Internet Marketing Articles by Web Profits

Is It Worth Advertising Your Website Offline?

At the last count, there were over 180 million websites online. This figure was calculated close to the end of 2008. That equates to a lot of competition, no matter what niche your own website falls into.

It was also estimated that some 1.5 billion people were using the internet by that time. If you think in terms of potential customers or clients, your market online is clearly a big one. With figures this large being bandied about, it is not surprising that some people only promote their website online.

But let us put this into context. The total population of the world is over 6.5 billion people. This means that according to the latest figures, the percentage of people who are using the internet is less than 24%.

That means there are over three times as many people who may be interested in what you have to sell who are not online.

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Global Internet Advertising Is Rising

There is no doubt that advertising on the internet is as popular as ever. From businesses run from home by one person, to huge multinational businesses with concerns in many countries, online advertising is big news.

But why does it continue to be so popular? The amount of online advertising being placed in various quarters is still rising, but why should this be the case?

Well there are many reasons for this to happen, but the first word that jumps to mind is this – versatility. There are so many ways to promote your business online that it really doesn’t matter what you sell or who you are trying to sell it to. It seems as if the whole world and his wife are online and looking for something, and so long as you know where to find them there are big business opportunities for you to develop whatever business you are running.

There was a time when advertising offline by way of posters, small classified ads and magazines was the way ahead. But the major forms of advertising that would reach the most people – otherwise known as promoting your business on TV or radio – were too expensive for many businesses to try.

That isn’t the case when you get online. Online marketing is far more accessible for everyone, and it doesn’t matter what kind of budget you have either. From the fledgling internet business with just a few dollars to spare, to the multinational business with a million dollar budget to spend, all are welcome here.

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So What Is PageRank Anyway?

PageRank – we’ve all heard of it and we know it’s got something to do with Google, but what exactly is it?

Put simply, it is one of the ways that Google works out the value of a web page. In other words, the PageRank of each one of your web pages will help to determine where each page will appear in relevant search results.

It basically has a lot to do with inbound links to each web page and the quality of the content on that page. You will no doubt be aware of the need to have as many links coming into your site (and its individual pages) as possible, since this increases the chances of it showing up in relevant results.

But the importance of each link is also relevant, and this is a big part of what goes towards a site’s PageRank. Generally, a page with one hundred incoming links to it carries more weight than one that only has a couple. But perhaps not surprisingly there is more to it than that.

Some people will think about this particular part of PageRank and work at getting as many links as they can – no matter how good or bad they are. But Google has made sure that the better links have more importance than the dubious ones. That means if you can get an inbound link from a reputable site, it will be likely to do you a lot of good as a result.

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Is Google Too Big?

When you need the help of a big search engine, which one do you turn to? For many of us, it’s Google. Even the name has turned into a part of the language. How many times have you “Googled” something?

But there are pros and cons to getting this big, and the question of whether the company is too big for the internet is debated quite frequently. There is some doubt over whether Google has gone over that tipping point, monopolising the search engine industry as a result.

It’s certainly not all bad, of course. If you have an online business to promote and you have ever tried the pay per click advertising solution, for example, the chances are good that you will have gone to Google to get your campaign underway. There is no other PPC avenue available on the internet today that even comes close to competing with the potential benefits of Google Adwords.

But even as far back as eighteen months ago people were writing articles which asked how wary others were getting about the company. The thinking is that it has got so big it cannot adequately control all the functions it is there for. Will this become one of those stories where the company itself becomes a victim of its own success?

Part of the issue seems to be the number of other companies that Google itself now owns. For example, Google owns the high profile site YouTube, and has done from less than twelve months after YouTube was launched. And it doesn’t stop there – because there are many other websites and companies that have since been swallowed by this huge company. And the chances are that we aren’t even aware of half of them.

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Reinvesting Profits For Future Expansion

There is one thing that is true of all businesses. When all is said and done, they all want to make a profit.

No matter what they sell or promote, profit is the bottom line. If they don’t make a profit then they are running at a loss. And no business which runs at a loss remains in business for very long.

This is why the profits gained in the early days of a business should be viewed as an investment. If you do not reinvest in your fledgling business, it won’t be able to grow.

The extent to which business people recognise this depends quite often on the business involved. And this could be one of the reasons why so many people fail online.

Think about it for a moment. Starting any kind of business requires knowledge, determination and perseverance. An internet marketing business is no different in this respect. If you take a look at people who have fought against the odds and succeeded in building their own online businesses, you will see that they all worked hard to achieve that success.

But unfortunately there are still plenty of people out there who think that making money online is easy. And if they do make any kind of profit, their last thought will be to reinvest it to grow the business they have begun. They will be far more likely to spend it in celebration.

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Is Selling By Email Dying Out?

