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.

Reaching out to offline markets

People can access the internet in many ways. They are not restricted to using a computer in their home. They can access one at work or at their local library, for example. This means it is worth promoting your website offline.

And not everyone who uses the internet will find your website in this way. How many times has someone recommended a website to you by word of mouth? It pays to get your website address in front of as many people as possible, regardless of whether they are online or off when they see it.

Make sure all your offline correspondence has your website address on it. Have business cards printed with it on, as well as other items such as letterheads if you use them. Some methods are more complex and take more time than others, but often people simply forget that there are more ways to find people than hopping onto Google.

Staying alert for opportunities

Many people think of the online and offline worlds as being two separate entities. But they are connected by the very people who use them both. Your website should be optimised to receive visitors online through web promotion. But it should also welcome those who rarely go online.

You are missing a trick if you only seek an online audience for your wares. You need to be sure your website promotion reaches out in all kinds of different ways.

Don’t get stuck in a rut and stick to the same methods of bringing in new customers. Of course you should stick with those that work, but explore what works for others too. You can get far more visitors than those you reach out and find through your computer screen.

Remember that everyone online is looking for information. But people are largely driven by information offline too. If you can convince them your site contains the information they need, it won’t matter whether you find them online or offline.

So focus on who you want to reach – and explore all the offline opportunities there are to find them.

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.

We simply didn’t have this kind of opportunity before the internet came along. Just imagine how hard it would have been to start a self publishing business offering eBooks before we could go online. The answer would be ‘virtually impossible’. But now things are very different – and that is why the number of people who are online and promoting their wares will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. It’s simply too good a chance to pass up.

And of course you can advertise for free as well. Social marketing and search engine optimization can be done for nothing, provided you know what you are doing. And even if you start with no knowledge at all the learning process is nothing short of fascinating.

It’s also possible to reach your desired audience very easily online. A TV advert would reach a group of people who watch a certain program, but within that audience there is still a wide spread of people. But once you go online you can more accurately pinpoint who it is you want to reach. It’s no wonder that advertising is continuing to rise when it comes to the internet.

It also has to be said that many people are not yet taking full advantage of what they can do online. But as time goes on and more people do discover the extent that online advertising can go to, we can expect more people to use this as their primary way of reaching out to their desired audience.

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.

The way it works is fairly logical. If a website has a PageRank of 5, and it links to 10 other pages, the PageRank value of 5 is divided in some way (depending on content, anchor text, location on the page, etc) and gives value to each of the other 10 pages. So you can see that a link from a page with a higher PageRank is far better than one with a low PageRank, or no PageRank at all. Similarly, a link from a site with too many outgoing links, despite a high PageRank, may not be as valuable as a link from a medium PageRank with only a few outgoing links, because more actual value is received if there are only a few outgoing links to share with.

Now, we all know that if you have an internet marketing business you will want to get as much publicity and promotion as possible. And climbing up the search engine rankings will certainly get you more traffic as a result. But if you focus solely on linking to get a higher PageRank you will consequently be missing out on a lot of other important factors.

PageRank is certainly not the only thing that determines your search engine rankings. If you put together a sub-standard site with plenty of links you still aren’t going to rank highly. This is because you need to remember that Google looks at a number of things to figure out where each site should be in the results. Search engine optimization, for example, is just as important, if not more. If you are neglecting keywords in order to get those inbound links created then you are going to be missing out on a lot of benefits.

In short, while PageRank has its place in the grand scheme of things, it isn’t the be all and end all of getting your site seen. In fact, there have been examples demonstrating that it isn’t as important as it was in the past. So pay attention to it and know what your own ranking is, but don’t treat a high PageRank as the Holy Grail. As long as you cover all angles, you will see results.

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.

It is this growing monopoly over many online resources and services that some people are a little worried about. In the world of online marketing we all want to do well, but when you start succeeding to this degree it becomes almost alarming.

The truth is that we don’t appear to be able to see any great changes in the near future. The monster that is Google will no doubt continue to glance round the internet in search of other companies to acquire, and it will grow more and more as it does so.

There is little doubt that the owners of some of the websites Google will be interested in – some of which were probably started in bedroom or dormroom somewhere – will happily give them up in exchange for a decent amount of money. But does that always make it right?

We congratulate (and are envious of) people who are spotted by Google in this way, but we don’t always think of what Google gets out of the situation. In one article in Business Week, the idea was given that it may simply get too big for itself to handle.

Now that would be an interesting prospect. But if you think about it, that probably wouldn’t benefit anyone other than the other search engines. So let’s just enjoy the Google ride.

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.

That’s a natural reaction of course. But it shows how immediate gratification for that success is the first thing that a lot of people think of. If they were to reinvest it, they could end up with a business that will take care of them for many years to come.

Profits must be reinvested wisely though. This could be done in many different areas, depending on the nature of the business in question. Pay per click advertising works well as a method for gathering more customers or sign ups. Those profits could be channelled into more advertising for example.

It’s clear that simple reinvestment isn’t all there is to it. In many cases an internet business can be started on little or no money at all. If a profit is generated in this situation it can be tricky to know what to do with it. After all, the business has begun without the subject of cash really coming into it at all. An entrepreneur may have to be very ingenious to get the word out about their product or service when they have no budget to back them up. But when they suddenly have some cash to work with, there can be almost too many choices about where it could be used.

