For a beginner looking in from the outside, Internet Marketing looks like a fairly simple process. Put up a website, add some ads to it and then become rich. Well a lot of the so called “experts” and scam artist out there would like you to believe that. They would also like you to believe they can show you the way. All you need to do is buy their product and kiss your day job goodbye.
The only thing you are really kissing goodbye is your money!
Internet Marketing needs to be looked at like a giant puzzle. In order to get the most out of it you need to fit all the pieces together. However, like any other puzzle you don’t need to have all the pieces put in place to begin to see what the outcome will look like.
Internet Puzzle
Here are the basic pieces
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Research
Prior to picking your niche or topic that your website or business will be catering too, you must do your research! Research will involve researching the best keywords, researching your target market and researching your subject so you can provide what your audience is looking for. Research will take quite a bit of time, but proper research is the most important piece of the puzzle. Think of it as the outer edge of the puzzle. Once the outer edge is in place, it becomes much easier to put the puzzle together.
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Website
Your website is your presence on the Internet. Your website is a section of the puzzle that is made up of several separate pieces. These pieces include your domain name and your domain hosting. Your domain name is what people type in to their browser when they want to access your website. For instance my domain name is “erictransue.com“.
Your domain hosting is similar to your hard drive on your computer. All the files that you use on your website will be stored on this hard drive. However, unlike your computer this hard drive is not local. This hard drive is provided to you by your hosting company and is stored on their servers. Prior to making any changes to your website you will use software or a web interface to connect to their servers and then modify your files.
Your website also contains all the content you want to provide your users. This will include blog posts, stories, and links to other websites of interest.
For some of you the most important part of your website will be monetization. Let me be the first to tell you that although monetization is important for your website your focus should be on providing the best content possible to your target audience. Once your audience is happy and returning over and over again to see your content, then you can worry about making money with your website. Without having an audience that is bringing traffic to you day in and day out, any attempts to monetize your website will only end up failing.
When you do get to monetizing your website, you will have several options. You can use Google Adsense. Google Adsense allows you to put ads on your site and when a user clicks on one of those ads you receive payment. This payment can range from a few cents to several dollars.
Another way to monetize your website is by using affiliate links. Affiliate links allow you to put links within your content to products or offers that other companies have. If one of your users clicks on one of those links and proceeds to make a purchase you will be paid a percentage of that purchase. There are several websites you could sign up for which will provide you the affiliate links you need.
There are also CPA networks. CPA stands for “Cost Per Action”. These are similar to affiliate links, but instead of trying to sell a product your goal is for the user to complete an action. This action can be downloading a piece of software or signing up for a mailing list, coupon or trial.
Once you build up a big enough site you may have advertisers contacting you requesting to purchase advertising space on your website. I have several advertisers on another one of my blogs who contacted me through my contact page and are paying me monthly for text links on that site.
Once you begin to receive traffic you will better be able to judge what monetization will work best for your site.
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Traffic
Target traffic is the middle section of your puzzle. Without the middle pieces the puzzle just doesn’t make much sense. This is the same with traffic. Having a great site with wonderful content does not make much sense if nobody is visiting it.
There are several traffic techniques that I will teach you at a later time. These will involve search engine optimization, article marketing, forum posting, videos and social bookmarking.
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Analysis
The final piece of the puzzle is analyzing what is working and what isn’t. Don’t just shove the pieces in and make them fit. Take a step back and look at the whole picture. Do things need to be moved around or changed to make it work?
Taking the time to analyze your site, will show you what layouts and offers are working. It will also show you where your traffic is coming from and how it is getting there. Are they coming from other sites or from the search engines such as Google? If they came from Google, what keywords did they use to find you? All of these answers can be found by analyzing the data.
If you are new to IM this may seem like a lot to take in. Don’t worry, I will attempt to explain it all to you in future posts. If you have any questions on anything leave me a comment. I will do my best to answer your question to the best of my ability.
