Beginning internet marketing - Start Here…

The main thing you must keep in mind as a beginning internet marketer is that it is really no different than non-virtual marketing. The same elements are in place.

1) Great Product
2) Low Competition

For example, let’s say you have the cure for cancer, and you are the only one, well that’s a no brainer, instant success. You could literally tell a small group of people (minimal traffic) about what you have, and literally overnight by natural word of mouth, you would have more demand for the product than you could produce, with people standing in line screaming for your product at whatever cost.

Let’s say you have on the other hand a book called “Greatest Steak Recipes”, and let’s say this same book can be purchased in any bookstore, well you get the point.

There are several things you must take into account when entering the field of internet marketing.

1) Every product is a campaign launch that requires extensive research, study, and planning prior to its launch.

2) Every launch typically requires an extensive amount of man hours to do correctly, and to start seeing real results.

When I first began internet marketing, and I see beginners do it all the time, they will do what I refer to as a half launch, or a quarter launch. By this I mean they will just stick their toes in the water to check the temperature prior to jumping in.
This is very natural, and actually a part of the learning process. I partially launched and marketed several products before I started taking full blown plunges into one. The other ones many of which I simply left hanging, deserted, or returned to at a later date to finish.

Essentially with marketing a product online, you have to think of it as you would in the offline world.

1) Who is my audience (customer)
2) Where can I find them in abundance
3) How can I lure them in to look at my product
4) How can I convince them to purchase

Now obviously the better the product, and the less competition you have the easier this becomes, just as was explained in the cure for cancer scenario I used above.

The trick for the internet marketer especially in the beginning is to try to the best product possible that also has the lowest level of competition. This would typically be referred to as a niche. A perfect niche would obviously be the cure for cancer, while the much less attractive niche would be the cookbook.

There are essentially two places where a lot of internet marketers give up.

1) Is finding the right product.
This can be VERY time consuming, and most beginning internet marketers do not get this right the first time, or even after several attempts they are still getting beat up and pushed around by spending massive amounts of time, money, and effort promoting a product they really though would sale, but just doesn’t. I have promoted products before that I swore when I started was going to take off like a rocket, only later to get hit with a real dose of reality when after massive amounts of traffic looking at the product, it just never sold in any numbers impressive enough to be considered a success.

2) Getting past the learning curve.

The internet marketing learning curve can be extremely overwhelming even for some very bright well driven people. The main reason for this is because there is no straight forward black and white clear cut method for promoting any product, and every product needs to be looked at differently. For example, you typically would not do online marketing for a local plumbing company the same way you would do online marketing for say a EBook about designing web sites. However, with that said, there are basic areas one must obtain knowledge and at the very least minimal skills to successfully pursue, and succeed at internet marketing.

A) Web design
You don’t need not be a master web designer, or a web developer that masters everything associated with web design such as using programs like Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, or web programming with languages like PHP, .ASP, or being able to build high end oracle or SQL databases. At a minimum, if you are going to be a serious internet marketer, I would highly suggest being able to do minimal web design, and have a basic understanding of HTML.

B) Adwords
Adwords is a Google term for using a PPC (or Pay Per Click) system through Google where you set up a Google account, and pay for ads posted on Google search pages when people search for certain terms (or keywords) such as “Cancer cures”, or “Steak Cookbooks” Your ads can also be set to shown on other peoples personal website, for example, your ad could show up on JohnsMedicalCures.com, or KimsBestCookbooks.com, and John and Kim would earn money from Google through Adsense accounts for each visitor that came to their web site, and clicked on you “Cancer Cures” ad, or your “Steak Cookbooks” ad.

C) Adsense
Adsense is a program set up by Google that allows web site owners to place Googlw ads on their own personal web sites, and when visitors visit your web site, and click on one of the Google ads, Google pays you, the web site owner for the click i.e. PPC (or Pay Per Click)

D) Keywords
Keywords are words that people type in while searching for certain items on
the internet, for example “Cancer cures”, or “Steak Cookbooks”

E) SEO (Search engine optimization)
SEO is essentially the task of doing on site (On your personal website) and offsite (Off of your personal website) work that helps search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN recognize and place the website that promotes your product or service up hopefully at the front page of results that pop up when a user types in a search term (Keyword) to try to locate a certain product and or service online. For example, when someone types in the search bar on Google “Steak Cookbooks”, or “Cancer cures”, the link to your website pops up on the first page of search results. This is generally accomplished by creating sites that search engines find easy to identify what the websites main topic is about (Onsite SEO), and by building incoming links (Links from external website belonging to others) pointing to your web site) (Offsite SEO).

Now as we stated before at the beginning, If you are the only one in the world with the cure for cancer, it would be very easy to quickly show up on the first page of Google when someone types the keyword or phrase “Cancer Cures”, however, if your product is “Steak Cookbooks”, when people type this term in, your product website would be one of millions of web site links that pop up when a potential customer types in the phrase (Keyword) “Steak Cookbooks”

F) Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is actually a whole different way of internet marketing that utilizes relationship building sites such as

1) You Tube
2) MySpace
3) Facebook
4) Twitter

just to name a few… as opposed to the standard design a website, and the optimizing it so that the link to your website pops up on the first page of Google for specific keywords (or Key Phrases)

These are social networking sites where essentially you build friends and followers, and market your product to them direct as opposed to just the general public that is out there searching for a certain product or service via a search engine such as Google, yahoo, or MSN.

