So you have seen, read and heard all about Internet
Marketing and feel you'd like a piece of the action.

There's no doubt about it - a lot of money can be made on
the internet and if you have the right knowledge, a piece of
that pie can certainly be yours.

And that is where the problem lies... The right knowledge.

You see, if you search for "Internet Marketing" on Google,
you will get a massive number of results - I've just done it
whilst writing this article and got 34,700,000 results.

Now getting on for 35 Million results is an impossible
amount of information to sift through - and do all of those
pages tell you how to make money on the internet? I don't
think so.

Here's a scenario - you come across a great web page, it
promises to share the "secrets" of internet marketing
success. It sound great - for less than $100, you can have
the "secret" and start making money right away - by this
time next year, you'll be bringing in over a million dollars
- the sales copy just pulls you in and you take out your
credit card...

But once you have paid your money and downloaded the eBook,
software, video etc... that is going to change your life,
you then realize that it isn't such a wonderful product
after all.

You see another great offer and out comes the credit card
again...

Sound familiar? You're not alone - I've been seduced by
great sales copy more times than I can remember.

Don't let me put you off though - there are some good guys
out there, that will share their knowledge with you for a
fair price. A good mentor will guide you through the
pitfalls and advise you where you should be channeling your
efforts.

So back to Internet Marketing...

When you hear the term "Internet Marketing" what do you
think it means?

There are many aspects to Internet Marketing, but it can
basically be broken down into the following areas:

Niche Marketing
Affiliate Marketing
List Building
Generating Traffic
Email Marketing

Now these five things are not really separate "modules" but
more "ingredients" - like the ingredients of a cake, they
all come together to make the finished product.


Niche Marketing.

With Niche Marketing, you will find a niche within the
market - What's a niche? I like to think of it as a market
within a market.

For example, Golf is a large market, but left hand golfers
who want to improve their swing - that's a small section of
the golf market - a niche.

Find a product that appeals to this niche and you can target
them.

And the product can be a physical thing such as an
instruction book or DVD, or a digital product that the buyer
can download such as an eBook or video file.


Affiliate Products

To make money on the internet - you need to sell something,
So what do you sell? The easiest thing is to sell other
people's products for a commission - that way, you don't
have the hassle of sending stuff out.

In the above example, you could sign up as an affiliate for
Amazon and sell instructional books or DVDs. For digital
products, I'd go with Clickbank - find a suitable product
and promote it.

Once you have identified a niche, you find a product to feed
it - if no product exists, but the market is there - create
your own product and make a killing.

If you HAVE created your own product - then you can have
others sell it for you as your affiliates. It works both
ways.


List Building.

To target potential buyers within the niche, you need to get
them onto your list. List building is probably the most
important aspect of Internet Marketing. Because people that
subscribe to your list have actively shown an interest in
what you have to offer.

And if they have already bought from you, they are far
easier to sell to again.


Generating Traffic.

But to build a list, you need to get traffic to your web
page so that visitors can opt in, which is where search
engine optimization (SEO) comes in.

Search engines are used to find things online and produce
results based on rules. These rules are very complex. Search
Engine Optimization takes into account these rules and
enhances your position in the search engine results.

To get visitors to your site - you need the right keywords
that the search engines will find. With a niche market, the
keywords will be searched for by smaller groups of people,
but there will be less results for those keywords in a
google search and so less competition.

As an example, I've just searched Google for "Left Handed
Golf" and got 97,000 results. Compare that with the results
when I just searched for "Golf" - that gave me over
335,000,000 (335 Million). So the left handed golf search
result was less than 0.03% of the overall golf market.

Now golf is a massive market - and I have probably over
simplified the percentage - but imagine using the same
principle on smaller markets.




Email Marketing

Once you have build a list of people interested in your
niche, you send them regular emails - not always with a
selling proposition, but that's the ultimate aim.

Send a regular newsletter or bulletin about the topic of the
niche and when you have a new product they may be interested
in, send them an email about it with a link to the sales
page.

If they don't buy, send a follow up email - if they do send
them a thank you email - offer an additional product at a
discount.

Keep in touch with your subscribers. Quite often a
subscriber will be on your list for several months before he
or she makes their first purchase. By keeping in touch,
you'll build a relationship with them so when you do have a
great offer for them, they'll think "I know this
guy - he's OK..." and you will have more chance of making a
sale.


You can see how the five "ingredients" interact:

To build a list you need to get traffic to your opt in page.

To get traffic, you need the right keywords.

To get the right keywords, you need to identify the niche

For email marketing, you need to build a list.

Before selling affiliate products, you need to know the
niche.


This is a general overview of Internet Marketing and it goes
deeper - for example copy writing - you need to have a great
page to convince your visitors to opt into your list. And of
course there's Google's Adsense and Adwords... But to
benefit from these you need traffic - back to one or our
main ingredients...

Luckily there are some excellent tools available to help you
make a success of internet marketing, but it's not a get
rich quick thing - despite what you may read. Sure, there
are the big boys who can make a million dollars in three
months, but even they had to start at the beginning and work
their way to the top - it won't happen overnight.

If you are looking to make a good living from the internet,
you need to start slowly and build it up over time. There
will be a very steep learning curve, after a while you will
feel like giving up - there will be a period where you are
having money going out, but none coming in - but stick with
it, apply the right knowledge and you will be successful.

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Did you know that 95% of Internet Marketing businesses
fail? To find out 10 reasons why CLICK HERE
and be one of the 5% successes.
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Terry Barrett is the publisher of

The Internet Marketing Factory a web site committed
to helping new starters becoming successful in Internet
Marketing.