If you got behind the wheel of a car without knowing how to drive, chances are, you’d crash. Yet, every single day on the Internet, thousands of newbies are performing the equivalent of the aforementioned driving analogy, by putting up a website without having the slightest idea how to promote it. And guess what happens – they crash!

In my opinion, starting a business – any business without having even basic marketing skills is not only putting the proverbial cart before the horse – it’s downright foolish!

Now some might argue that a business plan is more important than marketing ability. And others might argue that knowing how to manage a business is more important than having a marketing acumen.

Well, I agree with the former argument. A good business plan is like a GPS system. It will keep you on course, and headed in the right direction. A business plan is an absolute must, and you should definitely develop one before you start any business.

However, I reject the  latter argument. Why? Because you can be the greatest manager in the world, but if you don’t know how to market your wares, your business will fail – I don’t care what you’re selling.

That’s why I consider competency in marketing the most important business skill that you can have. If you become proficient in the art of marketing, it will allow you to become profitable that much quicker. Then you can afford to either hire a manager, or take  a business management course.

A Simple Classified Ad

How important is it to acquire marketing proficiency? Believe it or not, writing a simple classified ad is considered both an art and a science, seriously! Publisher and mail order legend, Melvin Powers actually wrote an entire 240 page book about classified advertising titled, “Making Money with Classified Ads.” In an advertisement for the book Powers writes:

“I’ve run thousands upon thousands of ads, month after month, year after year and have made millions doing it. I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. I found that, as with most things, making money with classified ads is easy when you know how.”

Author and  master copywriter, Robert Boduch also wrote a book about classified advertising titled “Classified Magic …How To Make Your Small Ads Pay Off BIG!” In an advertisement for his book, Boduch wrote:

“After years of running ads — trying out various approaches — I began to collect the key ideas that worked. I wanted to figure out what made some classified ads so successful. And I kept testing new approaches until …I finally figured out …what works and what doesn’t.”

By the way, while we’re on the subject of writing ads, do yourself a favor and start reading Brian Clark’s outstanding copywriting blog, CopyBlogger. You won’t get a better ad writing education anywhere on the Internet – and it’s free! You can thank me later.

How Do I Get Free Traffic to My Website?

I’m a member of several small business forums, and without fail, whenever newbies visit the forums, the two questions they ask most often are: “How do I promote my website?” or, “How do I get free traffic to my website?”  Those two basic questions get asked by newbies every single day.

Newbies, are you starting to see my point about the importance of acquiring marketing skills? You need to know the answer to those questions, before you build a website. As I demonstrated a moment ago, even writing something as simple as a classified ad requires  a certain degree of competency.

The Seduction of Internet Marketing Newbies

In his book “Seduction,” author and social theorist Jean Baudrillard writes:

“Many social behavior theorists classify seduction as a specialized form of persuasion. Seduction can also be viewed as a form of power that relies on psychological mastery rather than the use of coercive power, money, or intellectual appeals.”

I couldn’t agree more. Seduction is indeed a “specialized form of persuasion that relies on psychological mastery.” That’s one of the reasons why so many newbies come online believing that they can succeed without any type of training – without any marketing knowledge whatsoever. They’ve been psychologically seduced – mentally manipulated into believing that they can – much like gamblers are seduced by the dream of striking it rich in Las Vegas casinos.

Allow me to elaborate: Naive and highly impressionable newbies see stories on tv about ordinary people getting rich on ebay. They see the slickly produced “get rich quick on the Internet” infomercials. They read the newspaper and magazine articles about people starting an online business with little or no money, and seemingly making millions overnight.

In addition, brilliantly composed and ultra persuasive get-rich-quick ads literally saturate the Internet. They’re everywhere! At virtually every turn, newbies are bombarded and seduced with stories, and images of ordinary people making extraordinary amounts of money on the Internet. And as is human nature, they want to get in on the action too. In essence, newbies are being seduced with unrealistic visions of the “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

And because the seduction methods being perpertrated are so powerful and effective, they almost have a brainwashing effect. Most newbies are incapable of determining for themselves what’s true and what isn’t. They can’t comprehend that the “flavor of the month” success stories they see in the media and on the Internet are the exception, rather than the rule.

Now many of you reading this may erroneously come to the conclusion that I’m against capitalism, and free enterprise. I can assure you, I’m not. I’m all for everyone making as much money as they possibly can. After all, that’s the American way. That being said, I also think it’s important that newbies coming online be told the “truth” about Internet Marketing – that it’s not nearly as easy as it’s being presented.

