The Basics

Let us say at the outset that this course is by no means all inclusive. We will give you some great information here, but it is just enough to get you started. Internet Marketing is tough business and should  never be taken lightly. A persistent approach is needed, and you should always be open to new ideas. 

The Internet is still a very new medium and no one really has all the answers. An "expert" in this field is one who has done a lot of testing and can speak intelligently about what has worked for them and what has not. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not being completely honest. 

Good marketers know that the bottom line is *testing*. Advice offered may or may not work for your site. You absolutely *must* test it to see if it works for you or not.

What we mention here are some of the classic methods of advertising on the Internet and will require some work on your part before
you will be able to get them to work.

This is a *shallow* look at the whole picture without question. However, throughout the course, we will tell you where to go for a deeper look and where to get important resources and tools that will
help you along the way.

Online Marketing can be extremely lucrative if done properly, but can be a colossal waste of time if handled poorly. Use caution and take this very seriously. 

With that said, let's get started with the first lesson!

This first lesson will cover some theoretical principles you must understand. This information should be well absorbed before we attack the practical stuff.

There are two primary tasks every Internet Marketer must complete:

a) Attention.

Before anything else must happen, you need to get the attention of the web surfer. This is not an easy task as his attention span is short and there are millions of others out there competing for his attention as well.

b) Action.

Once you have the attention of the websurfer, you need to entice him to act. Of course, there are a great many "acts" he must do before reaching your final goal, but you need to guide him each step of the way or he will be gone.

If you focus on these two steps at all times and have a clear intention in mind of which steps you want him to take, you will do very well.

Of course, it's not as simple as that... Before we go any further, though, let's look at some of the basic principles upon which Internet Marketing is based:

a) Utility is the bottom line.

If it works, it works. Do what works. If you have been doing something that works and most people advise against it, they are wrong. By the same token, if you get some great expert advice and it is not working for you, you need to change your tactics. 
 

b) The average web surfer is more interested in information than in widgets.

That is, most people do not go to the web to buy products, they go there to find information or for entertainment. This is not to say that people do not go online with the intent to buy. They most certainly do. However, I'm sure you'll find from your own personal experience that you spend far more time online browsing and searching than you do
product hunting. Everyone is targeting the one ready to buy. Your time is better spent making good solid relationships with the casual surfer and *telling* them to buy, not waiting for them to seek you out.

c) Every campaign must be tailored.

What works for one site may not work for another.

d) Marketing is not an exacting science.

It is quite difficult to tell which techniques are working and which are not. You can analyze your server logs and see where hits are coming from, but you can never know exactly what causes an increase or decrease in traffic. For instance, if you place an ad at site X and you get a bunch of hits from site X, you can not be guaranteed that the same ad at site Y or another ad at site X will be effective. All you know is that particular ad worked at that time at that place. From there you can make educated inferences. That is not to say you should just give up on trying to figure out why things are happening. *Absolutely not!*

You should spend as much time analyzing and testing your campaigns as possible. However, you need to be sure to take what you learn with a grain of salt. The net changes faster than you can imagine. What works right now may not work tomorrow. You need to be aware of this and keep your marketing approach fluid.

e) Do no harm!

The golden rule of medicine should be heeded by you as well. Don't start any aspect of your campaign hastily. Remember that you are not just trying to get people to buy your product but you are also building an image. 

People will buy what they think is good,   regardless of how good it really is. If they think a product is shoddy, they will not buy it even if it is the best thing since sliced bread. When you start a particular phase of your campaign, ask yourself: "What image is this creating for me and my products?"

f) Don't be afraid to take risks or be   unconventional.

This may seem to contradict the above rule. Well, it does, but it is valid as well. The greatest minds of history have always gone against convention and done things that they knew were right. The Internet is changing so rapidly that innovation is not just a nice thing but a *requirement*.  The market is absolutely huge. *Global* in dimension to state the obvious. Conversely, so is the competition! Can you strike a balance between these last two rules?

In the next few lessons we'll dive right into some practical things you can do to promote your website *right now*. Print out this course and save it in a file somewhere for review. These concepts will give you a leading edge later on down the road. I wish I had realized them years ago. They would have saved me hours of wasted time. 

Since you're fired up to learn more *now* and you don't want to wait for tomorrow's installment, check out 1001 Killer Internet Marketing Tactics:

http://killertactics.com

This is my complete course which provides a distillation of my many years of Internet market testing. You'll learn fool-proof formulas for marketing any product, how one company went from 0 sales per day to 7 sales per day after I told them to change a *single* line of text, and much more.

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