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In today’s world where everyone seems to be chasing each dollar and people often have two jobs and sometimes three, internet marketing could be an option to make money. It sounds great – you just sit at your computer and promote someone’s product and while you are asleep the dollars come rolling in. Like all businesses, don’t be fooled by all the hype and some guy magically making thousands of dollars a day after only one month. The real truth is it usually takes time and also a bit of luck before any sort of money comes in. Until then it’s a lot of hard work.
Internet marketing means that you have to have a website and then use the website to either advertise (Google Adwords, for example give you some cents every time a visitor clicks on their ads) or to promote a product. This product can be someone else’s, in which case it is called affiliate marketing, or you can go ahead and spend the time and effort to make your own products to sell.
If you intend to do this yourself, you need some basic skills to setup a website. If you use WordPress, for example, this procedure is fairly simple and there are tons of tutorials online how to help you do this. You will need to write content for the website. This usually means at least ten pages at say a minimum of 700 words per page about the product you are promoting. You can get the writing done for you by outsourcing it. Sites like e-lance.com can help you there.
You also have to setup links to go to your product so people can buy. Or you have to setup Adsense ads on your pages in accordance with Google’s rules and regulations. Most importantly you have to place these in prominent positions to encourage visitors to click on them.
The next step would be how to get visitors to your website, as without traffic, all your efforts so far would have been in vain. This can be a complicated endeavor as there are many options. You will have to do research to find out which methods work for you. You should not rely on one method only. Ways of getting traffic could be setting up a fan page on Facebook and working that angle, or getting links from companies that offer such services, or writing articles about your subject with a link back to your website and to publish those in article directories. You can also comment on different blogs on your subject with a link in your signature back to your website.
Then, while working on all of this, you could get your first sale. This usually helps to motivate novice internet marketers to work harder. If you get enough visitors, your ranking for your targeted keywords will climb up the Google page, hopefully ending up on page one, if you’re lucky and diligent. Then when people search for a keyword you are targeting, they will often end up on your website and buy from you.