The Truth About Internet Marketing

Because of fierce competition and ratings pressure, the tv media especially tends to glamorize certain news items. As a result, newbies are being fed a daily dose of sensationalized poppycock! The truth is, Internet marketing is hard work. No, not ditch-digging hard – but hard work nonetheless. And for every “rainbows and lollipops” success story that gets publicized, there are at least a thousand gut-wrenching failures that get swept under the rug.

The point of this article is to cut through the hype and B.S – to tell newbies the truth about Internet Marketing. It’s a business, like any other business. And it requires preparation, effort and dedication. So how can newbies realistically succeed on the Internet? In my opinion, the easiest, safest and best way for newbies to succeed online is with affiliate programs. What are affiliate program?

In a nutshell, an affiliate program is where you agree to promote another company’s products for a commission, or percentage of the profits. Affiliate programs are perfect for newbies, because for the most part, you don’t even need a website to get started making money. You also don’t have to worry about billing hassles, stocking inventory or shipping products. That’s all handled for you by the merchant. You simply promote the daylights out of the link the merchant provides you. And when you make sales – collect your money.

But what about if you don’t know anything about marketing? Glad you asked.

The best and most successful affiliate programs like Dr. Ken Evoy’s 5 Pillar Affiliate Program or The Internet Marketing Center (IMC) Affiliate Program take you by the hand, and help guide you through the marketing process. They work with you to help you become successful. They’ll do their part – but you have to do your part as well. That means you have to work hard, and faithfully study and apply their proven marketing techniques – and learn how to promote their programs. They’ll teach you what you need to know to become successful, and allow you to progress at your own pace.

There are also some excellent books on the market, written especially for newbies. One of the best is “Street Smart Internet Marketing” by Justin Michie.

So if you’re a newbie reading this, do yourself a favor, and pick up a copy of “Street Smart Internet Marketing.” It’s selling on Amazon for as little as $4.99 – a relatively painless investment in your marketing education.

Free Internet Marketing Resources for Newbies

A really great website for newbies is the original newbies site, Joe Robson’s The Newbie Club. This site has some incredible free resources, including articles, free tutorials, newbie software, newbie books and e-mail courses.

StartupNation is another fantastic site for newbies. It pretty much has everything a newbie would need, all on one website, including blogs, forums and a marketplace where you can promote your business for free. It’s a very impressive site.

Also, check out Lynn Terry’s Self Starters Weekly Tips website. Lynn has been working online for over a decade. Her website has plenty of free resources, including a popular forum and blog. And from what I’ve observed, Lynn goes out of her way to help newbies.

Another good site for newbies is Mike Merz’ im4newbies. Mike has been helping newbies for nearly a decade. Our paths have never crossed, but word is, Mike’s one of the truly good guys on the Internet – and his site has some excellent free resources for newbies.

In closing, Internet marketing is serious business – so be sure to treat it that way. Because unlike the movie, “Field of Dreams,” where “if you build it, they will come.” On the Internet, if you build a website without knowing how to promote it – nobody’s coming!

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If you’re new to blogging then it can be confusing when creating your first blog.

For a blog marketing guru though, it’s really not that difficult, anyone whose familiar with blog marketing online will tell you it takes hard work, dedication and most importantly consistency.

For someone just starting out with their marketing campaign, it may seem like a lot of work with little or no immediate return, however, just know that marketing is something that you have to build.

You have to work on it and continue to market your blog.

There are many things you can do to market your blog and get it out there to be seen by the world, one of the most important things is to visit other blogs that are relevant to yours and leave comments.

Doing this gets your blog out there to readers of other’s blogs and in return can get you some new visitors as well as readers.

While all of this might seem confusing at first, after a while you will get the hang of it and it will make sense and fall in place.

Posting on your blog on a regular basis is another way to get new readers, who wants to read a blog that is never even updated?

Would you?

Of course not! So give your readers what they want with new content and give it to them often, post daily, weekly or bi weekly and be consistent about it.

This way your readers and visitors will know how often to check your blog for a new post.

You must know where your traffic comes from, knowing which search engines are directing people to your blog is extremely valuable as is identifying those which aren’t, find out which keywords are driving visitors to your blog too.

If you know all of this then use it to your advantage, write further content using the keywords that work for you and look at the areas where you fall down on search engine results that are sending visitors.

