I’m going to start this blog with the very basics so that everyone will have an equal footing on becoming an expert internet marketer. It really isn’t as big a feat as you’d think. It’s actually more about motivation and taking the time to work at it, but other than that it’s relatively easy. Let’s get started.

What is internet marketing?

Depending on who you ask you may get a different response. Why? Because internet marketing makes up a variety of different things. It’s like asking, “What is the meaning of life?” Just kidding :-p … it’s much simpler than that. In general we can break it down into two parts: the product (something desirable) and the buyer (the one who wants the product).

As an internet marketer your goal is to match potential buyers with the right products. This in itself can be tricky and we’ll get more into it at a later time, but for now let’s just look at the big picture. When I say “right products” I mean that we want to advertise something to people who would most likely buy the product. There’s no sense in trying to get dog lover’s to buy a kitty scratching post.

What products can I promote?

There are many types of products you can promote. You can create your own, or more easily you can find a product that needs promoting. There are literally thousands of people trying to get their products advertised on sites such as Commission Junction and ClickBank. These people will pay you (commissions as high as 90%) to promote their products for them.

Once you determine your target market and the product you wish to promote,  you need to create some sort of website, landing page or advertisement. The difference all depends on what you are trying to market and how much effort you’re willing to put into it. Let’s pretend that you’ve found a target audience and a great product to sell via Clickbank. One easy thing you can do to start earning potential money is to create an ad using Google’s Adwords. Adwords will allows you to create one of those ads you always see on sites with “Ads by Google.” When you set up an Adwords campaign you choose the text, how often it gets shown and where people will be directed upon clicking the ad. How often your ad shows up depends on how much money you want to spend as well as the competitiveness of that particular market. Once you set this up you have two basic choices: you can either have the ad link to your own website, blog or landing page, or you can have it link to one of the landing pages often created by the product’s publisher. This is really convenient for those who don’t want to take the time to setup their own page and host it.

That’s basically internet marketing in a nutshell. Obviously there is much more to it as well as other methods of making money. This is just one common way of doing so. I will provide much more detail on many posts to follow that will cover all the aspects in making legitimate money online that I know.