Internet Marketing Techniques That You Can Use Today

Need help knowing how to make money online?……read this if you are making less than $5 per day…..

There are thousands of ways to make money online.  In fact, there are so many ways, that there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be making a little money along the way.  Here are some great internet marketing techniques as well as the pros and cons of each. Here are 12 internet marketing techniques that should help the beginning marketer start to sift through and find a gem that they can start to build around.

While this listing is far from absolute, the 12 techniques are things that I have tried in the past, successfully and unsuccessfully.  All of them come with their own set of pros and cons and each have their own set of challenges that the ordinary internet marketer will have to pass through.

There are some things that are non-negotiable when it comes to internet marketing (or marketing in the general sense)

1. You must understand how to test and track
2. You must know ad copy techniques
3. You must have a solid understanding of the market and its audience in order to deliver the most targeted campaigns.

Internet Marketing Technique #1 Article Marketing

Also known as “bum marketing”, the idea behind this is to go to a third party article directory such as ezine articles and submit articles.  It is a little more complicated than this to make money.  However, given the fact that anyone who can write remotely well can get started today, article marketing is typically one of the first internet marketing techniques that a new marketer will start out with.

Pros to becoming a bum marketer-

• Someone can start with no capital and build a small empire fairly quickly with the right prerequisites.
• Anyone can do it.
• Although it starts off slowly, the pay off comes with the more articles you write.
• You can build back links to your site with the contextual anchor text of your keyword.

Cons of becoming a bum marketer-

• Most of the bum marketers who are selling manuals typically make it sound much easier than it is.
• In order to truly be a bum marketer, you have to inundate the article directories with articles.
• Aside from the trust rank that you get from many of these articles, wouldn’t it be easier just to build your own authority site?
• Two clicks to get to your pitch- That’s right.  In order for the visitor to get to where you want them to go, they will need to click to get to the article directory and then click your link in your bio box to get to your offer.

How to make money as a bum marketer-

• The best bum marketers understand that it isn’t the article directories that get you traffic…it is the trust that google gives some of these sites.  With the trust, comes higher search engine rankings. So therefore….
• Knowing how to do keyword research is a must here.  Most of the articles that really drive traffic are on the front page of the google results and therefore get a lot of organic traffic.
• Must know how to write-  This is debatable as I have seen some pretty mediocre writing.  And not only is article writing a learned art, you also have to know what not to give up in order to get the article visitor to click to your site
• Must understand basic ad copy techniques-  This is primarily for your bio box which, incidentally has your link going to it.  In other words, if you don’t know what a call to action is, then you need to read up on some Yanik Silver or Dan Kennedy.
• Must know how to build a website-  Your article link has to land somewhere and this is typically in the form of a blog, landing page, or website.  In order to do this, the internet marketer must know, in the very least, how to build them.

Summation:  Bum Marketing may seem to be all that from the outside looking in and while it is true that people are making money with article marketing, the real deal is that most aren’t.  In order to truly be successful, you have to spend a lot of time writing and submitting articles.  Keyword research (finding those long tail keywords) is paramount to how much success you will have as most visitors will reach the article via organic search.

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Internet Marketing Technique #2 Adsense and other contextual ads

Pros of building a site with contextual ads-

• Almost anyone with an opinion can build one
• Passive income
• Guaranteed paychecks from a reputable source

Cons of using contextual ads-

• Very little control of the ads on your site
• For adsense to work well, you need loads of traffic
• Google has been known to smart price sites as well as ban your account on a whim

How to make money with adsense sites-

• Building sites is easy.  Building sites that get large volumes of traffic is much harder. You will have to learn how to build sites that generate traffic.
• Keyword Research is a must-The person interested in building informational adsense sites should investigate keyword research.
• Organic Traffic is the lifeblood for most adsense sites-The pro adsense guys make money because they are able to rank highly for their search term….
• You must know how to get ranked-Getting backlinks is the name of the game if you want to get ranked.  Someone who is trying to make money with adsense will have to search for ways to get backlinks to their site so they can rank and actually bring in worthwhile traffic.
• The content on the page will define what type of ad you will get.  If you choose wrong or are all over the place, then your page won’t be optimized and you won’t get the highest paying ads.
• Search Engine Optimization knowledge is a must.

