Internet Marketing - How To Get Started

This is probably the hardest part of Internet marketing. You need to get started - but where and how do you begin? There are many choices to make here and most people will make the wrong ones. It is very easy to get side-tracked and wind up spending days and weeks on non-productive work.

The very first thing you need to do is to get a website. In order to get noticed, you need to post something for people to see. You can get a basic site for very low cost. You don't need anything fancy. Google for "Internet Hosting" and you will find plenty. You will also need to register a domain name. Think of a catchy name and go to Go Daddy and register the name. Your hosting provider will do the plumbing and you will be on the net.

Great, your home page works now, but it says "Under Construction." So now its time to get some content and post it on your site. But what content will you post? You need to think about all the things you are personally interested in. What are you passionate about? What are your hobbies and interests? Is there some subject matter where are you an expert? It does not have to be something that is widely covered elsewhere - it can be something completely obscure like collecting antique porcelain dolls, or anti-bellum architecture, whatever. You want this to be something you are interested in, because the best content is original content and the best source for that is your own words.

So the next step is to sit sown and write some simple articles. No need to write a book, and keep in mind that this stuff can change (and the more it changes the better). So just keep it short and simple, to the point. Pick a few very-narrow topics and do some Internet research, then write down your thoughts. That's it.

Now you need to post these articles along with a home page linking them together. If you want to learn how to do this yourself, there are many how-to books and articles on the web. If you are tech challenged, go to RentACoder and hire someone to set you up and walk you through the basics. You need to be able to make simple changes and upload them to the website.

So now you have a website with some interesting content. At this point you need some traffic. Gather up your articles and post them on article exchanges. There are many of these, some examples are: Article City, Go Articles or E-Zine Articles. Basically, you are allowing the world to take your articles and post them on their own website. In exchange, they must post a link back to your website. Keep writing articles. Post them on your website and on the exchanges. You will soon see an increase in traffic (your hosting provider should have tools that track number of visits, pages viewed, etc). Soon you will see an increase in traffic.

OK, so how do you get paid for this traffic? The best (and easiest) way for now is to get a Google AdSense account and put some ads on your site. Google will place ads on your website that match the context of your pages. Whenever one of your visitors clicks on an ad link, you get paid.

From now on, your job is to track the volume and the click-through ratio (on the AdSense pages). As you make changes, note when they were made, and correlate that to your CTR. This will tell you what sells and what does not sell. You must keep posting new and interesting content. Once you are making money, you can hire someone to ghost-write these articles. You can allow your visitors to submit articles. You can setup a forum so that your site becomes a virtual community. All of these things will increase your traffic and your earnings.

A few caveats -

Don't scatter your attention. Pick one subject and stick to it. Build one website - not two or five. Once your website is earning money and is on auto-pilot, that is when you can start branching out.

Dedicate a time-slot to work on this. It does not matter how many hours per week, as long as you keep moving along. You will eventually get to the money-making stage, but you must be dedicated.

Go easy on the banners. It cheapens your website.

Do not spam. It is not worth it. If you want to build a mailing list, hook up an auto-responder through GetResponse and make sure that everyone on your mailing list has opted in.

Marc Donovan, manager of Vertuso.com has many years of Internet marketing experience and is always willing to help a fellow marketer.

www.vertuso.com