Five Musts For Internet Marketing. Are You Going To Apply Them?

I am going to briefly go through five things you have to do to be successful while internet marketing. There are more tips, tricks and suggestions out there, but these are the musts. Ask anyone that has been marketing on the internet, successfully, and we will all agree there are some basics you have to do. Focus, Monetize, Track, Advertise, and Build an Email List.

Focus

You must focus on a niche and a main advertising medium. If you do not focus you will fail or have very poor results. Picking a niche is not difficult to do. Just look at what you enjoy doing. If you like hunting, than you can set up a blog about hunting. Are you a golfer? Blog about golfing. If you are an ice cream connoisseur than spread the word about ice cream flavors. What ever you like you can find a group of people that share the same interests, no matter how bazaar the topic.

Still don't have an idea on a niche? Go to BoardTracker.com or Yahoo Answers and find out what kind of problems people are having and try to fix them. Do some niche research and find out the hottest niches and who is involved. Are you a professional? Write about it. Something...Anything....I am going to bet since you are reading this you have already got an idea of what you want to do. The niches are endless.

You also need to center on your main advertising method and also the main source of your income. I said MAIN source. You should diversify and maximize your traffic, but you should have a main source of income and then design around it.

Monetize

Monetize = Money Now you have to figure out how you are going to turn the niche traffic into dollars. Adsense, affiliate site, product sales, information sales, other peoples products and services, sell advertising space, and the list goes on. Do some research on your niche and see what is working for others.

Example:
Mikey Lee loves to surf. He starts a blog about surfing. He wants to be very general in his blog so he chooses affiliate marketing as his main income stream. He does some research and finds a few Ebooks on the subject. Mikey also sets up an account with Amazon, Bodyglove (a clothing manufacturer), and Zboards (a board manufacturer). These sites will pay him a percentage of the sales generated from his site. He decides to write reviews of the books, his opinion on Bodygloves new clothing line, and the high quality of Zboards surf boards.

If you are extremely new to the internet marketing and do not have a lot of time to write reviews than picking one affiliate to market will probably be a better starting place. Once you get some time and articles under your belt pick up another affiliate.

A good addition to any blog or review site is Google Adsense. If you set it up correctly it can generate an income with little to no maintenance. There are a lot of techniques and opinions on how to set up Adsense. I choose to let the proof be in the Analytics. Google Analytics that is.

Track

Google Analytics is a great, free, tool to keep track of stats for anything you can think of relating to traffic. Many people say that when you are setting up Adsense you should make everything match your page layout and others say that is not a big deal. I say, do what ever is getting the best results. I generally start out with everything matching; font, colors, back ground colors and all. I will change it up and watch the stats to see if they increase or decrease. Stick with what works.

You need to start a journal. Keep track of everything you do, day by day and step by step. I will do an in depth review of my monthly activity and focus on what worked the best. I will then repeat it over and over again. If you do not keep track, then you can not repeat. Do not think one thing you do will work with everything. Every niche will work a little different. Keeping track of everything can also help you when sales are down. You can look back and find out what you changed or did not change and then correct the mistake.

Advertising

Focus on three ways to get traffic. Notice I said FOCUS again. The three fool proof ways that I advertise are article marketing, bookmarking, and pay-per-click.
Article marketing is nothing new but it is definitely my most valued means of advertising. I will take some time to do some research for an article, have my secretary proof read it, submit it to a few directories and watch the traffic come in This might take an hour to prepare but it out their in dotcom land for a long, long time. It is a permanent link to my site and a permanent way to reach the public.
Bookmarking is another way to drive traffic to your site and to your online articles. Why would I want to drive traffic to my articles and not directly to my site? If you go to all the bookmarking sites and constantly bookmark your site it can and will hurt your rankings in some search engines. If you choose to link to articles you take the heat off of your site, especially if it is new.
PPC is definitely an area you need to keep track of. If done incorrectly it can cost you money and deliver traffic that is not targeted. I will explore more on this in later articles and on my site.

Build an Email List

"The money is in the list" is a very common phrase among internet marketers. I agree completely and will add my two sense. "The money is in the way you build your list, treat your list, and maintain your list."

You should always be building your email list because it is your contact with future sales, and more sales, and more sales; if treated correctly. First, you will need to make it worth their wilds to subscribe. Give them something free and then over deliver. A free report on your niche works best for me most of the time. You need to make them want to enter a good email address. Many people have an email address they use for sites they think will misuse their email address. You want them to enter an email address that they would give to their friends and family.

Once you get them to subscribe you want to keep them happy. Over deliver all the time. Never send an email just to blatantly sell them something. Many people know that you are going to try and sell them something, but they do not expect you to keep giving. Give them something of value every time you send an email. There is enormous amounts of great information that you can spread. Make them look forward to receiving your email. All it takes is one email they find useless and unsubscribe they will.

"We hate to be sold, but we love to buy."