Summation: Adsense is typically the first internet marketing technique that most new marketers try to use and employ.  It works well for some but most will make only pennies a day using it.  It isn’t because of the business model, though.  In order for you to make good money with adsense, you will need a ton of traffic going to your site on a daily basis. The most preferable way is to get it via organic traffic.  In other words, you get paid by volume of visitors to your site.

A couple years ago,  the adsense model that was regularly recommended by make money marketers was to build 100 websites with shoddy content and place adsense on it.

The thought behind this so called plan was that if each of your sites could make $1 a day, then you would be making $100 a day across your website’s network.

What most people didn’t take into account was the possibility that there wouln’t be enough traffic for most of these sites to make $1 a day.  Plus there was a problem with getting smart priced, which would lower your revenue across the board.

Making money with adsense is really more of a numbers game and therefore are best for those minds that like to crunch numbers.  If things like conversion ratios and rampant testing is the thing that gets you going, then adsense will probably be for you.

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Internet Marketing Technique #3 Make Money Writing Articles

We aren’t talking about the typical article marketing affair that most affiliate marketers are in love with.  We are talking about getting real money for articles that you write.  While most people will not be too into this, it is as close to guaranteed money that you get (especially if you choose Associated Content) on the web.

Pros of Making money by writing articles

• While not guaranteed, most article sites who purchase material are fairly lax in the content that they accept.
• If you build up credibility as an article writer, your jobs (and paycheck) will grow.
• Perfect solution for writers who want to build capital for bigger projects.

Cons of making money by writing articles

• While you do get paid, the payment is much lower than what professional writers make.  $1.50-$16.00 per article.  The minimum word count is 450.
• If someone is thinking that they could do this for a living (and you could on a low scale…10 articles a day would average you $50), you would in effect be trading your day job in for another job…not exactly the sexiest trade-off.
• If you are elancing yourself off, your competition will be against other people in third world countries willing to charge $2-$4 per article.

How to make money by writing articles

• When you first start out, you can expect to get paid lower amounts until you prove your credibility.
• You could actually take one article and rewrite it a couple times.  The result is you have one that will pay you via associated content, one that you can throw on a writer’s market forum for sale and one for a website.  The rewrites will come a lot easier the second and third time around.
• You could also purchase some diction software (like dragon naturally speaking) to speed up the process of writing.  Although this does work, it does take a couple months to train the diction software to recognize and understand your voice.  Then, of course, you also have to get used to speaking your thoughts rather than writing them.
• Personally, this type of money making technique is best served for those that need the capital  for bigger projects but don’t want to deliver pizzas for a month.
• Of course, you need to know how to right write.

Summation:  This is actually one of the easier ways to make money online because it is work related and the amount of money you make will be congruent with the amount of work you put in.  That said, for those who want to travel in this direction, chances are you just trading in a job for another job.  Still, if you want to learn keyword research and hone your writing skills at the same time, then you will find this method to be a good internet marketing technique.

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Internet Marketing Technique #4 Create your own Products

Of course, if you talk to any online marketing guru, they will all tell you that you will make the most money if you create your own product.  We aren’t talking about building ipods here though.  In most cases, the products are nothing more than a digital e-book, video tutorial or audio interview.  You have seen these types of products attached to miles of ad copy promising to end your troubles and make your rich, tame your untrainable dog, stop your child from bed wetting, fix your xbox, ect.

Pros of making money with your own product:

• Low cost start up (in most cases)
• Great way to build a business with repeat buyers
• Potentially unlimited income
• Since you made the product, you create the rules.  Charge as much as you want, re-package it, whatever.

Cons of making money with your own product.

• Creating Products do take time (most of the time, when I create something, it takes usually about a month)
• There is no guarantee that you will make any money at all (the idea that if you build it, they will come is one of those internet marketing myths)
• For a do-it-yourself marketer, a successful product launch requires mastering many different skills.

