Choosing a Direction
This is probably the most difficult decision starting out as an Internet marketer, so please pay full attention here. You have now been exposed to many Internet marketing techniques, some of them paid, some of them free. You do not need to know all of these in order to succeed. Actually, if you are just starting out, it is better that you don't.
Choose your direction!!!
On a limited budget?
We recommend that if you have a limited budget that you start off by becoming an article marketer. This is the best free marketing technique, and requires much less work than creating 100's of web pages that are SEO friendly. Writing articles will give you a solid understanding of different niches, how to find niches, copywriting skills, and how to target different demographics & audiences. These are all essential Internet marketing skills and can be incorporated into any Internet marketing technique.
Becoming an expert at Article Marketing is 100% possible here at WA as we have an entire category dedicated to Article Marketing.
Search Engine Optimization (Article Marketing is a form of this), is also a very popular marketing technique among those marketers who look for free, targeted traffic. SEO is performed through the creation of relevant websites, linking strategies, and the creation of relevant blogs. There is also an entire category dedicated to SEO here within Wealthy Affiliate.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Category
**We do recommend beginners start out with Article Marketing if they are going to choose a free technique.
Have a bit of cash?
If you do have a budget available to invest into getting your business up and running, you may want to start off with PPC marketing. This will allow you to get quicker results (in terms of traffic) as you can dictate exactly where your ads are in the search engines, what your web pages look like, and what keywords your ads will show up under in the search results. Is this more risky? Well, the fact that you have to outlay your own money for advertising is the only risky part.
If you follow the techniques that we outline in the coming chapters focusing on consumer research, marketing, and the use of landing pages, you will be well on your way to creating a successful PPC campaign. The biggest risk involved with PPC is for people who RUSH into things before they know what they are doing. Take your time to learn PPC marketing techniques before you even consider writing your first ad!
It is much better off to become an expert at one thing than to be a "jack of all trades" within the Internet marketing realm, especially if you are just getting started. We like to use the "doctor" analogy for this.
There are many different types of doctors in the world, and guess which doctors make the most money? Specialists! If you become a brain surgeon or an anesthesiologist you will make much more money than a general practitioner. The same goes for Internet marketing. It is much better to be great at one thing (such as Google Adwords or article marketing), then to just "ok" in both.
So, as a rule of thumb become good at one thing before you become good at many.
The same goes for your marketing campaigns. Before you tackle multiple industries, figure out how to create a successful campaign within one. It is easy to duplicate campaigns once you have created a successful one, but it is difficult to become successful if you spread your resources thin by setting up many average or failing campaigns.
Think about it. If you try to be the Wal-Mart of the online world (the generalist), then you are going to need a budget like Wal-Mart. Start with a focus, and diversify once you have mastered one thing. Diversification can be very harmful if you are not ready for it just yet!
Now here is the cool part. If you fail at the first thing, you can always move onto something else. There are endless amounts of opportunity and if one thing does not work out, the next one likely will. Everything you do in your "online career" should be considered a learning experience, especially failure as it is very important to the success of any business.
Thomas Edison failed 1000's of times while inventing the light bulb before he got a working prototype!
We (Kyle & Carson) have also experienced many failures along the way, but this made us better marketers.
Remember, if you become good at one thing, other Internet marketing strategies will come to you easily. Look at athletes; most of them are very good at more than one sport, even though they specialize in ONE. The same goes for marketers.
We started off by using strictly PPC techniques, and then evolved into much more diverse marketers. Now have a very complex understanding of Internet marketing, and implement almost every Internet marketing tactic you can think of, but we started out by specializing in one thing.
What do You Choose? Free or Paid?
Well, this is completely up to you, but it is definitely recommended that you at the very least become familiar with writing articles as this is always a great "free" technique that you will be able to fall back on if your initial PPC ventures go awry. Our recommendation is that you have an understanding of both Article and PPC marketing. The two are often closely related and you can port a successful article marketing campaign into a PPC one and vice versa.
PPC marketing definitely achieves quicker results as your ads can be shown almost instantly with Google or Yahoo and they will show up under the keywords that you specify. You can also hyper target your audiences and certain geographic regions, something that is not easily achievable with free techniques. PPC marketing does cost money and although it is fairly easy to implement there is a downside. If you start PPC marketing without taking advantage of the learning resources we have here at Wealthy Affiliate, you could easily end up losing money.
The great part about article marketing and other free marketing techniques is that they are 100% free and you can "learn by doing" without having to risk your own money. While article marketing, you will learn some of the most important aspects of Internet marketing including copywriting, creating sales pages, affiliate linking, researching industries, and how to understand your target audiences. We suggest that if you are on a budget or do not feel comfortable with doing PPC marketing just yet, that you work on implementing free techniques like article marketing until you get a better feel for how PPC works.
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