Like any industry, Internet Marketing has its own special marketing tools and methods. Many of these marketing tools may already be familiar to you: autoresponders, SEO software, link-building systems, content management programs, affiliate software... and the list goes on.

However, Internet Marketing has other more effective, non-traditional marketing tools every marketer should know about if they want to reach their full potential as online marketers. Some of these marketing tools come cleverly disguised or camouflaged, with many surfers or customers completely unaware that they're receiving a sales-pitch. Yet, these innocent and simple sales techniques are some of the most effective marketing tools on the web.

For anyone involved in Internet Marketing or for anyone wishing to become involved, a quick rundown of these marketing tools may prove helpful. Here's a brief list and a few pointers on how to effectively use these marketing tools.

1. Domain Name

Lets start at the very beginning. Your domain name should be considered your first Internet marketing tool. Pick it right and your domain name can also be your most effective marketing
tool. Get it wrong and it may spell game over.

Most marketers agree you should pick a short memorable keyword-related domain name. For example, http://www.hotels.com, it's easy to remember/spell and it tells you exactly what
the site is about. Picking a domain directly related to the keyword or keywords of your site will help greatly in obtaining a high ranking for your site with the search engines. Not to
mention, it will be a great marketing and promotional tool, telling your potential customers exactly what your site is promoting and displaying.

On the other hand, some marketers suggest you opt for a short jazzy name that can be easily remembered by your visitors. Ebay, Google, Napster, Yahoo... regardless of which route you
take, make sure you examine all the marketing potential before you pick your domain name. The right domain name can be one of your most effective marketing tools on the world wide web.

Many experts also suggest you only set up a dedicated server for your domain or domains. A dedicated server only carries one domain. Most hosting companies (for economic reasons)
often share hosting servers, i.e. your domain is co-hosted with hundreds of other domains on the same server. Since you will be using the same IP address this may have dire consequences
if one of the domains is accused of spamming or some other unscrupulous behavior. Even if you can't afford a dedicated server, it would be wise (for SEO purposes) to have a separate
IP address for each domain you own. Most hosting companies provide this service for a small fee.

2. Keywords

Keywords, what surfers type into search engines to find what they're looking for, are the real building blocks of the web. They are the single most important element in any online
marketing venture. Pick the right keywords and you're in business, pick the wrong keywords and again, it's game over.

Therefore, you must have special keyword software or use some online sites or services to help you pick the right keywords. Many top marketers use WordTracker.com, GoodKeywords.com,
or the new Keyword Elite by Brad Callen. A superior keyword research product will supply valuable information: number of searches made each month, amount of competition and the
top sites targeting your keywords.

Remember, you must target the right keywords with your site or online marketing. Targeted keywords draw targeted traffic (customers) to your sites or products. The right keyword software or program will have a direct correlation to the success or failure of your online marketing efforts. So choose wisely!

3. Articles

Many marketers believe in and rely upon purely organic SEO techniques for marketing their sites. One simple method of organic SEO is writing and submitting keyword related
articles around the topic of your website with links back to your site. As other sites display your articles you gain valuable one-way links back to your site. Search engines then follow all of these links and rank your site highly for the keywords in these articles. For this reason the modest article may prove to be the single most important marketing tool you have in your arsenal.

As your site becomes highly ranked for these keywords, other sites will want to link to your site in order to become optimized for those same keywords... article keyword marketing is one of the most effective Internet marketing tools at your disposal. Used properly if can position your site in the search engines and bring in all that highly prized targeted traffic.

Keep in mind, many Internet marketers have side-stepped the whole SEO optimization process by going directly to search engines and buying their traffic with PPC pay-per-click advertising. Overture and Google Adwords program are good examples of this method. Marketers bid on clicks to their site's keywords and bring in targeted customers. In knowledgeable hands, PPC marketing is an extremely effective and lucrative marketing tool.

4. Lists

The backbone of any Internet marketing system is the list. It is another marketing tool you can't do without. The list is simply a large database of contacts, people who have given you permission to email or contact them. These are subscribers who have opted-in to your ezine or newsletter.
Most successful marketers keep countless different databases for each product or topic they're targeting with their marketing.