How to make money by creating your own products

The idea that you can create a product and retire is one of those internet marketing myths that seems to abound in the MMO community.  The reality is that there is a lot of competition in nearly all niches and in order to be successful you will need to create, create, create.

In addition to this, for the diy marketer, you need to know more than simply how to write.

• You will need to know how to write good ad copy (great ad copy with a mediocre product will almost always trump a great product with mediocre ad copy)
• You will need to know basic website work (HTML, ect.)
• You will need to know payment processors, ect.
• Networking and JVing will be the most likely way to make money with creating products.  Building relationships with other marketers takes time.
• Advertising an unknown product if you are unknown can be daunting to say the least.

Summation:  While this is the road most traveled with internet marketers as from the outset, it makes the most sense, product creation is probably the hardest of all strategies to master because of all the other things that you will need to know along with the process.

Of course, most of the process could be outsourced but that would take money, and in a lot of cases that number could exceed the $1,000 mark….not very practical for the beginner marketer.

Still, the fact is that if you create your own product, you have the full run of what you will do with it and how much you charge.  And if your product makes waves, it could pay off big.  How big?  Even some of the intermediate product marketers are reeling in mid-six figures per launch.  Now that is how to make money online, right?

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Internet Marketing Technique #5 Make Money Selling other People’s Product as your Own

This is actually a side note to making money creating your own product.  Did you know that there are hundreds of products that you can claim and sell as your own online?  That’s right, there is a bevy of products that range from acne control to internet marketing strategies to wine tasting that you can build a small empire around.  But before you get too excited, let’s take a look at the pros and cons…..

Pros of making money selling products as your own-

• No need for product creation since the work has been done for you
• In alot of cases, these products have been researched and identified as hungry markets
• The sales page, one time offer, email series and thank you page are normally packaged up with it.

Cons to making money online selling products as your own-

• The products are not unique meaning that if the product is good, many other marketers will be selling the same thing.
• You could be undercut price wise because of this.
• Keyword research and search engine positioning play a big role in how well your site will do.
• The product could have been someone else’s product that they are pawning off because the market is no longer viable.
• In a lot of cases, the product is subpar and not worth selling.

How to make money selling other people’s products as your own:

This route is very enticing to new marketers because it has the look and feel of a turn key business.  And the good news is it can be.  The bad news is that although you may not need to worry about ad copy and write the actual material, the downside is that in order to make money you need traffic and to get traffic, you will need to do the keyword research for ‘buy’ keywords.

Alot of your success will depend on your search engine positioning for these ‘buy’ keywords.  A lot of times, the marketer will be forced to create an infrastructure (either through parasite websites or through their own websites) that will help get them get ranked for the keyword.

In addition to the problem of getting buying customers through organic traffic, the actual ad copy should be tested and conversions should be tracked to make this effective.

Of course, the marketer could explore other avenues like utilizing pay-per-click but that is another subject with its host of issues altogether.

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Internet Marketing Technique #6 How to make money online with build a niche sites

Pros to making money online with BANS

• You can build sites on the fly.  With BANS you can literally build a 50 page site in about 30 minutes
• Because the keywords are very micro niche oriented (like gibson left handed ephiphone 755), the searcher is obviously looking for information to buy.
• Usually, these search terms are so specific that the competition is negligible and the BANS owner should rank quickly.
• Finding long tail keywords is not a problem since another site is finding them for you (via RSS).
• Because most of the crawled information is constantly changing (because it is nothing but Ebay auctions), the search engine spiders in theory will constantly be crawling your site and giving you more keywords to play with.

Cons of making money online with bans

• One of the most obvious cons is that the BANS software has a footprint which would make it easily identifiable to Google.  Hence, the recent deindexing of BANS sites because of lack of content.
• Highly targeted keywords will do you no favors in terms of getting traffic to a site.  Don’t expect a water shed of traffic.

