Internet marketing: A reflection after one year in the business

As autumn and cold crawl their way into Canada and the sun sets before 4 p.m., this darkness and quietness bring along a time of reflection for all of us. The assessment I want to share with you is about internet marketing. Although my list of things to do seams never-ending, I am very happy to realize all I have accomplished in less than a year ( over 40 active web sites, a hypnosis for childbirth program that already got international recognition, over 100 published articles on the net, etc)

I have been in internet marketing for a little less than a year and I have attended ten internet marketing seminars in 2006. I am the kind of person who likes to get to the bottom of things. I want to share my findings with people who are starting, thinking of starting or even stalling in the internet marketing business.

The ten biggest pieces of wisdom I want to share with you about internet marketing I have learned are:

1)The price of Internet Marketing products is highly exaggerated. Many marketers are comfortable taking hundreds of dollars for useless e-books or software. They are able to overcharge such big money for two main reasons: their customers believe their well-written sales letter promising them to become a millionaire by working only two hours per day. The second reason is that since other people have raised the bar before them, they feel comfortable with overcharging for their products.
I encourage everyone who is about to purchase any internet marketing product to take a deep breath, back up and do an internet search. Most probably, the product or its equivalent is already available for a fraction of the price on the internet.

My opinion is that no e-book is worth that much unless it provides me with the code of the safe at the bank for this internet marketer.

2)In the internet marketing business there are dreamers and there are doers. I have repeatedly met some people at internet marketing seminars who have not taken action and just keep buying the next product promising them a fast an effortless income. My experience is that it takes work (but then again I don’t see it as work as I enjoy it very much) at least in the beginning to secure a decent income in the internet marketing business.

3)Many internet marketers made their fortunes by selling products to people who want to make a fortune in the internet marketing business. Willie Crawford draws the parallel that the people who got the richest during the gold rush were the ones selling shovels and sticks to the gold diggers.

Anyone interested in internet marketing has to ask themselves if they have just been enriching the people selling them promises to make millions in the internet business.

4)There are basically three categories of internet marketers out there: the ones who just want your money, the ones who give you a good deal for your money and the ones that genuinely care about helping you making good money by sharing their efficient tactics.

I will, of course, not name any names here and I think that deep deep down people know what kind of marketers they are. I can tell you that upon trying to do a mental list of the genuine, caring ones, I had enough of my ten fingers to do the complete list.

5)The real successful internet marketers are often not on stage at seminars. I have met some very successful and knowledgeable people by talking to the person sitting next to me at seminars. I highly recommend you get to know the attendees at any given seminar; you will be surprised to sometimes find out that they know more than the speaker upfront and wiling to share everything with you…for free.

6)A masterminding group is a great resource to learn and share tricks and tips about internet marketing. The rule is to be part of a group that is about (or even better, a little above) your level of knowledge and accomplishments in internet marketing.

7)Action is power. Whatever piece of gold nugget you learn is useless if you do not take action on it. Many people are eternal course takers but have yet to get their first web site up. Even the best intended internet marketer will not make a penny if he doesn’t get his product out there. I have heard numerous times the advice to put out your product and fix the fine details later. It has been a little challenging for a perfectionist like me but, honestly, it works great. Often, customer comments allow me to go back and improve my product in ways that I would have never thought of.

8)Internet marketing is a number’s game. If you put all your eggs in one basket, you might rise very fast very high and then tumble down as fast. Diversity is the foundation for a solid business.

9)There will always be new things to learn. One cannot stay in their basement and hope that the world will not change. The internet marketing world is one that changes at the speed of light and one has to keep informed of the new trends and developments.

10)The Internet is here to stay. Internet has been growing at an astonishing rate and those who got in the game will be ahead of the pack in this exciting and powerful window to the world. The possibilities are infinite.



http://www.articleson.com/Article/Internet-marketing--A-reflection-after-one-year-in-the-business/29137

Web Design - Some Quick Tips To Get Started

Web design can be quite a daunting prospect if you are new to the Internet. You would like to create your own site but have no idea where to start. Html? Photoshop? Fireworks? FrontPage? Dreamweaver?

This article/tutorial will give you some tips and hints on how to get started with web design - and which shortcuts to take!

~ Tip 1: Learn HTML ~
I can hear you groan. I said I was going to give you some shortcuts, now I suggest you learn HTML! Unfortunately there is no way around it. Even if you make use to the shortcuts to web design that I am going to suggest, learning HTML will still be the best investment that you can make. It is really not that difficult and it will greatly aid in your understanding of web design.

A really good place for online tutorials on HTML can be found here: http://www.w3schools.com/html/

Depending on your enthusiasm and level of technical skill I would also suggest that you learn a bit about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Cascading style sheets can assist you tremendously with controlling the layout, colors and images on your web page. You can also find good CSS tutorials on the w3schools website.

~ Tip 2: Use a web template for web design ~
Now this is really a shortcut to web design! I suggest that you create your first website by making use of a web template. There are lots of commercial templates available, and frankly, they are beautiful, but I am going to give you some hints on where to find free web templates. Most people would think that searching for 'free web templates' in Google would be the most obvious way of doing it - but I suggest that you rather search for 'open source web templates'.

Here are three sources with open source (basically - free to use) web templates. The advantage of these templates is that they are normally well designed and will also teach you good web design principles (as opposed to most of the commercial templates which, while they are undeniably beautiful to look at, they are normally not built making use of good web design principles).

My favorite Open Source web design site is http://www.oswd.org
This site has over a 1600 free designs to choose from. Download any design and build your site! Most of these designs make use of CSS as well which is why it is a good idea to learn CSS.

Another site with lots of free template designs is http://www.daydreamgraphics.com
I suggest that if you are just starting out you stick with the designs made with tables. These are the easiest to manipulate and use. The templates on Daydreamgraphics are not for everyone - they are mostly geared towards a young funky look, so if you are looking for a design that you can use for your business or company, you might do better to rather select a design from OSWD, but if you are looking at setting up a personal website, a hobby site or a site related to music or entertainment, these designs will work very well.

~ Tip 3: Use Wordpress or Joomla to create your site ~
This option is really by far the best way to create your website in the long term. Theoretically you do not need to know HTML and CSS to create and modify your site but in practice it pays off to learn these skills since it will help you master these tools just so much faster.

The steps to creating your website using these tools are as follows:

1. Log into your CPanel control panel (if you are not using a host that provides you with a CPanel control panel and Fantastico scripts - frankly, my only advice is to change to one that does!)

2. Select Fantastico from the control panel

3. Select either Wordpress or Joomla from the menu on the left.

4. Install Wordpress or Joomla in the root folder. You will have to select an administrator username and password to access the admin side of your site.

Log into the admin backend (normally /wp-admin for Wordpress and /administrator for Joomla). There are lots of free Wordpress tutorials available - just do a Google search for 'free Wordpress tutorials' and to get started in Joomla, do a search for 'how to use Joomla'.

To change the look and feel of your Wordpress or Joomla website is really easy! You simply install a new template. Wordpress and Joomla templates are specific to these tools (you cannot use any templates). For a guide to where to find the best free Wordpress and Joomla templates you can take a look at these resources:



http://www.articleson.com/Article/Web-Design---Some-Quick-Tips-To-Get-Started/32545