We’ve already covered the issue of mobile marketing numerous times in the past. You’ve probably seen just how important it is for your website to have a mobile version if you don’t want to be left behind and let the competition take your customers. You’ve also seen some statistics on how many mobile users there are in the world, what platforms they’re using (Android, iPhone, etc) and what they like to do when they’re online. But what about the practical aspect of it? Actually building a mobile friendly version of a website?

This is where many webmasters and internet marketers get stuck. They may recognize the large importance of having a mobile site up, but don’t really know how to make it happen. Many research some option, but then have trouble deciding which one would be the best for them to use in their case. Then of course there is the issue of cost. If your site is making several hundreds of dollars a day in profits, you may not think twice about spending $500, $1000, $2000 or more on getting a mobile version of your site designed professionally, complete with all the bells and whistles. But if you are a small time entrepreneur or a start up, with a business that’s just earning a few dollars a day in profits, you may be a bit hesitant to drop a huge chunk of coin on a mobile version of your site, especially if it may take months before you get any sort of tangible return on your investment.

There is, of course, a way to get a site going at low or no cost to you and that would be designing it yourself. But not every webmaster has the skill needed to create a complete mobile site from scratch. Also, this is a process that is seen as time consuming. So what are your options?

There are actually several of them, which are all either free or quite inexpensive. You also get to choose whether you will be creating a new website from the ground up, or you will simply be adapting your current site to better fit the smaller screen of a mobile device.

One word of advice is not to choose the first option that you see (here or in another resource), but rather, to compare the different systems and providers available to see what will fit your site and your business better. Remember that every website is unique. Therefore, you will need a mobile solution that will be well adapted to the type of content and services that you provide on your business website.

Tomorrow we will go into more details about the options available to webmasters who want to build a mobile version of their site. You will see, it’s actually a lot easier than it may seem at first and you can get the whole thing completed in one day.

With changes to search engine algorithms, as well as a myriad of other changes in the way that search engines such as Google rank websites, some are arguing that SEO is “dead” for internet marketers. Is there any sort of truth behind these claims?

If you examine most of the articles, press releases and blog posts that claim that SEO is going away, you will quickly find what the author’s intentions are. Usually, they want to create an “alarmist” title to draw the user’s attention, then make some vague arguments as to why SEO won’t work for you and of course, you usually end up with an advertisement for some kind of product, system, guide, etc. which will supposedly magically bring you traffic to your site without doing any search engine optimization work on it.

One of the main reasons why SEO isn’t going anywhere is that it’s an industry that is too profitable. Search volumes are higher than ever. There are now hundreds of thousands of service providers which work in the search engine optimization industry. This includes “general” online marketing firms, to more specialize businesses that help certain types of websites rank well in search results. Not to mention the millions of freelancers that also help with SEO (often unknowingly), such as article writers, web page designers, etc. Companies are willing to spend money to rank well on search engines and there’s millions of dollars spent on that each and every year.

Those who complain about SEO are often those who did something wrong and got their websites penalized after yet another Google update. But you rarely hear webmasters with years of success and a constant stream of traffic complaining about it. Updates made by search engines to the way they rank their search results have nothing to do with them wanting to “penalize” some affiliate marketer who made $35 last month pushing some dubious weight loss product. Rather, it’s all about the user.

Nobody wants to search for specific information, only to be presented with search results that are little more than thinly veiled advertisements for commercial products. Nobody wants to look through blog comments to see what other users have had to say about an interesting article they’ve read only to see a hundred comments saying “Nice site!” and stuffed with a link to some scammy get rich quick scheme. The changes that search engines make encourage webmasters, marketers, product sellers, etc. to make the web a better place. They can still sell their products and promote their offers in places where it’s appropriate. They can still run any type of website that they want, but if they want visitors, they need to have a site that runs well and provides their users with something that will actually be useful for them.

SEO is here to stay. The methods used for it, however, will evolve and adapt themselves. Those who are truly skilled in internet marketing will see this as a normal part of the game, as a challenge to take, rather than a threat to their bottom line.