How to make money by building BANS sites-

The idea that you can build sites that are largely nothing more than an ebay portal are done.  Since BANS has a footprint, the better option would be to use software that doesn’t have a footprint or that are used for other things like CARP.

Also, expect to spend a bit more time building crawlable keyword rich content to get ranked for your keywords.

Summation:This internet marketing strategy was the golden child of this year…until Google pulled the plug and started deindexing BANS sites.  The idea behind it is something that every marketer should be aware of though.

The idea is to find a long tail niche via Ebay and then build a site around your primary keyword.

Your content is a combination of an Ebay RSS feed and text to give the search engines a way to rank.

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Internet Marketing Techniqe #7 Make Money Online Selling Other People’s stuff as an Affiliate

This is probably the most used by online marketers because it is drop dead simple.  Basically, the approach is that you sign up with an affiliate company (when starting out, most will go the route of ClickBank), and then promote the product via their own website.

Pros of making money online as an affiliate-

• You don’t have to create a product as it is already there.
• In a lot of cases, advertising material in the form of banners and an autoresponder is already provided for you.
• Can be done with little to no money.

Cons to making money as an affiliate-

• Although you don’t have to create the product, you still need traffic in order to make money.
• If you have your own website, you will have to spend the time matching the right affiliate product to your target audience.
• For most products, there is still competition for the actual keyword of that product.
• More competition = harder to get ranked organically.
• Alot of times, your competition has a heads up on your because they are marketing to their list.  In other words most marketers are taking the crumbs left over.

How to make money as an affiliate:

In most cases, most of the professional marketers will spend the time building a list and then grooming their list to be sold to.  In order to be successful, you need to almost be an arm chair psychologist and understand human behavior in order to make mass sales.  Matching your product selection to your target market is paramount.

If you are going the route of getting organic traffic as an affiliate, then keyword research plays a much bigger role in selling things.  Most marketers will target keywords like “keyword scam”, “keyword review”, or “keyword bonus” for product launches.  Ultimately, their success or failure depends on their rank position in the search engines so an understanding of basic seo techniques is very much recommended.

Of course, the search engine affiliates who make the most of selling these types of products have built up a network of supporting sites and use methods to dominate the Search engine rankings.

Summation: Making money as an affiliate is probably the most popular internet marketing strategies out there because it makes sense.  However, in order to fully develop this marketing technique, you would have to have a keen understanding of getting ranked AND also know and understand your target market.

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Internet Marketing Technique #8 How to make money with PPC Marketing

Of course another way to make money online is to fore-go the search engine rankings altogether and simply do pay-per-click advertising.

Pros to making money with Pay-per-click marketing

• No organic search engine ranking necessary- You can easily be at the top for any keyword….for a price.
• In some cases, it is very easy to dominate a niche and it is perhaps the easiest way to build a list with PPC.
• It is an effective way to see if the keyword is actually viable without spending the time to try to get ranked.

Cons of making money with Pay Per Click

• The cost of marketing this way can easily break someone financially
• There is a learning curve.
• It does require some ad copy skills on both the contextual ad itself AND the landing page as well.
• Conversion and Analytics knowledge are an absolute must.
• Testing and retesting is essential.
• Google can put the hurt on you by giving your site the “google slap”.

How to make money to pay-per-click marketing…

It sounds easy enough.  Find a product or choose a keyword congruent with your market and build your list and then launch a pay-per-click campaign.  If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it.  The reality is that the steep learning curve on how to do an effective PPC campaign will keep most amateurs from choosing this internet marketing strategy because if you guess wrong, you could feel it in your wallet.

Still for those who have the capital, there is no quicker way to get to the top of the search engines than launching a ppc campaign.  If you are smart, you can build a huge list AND make money without a strong presence online.

Summation: This is probably the easiest way (although it does cost) to getting noticed on the web without having to worry about SEO strategies.  That said, it comes with a host of challenges that the ordinary marketer will have to worry about.  And every challenge can cost them financially.

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Internet Marketing Technique #9 How to make money with email marketing

If you have been around the block in regards to internet marketing, you would know the saying that the money is in the list.  The truth is….it is! This is AKA relationship marketing and most marketers are very aware that if you can build a list, you don’t really need to have a presence online via a website at all.

