FREE Marketing Course For Bloggers!

A lot of books and video courses have been created teaching you how to make money online. In this article I want to give you a few things to keep in mind that you have to do when it comes to making your living on the Internet.

The Internet Is Only A Medium

No, the internet can’t speak to dead people (that was a joke by the way!) I mean that the internet is nothing more than a quicker and more efficient way to contact PEOPLE.  It’s far more efficient than any other medium ever invented, and that included TV.  You see, television was limited to one-way communication; from the advertiser (or infomercial producer) to anybody and everybody who happened to be watching that particular channel at that time.

Two Way Street

The internet on the other hand, allows communication to go both ways, so the reader/viewer/listener can interact with the company presenting their products and services. (Or simply interact with other people for fun of course).

Because of this interaction, businesses can more accurately target their audience in a way that TV simply cannot.  TV executives and ad-people rely on choosing the right time of day to advertise their products and services, whereas the internet can use keywords to specifically target the right socio-economic groups.

Use Caution

Because of this, I would advise caution when dealing with anybody on the internet, because you don’t know them; however you CAN get to know them, unlike those people who make the television commercials.

Read their blogs; do some research about them online.  Read forums about that topic or simply type the company or person’s name into your favorite search-engine.  You’ll find out a lot about them this way, and if what you discover is mostly negative, steer clear of them.  If your research discovers that they are reliable and trustworthy, this will give you the green-light to try out their products.

If YOU Want To Be An Internet Marketer

It’s a great market to be in, especially in these pathetic economic times, because people are looking for help.  If you can give them guidance on something that you have gone through first hand, in the form of videos, ebooks, audios etc. you can do very well.

Social Networking Sites

Social networking allows you to make contacts and get other people’s opinions about a person or product. Sites like Twitter, MySpace, FaceBook and the myriad of others that are springing up each month.  A great tutorial can be found here: Social Traffic Explosion.

There are some other excellent products to get you started HERE.

If you are an marketing newbie, or you just want to reach out to people and let them know your thoughts and feelings on a particular (or not so particular) subject, blogging is a great place to start.  Wordpress is probably the best software to use, but you can still get away with using blogger.com or similar if you only want a social blog.  Use Wordpress and host your site yourself if you want to run a business though.

Blogging

The majority of your time that you spend online every day must be marketing yourself or your business. I’ll even go one step further and say that you should spend a good part of your time every day to either posting to your blog, or promoting your site in some other way.  You see, you can’t physically move your “store” (website) to a better location in the shopping mall like a traditional business would do, so you have to get people to want to come and visit your site.

Here’s a great FREE course to get you started:

Become An Authority

Becoming an authority means that you are one of a few people who would be considered an expert in a certain field.  If you were a math professor at school, then you would be considered an authority in that subject.  It’s easier to become an authority online because you can choose very specific (niche) subjects that MOST people aren’t interested in, like perhaps a certain breed of dog.

Traffic

You STILL need a large ENOUGH audience to make money, but you have access to millions of people all around the world and so you’re only trying to reach a handful in every country, which could easily be the equivalent of having a physical bricks and mortar store in a small town.

I would call this an authority site because the amount of content available to you, and the quality of the content, is outstanding. You can learn everything you need to make money online as a blogger just by following other profitable bloggers hanging out at this site.

Blogging also allows you to make money in a subject writing about things you get pleasure from, so if feels a lot less like work. It also allows you to generate a fantastic amount of free traffic (visitors to your site) over a long period of time. Consequently having a quality blog with high traffic is an superb way to sell products.

You Don’t Need A Credit Card Merchant Account

Finally, with the advent of companies like PayPal, Clickbank and Commission Junction, you no longer need to go to the hassle of getting a credit card merchant account to accept payment via credit card.  You simply have to sign up with these companies and they have the merchant account already which they share with THEIR customers and suppliers.

I hope this has helped your understanding a little more.

Luke.