Ezines or newsletters are vital Internet Marketing tools that no online business should ignore. It is essential you keep in contact/touch with your past and future customers. You must build an ongoing relationship and connection with your customers.

Besides your ezine or newsletter, many marketers also set up lists of affiliates to help promote and sell their products. Never underestimate the power of an affiliate system as an effective marketing tool. It is the stuff Empires are made of! Once a marketer has acquired a large list of loyal contacts or affiliates -- the flood waters open up. Opportunities for JVs or Joint Ventures with other online marketers make for serious cash flow.

5. Blogs And RSS Feeds

Blogging and RSS feeds have become essential marketing tools for savvy online marketers. Online journals or blogs are all the rage, especially in the marketing field. These blogging systems such as WordPress are great content management tools that will quickly build a content-rich site, pulling in targeted traffic from the search engines.

Search engines are enamored with blogs and RSS feeds mainly because blogs provide fresh content, the main lifeblood of every good search engine. For this reason no site should be
without a blog and RSS feed, it will keep your content regularly visited and indexed by the search engines. In addition, all that information and content is a perfect tool for drawing potential customers to your products and services.

Along with your domains, lists, keywords, and articles -- blogs are effective marketing tools that will play an important role in the success of your online marketing. In the right hands, these Internet marketing tools can work magic on any company's bottom line. They are some of Internet Marketing's most effective tools.

You don't have to think outside of the box, you just have to know what makes up the box!

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If you are knowledgeable about e-business in general and the way the online market place works, then you may want to consider a career as an internet marketing consultant. Even if you are relatively new to the online world, but have a marketing background to call on, you can actually still become an internet marketing consultant. All it needs is just a little bit of work. But that's true for any career. But to be a consultant you need to make sure your knowledge is varied and is solid.

In order to turn yourself into an internet marketing consultant and be able to market yourself, you need to first take stock of your internet marketing skills and knowledge. Figure out where your strengths are and what you need to improve. From that information, put together a plan that will allow you to educate yourself and improve your weak areas. If you find that you are weak in some areas, begin to work on those areas and brush up on them. Once you develop your skills and feel confident, you will be ready to embark on your internet marketing consultant career.

You must be prepared fully, because as an internet marketing consultant you will be called upon to help a number of varying clients. Your clients will vary from being completely "green" to seasoned veterans of their fields. You will have some that know almost nothing about business or the internet and are looking to you for everything. You will have to take them under your wing, so to speak. On the other hand, you may have clients who are essentially marketing gurus, but have no idea how to market on the internet. As an internet marketing consultant, it is your job to help all levels of client. So be prepared.

Perhaps you feel that your strengths are heavy towards just one area of expertise. You may then want to consider working as an internet marketing consultant within that niche. You can specialize in fields like search engine optimization, email marketing, ezines, or even newsletters. Identify the niche you are strong in and make sure you are up to date on it. There are a number of areas where you can work in internet marketing if you do choose to go the way of niche expertise. To identify which niches are "hot" simply type in a typical question into your favorite search engine and see what comes up.

Becoming an internet marketing consultant can be rewarding work. If you enjoy business, marketing, and the internet it may be a career direction you may want to take. All you need to do is take stock of your knowledge and skill, educate yourself, and be ready help all levels of customers. If you think you are more suited to one aspect, then you can always go the way of the niche consulting role. How you choose to function in your internet marketing consultant role is really up to you.

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You know, I have been an internet marketer for almost ten years now. I have reached a point where I actually support myself, and quite well, I might add, from my internet businesses.

It wasn't always so. I made a lot of dumb, and sometimes ignorant (the two are not the same) mistakes along the way. Somehow, I managed to learn enough about internet marketing to get successful at it in spite of myself. However, in the process, I paid for a lot of junk and wasted my time on a lot of things that didn't work. I usually refer to this as "accidental tuition".

Read more »

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What is Affiliate Internet Marketing?