In the past year, there are plenty of internet marketers as well as SEO specialists who have had their business completely turned upside down. Was there some kind of radical change to the way online marketing is now being done? Not quite. The same channels are available (SEO, paid search, on site advertising, email, social media, etc) and they still work in the same basic way. However, it is the world of SEO that has been the most touched lately, with updates that Google has rolled out during this past year.

Google’s justification for their changes to their search algorithm is simple: to deliver content that is a lot more relevant and of high quality than every before. The main benefit of this is for the users, who want to be able to find what they’re looking for without too much trouble. Previously, especially when searching for some more obscure keywords that don’t have millions of search results, it wasn’t uncommon for users to find pages listed in search results that were quite irrelevant to what they were looking for. Pages that were simply a collection of (often poorly formatted) advertisements, plus content that looked like it was written by some kind of experimental AI robot in the early stages of development, rather than a human being that actually possesses a working brain.

Before the updates that were made recently, called Google Panda and Google Penguin, are now starting to do their effect by cutting down on this phenomenon. Various tricks that were used by online marketers, webmasters and SEO experts, whose goal was to try and outsmart the search engine by highly ranking pages that don’t actually have anything worthwhile that would be deserving of that rank, now are no longer working. Previously, it was possible to create content in barely legible English, put a few links in it with the relevant URL and anchor text, then distribute the content to a network of blogs. Since this has resulted in poor quality search results being delivered to the user, Google has seen as it had no choice but to change the way they do their business.

Now the main question that many reading this will have: who will be affected by these changes, to what degree and what they can do about it to stop their website from being dropped down in rankings or severely penalized. Anyone who is building an online business for the long term will know the great importance of having a website that will be well ranked in Google and that can remain there for a long time. Even though most webmasters know that black or gray hat SEO methods only work for short term use, they didn’t hesitate too much to use them. But there are some better ways to get a website to rank well, give the user the material that they were searching for and still lead to profits for everyone involved in the entire online marketing operation.

When you advertise through other methods, such as media buying or social media marketing, properly choosing the audience that will see your ads is very important. This is something that has been done by the best internet marketers ever since online advertising came into existence. In fact, it is also a concept that predates online advertising too. After all, you wouldn’t see ads for payday loan places or pawn shops in magazines whose readership is mainly comprised of millionaires. Even though the importance of proper targeting is well known, many online marketers don’t do any of it when it comes to email marketing campaigns.

They have one big list and apply a “one size fits all” approach to email marketing. Therefore, everyone on the list gets the exact same message sent to them. Now in some cases, such as if you’re only selling one main online informational product and you want to promote some of your secondary products that you own, this might be a good way to do things. After all, it’s simple, all you need to do is to create the email message, load up your list and then just fire away.

But if you have multiple products, several different kinds of customers, people who subscribed to your list for different reasons, or if you promote a diverse range of affiliate offers in your email messages, then properly choosing your audience would be beneficial for you. All that targeting does is ensures that your message will get to people who will be the most likely to buy the products that you’re promoting to them.

The first step towards targeting is personalization. At the very least, you can insert the recipients name in the email. Studies have shown that people are more likely to pay attention to a message that was directly addressed to them, as opposed to having a generic greeting such as “Dear Friend” or “Valued Customer”, etc. Using a script that handles your email marketing automatically makes it very easy to insert the clients name, as well as other attributes into an email message that you send to them.

Then, there is also the products that you present to your reader in the message. You need to think what different kinds of recipients you have and what products they would be more likely to get. Think about what kind of shopper they would be. Do they want something that is the cheapest item possible in terms of price, or are they looking for something that will be very useful and valuable for them, regardless of how much it would cost. Also, think of what category of items certain groups of subscribers would be most likely to buy from you. Tomorrow, we will see how you can get the right information about your list subscribers and then use that for your marketing efforts.

If you are an online entrepreneur or marketer, then you will probably be doing most of your work online. To get online, you will probably use a PC, or maybe another device such as a laptop, netbook, tablet or a smart phone. There has been a lot of talk lately about cloud computing and the benefits that it can bring to business users. However, is it time to switch to cloud based applications yet?