Pros to making money online with a list

• Name your paycheck: Although many will disagree, Volume does matter in this case.  The more people you can grab, the greater the chances you will make money from them (from attrition).  Spammers have known this for years.  Hence why you still get those viagra and lose weight emails from unknown sources.
• You don’t need a website once you have a list (although a website is recommended.
• You are completely immune from google’s flakiness when it comes to getting ranked.
• You can actually network with your list in some cases to make even more money.
• Most list building software will allow you to create a series of emails so there is no work once it is set up.

Cons to making money with list building-

• It simply isn’t as easy as most marketers would have you believe.
• The biggest marketers still employ PPC and co-regs to build their list.  This can be very costly….
• It requires some ad copy skills and an understanding of your target market (after all, you are trying to connect to them).
• If you aren’t careful, you can get busted and derailed by I-CANN spam laws.
• In most cases, you have to pay monthly for the service.  The rules are very tight so migrating lists to another company will cost you a part of your list.

How to make money online with lists-

Like I said earlier, building a list can truly build you a virtual goldmine.  I know of one collegue who sends out an email 3 times a year and each time makes $50,000+.  However, that said, there is more to email marketing than simply blasting your list with the next best offer (although a lot of marketers do this.)

Email marketing is basically about building relationships so there is a very narrow line between being someone’s ‘friend’ and marketing products to them.  It is almost a lost art.  Expect to spend some time not selling to them and even more time building your credibility.

The more credibility you have in the eyes of your list, the more money you will make.

Summation:  Email Marketing is definitely something that every marketer should utilize, even if they are using it as a secondary marketing strategy.  The sheer amounts of money that could be made simply by blasting a responsive list can be incredible and could actually make a very good living online.

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Internet Marketing Technique #10 How to Make Money Online with Pay-Per-View

Pay-Per-View (PPV) is probably one of the least looked at marketing strategies out there, partly because it isn’t that understood.

The idea is rather than use the traditional pay-per-click model, you can instead opt to pay for advertising based on page views. Traditionally, PPV companies offer something for someone to install their software…usually this is in the form of free movies, games or music. In return for access to the network, the user is inundated with ads in the forms of pop-ups or pop-unders. If you are utilizing the PPV network, your ad (in the form of a site) will be viewed because the user will have to click away eventually.

Pros to making money with PPV networks

• You don’t have to worry about PPC networks.  In most cases, you are depositing money into the network so once the money is gone, you have to manually re-up it.  This can help keep the beginner marketer from emptying his bank account.
• Can target URL’s to display your ads.  Are you selling the latest greatest product launch?  How cool would it be if you target all the google ads for the keyword AND the top 10 of the search results so if the person clicks on them, they see your ads?
• PPV is traditionally much lower than PPC-  your page shows for pennies, in some cases as low as .01
• Great for building a list quickly

Cons of making money with PPV networks

• Because the view is forced, the conversion rate will be much lower than if someone clicked an ad via pay-per-click.
• A solid background in ad copy is necessary to maximize profits since the page is forced.  This is even for list building and giving away free stuff.
• PPV markets have been rumored to stuff cookies on popular affiliate products which means that some campaigns are made in vain.
• Unlike PPC, there is a minimum just to try out most PPV markets….Zango for instance has a $200 minimum just to play.

How to make money with Pay-per-view

Making money with pay-per-view, at least in my experience can be hit and miss.  The key is to match your target market with the right ads.  If the pay-per-view is actually replacing your affiliate cookie with theirs, then you might as well be pissing your money away.  However, that said, I have had success with PPV markets and CPA ads as well as have found it a good and cheap way to build a list.

You will need some solid ad copy skills since the views are viewed largely as unwelcome guests on someone’s computer.  A great call-to-action is essential.

Summation:  PPV is a great internet marketing strategy for the intermediate marketer who is trying to build a bigger list or has reached critical mass with their site as far as list building is concerned.  Another great option is to test your own products out to see if they *pop*.

