Web Hosting 

You need a presence on the Web.

Before you can make any money, you need some form of presence on the Internet to get your word out. This is usually in the form of some type of web page, but in today's Web 2.0 world, it could also be one of the many different social websites like My Space or Face Book. All of these perform basically the same function: they allow you to put content, content people want to read, out on the internet to drive traffic to your products.

• Traditional Web Hosting
  There are both free and paid services available that allow you to host anywhere from one to hundreds of web sites on one account. The free ones usually allow one site and will add their own advertisements to your pages. With a paid service, you avoid their advertisements and look more professional; you can also use your own domain names for the sites -- like www.yoursite.com.
  
  For my sites, I really like the hosting plans offered by Hostgator. They are very affordable and offer lots of services like unlimited domains and free site templates. In addition, their service is top notch.
• Blogs
  Over the last several years, blogs have almost taken over the Internet. Everyone has one these days. I saw where Wal-Mart, the largest company in the world, has their own blog to get out the word of new company news. You can also use them to market products; this is usually done as an ongoing series of reviews, and the format works very well for this.
  
  You can start with a free blog on Blogger, but at some point you'll want to venture into a blog hosted on your own site using something like Wordpress. A Wordpress blog on your site looks more professional and allows you to customize the blog to fit your website, where a Blogger blog won't.
• Collective Web Sites
  These can be a great way to share Internet real estate with others, and you can get some good traffic at the same time. These would include sites like Squidoo and Hub Pages. There's usually no cost, but you'll want to carefully read their terms of service before hawking your wares. If you're not sure where to start, Squidoo would be my first choice.
• Article Directories
  For beginning marketers on the Internet, article directories are a great zero-cost method to get traffic to your sites. Just write a few articles about your topic, link back to your web site, and once you post to these directories, you're done. The biggest of these is Ezine Articles. You'll want to read their submission policies before you submit an article; there are rules about where and how you can promote other sites in your articles.
• Video Sites
  Videos are huge on the Internet these days. Everyone watches them, so if you aren't using video for advertising, you're missing out on a huge source of traffic. Sites like You Tube are a great place to start.
• Other Social Sites
  Although not traditionally used for advertising (in fact, it's frowned upon), many Internet marketers are using sites like Face Book and My Space to get the word out about their products and services. It's worth looking into, but be sure to read their terms of service first.
• Email
  I hesitated to list email as an advertising medium, but it can be effective. We all get tons of spam each day, but sending out unsolicited email is against the law. If you have explicit permission to send emails out to your clients, this can be an effective medium for new sales and leads.

HTML Editing 

Define your own look.

HTML is scary for most new Internet marketers, but it doesn't have to be. In basic terms, HTML is the language used by the Internet to tell your web browser how to display a page. It's what makes bold text bold and the background of a page a certain color.

Luckily, you don't need to be a programming expert to use it. If you can use a word processor, you can build a web page using HTML. There are many "What You See is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) HTML editors available that are as easy as your favorite word processor. Some are free and some cost a good deal of money, but if you don't have to learn HTML, they may be worth the cost.

If you don't want to buy or download an HTML editor for your computer, a good choice is something like Site Rubix. It's hosted online and allows you to edit your pages and post them to your web server without using HTML or FTP. It even has lots of included templates, so it's easy to change the look and feel of your pages. Using Site Rubix, you can build a professional quality website in about five minutes.

Keyword Research 

What are people looking for?

Once you're ready to build out your presence on the Internet, you need to figure out how you're going to get people to come to your web site. Perhaps the most direct approach is to target keywords that people search for on the search engines. Google, for example, serves up millions of searches a day, and you can claim your piece of the pie if you can figure out what these folks are searching for.

The good news is that there are lots of tools available to help with your keyword research. Some, like Google's own keyword tool, are free. With a little work, you can get hundreds of keywords directly from Google. Others are very expensive and can be difficult to use for the novice. Both have their advantages.

Although the cost is right, there are some disadvantages to the free keyword tools. Because they are used by so many people, the keywords they return are often already in use by many other advertisers. The competition among these keywords can be fierce.

Using the paid tools, there's a higher likelihood that you'll find a set of keywords with very little competition. The less competition, the more likely you are to list high on the search engines and get lots of traffic. This does come with a price; many of these paid tools are quite expensive.