When we are talking about cloud computing, one should know what exactly this concept means. It is actually quite simple to understand. It means that your applications are running on a remote server online (on the “cloud”), as well as the majority of your files can be saved remotely. This has the advantage that your files will be accessible from anywhere and that your programs are actually running on the server, you are merely viewing them on your PC or other device.

One mobile computing device that has caused a lot of talk in the IT industry lately is the Google Chromebook. It is basically a netbook, a smaller version of a laptop, that runs on the Google Chrome OS. With it, all applications are hosted on Google’s cloud servers. Therefore, to do anything useful with it (except play Angry Birds, which can be downloaded to it and runs locally), you need to be online.

Now the problem is that the current set of applications available is quite limited. It is mostly designed for business users that want to browse the web, check their email and remotely connect to another server or use a remote desktop tool on a regular PC.

Now since most applications that are used by internet marketers, such as SEO tools, web design applications, graphics tools for creating logos and ads, etc. will not run on the Google Chrome OS, we can see that the device is quite useless for most online marketers.

There is also the issue of price. It is much more expensive than other netbooks, without bringing in any features that are significantly superior to them. Sure, the Google Chrome OS may be a simple interface if all you need to do is browse, but if you really love it, then there is another way to get it without needing to spend almost $500 on the Chromebook. There is actually an open source version of the same OS made by Google called the Chromium OS, which can be downloaded for free and installed on any desktop, laptop or netbook computer.

Many online marketers would find that getting a netbook would be an excellent way to catch up on work while outside their home, thanks to a very portable mini laptop. However currently, it would seem that the Chromebook does not really have anything that outperforms some of the other netbooks on the market today, which run Windows or Linux and sell as low as $150.

Now in the past few months, there have been plenty of internet marketers complaining about their Google Adwords accounts being banned. Of course, we’ve explored some alternative PPC services, but there are still many people who prefer to use Adwords for various different reasons. Recent banning of Adwords accounts came as a surprise to many online marketers, many of who have PPC as their main source of revenue and who have spent tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on traffic coming from Adwords. Of course, the lesson would be not to put all of your eggs in the same basket. But how would you prevent having the ban hammer falling on your account? It is actually not that hard. Here are some ways:

• Obey the terms of service and any information on the Google Adwords website

If you don’t do this, you will get banned. Maybe not right away, but you probably will. Familiarize yourself about what is, and what is not allowed on Adwords. The excuse of “I didn’t know it was against the rules” will probably not work.

• Don’t use fake review sites, or fake blogs commonly known as “flogs”

These types of sites are quite popular with re bill offers, in the weight loss and make money online niches. While we will not get into a debate about the ethics of the offers and ways of promoting them, the main issue important for you is not to use fake review sites with Adwords. Google doesn’t like them and will probably ban you if you use them on their network. And no, including a “disclaimer” in gray 5 point type at the bottom of the page saying “The reviews, testimonials and people appearing on this site are fake, this is just an ad meant to sell stuff to you” will not protect you. Some have tried and in the best case they were told to stop running this campaign. In the worst case they were issued a life time ban from Adwords.

• Be careful about which kinds of affiliate offers you promote

Google has recently starting coming down on pretty much any rebill offer, mainly because of the flurry of complaints about people not knowing they would get charged, or the actual terms of the offer being obscured and hard to read. Recently, Google has started banning all those who “ride on their coat tails” by promoting re bill offers in the make money online niche which make use of their name or logo. All of these “Google pays me $100 an hour!” types of sites are now banned. If you want to run such campaigns, you need to do so elsewhere. Obviously, the response from Google could be quite well understood, as these sites create a false impression of association with them. Google has also stated that sites which make “unrealistic promises”, such as “make $10 000 a week sitting at home!” or “lose 25 lbs a day!” are not allowed.

