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 exactly 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.

In most cases, 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!

Concepts of Web Traffic – Why Internet Marketing Cannot Succeed Without Traffic?

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 a 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:-

  1. Traffic, per se, is not useful to the Internet marketer. It is the unique traffic that counts. You might have a traffic of a hundred thousand, but if 90% of them are your regular visitors, then you haven’t gained anything new. In that case, your meaningful traffic that spells your progress is just the 10% of new people that you have obtained.
  2. Again, the people that comes to your website are hardly of any use to you except they take some specific actions. You need them to download an eBook, subscribe on your website or pay and buy a product, etc. Simple surfers don’t do much for your website!

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 of no use to you! On the other hand, the people who come on your website and take some actions 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 to you in terms of business prospects. They come to your website with some expectation, so you can hope for some business from them too.

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.

Making The Preparations For Monetizing Your Traffic

You need to have a website. That’s an absolute must! This is something like 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 expected of them. Hence, attractiveness is an important point. But it is also very important to impress them with meaningful content.

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