If someone leaves a comment on your blog, be sure to acknowledge it.

No one wants to have a conversation with themselves, and it will only take a brief moment to reply and let them know you appreciate them, otherwise if you have a section full of comments and you have not replied, chances are that you will not be getting many more.

The readers may even drop you off of their list of blogs to visit frequently as well, using your head and treating others as you would want to be treated is a big part of marketing.

Make friends with other bloggers, network with them and find out how they get so many visitors to their blog and what they do to keep them interested.

Exchanging ideas with other bloggers that are successful is a great idea and a good way to make friends. If you want, you can even become friends with other bloggers offline as well.

Use this to your advantage but don’t just take from your conversations though, make sure you share all your own blog marketing techniques with your blogging friends as well.

If you happen to be quoting an article from another source or blog, always be sure to provide a link back to the original, otherwise this is known as plagiarism and something that is looked down on in the world of marketing.

Stealing other peoples content isn’t clever and let me assure you, you won’t get away with it, you’ll get caught trying to pass someone else’s work of as your own when clearly it’s not.

This is not a good way to start off in the blog marketing world.

Blog marketing is a fantastic way to make an extra income and build an online presence letting people know you are there there.

Be patient, use these tips to drive people to your blog, as they become regular followers and you earn their trust you’ll be able to use your blog to earn yourself some money.

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Online Business Coach and Internet Marketing Strategist Gabor Olah helps baby boomers create profitable online businesses that they love. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to increase your visibility and get found online by claiming your FREE gift, $1K A Day Formula, at ==> $1Kadayformula.com

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The concept of user experience, and the consideration of ideas that lend toward the optimization of that concept, have created a field of interest and study that is growing as a concrete and primary business model regarding the online world. The focus on user experience is defined through standards that involve multiple dynamics. A paramount is placed upon not only the user’s perception of a web site, but also the sites ability to efficiently serve the user’s needs while simultaneously reflecting the business operatives sought after by the owner of the site.

There are many standard sets, such as The Stanford Guidelines, which relate to the functional aspects of a web site, referring to credibility, updates, and other performance based ideals. However, evaluating and applying user experience principles involves a more complex and multifaceted mindset. When dealing with UX, (user experience) a web designer or programmer must incorporate concepts that exist independently, but also blend smoothly and work efficiently.

User Experience is about more than just building a website

 Many believe it is the responsibility of the web design company to implement UX effectively in ones websites, yet in reality this is a common misconception by many business and associates. In reality, all areas of development of a website are critical, especially the content as it contains the philosophy of your business and is the key in sharing this philosophy with your users. Along with effective content organization, marketing techniques and add to the overall effectiveness of a web-site, by understanding what your visitors are looking for when they visit your site.

There are many aspects of User Experience that are very complicated and in many ways this discipline is still being developed and mastered. Many debate whether the topic is even a distinct area of study. Louis Rosenfeld, an author and publisher who focuses on web information architecture claims of UX that, “At best, it’s a common awareness, a thread that ties together people from different disciplines who care about good design.” While this may be true in many aspects, the discipline albeit still forming, is commanding extensive attention via statistical research methods throughout the online arena.

The Specific Set Of Concepts To Follow

The UX Honeycomb Model, designed by information architect Peter Morville, lays out a specific set of Concepts to be systematically applied when designing a site. Usability with a strong focus on emotional design principles use functional aspects to provide comfort and attraction to a given website.

This supports the fact that all facets of custom web design and consultation come into play when analysing how a user will feel and react when they visit your site.

One of the important areas to think about when implementing UX principles is to consider other proven sites without copying the exact UX. User Experience is really very complicated and can’t simply be applied through blanket methodology. The unique user experience if defined via the identity and purpose of each individual site. Therefore, attempting to apply standard methods in order to copy a set formula of another site with a different set of values can be not only detrimental, but also wasteful.

Every site must have its own unique angle when it comes to User Experience

Every project engaging UX principles call for a custom outline predicated on the business or non-profit’s available resources, abilities, timeline, finances, and a plethora of realistic factors.

Additionally, because the concept of UX is based on users or people, a detailed paradigm of interpersonal qualities in many ways define the effectiveness of user experience initiatives.