Over the years, Google Adwords has become known as the dominant platform when it comes to pay per click advertising. There are plenty of business owners, as well as various internet marketers and affiliates who have made use of it. However, just because a service is popular, it doesn’t mean that it is good. There have been numerous complaints in webmaster and online marketing forums of people getting banned from Adwords for reasons that are not that clear. Often, when the client contacted Google, they would simply get a generic response stating that they violated the terms of service.

However, when it comes to pay per click advertising, Adwords is not the only game in town. Now that Bing has combined their pay per click platform with Yahoo Search Marketing, many people have jumped to create an account and start advertising there. According to a recent survey done by an internet marketing company, over half of small business owners who are using pay per click marketing are already using or are considering using Bing for their online marketing campaigns.

One of the complaints that many advertisers on Bing (formerly Microsoft AdCenter) had is that they weren’t receiving enough traffic. Well, it is a known fact that the Bing search engine receives far less traffic than Google. However, now that they are working together with Yahoo, this should resolve the complaint that many advertisers have. For those who are already used to Google Adwords, using Bing should not be much of a challenge, as the basic way that both advertising platforms work is very similar.

But when it comes to pay per click ads, there is another site that some marketers and business owners sometimes overlook: Facebook. Let’s not forget that this social networking site is the second most popular website on the internet, right after Google. So the traffic is obviously already there, you just need to put your ad in front of people who will be interested in your products. Facebook has a pay per click advertising platform that works in similar ways to Bing and Google Adwords.

The main difference, however is the way the traffic is targeted. Obviously, Facebook is not a search engine, so you can’t really target people that are looking for specific keywords. However, there are some other demographic options that you can use instead to target you ad. All that you have to do to get optimal results would be to target your ad so that it will only be shown to the demographic that would more closely match your customers. You can select things such as age, gender, relationship status, location, etc.

So as you can see, there are other pay per click advertising solutions besides Google Adwords out there. If you are considering using one, all you simply need to do is a bit of research on how it works and whether it is a good platform to use for promoting your specific products online.

A recent survey taken in the United States by a technology consulting firm gives some very interesting figures about the use of internet marketing among small business owners. Based on the results, the majority (close to 80%) of small business owners had a website for their business. Of those that didn’t the majority were planning to create one in the coming year. This result is really not something that is surprising. It has been said time and time again that creating a website is beneficial for any business owner, even those that run a very small local enterprise. It makes them easier to find by their prospective clients, many of who exclusively use the internet in order to locate a business that they want to use.

While this first statistic was not especially surprising to anyone, what followed next may raise a few eyebrows. Of all business owners that had an online presence, nearly 40% were not entirely satisfied with the results that it was bringing them. Some were not happy with the way their website looked and wanted one that was more professional and more attractive to customers. Some others had a website and were quite happy with the way it looked and worked, but they were not convinced that it was doing them any good, as they did not see their website bringing them the amount of customers that they needed. It has also been said that small business owners (outside of the technology or marketing sectors) did not have much knowledge of how internet marketing worked and only a minority of them (14%) wanted to spend some time studying techniques to make their site better and to figure out how to deploy betting marketing efforts such as SEO and other internet advertising, in order to get more visitors to their website.

Ok, this maybe news and it is always nice to know some stats… but what does this mean to internet marketers? The bottom line is that there is a wide open market of local business owners who would want to use your services. Some of them want better websites. Some want to do some SEO on their site to get a better ranking on search engines. Others would want to use internet advertising in order to bring in more customers but are not sure which kind to use and are hesitant to buy ads on their own.

For those of you who are just learning internet marketing, or who are doing something else (CPA, Clickbank, eBay sales, affiliate stuff, etc.) and don’t get the results you want, this is a great opportunity. What you need to do is simple: learn how to create simple, yet functional websites. Learn how to optimize pages for SEO and build backlinks. Learn about the different kinds of online ads (business directories, classified ads sites, PPC, etc) and how they work. Compile a list of tutorials and learning materials (there are hundreds of videos, articles and blog posts on these topics, all free) and study them for about 2 weeks. Then you can start targeting local business owners and providing them your services as an internet marketer.