Definition

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Affiliate internet marketing is a superb introduction to ecommerce and earning extra money, but according to TamingTheBeast.net, it's also "a numbers game."

In a nutshell, affiliate internet marketing is an advertising arrangement, so to speak, in which a company offers to pay you, as an individual or business owner, an agreed sum of money based one of the following advertising results from your site:

- a click through from your web site to the business' site;

- a fixed amount for a lead, where a visitor would sign up for a newsletter or other special offer; or

- a percentage of the amount of a purchase made by a visitor as a result of a click through from a link posted at your web site.

Often times, affiliate internet marketing allows for a "cookie duration" of 30 to 90 days. What this means is that if a visitor clicks through from your web site to the business' web site, the visitor will have the cookie in their cache. When the visitor returns to the business' web site to make a purchase in the given period of time, even if they don't first hit on your web site, the cookie will still be in their cache, and you will receive your commission from the purchase for that visitor. Prior to signing on to an affiliate internet marketing agreement, however, don't assume this to be the case in all agreements. It is something to be inquired about prior to agreeing to the affiliate internet marketing program.

Finding an Affiliate Internet Marketing Program for Your Web Site

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Locating the best affiliate internet marketing program for your site can be difficult and tedious. An extended amount of time is highly recommended in order to search the details of an appropriate affiliate internet marketing programs for your particular needs; implement the links; and monitor their activity. It can require long hours and may prove to not be a big money maker. Additionally, many affiliate programs come into existence and then disappear just as quickly, meaning that purchases or click throughs from your web site may not be paid in such incidences, which is why careful monitoring of the programs is crucial.

Approach the search for affiliate internet marketing opportunities with care. For example, choose an affiliate program with a major advertising agency, who can offer you hundreds or thousands of advertisers in which to choose. Another option is to consider individual companies to represent on your web site. If the company is one that is well known, has a good product or service, offers great affiliate support, and commits to regular payment with a low payout threshold, they can actually perform better than some agency associations. This can most definitely be the instance at hand if the business you're representing offers residual income, or monthly commissions from referred clients for services that might include web hosting or magazine subscriptions, for example, for as long as the client is with the company. Affiliation with these types of individual advertisers, over time, can build a steady stream of reliable income for you.

Be wary affiliate internet marketing programs that you have to pay to join. These types of affiliate internet marketing programs are actually called of Multi Level Marketing associations, or MLMs. There are some very successful and respectable MLMs around, but there are also many that are complete scams that are simply out to take your money, offering no support. Research the MLM carefully before committing to their affiliate internet marketing program.

Setting Up an Affiliate Internet Marketing Program on Your Web Site

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An affiliate internet marketing program is extremely simple to set up on your web site, and can be an excellent way to generate some extra income. While it's not realistic to think that it will be a huge money maker, it can be an effective tool to use in generating added money for your business or simply for your household.

Once you've located an effective affiliate internet marketing program that satisfies your needs, you'll need to advertise that affiliate's URL on your web site. This can be in the form of banner advertising, text links, reviews, email, or through other resources. The advertisers compensate webmasters by paying them for displaying the ads, or for click throughs sent to them, or, as is most common today, a commission on sales resulting as a referral from their web site or email message. Your chosen affiliate internet marketing program will have the information you need to get started with their particular program.

Be aware of affiliate internet marketing programs that promise they're the best, giving you the impression that all you have to do is implement their banners and links, and wait for the commission checks to start rolling. That can certainly be the case with very large web sites that have massive web traffic relevant to the product or service being offered by the affiliate. However, for the rest of the sites that are not that huge, being a successful affiliate requires just a bit more work.

Another thing to watch for when setting up an affiliate internet marketing program is the company's minimum payout level. Often, the business will set an unachievable level for an affiliate to achieve, but they themselves will greatly benefit from affiliates that don't reach their minimum. For example, consider a company that launches an affiliate program with a minimum payout level of $25, which tends to be the industry standard. They then recruit 20,000 or more affiliates. Only the top 1,000 affiliates are able to actually generate enough in sales to receive payouts on a regular basis. If the remaining 19,000 affiliates average one sale each, they may lose interest and drop out of the affiliate internet marketing program. These 19,000 affiliates made no money at all, but the company still earned what could actually be millions of dollars in sales.