If you were to get a group of internet marketers together in one room, they would probably all tell you that their email list was the most important thing in the world to them. Or at least it would be the most important part of their business.

This is largely because they will tell you that they can make a lot of money – over and over again – from that list of names and email addresses.

I’m sure you’ve seen them countless times before. You sign up to a newsletter and you start getting emails which not only contain a worthwhile newsletter to read (if you are lucky), they also have a sales pitch for a particular product the marketer is promoting.

Now this product could be one that they have come up with, or it could be one that they are an affiliate for. Whatever the case may be, you can be sure that 99.9% of the time they will make money off every sale that goes through as a result of sending out that email.

There’s no doubt that selling by email like this is still one of the strongest parts of web marketing. But are we as consumers becoming immune to the power of the email?

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How Big Should An Internet Marketing Budget Be?

If you were expecting a strict sum of money in answer to that question, you will be disappointed. But we will try and work out whether there are any guidelines that you can stick to here, as we attempt to answer that difficult question.

It’s pretty obvious that no two companies or businesses will have the same internet marketing budget. For one thing every one of them will have a different level of income, so while one may be able to afford thousands of dollars a month, the other might only be able to allocate a few hundred – perhaps even less.

But it isn’t just the size of the business that matters. You also need to think about your end goal. What kinds of web marketing do you want to do? Are you thinking about a few ads here and there to promote your business in general? Are you thinking about launching a brand new product and spreading the word as far and wide as you can? Or have you never been online before and you want to dip your toe in the water with a basic website and some search engine marketing to go with it?

It’s plain to see that there is no simple answer to this question unless you know what you want your outcome to be. This is quite often the best way to approach the situation. Ask yourself what you want to achieve, and then work out how much it would cost you to achieve it.

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Don’t Limit Yourself When You Are Considering Online Opportunities

Selling on auction sites, selling eBooks, making money via Google Adwords… all these and more are very popular ways of making money online. But should you automatically go for the same old methods that everyone else is trying?

This is a thorny issue. Many more people arrive online every single day, looking for a way to earn extra money or start a whole new career. But whatever your end goal might be, it’s vital not to limit yourself right from the start. Internet marketing offers a multitude of opportunities to consider. You certainly shouldn’t just go for the first thing you come across.

The one thing that happens a lot online is that someone new will read about a successful marketer and decide they can make lots of money in the same way. But instead of doing their research and finding out all they can about how they did it, they focus on that end result. They focus on the money and the success. But of course, you cannot expect to get there without the knowledge required.

The other sin that many people are guilty of is jumping in too fast. The internet is a huge place, and it is getting bigger by the day. If you dive straight in to the first opportunity you set eyes on, how will you know if it is the best one for you?

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Are Banners On Their Way Out?

We’ve all seen them. In its various different sizes the humble banner has cut a swathe across the internet for many years, advertising anything and everything you can think of.

But has the banner had its day? Do we ever really look at them in the same way that we did when they were new and exciting? It’s very much an individual point of course. Some people look at them all the time, while others no doubt gloss over them and cease to notice them at all.

If you take a look at the vast amount of web marketing efforts going on today, you will notice that a fair amount of it is banner advertising. So clearly it’s not a case of banners being used less than they have been in the past. Some websites might choose to offer other types of advertising than the banner, but surely that is a personal choice made by the webmaster rather than anything else. Some people certainly have a preference for different types of advertising, and that may be determined by the amount of space they have to promote on their website or blog more than anything else.

Perhaps it is more the response to banner advertising that is making people decide whether to keep using them or to ditch them instead. But can we lay that at the door of the banner format itself – or the people who are creating them?

Quite often it is the latter that is responsible for how well a banner performs, as opposed to the fact that it is a banner. If you frequent some of the biggest and most well known websites around today, you will see that some of them have large banners somewhere on the page. But these aren’t always plain static banners – they will usually be animated ones that cycle through a specific presentation. It’s rather like watching a mini television advert on your computer.

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Can A Business Survive Without Broadband?

When it comes to getting online, you have two choices. You can either go for dial-up, which uses a phone line to get online and therefore ties up that phone line whenever you are on the internet, or you can opt for broadband, which is permanently on, permanently available, and often one hundred times faster than dial-up.

This simple but very distinct difference between the two options almost answers the question posed in the title without any further thought at all. If you are serious about running a proper business – even if that business is based at home – then you really must have broadband to get the best from your business. If you don’t have it you will soon become frustrated at the limitations that dial-up gives you.

When we hear about how various people set up their businesses online and delve into the various aspects of website marketing and how to provide the best service to their customers, you will never hear too much about what service they use to go online with themselves. But you can almost guarantee that they will be using broadband.

The only situation in which the owner of an online business might just get away with using dial-up is if their website runs virtually on autopilot, and the only thing they need to do is to hop online occasionally to see what is going on and to check their stats.

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