Craigslist is a popular and free online classified ads site. While it certainly isn’t as popular as say Google or Facebook, it is still one of the most popular sites on the internet, with millions of users from all around the world visiting it. This has given online marketers a lot of ideas on how to monetize all of this traffic. Unfortunately, Craigslist is not what it used to be when it comes to internet marketing and you have black hat marketers to thank for that. What some people did went far beyond just spamming CPA offers to downright lying to people such as promising them jobs or mortgages if they complete a CPA offer for a credit report or a biz opp. As a response to that, Craigslist has upped its security mechanism and has even posted warning in many of its sections that specifically mention affiliate marketing.

But this doesn’t mean that is is completely useless to online entrepreneurs. There are a few ways to use it for your online marketing efforts. Here are some of them:

• Promoting your e-commerce site

If you have a website that sells merchandise, then you can still use Craigslist to promote it. For example, if you sell clothes or electronics in your online shop, then you can post an ad in the proper section of Craigslist and get some traffic to it that way. Make sure to post in the right section, or your ad will be flagged down rather quickly. Also, don’t post the same ad in different cities at the same time. While there is nothing wrong with a global e-commerce site posting ads in multiple cities, remember that Craigslist is not mainly aimed at internet marketers, but rather for small, local businesses to post ads in the city where they operate.

• Providing services

If you offer some services that can be done over the internet, then you can use Craigslist to get some business too. For example, if you create websites for businesses and individuals, then you can put an ad in the right section to promote that. There are plenty of services that you can do over the internet and have your clients pay your by Paypal or another payment system. Some examples include: translation, writing, graphic design, flier/advertising design, promotional video creations and a whole lot more. If you want to appear more professional and therefore more trustworthy when providing these services, you can always create a simple “business” style website that gives details of what you do and your prices, as well as get a toll free phone number to get your clients to reach you. You can get one for a few dollars a month and then forward it to your cell phone, or just leave it to always go to voicemail. Here’s a tip to get more sales: put a special discount or coupon code in your ad and tell readers to mention it when they order.

If you want to make some money online by promoting affiliate offers, then there are various ways for you to accomplish this. You could building landing pages for each offer you push, or even link directly to the offer depending on which advertising channel you use. But one of the ways to push affiliate offers online is by simply creating a blog.

Blogs have many advantages. They make it very easy to add unique and new content, which will help them remain interesting with readers and also make SEO easier. With blogging platforms such as Joomla and WordPress, creating your own blog has never been easier. So how do you make one for affiliate marketing? Here is an example scenario:

Let’s say that you are promoting web hosting affiliate offers. The main topic of your blog will be web hosting, or issues that are of interest to other internet marketers or webmasters. You would make regular posts such as: web building tips, reviews of particular web hosts, comparisons between different types of web hosting, SEO advice, etc. Basically, anything that is related to being a webmaster.

There will be various ways for you to “plug” the affiliate ads into your blog. You can, of course use classic banner ads, or text ads placed in prominent locations. But it is also possible for you to include affiliate links inside the text of your blog. For example, you could link the name of a web host that you talk about in a blog post to the affiliate offer.

But one important thing to remember when you are creating a blog for affiliate marketing is to not make it look like this is the only purpose of your blog. Sure, for you the main objective of your blog would be to generate money for you. But your readers come to your blog in order to be informed about something they care about, not simply read post after post that is singing praises of various different companies and products.

So back to our example of a web hosting blog. Sure, it is fine to have certain posts talk about how great a certain web host is, or that inform readers of a special promotion that a hosting company is having at this time. But you also need to include some informative content as well. So you could make some posts that talk about web design tools or posts that explain how VPS web hosting is different from shared hosting, etc. If your readers notice that your blog is nothing more than an advertising platform, chances are they won’t trust it very much. They will probably leave to go to another site and the chances that someone would click one of your ads and sign up for one of the web hosts that you are pushing are quite remote if your blog is structured that way. Basically, the key to success is having regularly updated and informative content.

