For anyone starting out online in internet marketing the dilemma is knowing where to start. There is no easy way around it but to start with the basics. One of the easiest ways to build an understanding of how the internet works is to start your own blog. By creating this and working on it slowly you will gradually expand your knowledge and learn how things work. When you come across something you don’t understand then Google up the answer.
None of this sounds too exciting and it is tedious at times. However it makes sense to gain an understanding of the basics before you take the next step. Included in understanding how to move around the net with the basics is the concept of analyzing your work. In the offline world if you are in business naturally one would monitor the effectiveness of certain strategies. You know it is no different online. Once you decide upon a direction and start an online business then you will be needing to monitor the effectiveness of what you are doing. Google Analytics is a good start for beginners here. Simply get yourself a free account with Google Analytics and go poke around.
The ability to analyze your traffic and where it comes from is essential. You will learn to look at spikes in traffic and relate it back to a certain event. So that worked, you try it again and see if you get the same response. Analyze what people are interested in and give them more of the same. Google analytics will tell you what countries your traffic is coming from and how long they stayed on your site. All rather ho-hum stuff but you need this understanding before you think of marketing.
Affilate marketing is an obvious choice for beginners.Once again most information you need on this can be gleaned from the net. The one point conveniently over looked especially by those who would coerce you in to being their affiliate is that they fail to mention that you will need TRAFFIC. That is you will need customers. Getting traffic and customers is going to require some effort. This is unless of course you have big bucks to buy traffic. Most folk starting out certainly do not generally have lots of spare cash.
Getting traffic the old fashioned way with SEO still works. That means firstly knowing sufficient concerning SEO. Once you’re onto that then the sequence of back linking begins. The number and quality of links are very important to Google. We used to stress about the Page Rank (PR) but in fact the backlinks is what you should focus on and the PR will follow….
Cheers
Allan and Dawn
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