Starting an online business could be one of the simplist things you can do. With all the free software available to you it doesn’t take much money. You will want to map out a marketing strategy and a budgetary game plan; and you must stay within your means to avoid overspending, which is very easy to do. The Internet has simplified your business automation process.

Once you start marketing buckle up because it coud get crazy in a hurry. The Internet is like the Wild, Wild West! There is no structure to the organization of the Net, and if you don’t give your customers a way to find you, you won’t make any money from your business. That is why you must make sure you understand which customers you’re trying to reach. The more specific you are the more successful you will be!

Although you will find that there are many “Guru “opinions on how to market your business online, here are seven initial steps that can help you to increase your profits and mainly involve investing your time:

1. Autoresponders – All Guru will tell you that their key to success begins with the list! Now you could purchase leads, but it is not the same as creating content that entices your customers to want more so they will opt in. You begin to start your list. To make this possible you must have a subscription box on your website. Use a company like Global Virtual Opportunities or Aweber – the cost is usually $20 a month and well worth every penny!

2. Video Marketing – This provides a human touch to article writing. People tend to indentify with someone, once they can visualize that person in their head. Video Marketing has turned out to be one of the most effective tools to use. Video Marketing is very cost effective because you can post to all the video resources available to you, i.e. Tube Mogel, Viddler, and YouTube, etc at no cost. Focus on the FREE resources to save money.

3. Article Writing – You will want to write and submit to article directories like Ezine Articles and Amazines. This is a way to demonstrate your product’s potential and is an excellent source to provide the information that your customer’s are looking for. The cost is ZERO!

4. Blogs and Forums – You will want to create your own blog and then participate in forums in order to find out what your customers specific needs are. This is where your prospect gather to discuss subjects that are related to what you are marketing. Blogger and Wordpress are good sources for blogging. Again, the cost is ZERO!

5. Social Marketing – This new phenomenon has changed the Internet marketing world. I would recommend you starting with either a Facebook or a Twitter Account. In this area, you will want to make as many connections as possible, and get to know them as time permits. DO NOT USE THIS AS AN AVENUE TO MARKET YOUR PRODUCT – A BIG TURN OFF! The goal is to network and develop friendships, and your business promotion will take care of itself!

6. Free Classified Ads – There are great channels out there, such as Craigslist, US Free Ads, and Classified For Free. You will want to post ads to them almost nightly, especially when you first start.

7. Vitual Advertisements – This is another way to put ads out on the Internet for free; but the programs that have a monthly fee, usually provide more exposure for your ads.

By implementing several of these steps weekly, you will have a complete and successful marketing plan up and running within a month.

You have to tract all your website activity – this is very important. There are tools available out there for free to help us do this. GoStats Analytics is a good one to use. You can monitor how well you are doing, specifically your website activity and your progression towards your ultimate goal – a successful internet marketing business. Good Luck!

As you pursue your Internet marketing efforts, you may soon discover that submitting as many articles as you can to the maximum number of directories and blogs that are appropriate for the topic of your articles is essential.  This is expected to increase targeted traffic to your site and recognition of your company.  Another important benefit of article submission with SEO articles is that it will increase the number of back links to your website and this is essential for search engine optimization or SEO.  It has been observed that search engines have a better regard for websites that have more back links because this is one of the signs that it is highly regarded by other site owners.  Article submission services, such as My Article Network or MAN, have therefore been created to facilitate the wearisome process of submitting articles that will result into the natural production of back links.

The strategy of manually posting your articles to the thousands of appropriate directories and blogs may no longer be practical because of the amount of time that it requires and the fact that there will be other online marketers vying for your targeted words and phrases who are using automated strategies.  With article submission services such as MAN and Linkvana that make use of automation, it is still feasible to utilize article marketing principles even if there are more than 10,000 blogs and directories to submit the articles to.  How much time would it take to manually submit articles to these blogs and directories?  It would probably take you several months or even a year to complete this task.  With MAN and the other article submission services, the task of sending the articles to the thousands of blogs and directories is no longer a difficult and long process.

Another problem with submitting your articles by yourself is that your competitors for your targeted keywords and phrases may be getting way ahead of you if you take part in one of these article submission services, such as MAN.   Because of the vast difference in methods used, they may be getting 20 back links for every back link that you are getting.  It is not hard to figure out whose sites will be visited more because of their higher position in the results pages of the search engine.

Article submission software may also be applied by Internet marketers to speed up and facilitate the task.  However, there is one deficiency of this kind of software and that is the submission of article to the incorrect categories.  Article submission services like MAN and Linkvana have personnel who control the system to prevent such kinds of errors.  This error may negate all of your efforts because most of the people who are reading them may not be interested in your products or services.