Many internet marketers make their money by dealing with affiliate programs or with CPA networks that have various kinds of offers they can push in order to make money. Most of these companies are legitimate and will pay you the earnings that you have made on time, every single time. But there are a couple of bad players in the industry. Here are some ways to spot and avoid them:

• Do some research first

Before even signing up for a network simply doing a Google search for their name can bring you a lot of information about the company. You will often find blog posts, forum posts and articles that mention them. Read these. See what other internet marketers are saying about them and look at whether the general opinion is positive or negative.

• Be wary around “start ups” and smaller networks

If a company has not yet established their reputation in the industry, remember that things can go in two ways with them. Either they will grow to become a productive and successful network or they will fold. If it’s the second thing that happens, things are not likely to be pretty. There have been several cases of networks going under and skipping out on tens of thousands of dollars of payments to affiliates. The large majority involved CPA networks which were operating for less than a year.

• Be careful around networks who seem to approve everyone

While there are some notable exceptions to this, such as Commission Junction and ClickBank, which are very reputable networks, as a general rule you should be quite wary around a network that seems to approve every publisher that applies without giving them a phone call or emailing them to ask them about their marketing methods. While you may think it is convenient, this can cause problems down the road, if large amounts of fraudsters manage to sign up and merchants start dropping the network.

• Carefully check the terms of any offers that you run and ask questions if necessary

This is especially the case for “trial” or “membership” offers. While you may be offered a good amount for every sign up, some merchants have been known to use underhanded tactics if not enough of the sign ups that you refer have converted to full members on their end. Some may falsely accuse you of sending fraudulent leads or deliberately using bad quality traffic and refuse to pay you. For this reason, it is very important that you check the terms of the offer to see if the merchant has any special requirements with regards to the type of traffic you can send and its productivity.

• Work with multiple networks and run different offers

It is not a good idea to focus all of your marketing efforts for the month on just one offer or on offers from only one network, no matter how profitable they may seem. Spread out your traffic around several different offers in the niche on different networks. That way, if there is any problem with one of them, you will still be getting paid by the others.

We all know that there are plenty of success stories to be found when it comes to the online marketing industry. Some people have built million dollar businesses right from their homes. But what about those who simply gave up. Let’s keep looking at some of the common reasons. But, maybe you are asking yourself: why does this guy want me to see what people who failed did? I want success!! Well the answer is simple: because you sometimes need to see where people messed up so that you don’t repeat their errors. There is a quote that I often like to use: “The wise man learns from his mistakes, but the genius learns from the mistakes of others.” Now let’s get back to seeing some of what causes people to give up:

• They Let Others Talk Them Out Of It

This happens, and it does quite often actually. Somebody could have a million dollar business plan, but then their friend/wife/mother/uncle/dog tells them that “that’s stupid, it will never work” or that “you can’t make money on the internet, it is all a big scam” and then they simply put their plans behind. To have success in any business, whether its online or not, you have to believe in yourself. Do you really think that nobody was laughing at Bill Gates when he quit college to start Microsoft? Well, considering the fact that he’s now the richest man in the world, I somehow have a feeling that these people are saying: “Damn! If only I was more friendly with that geeky guy in glasses!!”.

• They Wanted Someone To Hold Their Hand Every Step of the Way

Part of running any business is that you need to be able to make the right decisions by yourself. There will be nobody explaining to you what you have to do, how to do it and when to do it. YOU will need to look up the information necessary to build, operate and expand your business. While you may partner up with others who can give you advice, remember that these people also have their own businesses to run and therefore won’t want to constantly be looking out for you.

• They Had a Problem or Setback and Quickly Got Discouraged

Again, this is a common occurrence. If I said to you that everything will always be A-OK in the online business industry, I would be lying to you. Things can go wrong. Sometimes, your ads and sales pages will not convert as well as you want them to. A “super money maker method” could turn out to be completely worthless. An affiliate network could go bankrupt, leaving hundreds of affiliates high and dry. This happens. Deal with it. When a problem occurs, the best thing to do is to start thinking of logical solutions: what could I have done differently so that this doesn’t happen to me again in the future? That is the question that you need to be always asking yourself in case of an issue with your business.

