is literally "tap into" their resources. You see, they have already done the hard part (creating a list of people who have already bought from them). Now all you do is simply email them with a special proposal, and have them recommend your product/service to their
list. This alone can product thousands of website visitors to your website. And in the end, can yield massive profits for you if done properly.
7) Having Your Own Affiliate Program
Generally speaking this form of advertising typically applies to those with their own products or services to sell. For example, if you create an information "how-to" digital ebook. Many times your merchant account will have a built in affiliate program manager that will allow people to join, and promote your product or service for a certain percentage that you determine.
Some great affiliate program managers that I have personally have used and recommend are:
(http://www.clickbank.com)
(http://www.quickpaypro.com)
(http://www.homebasedbusinessindex.com/webhost.html) (built in web hosting as well)
The main thing to remember when marketing your business is to keep your potential customers/visitors in mind. Build a website that caters to their needs and wants. If you utilize these resources for internet marketing, you will see the success that most individuals never truly see. Even though what is listed above gives a great starting point, don't limit yourself to what's listed above only. If you truly want to succeed with your online business, study the "Art of Internet Marketing". Give yourself room for improvement, and never think you know enough to "get by" either. Internet Marketing changes as time does, so keep the ball in your court, and have fun while playing ;)
About the Author
Article written by Jason Gazaway, webmaster and owner of
(http://www.homebasedbusinessindex.com) and publisher of the "HBBI Newsletter". To subscribe to this free home business newsletter, simply visit his site listed above or send a blank email to:
hbbi@inetmarketing101.com for more details.
