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12 Key Internet Marketing Terms - Your Guide
All industries have their own unique terminology and colloquialisms -
Internet Marketing is no different. If you're just starting out, before
you get to achieve anything you need to get past this new terminology without
letting it blind you or stunt your enthusiasm! Here's a short glossary or
guide to 12 key terms you'll come across and in some cases disciplines you'll
master on your way to becoming a great internet marketer.
- Affiliate Programs - This is an enormously popular way to help
other people sell your products or provide you the ability to sell
someone else's product. You either give or receive a commission for
each sale - 20-50% is the normal range of commission.
- Auto Responders - Automatically send your clients or potential
clients multiple 'personal' emails over a period of time. This is
perhaps the most critical tool in your box for relationship building using
what is usually referred to as email marketing.
- Blogging - Blogs (short for web logs) are a relatively new and
popular way to publish content on the Internet. They allow the blogger
to publish content (thoughts, ideas, tips...) very quickly AND get feedback
from the people that read it. Because they are new and content is
created regularly, search engines love indexing them - and if search engines
love them, you should too.
- Copywriting - The process of writing compelling copy or content
for your web site (or other written medium). You'll see the term
'sales copywriter' or similar ones for those people that are skilled in
writing in a way that compels the reader to buy! Hmm, quite important
then!
- Domain Name - Domain simply means 'area' or 'sphere of
influence.' A domain name is the name for your area on the Internet -
the name that people will use to reach your web site. Its also called
your Internet address. It has some restrictions imposed on it
because it must be unique anywhere on the internet and must conform to
simple a set of rules. Whenever you type the address of a web
site you'll notice is doesn't contain spaces and has several portions
separated by dots (or periods). In fact there are three sections to a
domain name, the start, usually the letters 'www' (standing for world wide
web) followed by a name and ending something like '.com', '.co.uk', '.ca' or
'.au'. The ending is intended to denote the country of the site, but
many global sites simply use '.com' originally intended for names in the USA
So,
www.OnlineMarketersChoice.co.uk and
www.ValuedClientSystem.com
are both examples of domain names.
- eZines / Newsletters - Electronic magazines are another popular
way to create a relationship with your clients. Published regularly -
say bi-weekly, entirely electronically, that is, online via your web site or
blog this can be a great way to stay in the forefront of your clients
thoughts.
- Joint Ventures - Do it with a partner. That's the motto of the
Joint Venture. They combine the client base, marketing, skills and products
of one or more partners to create a new business venture. Those
business ventures may be small and short - one product, one short marketing
campaign or serve as the base for a complete business.
- Merchant Account - In order to process payments directly from
your web site, you have two basic choices:
use a 3rd party payment processor (such as clickbank.com), who will take a
commission and pass on the reminder after a period of around 30 days.
Or, pay for your own payment processor and open a merchant account with your
bank to allow you to process credit card payments directly.
- Search Engine Optimization - Search engines are a key route to
free web traffic. Most people use search engines like Google, MSN,
Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and so on to find web sites. If your site appears
early in the often very long list of results returned from a search, you've
probably done a good job optimizing your site for search engines.
- Shopping Cart - The piece of software that keeps track of the
many, many products your client is planning purchase on a particular visit
to your site. When they've finished browsing it will take them though
the process of providing their details like name and address and taking
payment details to pass on to your payment processor. Some web sites build
their own carts but most choose to use a 3rd party service.
- Web Hosting - Your web site needs to 'live' somewhere. That place
is either your own computer(s) or more typically on a computer managed by a
Web Hosting company. You create the content and manage the site and
the hosting company provide you the computing power.
- Website - Creating your own website can be both fun and
challenging. But you don't have to create it yourself. If you do, you
might create and edit web pages using a tool like Microsoft FrontPage, as in
fact I'm doing to write this. Alternatively you may use one of the 'instant
web site creators' (try searching on that term) or pay somebody else to
create your site for you. Which every route you choose - your web site
is 'you' on the Internet, so make it compelling.
Between them
Paul Quirk and Mark Quirk have more than 40 years experience in the IT industry.
OnlineMarketersChoice.com is
their site to help new internet marketers learn their craft and for seasoned
professionals to share their advice.
Copyright 2005, All rights reserved.
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