If you look at information on internet marketing, you will find plenty of success stories coming from people who have “made it” in this industry and who have made very good amount of money in online business. But what about those who haven’t? Let’s take a closer look at what causes many online marketers to simply give up rather than want to do everything they can to make their business succeed.

• They Set Their Income Expectations To An Unrealistic Amount

Advertisements for IM products are partly to blame for this one. They show money falling out of the sky, flashy cars, big houses, etc. All of that, with promises that you can make thousands of dollars every single day. While these amounts are achievable, after all, some people have made millions on the internet, they are not what you will be earning when you start. Every business starts out small and brings in a modest amount of profit at the beginning and the online business world is no different.

• They Thought Everything Was So Easy

Again, ads for products that teach IM methods are partly to blame for this. They use language like “all you have to do is put up a few ads on Google each day and you might make thousands!!” Well, this is technically true. You CAN make thousands by putting up a few ads on Google. But then again, you need to know which products to promote, what to write in the ads, what keywords to select, etc. And this requires work and dedication. When some people realize that actual work will be required, they seem to back out of the deal rather quickly, instead of actually giving it a shot to see what works and what doesn’t.

• They Thought That You Would Never Have To Invest Any Money In Their Business

Some people come to internet marketing thinking that since this is the “virtual world” starting a business that will bring them hundreds of thousands a year in “real” money will not require them to spend anything. When they realize that they will need to spend a few dollars on domains, hosting, advertising, tools, etc. they once again run away thinking that this must be some kind of scam or conspiracy to get them to lose money. The funny thing is when you consider that those people are not unable to get the cash necessary to start their business. They are rather unwilling to invest in it. And if you look even closer, very often you will find that the people who complain about having to pay $10 for a domain would not think twice about spending $2000 on a vacation trip, or would run to the mall to buy a $300 pair of shoes that they would wear a few times only. While there are ways to cut down on your initial expenses, if you want your business to grow then you MUST invest some money in it at some point.

When you are looking to advertise online, you will find that there are plenty of ways to do so. But one complaint of many internet marketers is that they don’t have much of a budget for their marketing activities. But this is not a problem if you are serious about succeeding online. There are plenty of ways for you to get the word out about your website without you having to pay anyone. Sure, it will take a bit more work on your part, but the results will definitely be worth it. Let’s take a look at some of them:

Article Marketing

One of the most famous ways to get the word out about your business, product or website. All you have to do is to write articles which are related to your niche and include a link to your website either at the end of the article or in the body of the article (this depends on the rules of the site where you put up your articles). You would then submit them to various online article directories.

Video Marketing

Video marketing means creating videos about your business and then uploading them to popular video sharing sites such as YouTube. Users will then watch the videos and have the opportunity to continue on to your site by clicking a link if they like what they see. If people really like your video, there is always the possibility that they will share it with their friends, who will then share it with theirs, etc. This creates what is called the “viral effect” and means that your video could potentially be seen by millions of people everywhere.

Social Media

Social networking sites such as MySpace, Twitter and Facebook are being used by millions of people from all over the world. Creating a presence on these sites for your business is an excellent way to get visitors to your site. Remember, the traffic is already there on these sites. All that you have to do is to capture it.

Classified Ad Sites

These sites function in a way similar to newspaper classified ads, except that they are more flexible and powerful. On most sites, placing an ad is free. Certain sites allow you to include a link to your website, while others charge you a small fee for each ad in order to do so. Classified ad sites are definitely worth checking out to see if they are a good marketing tool for your business. These cost much less than newspaper ads and are much more likely to generate traffic and customers for your business than print advertising.

This is just an overview of ways that you can use to market your site. If you want to succeed in the world of internet marketing, you definitely should get familiar with them. Remember that these aren’t methods only used by “cheap” or small time marketers who can’t afford other ones. Even successful online businesses that make millions each year use them, so why shouldn’t you?