Jan 07 2010

What is Internet Marketing?

Category: Internet Marketing — Tevin @ 10:40 pm

We must absolutely understand what internet marketing is, if we run any sort of business.

And we must understand all the different aspects of internet marketing that are available to us, so we can determine which ones are going to best suit our business.

I define internet marketing as:

“Anything and everything you do online that relates to your business”

That’s a wide range of “stuff”.

So many business that I talk to can only think of online marketing, like they do their offline marketing: Buying Ads > Getting Customers. Rinse. Repeat.

While this can and does work online there is so much more you can do online that will help drive new customers to your website. So let’s list a few areas you may or may not of thought of that are included under the umbrella of “internet marketing”.

You don’t necessarily have to know what or how to do any or all of these. I’m going to break all of them down in future posts. But they are:

  • Search engine optimization; using Google and the other Search engines to drive traffic to your webpages for free.
  • Pay Per Click; Purchasing ads to promote your business and only paying if someone clicks on your ads and visits your site!
  • Social Media Marketing; using the power of connections and the viralness of the internet to promote your business, using sites like: facebook, myspace, digg, stumbleupon, twitter and other “web 2.0″ sites
  • Video Marketing: you can harness the power of the online video giant youtube.com to drive massive amounts of targeted traffic to your website
  • Blogging: you can add some personality to your website site with a blog, and increase your web traffic and footprint by 100% or more
  • Media Buying (AKA Banner Advertising, Pay-Per-View); a technique not as pervasive in todays market, this is going to be a topic not often covered in this blog, as it is one of, if not THE most ineffective form of internet marketing
  • Email marketing: the key to exploding your business online is gathering an email list of your current customers and prospective clients and marketing to them on a regular basis through email
  • Grayhat/Blackhat/Spam; not really it’s own category but worth a mention, you can grayhat or blackhat (spam) almost all of these techniques mentioned above. Use these blackhat at your own risk, blackhat has the extreme power to either make you a lot of money, or completely kill your business.

These are the major prongs to the umbrella of internet marketing. We are going to discuss all of these techniques within this blog, each technique can have it’s own book written on it. So I’m going to bring you the information in an order that I think is digestible and actionable.

Now think about these items, which ones can you see your business doing that you’re not already doing? Which ones are you already doing, but could be doing better?

So do you think you have your mind wrapped around the vast world of what internet marketing is? Good, that your mind digest, and I’ll be back soon with some more.

Tags: , , ,

Jan 06 2010

Your Internet Marketing Sucks

Category: Internet Marketing — Tevin @ 12:57 am

Your Internet Marketing SUCKS

Don’t believe me?

You know your business should be performing better online… You know you’re losing clients and customers because your competitors are kicking your ass with their online presence… You have a website, but you don’t know EXACTLY how many people are buying from it… Worse yet, you have NO IDEA how many people are even visiting that site…

You’ve heard of “social networking”, but have no idea what the hell it is, or how to even get started with it (“it has something to do with a ‘facesite‘ and a ‘tweeter‘” right?).

You’ve know it for some time now, you’ve just been too afraid to say it out loud. So say it with me: “My Internet Marketing Sucks”

Now that we’ve admitted that, don’t we feel just a little bit better… no. We will soon though. Because:

IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT

Internet Marketing has been shrouded in secrecy, by the people that want to charge you BIG BUCKS to do the simplest of things. It’s not explained in plain English so you can just do it yourself, and make an impact.

Internet “Marketing” is butchered by web designers that are so focused with being “pretty” they forget what matters: making money.

So it’s time to cut through the BS.

My name is Tevin and I’m here to be your Internet Marketing Czar.

I am not “politically correct”, I often times say inappropriate things at inappropriate times. I am “young” (23). I’m a little outrageous, and a lot off the wall.

I have also been online since I turned 7 years old. I have studied and implemented hundreds of different internet marketing strategies on dozens of different websites over the last 6 years.

I have:

  • Dominated pay-per-click campaigns
  • Mastered social networking to drive massive amounts of traffic to any website
  • I have slayed the mythical dragon known as “Search Engine Optimization”
  • And even how to use Craigslist for more than just finding a used sofa.

I do not expect you to know what these things even are. Just know they’ve taken dedication and thousands of hours of sitting in a chair reading, doing, failing, and reworking to become successful at.

Thousands of hours I am going to save you with the writing of this blog.

You should know, I don’t expect my writing style to be for everyone. If you are easily offended by the spoken or written word, and can’t take a joke, you should probably just leave now, I don’t have the time or energy to censor myself.

If you can take a joke, and are not offended by language (or at least can read and listen past it) I have some good news for you:

My goal with this blog is to teach you these so-called “hard” and “advanced” internet marketing techniques in such simple language that even your 7 year-old nephew could do it (bad example… he probably already can, but you get my point).

Why would I give you such closely guarded internet marketing secrets completely free?

Because I’m an arrogant kid that likes to live dangerously? Probably… But that’s not entirely it.

I’m giving all of this information away for free so I can make mo’ money.

“How, Tevin How!?” I hear you asking. Simply, no matter how much information I can type, or speak, or show on a video to you, I can almost assuredly give better guidance by sitting down with you and learning your business, and speaking with you one-on-one.

So if you want to pay me to sit down with you, I do offer that… But not yet, because we haven’t learned anything yet. So we’ll get there later. First, the free stuff.

So what first? Before we start making money, and dramatically increasing your internet presence we’re going to need something. A Google Account.

Whether you love or hate Google (trust me, you’ll learn to love/hate them soon enough), you can’t get through the internet with out them, and you need a general Google account, because we are going to be using a lot of their products.

So start by signing up with a google account here: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

Also make sure to enter your email address in the side bar to make sure you receive the newest information as soon as it comes out, so you can follow along.

Lets have some fun,

Tevin