Success with Affiliate Internet Marketing Programs

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Though there is much information to obtain prior to becoming an affiliate, it can definitely pay off in the long run. Being an affiliate is hard work, but can also be very rewarding when you team up with the right merchants. Take the time required to learn all of the details of an affiliate internet marketing program offered by a business, and don't sign on with a program that leaves questions unanswered or offers little or poor communications to their affiliates.

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In today's Internet Marketing environment having a Blog is not just a nice to have it's becoming essential. More and more people are reading Blogs and they offer great opportunities to promote your products or services. In addition if your Blog becomes popular you can create a good passive income through the adverts that you carry.

As an Internet Marketer if you want to create a really successful blog, there are three main things that you need to concentrate on to get started. Many Internet Marketers make the mistake of thinking that building a successful blog is one of the easiest tasks out there and they couldn't be more wrong! A successful Internet Marketer needs to do more than just set up a blog page to chat about their products. You need to focus on three essential building blocks in order to have a successful Internet Marketing blog. These three building blocks are not enough of themselves to make your Internet Marketing blog successful however they will give you a great start.

Look

The first building block for a successful Internet Marketing blog is The Look. What this means is that your blog should start with an appropriate style. A style which reflects the rest of your online business or at the very least conveys your professionalism. You can begin when you first start your blog. Many blogging software programmes will help you out with the style of your blog. If you are using a blogging programme that is aimed mainly at beginners, you will find that it will offer different templates for you to choose. There will be something for everyone. You can go through the templates to choose which colours you like best for the layout. Experiment with the layouts to see which templates look best on the computer screen and which most readily match the rest of your Internet Marketing sites. You have the option to go back and change the template later if you want to change the look of your Internet Marketing blog. Make sure that if you are creating your own Internet Marketing blog, without using a pre-created template that you make it look as professional as possible. You can even hire a professional to do the job for you if you wish. The more professional your blog looks, the more seriously your readers and potential customers will take your posts.

Content

The content of your Internet Marketing blog is the second key building block you will need for a successful blog. While you can choose to create posts that have no direction or purpose, you will find that when you post interesting commentary or short information filled articles that your traffic will increase. Although you may think it is interesting, most readers will not enjoy reading about your day to day Internet Marketing activities, unless you make them into humorous stories.

It should also be noted that the more content you have on your site, the more successful your site will be. It is basically a numbers game at this point. The more you post, the more chances you will have that one of your posts will attract the eye of someone searching for a related topic.

Advertisements

The third building block is advertising. Internet Marketing Bloggers can make a steady passive income using advertising on their blogs. The trick is to have a good mixture of ads and content however. If you fill your blog with ads and have no content for readers, they will be distracted and not visit your site again. A good rule to remember is that you should never have more than two or three ads per blog page. This is an important rule to remember. You should not overwhelm you readers with ads. You should only present them so that the readers can further explore them if they wish. Don't use flashing ads or other bold ads that will annoy your readers. Choosing the right type of advertising program is part of it as well. In fact I would go as far as to say that the best way to advertise is by using Google's Adsense Programme which will place ads relevant to your Internet Marketing activities - as long as you talk about them in your content! You have the option with Google Adsense to filter out your direct competitors which is an added bonus.

Dedication

The most important building block of a great Internet Marketing blog is dedication. You must be willing to be dedicated to your blog. You have to put in the time and energy to get positive results. Even with the other components in place, unless you take the time to update your posts on a regular basis, you will not be getting optimum results. Dedication can help a lot. It can mask the fact that you are a beginner and allow you to create a profit producing and functional Internet Marketing blog. No matter how little experience you have simple dedication can take you a long way and you are learning all the time whilst building up your Internet Marketing activity. You can have a great blog as long as you take the time to commit to your latest Internet Marketing project.

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