by David Lim
Internet marketing, as defined by Wikipedia, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. It is also referred to as web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing.
So, how do you go about marketing on the Internet?
If you were to pose that question to an Internet marketing guru, he'll tell you that while there are thousands of ways to market on the net, he has found a secret way to market that ensures that you are profitable 100% of the time. And he will sell you the secret for $24.95.
Ask an SEO expert, and he will tell you that he can teach you how to get to the top of the search engine rankings for your selected keyword, ensuring profitability for your products and services.
Look around the net and you will find websites that will submit your site to hundreds of search engines, directories, classifieds and many more. And they will even throw in a couple of free ebooks if you would sign up in the next 24 hours.
In the newspapers, you would have read of teenage girls who set up blog shops and were earning hundreds of dollars in their first month.
I can go on but I think you know that there are many, many ways of making money through Internet marketing, and all the ways are valid and everyone of the ways have made many people a lot of money.
Take a step back now and consider the teenage girls that you have read about. When they setup their blog shop, they probably told their all their friends, who told their friends, and the blog shop took off. The girls probably needed a little help in setting up the shop but the rest of the marketing was essentially done through word of mouth.
Or, consider the situation of a Chinese programmer with a limited command of English. He probably won't want to try article marketing, and would fail miserably even if he did try. But with his analytic mind and programming background, he might do very well at SEO.
The point that I'm trying to make is that you are a unique individual, with your own strengths, weaknesses and resources, unlike any other. Similarly, your Internet business would also take on its own unique characteristics.
Internet marketing is but a tool and it is up to you to decide how you can best utilize this tool to reach the goals of your business.
So, coming back to the question of how to market on the Internet, I have no answer for you. Only you have the answer.
My advice would be to spend a little time assessing your strengths and weaknesses, and the resources you have available. Do the same for your business. Then educate yourself on the promotional resources available on the Internet, and their characteristics.
Once you have done all this, formulate a game plan that is uniquely your own, taking advantage of the strengths and resources that you have, and you are good to go.
David Lim is the webmaster of http://QuittingYourJob.com, a business resource for the entrepreneur looking to start, or grow an online home-based business.
This article may be reprinted freely, provided no changes are made, and provided the resource box above follows the article.