It’s easy to see how problems arise. But reinvesting profits is clearly necessary if businesses are to grow in the future. And that applies no matter what the current economic situation might be like.

So if you have a business that you are thinking about starting, make sure you pay attention to the money. It can really pay dividends if you do.

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?

Ask yourself this question. How many email newsletters have you signed up for, only to delete them as soon as they come in because you don’t have the time to read them? How many more do you unsubscribe from because you wish you had never signed up in the first place? We’ll forget all about the junk emails we all get that we never signed up for at any point, but which still find their way to us with unerring accuracy.

As a seller, how on earth do you get past all the obstacles that stand in the way of someone even reading your email in the first place? Is it perseverance? Is it dedication to building a big enough list that all the people who instantly delete what you send them don’t really matter?

Selling by email isn’t really dying out, it’s just that we all get so many more emails than we used to, we only read what really matters to us. But is that such a bad thing? After all it makes anyone who is making their living from internet marketing work even harder to get our attention.

Making a name for yourself definitely helps in this respect. Most people will automatically look to see who sent a particular email. If they recognise your name and think of you as someone who is worth listening to, they will be more likely to open your email and read it.

In short, selling by email may well be dying out for those people who don’t put everything they have into gaining the trust of the people on their list. If you don’t do that, then you might have trouble making any money at all in this way.

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.

For example, let’s say you currently have five hundred unique visitors a day to your website and you want to increase that to five thousand. Now that would take a dedicated campaign, and if you are thinking of getting all that traffic from the search engines you’d need to focus on pay per click campaigns and featuring more highly in the organic search results.

To do that, you’d probably have to hire someone who knows that side of the internet inside out. A professional will be more than worth the money you pay them, and you would be safe in knowing they were doing their job while you got on with doing yours.

Of course it might be that your end goal is unaffordable for you at the moment. If your business hasn’t yet reached the level where you can afford to put aside that kind of money into a marketing budget, you will need to lower your sights a little and figure out a way of making the money you need to aim for your ideal goal.

This is where some businesses trip up. They make their advertising budget bigger than they can afford to manage. It might be okay to allocate more funds to promotion occasionally, but doing it all the time can lead you into dangerous territory. And at any rate, you should always review your budget to see whether it needs any changes.

You’ll achieve your goals eventually – and making sure your budget stays on track will help you get there.

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?

Many people also limit themselves by thinking they are only capable of doing certain things. They don’t give themselves a chance to stretch out and explore the world of online marketing in more depth. It’s said that knowledge is power, and there is probably no other place where that is more applicable than the internet.

Why limit yourself by sticking to what other people tell you that you can and can’t do? Explore what’s out there; evaluate all the opportunities you can find and research them before doing anything else. Only then will you be able to make an educated decision about what is best for you.

The internet also gives us the chance to try out new things. It’s not so easy to switch careers in the real job world, but if you want to try your hand as a writer, a photographer, or an affiliate online, you can do so virtually straightaway. Too many people accept the same limitations online as they impose on themselves offline.

That’s not to say you should automatically ignore the old favourites though. Some people are making a full time job out of selling on auction sites, so they are clearly working well. The same goes for selling eBooks; if you have the knowledge people are looking to pay money for, then you can capitalise on it without a doubt.

So what is the moral here? Perhaps it should be that limitations are merely walls that you put up for yourself where previously there were none. Bear that in mind when you are thinking about how you can make money online.

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.

So is this the way of the banner now? It seems as if it could be. After all it is known that they don’t attract the attention quite as much as they used to. It seems that people might actually take more notice of online marketing methods that have some movement in them. They do catch the eye rather more than any static banner ever could.

It’s obviously not the end for the banner. Just as with every other promotional tool in the past, it too has to change and develop as time moves on. The internet is always changing and so are the needs and expectations of the people who use it. The static and boring banner may well have served the purpose well a few years ago, but it will get left behind now.

If you are using banners which are past their sell by date, perhaps it’s time you had another look at them. It’s never too late to overhaul your advertising and make it work even better than it does now.

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.

But just imagine trying to run a business in which you are constantly online fulfilling orders and making sure that customers are satisfied. Anyone who has tried using dial-up in the long and distant past will know that it has a tendency to cut you off, and it is also much slower than broadband. What this means is that even if you aren’t cut off at any point you will certainly notice that it takes much longer to process orders due to the slower speed of entering websites and pages than it would if you were using broadband.

It’s reasonable to think that the smallest business just starting out online could get by for a time on dial-up. But once that business reaches any kind of success then broadband becomes almost necessary to encourage further growth.

One other point worth bearing in mind is that because dial-up internet connections tie up your phone line, you would either have to be unobtainable on the phone (not good for customer relations) or you would have to have another dedicated phone line put in. When all is said and done you are much better off simply opting for broadband in the first place – it’s probably cheaper.

Internet marketing is a business strategy that tends to attract all kinds of people to it and has an image of being an easy business to succeed in. This is far from being the truth, of course, but some people will try and build a business without having the right tools to succeed – and one of those tools must surely be broadband.