How To Get Started In Internet Marketing
Starting a new career from scratch and figuring out how to get started in internet marketing is not as easy as it seems, especially without help.
Internet Marketing is often seen by people not involved in it as a scam, or run by people who want to just take your money and run.
I wont deny it, there are some people who do do these things, but the vast majority of internet marketers are simply trying to provide honest information on products and services and gain a commission doing so.
So what is Internet Marketing?
Broadly speaking it is about generating leads to other business and services and if those leads convert into sales, those businesses will provide the marketer with a small commision (anywhere from 5-75% depending on the product).
In plainer speak you promote a product on your website, with a special affiliate link to the sellers website. If one of your visitors click the link and then buy the product, you make a small percent of the sale cost. All this without the customer having to pay any more.
So its not about ripping people off or scamming people (though like any industry this does occur) but about bringing products to peoples attention and being reimbursed for doing so.
What you need to get started in internet marketing
Like any profession, you will need some tools. A lot of these can be found for free on the interent (basic ones at least), but some items will need to be paid for initially or early on.
Website
Though it is possible to make money by using free website services like Squiddo and Blogger, most marketers will want their own website, as it allows much more control over what you do and what you can promote as the free website services often have their own rules on these things.
A Domain name (the website address like www.apinamarketing.com) will cost you about $10 a year from a company like Namecheap and the hosting (where your website files are stored) will run at about $10-15 a year from a service like Hostgator (I use both companies and highly recommend them).
A Niche
At its most basic, a niche is simply an area of interest. Football is a niche, guitars are a niche, web design is a niche.
Internet marketers tend to focus on very narrow niches, meaning that rather than focus on the guitar niche in general, they may focus on Gibson guitars, or even just a single make of Gibson guitar.
There are exceptions to this. Take this website for instance. Rather than focusing purely on website SEO, it has a broader niche of internet marketing. This is called an Authority site.
Tools
An internet connection and a computer/web browser of course, as most of your work will be done online; from research, through to creating a site and publishing your content.
Keyword research tool. These allow you to find keywords, which are what people write into search engines like Google to find things. Keywords help you get the right visitors to your site. If you use the keyword “guitars”, you will tend to get a lot of general traffic but make no sales. If you use the keyword “buying a guitar” you will get more focused and relevant traffic. Choosing the right keywords to focus on is key to your success.
Google offers a basic keyword research tool, or you could opt for a more advanced one like Jaaxy.
WordPress. This is a free website builder which a good chunk if not most of interent marketers tend to use as its free, easy to use and easy to modify when compared to traditional HTML sites.
There are more tools that may be needed, but these are the only ones you need to get started.
Training
Lastly, but most importantly, you need training. Like any profession, internet marketing is not a case of clicking one button and seeing the money roll in… no matter what the supposed “gurus” say.
It requires hard work, effort, a burning desire to succeed and constant learning as the world wide web constantly evolves.
If I haven’t lost you at the mention of hard work, then let me tell you that finding the right, most up to date information is hard to do just by using Google, especially when you start out.
Using link spamming services might look good as there is plenty of information out there to say it is good. In reality it will do more harm to your website than anything else as Google hates this kind of service.
Information like that can be found however, and there are places where you can find all the information and support needed.
Wealthy Affiliate is one of those places, support, training and many other services rolled into one. Yes it does cost a monthly fee, but in my opinion its worth it to get the training you need.
You can even check it out free!