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Internet marketing Technique #11 How to Make Money with Forum Marketing

Forum Marketing is the very beginning for most marketers because most internet marketers start to understand how to market online via the forums.  That said forum marketing is probably the easiest and most fun of all ways to make money online because of the social factors involved.

Pros to making money online with forum marketing

• It is free
• It is social.
• In most cases, you get to learn as well as recommend.
• Building a list is much easier because your name is part of a community.
• You can gain credibility very quickly.

Cons of making money online with forum marketing

• It is very easy to get distracted from your marketing campaign and turn into a reader.  Because it is such a social atmosphere, it is easy get side tracked.
• It does take time to become credible in most niches.  This involves a lot of posting.  The quality of your posts does affect your campaign.

How to make money online with forum marketing

I used forum marketing as my first venture into affiliate marketing.  Funny as it may sound, I found marketing by accident.

Basically, the formula for making money with forum marketing is to become a part of the community and deliver great content in posts and threads.  The more of a presence you are, the greater the trust.  The greater the trust, the more influence you will have on the community.  You are marketing your products or landing page (for list buidling) via your forum signature.

That said, it is very easy to get side tracked and rather than posting, you are reading.

Summation: This is the easiest step for a new marketer to become involved and make money online.  It takes a bit of time to get established but once you are there, you will find that you will make money based on your reputation in the community.

This applies to virtually any niche in any forum that allows signatures.

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Internet Marketing Technique # 12 Make money online with Trend Marketing

Trend Marketing is one of those marketing strategies that is least understood.  And for good enough reason.

The thought process behind this is that the marketer will look for news that is just breaking, whether this is product launches like the newest Harry Potter Book or through breaking news like wild fires in California.  The trend marketer will quickly write a post, connect as many pathways (backlinks) to his post and hope to gain from an artificial ranking that google will give while trying to figure out how to sort sites that are posting the news.

The result?  If they are lucky, they will get tens of thousands surfers looking for information in regards to the trend.  If they are unlucky, nothing happens.

Trend marketing tends to be more unfocused and therefore the conversion rates are much, much lower.  However, this is one of those internet marketing techniques in which the sheer volumes of surging traffic actually make the marketer money.

Another version of trend marketing is to build sites on upcoming trends.  For instance, American Idol will be  coming out with a new season.  If a trend marketer is fast enough, he can grab the names of the Idols and make personal fan sites with them.  The result would be a rush of traffic every week after the show is over.

Pros of trend marketing

• Obviously the mass volumes of traffic can be one of those things that can seduce a future trend marketer into the market.
• Easy to do if you don’t mind watching the news looking for breaking stories
• Predicting trends can actually be fun.

Cons of trend marketing

• It can be hit and miss
• You spend a lot of time locating possible future trends.
• If you pick the wrong keyword, you will get no traffic.

How to make money with trend marketing

The most obvious way to make money with trend marketing is to target the primary keyword of the trend itself.  This can be disastrous to the trend marketer though.  The better option is to search for the secondary keywords.  For instance, was there an obscure name named? If so you could potentially cash in.  Trying to capitalize on Roger Clemon’s Steroid use will be a hard match because it is likely that there are already sites that are entrenched that cover Roger Clemons.

The better option is to target something like who caused the wildfires for instance.

Summation:  Trend Marketing can be a great way to grab some very quick traffic.  However, it will become a job all to itself, since the trend is typically short lived and the artificial rankings will disappear overnight.

Some other grabbing future trends:

• Video Game Launches- I recently saw a site up for sale at sitepoint that was about Halo 3.  The site was just 3 months old and was getting nearly 200,000 uniques a month!
• Future TV shows-  Being able to grab the domain name of a future tv show (has to be a derivitive is a great way to build traffic to a site.  The Prison Break fan site gets nearly 50,000 uniques a month.
• Upcoming Popular Sequels to books-  Here is another great one.  Target the book AND the author in one fell swoop and watch as the traffic comes pouring in.
• Upcoming products (such as the IPOD)

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