How To Start An Internet Marketing Business
Welcome to my article on internet marketing. I am Agent Moonwalker, reporter for The Daily Wealthy Affiliate. For all aspiring online entrepreneurs, today’s article would primarily focus on how to start an internet marketing business. Before we start, here’s a little introduction about myself and this series that I am going to write.
Before being a part of building this website by writing news articles, I am just your average 9-5 worker, a little cog in a huge organization where the rats near the higher rungs of the ladder are constantly trying to pull each other down. The corporate ladder is like a pyramid, the higher you go, the narrower it is.
Why is that so? Well, there is so much more money and a higher status to be gained at the top, so this is in line with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and this is human nature. Is it a wonder, why people strive so hard?
Are Corporate Ladders Worth The Climb?
So this little cog (me) at the bottom, I mean I am not on the ladder at all, rather, the little cogs are all gathered around the ladder, forming a large pool of support for the ladder.
So I was looking at the ladder one day and I thought wow it must be pretty awesome there, but it’s very uncomfortable too. Just think of how you have to watch each and every step, and beware of each and every other person near you, specifically, those above, below, left, right, front and back of you.
That being said, you would think I mean that it’s much more comfortable at the bottom, but believe me when I say it is not. It’s not easy to gain a foothold at the top, you know if you are at the bottom, because you get squeezed just as easily and because it’s a huge pool of cogs, the pressure is so much greater.
At this point, I started fantasizing….
Can I Start An Internet Marketing Business?
Wouldn’t it be nice if one day I get out of the pool as well to climb up the ladder? Could I one day be free of work stress, of worrying about putting bread on the table and paying the bills? Maybe one day I would be able to provide well for my family? One day I would like to travel around the world, without a care and just fully experience life itself!
With this fantasy in mind, I began searching for answers and that is the motivation that pulls me out of the pool. Instead of becoming a cog in yet another pool, I decided to build my own ladder. I began to create a dream in my mind.
Chasing the Dream
This little ladder will not only bring me up, it will act as a bridge that goes across, horizontally, vertically, diagonally, upside down and downside up, in any direction and to any destination that you can possibly think of, this ladder is going to reach it.
So what if I can create my own ladder, my own business or join with others creating our own business. Well my dear readers the answer follows below. The newspaper is my dream too and as The Joker offered me to join in, being a reporter and a partner for his newspaper, I decided to make this dream come true.
Our Entry Into The Internet Marketing Business
One day while having drinks with my best friends The Joker and Robocarl at our favorite haunt, Joker suddenly turned to us and said, “Hey do you guys know a lot of people are making money off the internet, why don’t we do the same?”
Having known him all my life, I know sometimes he gets these crazy but brilliant ideas and it’s always good to listen to him so I said, “What? How? When?”
That led us into a in-depth discussion and an extensive research into this topic. We found out that people are doing internet marketing and while some are struggling, there are many who have made a living out of it.
The Basics of Internet Marketing
Well, we know practically nothing about internet marketing at this point, so the first step would be finding out some basic information and where to start. Obviously internet marketing would start from the internet, so we googled around for some information and realized we urgently needed answers to the following questions:
- What is internet marketing?
- How do we start an internet marketing business?
- What is the best internet marketing program?
- What is the difference between internet marketing and affiliate marketing?
- How to earn with affiliate marketing?
… and millions more related questions.
1. What is internet marketing?
What is internet marketing? The word internet should give a hint, internet is the marketplace, the place where you market and sell your products and services through various methods, with all words being used in the broadest sense.
The Internet
Generally to be connected to the internet, you would need a Computer and an internet connection. To expand the concept of equipment that could connect to the internet, besides desktops, I would include laptops, raspberry Pi, tablets and mobile phones.
To take it one step further, I would include the offline world too because internet marketing can take place 24/7/365, regardless of whether you are connected or not. As long as somebody in the world is connected, there is a possibility of making a sale.
Products and Services
Ever bought books, clothing, cosmetics, equipment, CDs, ______ (fill in the blanks yourself) etc from Amazon or other online stores? Have you ever purchased an antivirus software online where all you need is an activation license? Have you ever made a booking for concert tickets, a massage session or paid for a course or other services?
I’m sure all of us would have said yes to some of the questions above, or even all of the above. All these are examples of products and services which could be purchased or sold over the internet. This process is called internet marketing.
2. How do we start an internet marketing business?
I start by being an active user of Google. On the Google search bar, I typed in words like “how to earn from the internet”, “online entreprenuer”, “internet marketing”, “how to start internet marketing”. At that time, I didn’t know that I am already putting into practise one of the most important skills required for internet marketing. That means, doing keyword research.
Slowly I had a vague idea of what it is about, then I started to note down some notable names. Next comes the blogs. I read a lot of interesting articles, many websites came with opt-in forms. So I signed up for a ton of them.
Then the marketing came. Lots of gurus / schools / programs / software tried to sell me knowledge for $199 / $299 / $399 / $999. Once I got so tempted that I almost keyed in my credit card. But wait, that’s a lot of money, and is that the best for me? Should I do some more research? I’m glad I hesitated. I began to search for The Best Internet Marketing Program
3. What is the best internet marketing program?
How do you define the best internet marketing program? There should be certain criteria attached to the “best” and here’s how I rate them.
1. The Program
Being a program, that means they provide courses and teachings. Therefore, how knowlegeable the trainers are would be a huge factor.
Things to look out for:
– How successful they are?
– How many people are taking the courses?
– Their years of experience
– Examples of the products they have created
2. Tools
Does the program merely offer knowledge? Knowledge would be in the form of ebooks and videos but besides that, what else? I suggest tools here because I found a place which got me started with a lot of tools, both technical and non-technical. More on this later.
3. Support
I would think support makes up the third leg of the program tripod. What if I am stuck during the course? Who can I ask? Are there any others learning alongside with me? Are they struggling too? Can we exchange points on our learning process and maybe help each other out? What if I have technical issues? What if my business was somehow messed up, because I don’t know coding?
Issues like this are very much my concern too, when I decided to take on a course.
4. What is the difference between internet marketing and affiliate marketing?
The term “affiliate marketing” came to me while doing research. After some study of the difference, here’s my concept of the difference between internet marketing and affiliate marketing. I would say affiliate marketing is a subset of internet marketing.
Internet marketing is a wider concept where we can use all kinds of strategies to make a sale over the internet. These could be physical products like eCommerce platforms like Amazon or Alibaba, or digital products like software and ebooks. On the other hand, when we are into affiliate marketing, we are acting like a middleman between a company and its products. Basically, we are marketing the products to earn a commission from the company.
5. How to earn with affiliate marketing?
I guess this is the multi-million dollar question which everyone is interested in. If we could somehow crack the code and learn the inside secrets, we would be on the way to become the next internet guru who lives on the beach with only his or her laptop. We would just write some articles, post them, and wait for the $$$ to come in.
If only it is that easy.
Well, it can be that easy, if we have the know-how. And so, that lead us back to How To Start an Internet marketing Business.
And that will be my job in the posts to come. I will be sharing with you how I got started, my experiences with it, what have I achieved so far and how did I get there. Finally it got me here, and so I am writing for you here in the office of The Daily Wealthy Affiliate your Novel Newspaper.
Coming Up Next: Day 1 as a newbie on my journey as an aspiring online entrepreneur
Agent Moonwalker, Star Reporter of The Daily Wealthy Affiliate