Therefore, attempting to broadly and forcefully incorporate a devotion to UX, rather delicately fuse it with existing business principles, would be an ineffective strategy. Steve Baty, principal and user experience strategist at Meld Consulting, concludes that, “People cling to things like personas, user research, drawing comics, etc…In reality the best designers have a toolbox of options, picking and choosing methods for each project what makes sense for that particular project.”

In the world of online efficiency, user experience models and principles are in many ways the logistic DNA of a site as it relates to its audience. In effect, the result of that blueprint proves to be the signature or fingerprint that separates a simply conducive web site from an engaging, capturing, and truly optimal site that rewards the user, developer, and company in a similarly gratifying manner.

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I know that success or failure of your custom web design project is determined by the user experience. Find out more about why the professional web design company you choose to develop your website will either help your business succeed online or hold it hostage. We have the answers.

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In regard to making money on the Internet, everyone is always looking for the quick fix. They want to sign up for a program, place an advertisement, and make hundreds or thousands of dollars instantly. While this may be possible depending on your circumstances, the most direct and guaranteed path to success on the Internet is to stick with the fundamentals.

A friend of mine who is an athletic coach for kids in the city where I live reminded me of this lesson. This guy is actually so passionate about kids and athletics that he coaches 4 different sports: basketball, soccer, baseball and football. Of course, he has a kid of his own on each team. But what is remarkable about this guy is the results he gets with his teams.

He was recruited to coach the 8th grade football team where his children go to school. After 27 years of losing seasons in a row, the first year my friend became the head coach the team won the district championship and repeated their championship run the following year. This past weekend he coached 12 different games and won all 12 of them. As you can tell, this guy is extremely dedicated.

But the funny thing is that he and the kids he coaches are not totally hung up on winning. If they lose a game, they feel equally good about themselves as they would if they had won. What matters most to them is how well they played and lived up to their potential as a team.

The real question is how my friend’s teams continually perform on such a high level and beat nearly anyone they play even though they are often smaller and younger than their competitors. I asked this question to my friend the other day and he told me that it’s all in the fundamentals.

In his practices, all he works on with his kids is keeping a positive mindset and practicing the fundamentals. He told me that his teams never scrimmage or strategize about upcoming games during practice. They simply work hard on all the fundamentals of whatever particular sport they are playing and do so more than any other team they play. This constant practice and improvement of the fundamentals is what allows his teams to progress faster than his competitors. While most other teams get caught up with how to win, out-strategize, be stronger than and intimidate their opponents, my friend’s team is just so good at the basics that they blow everyone out of the water when game day arrives.

This got me thinking about my own Internet business and why I’ve been able to succeed on such a high level while most others who have tried to do what I do have failed. The answer is not really surprising.

Most people who try to build a successful Internet home business are looking for the quick fix. They want it to work IMMEDIATELY and so they usually fall prey to business opportunities that promise to help them get rich overnight and advertising scams that promise to deliver thousands of hungry prospects to their website in the next 24 hours. Of course, these opportunistic schemes are really just geared to steal people’s hard earned money. You see, when someone is desperate and looking for an INSTANT solution, they will often be taken advantage of and their chances for success with an Internet home business are slim to none.

However, while there are thousands of business opportunities on the Internet and millions of different ways to advertise and promote your website, I personally practice the fundamentals in my Internet home business. I do this by sticking with the business opportunities I’ve joined for the long haul and promoting my website consistently with simple, affordable and easily maintained Internet marketing techniques.

In fact, one of the techniques that works best for me is writing articles like this one and getting them published on other people’s websites using article syndication tools and software found online.

By writing articles and getting them published on other websites online using powerful tools like those mentioned above, I’m able to get my name and website address in front of thousands of people without paying a dime in advertising. Of course, the key to this strategy is that I write and distribute articles consistently in this way. It’s one of those “fundamentals” that doesn’t cost anything but a little time and effort. Fact is, it’s this price of time and effort that most people are unwilling to pay. They’ll gladly part with hundreds or even thousands of dollars, but ask them to do a little hard work and they say “No way.”

It’s this understanding that can separate you from the pack. If you are willing to practice the fundamentals of your business faithfully and consistently, you will be destined to succeed on a high level. But if you can’t and you’re only looking for the quick fix, you have already lost the game before you even set foot on the field.

Even pros like me practice the fundamentals every day. In fact, especially pros like me practice the fundamentals. The moment I stop practicing the fundamentals is the moment I stop being a pro. Think about this carefully and then renew YOUR commitment to the fundamentals of your Internet home business today. Do this and you will soar past your competition.

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