Depending on the product you may choose to utilize SEO for search engine traffic, or social networking sites to promote a certain product, but in many cases you would utilize both methods to get your product and or services out to the public.

For me personally, I try to utilize Web 2.0 methods as at the very least as a avenue to test certain products prior to going through the longer term commitment required to get the link to a website to pop up on the first page of a Google search, especially if in my initial research I find that my particular product and or service is going to be highly competitive.

In most cases, you can get almost overnight responses to certain products utilizing Web 2.0 techniques.

G) Clickbank
Clickbank.com is a website where anyone can sign up, and have access to thousands of online products (Mostly Ebooks, and web site memberships, all digital products) that they can promote, sale, and get paid a commission for the sale.

Probably one of the biggest problems that a beginning internet marketer will run into is all the options. There are so many tools available, and worst of all scams that promise overnight success that trying to get started in internet marketing can absolutely swamp a beginner with a) crap they don’t need right now (i.e. tools that are too complex to successfully use, and b) crap that promises overnight results that never work. And c) rehashed rewritten crap information that is way outdated.

So where in the world should one began on their journey into the world of internet marketing?

Here’s the deal, If you really want to dive in and learn what you need to learn to become a successful internet marketer, you essentially just have to dive in, and start paying your dues.

1) Start with visiting, learning about, and signing up for accounts such as.

    a) Clickbank.com
    b) Google (Set up a Adwords account, and a Adsense account)
    c) Hubpages.com
    d) Youtube.com
    e) Myspace.com
    f) Facebook.com
    g) Twitter.com

Get yourself a nice convenient place on your computer such as a spreadsheet, or contact book to keep all your passwords and log in information handy.

Depending on your current skill level, and internet experience, you could literally spend a full 20 hours just getting yourself signed up with and familiar with these sites. This is where the learning begins.

Don’t get too overwhelmed at this stage, you are just planting the seeds here, just get yourself signed up, and good and familiar with the sites. Maybe spend at the most a few hours signing up and learning about each site.

2) Sign up for Steve’s Classroom. This is were you substantially expand on your knowledge

It’s cheap, and this guy has put together some excellent beginner level online video training courses that go into all different aspects of internet marketing, and he manages to do this without selling you a ton of crap you don’t need. Steve was a previous school teacher that left regular teaching to pursue a full time career in teaching beginners a no BS approach to internet marketing to newbies.

Along with Steve’s course, Download this Book The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords from Perry Marshall. It teaches you everything you could ever want to know about using keywords for you marketing campaigns.

This guy is and has always been the Adwords master. If you even attempt Adwords without this book, good luck. Now at the same time, You WILL NOT master Adwords in a day, a week, or even a month. The main intent of getting this book now is so that you can gain a intense knowledge of Adword use, but you will refer back to this book and it’s methods many, many times over your entire internet marketing lifetime. This is sort of the ultimate Adwords bible if you will.

Between Steve’s Classroom, and the EBook from Perry Marshall, you should probably just make sure and spend at a minimum 40 hours of just reading, watching Steve’s videos, and taking notes, and studying the ins and outs of all the websites you’ve signed up for prior to going to step 3

3) Through research, and study, choose a product to launch/promote
from Clickbank.com this is were you get the real Hard Core experience

Clickbank.com is an excellent starting point for beginners. You don’t have to
have to have a website or a product, they give you the product, and each
product has its own website, all you have to do is promote the website. This
most likely is where you will began to realize how complex choosing the right
product can be, and how complex the research can get. Just do yourself a favor,
this is where the sharp learning curve starts getting sharper. Be prepared to fail.
As will learn in Steve’s online videos, one aspect of becoming a successful
internet marketer is learning how to fail fast. Your first handful of products
will most likely flop. At best you may make a few bucks, but you aint going to
retire on the beach, trust me. But if you can just accept the fact that you are
using your first handful of products as a learning experience, then you will be
ok.

At this stage, you are in the soup. You are now officially an internet marketer.
Now all you have to do is keep learning. It probably took me a good two
months to start earning money, and I had already done some extensive web site
design work. The trick is don’t take product failures personally. Also
remember that you are learning. With every failed product comes an extensive
amount of knowledge, so don’t hink of all that work to get a product launched
as a waste, with all that you learn from product to product, you will get better
and better at choosing and promoting products, and if you have skin thick
enough to stick with it, you will experience success.

Here’s a basic get started wrap it up approach. Choose a product from Clickbank.com, (You will receive your own personal indentifier link so Clickbank.com knows when you sent visitors to the products landing page web site so you get credited for the sale. Start writing articles (use HubPages.com), and or making YouTube videos about the product using your personal identifier link back to the products website / landing page, Start monitoring how much traffic / visitors are going to the products website from your link which can be monitored at clickbanks website under your account. Use Twitter to drive traffic to your HubPages.com articles. You can even embed your Youtube videos into the articles you write on HubPages.

Best of luck to you, and make sure to follow my articles for regular information on this topic.