Internet Marketing requires you to sell other people's products or services, or if you have decided to create your own product, sell your own. But whether you are selling your own or others, you must get traffic to our websites. But what is most important is not just getting traffic, but targeted traffic. Thus, How Do you or I get traffic to our sites?
In my early beginnings on the Internet, I tried many methods of getting traffic to my website. I was definitely a newbie in training - some of the software or services that I bought did me no good. I found, at times, that it was truly difficult to decipher which was a good deal and which was not - who was honest, and who was not - but I guess it goes with the Internet territory - and you must always do your due diligence.
However, I have found three methods of getting traffic to my site or affiliate product or service: Buying it, linking, or the hard one - Search Engine Optimization.
If you have the money to invest in Google or some of the other search engines pay-per-click programs you can make some money. Here you create an ad or ads relevant to your affiliate program, and place a bid on the keywords you select. This takes time, energy, persistence and money - and research. Also, I would advise that you read your affiliate programs rules, as well as, the rules of Google Adwords before jumping into the pay-per-click arena. You usually have to put "aff" after your ad or something similar to that - it's dependent upon the affiliate program you are in. The idea with pay-per-click is that you pay only when the individual clicks on your ad.
Linking can be by either paid or unpaid methods. The paid methods are paying for your link to be shown in Ezines, newsletters or on other people's sites. It can be costly, so the best suggestion that I can give you is to research the Ezines, newsletters and or other people sites that you want to link with before buying. In most cases, if ezines are accepting advertising, you know they must have at least 500+ subscribers, or I should say, be sure that they have at least 500+ subscribers before advertising in their ezine. Know what you are getting before you put your money down - and as they always say, be sure to read the fine print.
The unpaid method is through article creation. This requires hard work on your part, but the return will be seen in the long term. Keep in mind, your articles should be relevant and address the subject matter of your site and products. Content reigns king on the Internet - and if it is relevant to their needs - they will eventually come to read.
Search Engine Optimization is basically the optimization of your web pages so that you can get a decent ranking by the search engines, and thus, to pull people to your website by its relevance. This is a difficult chore and needs to continually be worked at - and within the ethics of the Search Engines.
To conclude, getting targeted people to your site is really part of growing your business. And Internet marketing - well, it's not for the faint-hearted, but for the determined, persistent individual who wants to really make a living online. Thus, if you really want to make a living on-line, don't give up and promote.