How to Make Your Website a Revenue Producer

It seems the whole world is using the Internet these days to research, get the best price and find a local store carrying products and services they are interested in buying. Marketing to these folks is now essential if you want to capture their business. Internet Marketing is a huge asset to any business with a website and required if they want to be found. So why on earth is Internet Marketing not being taught in colleges?

I know how important Search Engine Marketing can be to your online business because I developed a website of my own. Blood, sweat and tears went into developing and beautifying my website. To my dismay, I realized after it was complete, nobody ever saw it! Just because you put a well-designed, informational website on the Internet does not mean it will be indexed, and then ranked on the first page of search results. And if you are not listed on the first page of search results you will rarely been seen.

I went looking for classes or seminars to teach me how to market my website. I wrote Google, I called local colleges and I did searches to find out how to learn about Internet Marketing. I soon found out this technology is self-taught. There are no classes offered and periodically, if you are lucky, you might find a seminar covering the basics of one aspect of Internet Marketing.

I believe part of the reason Internet Marketing is not offered in colleges is due to the newest of this form of advertising; the Internet has only gone mainstream since the 90's. Professors don't know the technology and you can't teach what you don't know. The nature of Internet Marketing is constant evolution. The search engine algorithms continue to evolve changing the landscape of what makes a website relevant and valuable to the search engines. One has to keep up with the changing climate by buying books, reading blogs and engaging in the Internet Marketing Guru community. What a professor teaches one semester might be out dated by the next.

Internet Marketing takes patience and dedication to execute. A great deal of the work is redundant and meticulous and results can be slow in coming. One has to "get it" and actually implement what they have learned to show a real return on investment. You need to be successful in driving targeted traffic to your own website before attempting to help anyone else's drive traffic to theirs. There is an on-going learning curve; you need to be hungry for new tactics and strategies if you are to succeed. For those of us who love the trade, it is a fascinating and challenging game that is exciting to win!

Because people don't understand the complexity of Internet Marketing, they feel internet marketing is pie in the sky and anyone can do it. There are plenty of people out there doing a really bad job of helping people be seen and be heard on the internet. The medium has gotten a bad rap due to this disservice and companies are leery. Colleges are not going to offer a class on a subject that may be considered Hacky.

With all these challenges, a good Internet Marketer is worth their weight in gold. Who knows, you might even find the good ones teaching Internet Marketing courses in your local college in the years to come.