What Exactly is Internet Marketing?

Internet marketing is a variety of things to many different people as there are many ways you can “market” on the Internet. In saying this, Internet marketing is very similar to other forms of offline marketing in that you have two different entities: a consumer and a product.

The job you have as an Internet marketer is to align these two entities in efforts to drive sales to either your website or an affiliate website. You do not need your own product to succeed as an Internet marketer as there are 10,000’s of companies that are literally begging for people like yourself to promote their products/services online in exchange for a commission. The reason why companies are so eager to have you promote their product is because they are much better off having 1000 affiliates spending their own time and advertising money then it would be to spend the company time and money on promotions in house. Not to mention that having 1000 affiliates promoting a product gives a company a LOT more reach to connect with potential customers.

There are different types of payment structures which we will get into more detail later, but typically companies will either give you a percentage of the sale (sometimes up to 90%) or a flat-fee kickback for any sale or lead that you generate (these range into the $100’s).

So How Is All of This Tracked?

Companies have something called affiliate programs that they use to track your sales. When you sign-up to an affiliate program or a network you are given a unique sales link which you will then use to refer people to the company web page. This link will uniquely identify you as the affiliate who referred that visitor to their site. If the visitor ends up making a purchase, you will get a commission.

There are many Internet marketers that are earning $1000’s each and every day promoting other peoples products. This may seem crazy, but it is the truth! We have many members here at Wealthy Affiliate who earn this much! You are not required to have any prerequisite knowledge to do this, and everything you are going to need to succeed is provided for you here at Wealthy Affiliate.

There are many different avenues you can take as an Internet marketer, and there are many different techniques you can use to make money online. Before we get started here, you need to know that you DO NOT need to know everything in order to succeed. As you get started, you will be much better off focusing on one Internet marketing technique and becoming an expert in that area than to diversify as a generalist. Look at many different professions and you will see that the specialists always get paid more (a general practitioner does not get paid what a brain surgeon gets). You will understand this in grave detail by the time you have completed the 8-week action plan.