You already own the best keyword research tool on the market: your brain. Think about the kinds of things you would search for on Google or one of the other search engines and you'll already be one step ahead of the best tools. Remember that the folks who will be using these search engines are just people like yourself.

Competition Research 

What's working for everyone else?

The best marketers, both online and off line, spend as much time looking at their competition as they do looking at themselves. Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, got some of his best ideas and people from his competition. He not only found out where he could do better than they were, he also saw things he missed in his business. By spending some time looking at how your competition has optimized the keywords on their page, how they are advertising, and the other techniques they are doing, it may be easier to outrank them. Likewise, you may find something that they are doing that you aren't.

There are lots of ways you can do this research. The least expensive is good old grunt work; spend some quality time going through your competition's web site and doing searches on Google and the other search engines. Although this is free, it can get quite repetitive.

There are also several tools available to help you figure out what your competition is doing. Some, like SeoQuake, are plug-ins for your browser and let you see details that normal visitors don't see. Others are expensive stand-alone tools that track all ads for a keyword to see which ads are performing the best over a period of time. No matter which tool you use, you don't want to forget amout measuring up your competition.

Site Content 

As they say, content is king.

Without content, there wouldn't be an Internet. Content on your pages is what gets them indexed by the search engines, and what ultimately brings visitors to your sites. You must have quality content if you want to be successful online.

Of course, just like your web presence, this content comes in many forms. It could be traditional web pages on your web site. It could also be in the form of blog posts or articles in article directories. Whatever the form or format, you'll want to be sure to give your visitors quality as well as quantity. If they like your content, they may click your links; if not, they'll just click the back button.

If you're a skilled copywriter, you can write all of this content for yourself. If you don't think your writing skills are where they need to be, you may still do very well with blogs and social posts; people tend to believe things more that look like they were written by real people. You don't have to be a PHD to write for the Internet!

There are also other options if you don't have the time or desire to write your own content. With a little searching, it's easy to find private label rights (PLR) content on almost any topic. The PLR rights allow you to modify and repost the content anywhere you'd like. I suggest, however, that you take the time to rewrite it before using it to avoid the penalties Google places on duplicate content.

You can also hire copywriters for your content. Writers are available online for as little as $3 per five hundred word article, but you get what you pay for. I've found that you can buy quality articles for $7 - $9 each for almost any topic. As you start earning income from your sites, you can multiply your efforts by hiring copywriters for some of your content.

Training 

Sometimes you don't know what you don't know...

There is a wealth of training available online for Internet marketing. Much is informal training like this and other related lenses on Squidoo. When you're starting out, these free sources of information can be great sources to determine your interests and to help you get started down the right path.

Once you get more serious about your marketing efforts, there are many professional training resources available as well. They range from $20 e-books to seven-day seminars costing thousands of dollars. A good balance is one of the true online courses that guides you through a series of classes with an opportunity for hands-on experience during the training; these are generally very affordable.

Although the cost can be prohibitive for those starting out, the information gained from these courses can often pay for itself in a matter of days. All it takes is one idea to go from $100 per month to $1,000 per day in this business. You can do the same without formal training, but you'd have to be very lucky.

Mentoring and Coaching 

Even the best need a little extra help.

No matter how good you are, you can improve with help from a good coach or mentor. Even Tiger Woods, as great as he is, gets help daily from his coach. A good mentor is able to see things from a different view and give you valuable insight into small ways to improve your business. Simply put, quality mentoring can be the difference between success and failure.

There are many forums online , like the Warrior Forum, where you can get mentoring and coaching from the masses. There are lots of good tidbits of information available in these forums, but remember that the majority of the members are starting out just like you. Often, those who post have ulterior motives as well; are they really helping out or are they just hawking their own e-book to the newbies on the site? Although I suggest visiting these sites to look for new ideas, make sure you do your due diligence before trying any of the techniques you learn there.

There are also forums attached to some of the paid online training sites. In my experience, these often contain more quality posts, and the members are more likely to post true secrets on a paid, private forum than on a public forum. It's easy to build relationships on these forums as well, and these can lead to very lucrative partnerships down the road. I've been a member of one of these, the Wealthy Affiliate forum, for almost a year, and I both give and receive mentoring all the time. Carson and Kyle at Wealthy Affiliate University are the real deal.

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