by Sean Rasmussen on February 3, 2010
Every internet marketing guru was a newbie at some point. When you are starting out, deciding on the best way to learn internet marketing can be difficult, especially when you find yourself wading through uncharted territory.
You don’t want to put the cart before the horse and you don’t want to miss out on opportunities either. Where should you start? Learn… Learn before you start, learn as you go, and continue to absorb as much information as you can.
Every industry guru, no matter the industry, has a passion for staying knowledgeable. Internet marketing is a fast-paced world and those who want to succeed in it need to be on the edge of their seat at all times.
The answer to how to approach learning is going to vary depending on who you talk to. Asking the question in an open forum will often start a debate because every successful entrepreneur’s journey will have varied from others who’ve taken a similar path.
Some Basic Ideas To Learn Internet Marketing
• Learn internet marketing in general. The only way to decide if this is something you should pursue is to sop up all the info you can find on it. Learn how it works, understand the pros and cons of the internet marketer lifestyle, be prepared to invest time, or money (preferably a little of the latter and a lot of the former). Take the time to find blogs and sites to read up on. You’ll find a lot of comprehensive resources. Don’t just stick to one. Get a second, third, and fourth opinion.
• Figure out what you’d like to sell, do you have your own product, or maybe you are interested in affiliate marketing. There are thousands of potential ideas for what you could sell on the internet and there’s no standard answer for what’s the best product for beginners to start with.
• Learn about search engines. Find out how search engines work so you can start to think about ways to appeal to them.
• Learn about search engine optimisation. Knowing how to build a website that search engines will index will help you get traffic that could buy from you. This will be a never-ending proposition, though, as SEO is not evergreen and you’ll want and need to keep up to date on the latest strategies, rules, and suggestions from gurus.
• Learn about paid search engine marketing options such as pay per click. You may or may not be ready to invest in this yet but learn about it.
• Listen to the experts. Find out what they do. Read about what they say you should do and read about what they say you shouldn’t do. Then get a second opinion, a third, and a fourth. Experts may have solid advice and the first expert you listen to might give you everything you need but learning all you can will help you to develop your own signature methods that could come from a fusion of several experts success methods.
• Read free reports, white papers, blogs, and internet marketing forums. You’ll get good advice, bad advice, and come up with a lot of good ideas.
If you really want to learn internet marketing, it won’t take long to learn enough to get started. The world of internet marketing is enticing and exciting and there are many opportunities to make money online, but those who are most successful tend to be those who are willing to dedicate the time to learn how others have succeeded.
Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Year Of The Affiliate © 2010
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
by Sean Rasmussen on January 27, 2010
Quid pro quo, or reciprocity, is a concept that has long been used in business. It is much like the old “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” adage. Even competitors can agree to disagree long enough to effect good online promotion and SEO benefits for each other.
The same philosophy holds true for online businesses. Promotion and marketing are much more effective when they are multiplied across a group of partners.
Take these suggestions into account in order to use the power of quid pro quo for marketing your online venture and also to form part of your overall SEO schedule.
Link Sharing
Whether you are into affiliate marketing or marketing your own products, building links is one of the most effective SEO methods a website owner can undertake. While links that connect the pages on your website are crucial to good SEO, building incoming links from other sites is also vital.
One way to do this is by exchanging links with a related site, most often on the “links” page or on the blogroll list. The higher the page ranking and authority of the site you share a link with, the greater the benefit to you. This is a great method to use as a part of your blog linking strategy.
Blog Commenting
Perhaps one of the hardest things about getting a blog to gain high ranking in the search engines – especially for a new blog, is attracting comments to your posts. If you are having difficulty getting readers to leave a comment, consider soliciting other blog owners to do so in exchange for the same. Often just one blog comment gets the ball rolling and induces readers to start an online conversation.
The longer you keep at this, the quicker you will gain more subscribers. If possible, subscribe to the sites you comment on so that you can continue to participate in a discussion that you may start. This could bring people to your site.
Another benefit of blog commenting? If it is a dofollow blog, you get a valuable inbound link to your site. Try using the URL of a particular page you are trying to optimise (if the dofollow parameters will allow the particular URL extension you are utilising).
Testimonials
If you try a product and like it, consider letting the business owner know by posting a testimonial to its quality on your blog. This can be a great SEO boost in several ways. For one thing, it allows you to build an outbound link from your site to the address of the vendor’s site. Forward it to the vendor and you’ll also get a backlink when it is posted on their site.
Finally, the quid pro quo concept of marketing nearly always assures that you will receive the same in return, if at all possible. If it doesn’t occur naturally, go ahead and ask; you will be losing nothing if the other party refuses.
Reciprocity is a very valuable form of marketing. Even your competitors can become strong allies when you agree to cross post comments, testimonials, and share links. Quid pro quo is an excellent way to improve your SEO and to enhance your overall internet marketing strategy.
Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Year Of The Affiliate © 2010
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
by Sean Rasmussen on January 20, 2010
Your internet marketing strategy should include both short and long term goals. The two will obviously differ based on need. For instance, your short term goals will be to get your website started and do everything possible to quickly make it profitable.
Once you’ve got it up and running and you are starting to make money online, then it is time to focus on those tasks which will improve profitability and increase your online presence through branding, advertising campaigns, and site design that deepens market reach.
The following are some goals that could be very appropriate for including in your long term internet marketing strategy.
Internet Marketing Strategy – Stay Educated
In order to keep up with ever-increasing technology, it is vital that you get, and stay, educated. Knowledge is power and that power is an essential part of internet marketing.
Consider Web 2.0 platforms. Several years ago, handheld devices such as PDAs and smart phones were rare. Today they are found in the hands of a large percentage of your potential customers. If you don’t know how to optimise your site to reach this market and make it easier for them to find you, then you are potentially missing out on a large number of sales.
Add the cost of internet marketing education and tutorials to your marketing budget and plan on attending and completing courses regularly.
Review Previous Internet Marketing Goals
You can’t go forward until you’ve looked back. Reviewing past successes and failures in internet marketing is the best way to determine where to go in the future.
For instance, did your last pay per click campaign result in increased sales? If so, use the elements of that success to design a new campaign that will be even more effective. If the reverse is true and advertising dollars were wasted, that is a good indication of what types of marketing you should not repeat.
It’s always a good idea to keep track of each marketing task. Was it completed? What did you do? Did it result in increased sales or increased website traffic? A spreadsheet showing this information is a great tool for deciding what type of internet marketing tasks you should focus on for long-term results. If you don’t already have one, start one now and refer to it often.
Expand Market Penetration And Reach
There is always room to grow. When you become complacent about internet marketing, often you are leaving sales on the table. Even successful start-ups need constant revision and renewed focus to stay on top of competitors.
Use the information you’ve gained about past customers to prepare a profile of your market, then use that profile to determine ways you can more deeply penetrate the market. Expand your presence on the web by setting up additional social networking accounts, creating a Facebook fan page, starting an online forum or user’s group, etc.
Find events where you can meet prospective customers face to face. Use your existing contacts to gain referrals. These are all ways you can further penetrate the market.
The goals you set for your long-term internet marketing strategy are those which focus on steadily increasing online sales and growing your e-commerce business. If your company does not change and grow, rest assured that a competitor’s will and you could easily lose all that you’ve worked for.
Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Year Of The Affiliate © 2010
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
