Starting a Profitable Internet Marketing Business in 4 Easy Steps

In this article I want to show you how you can easily create your own money making home based internet marketing business in 4 easy steps - without breaking the bank.

I'm going to assume that you don't have much spare cash to invest in your business (or that you you want to create your business with as little up-front investment as possible).

I admit it, I don't like spending money where there are free or low cost alternatives, so if you're like me and don't want to bankrupt yourself but DO want to create an online income from internet marketing, then this article is for you.

It doesn't really matter whether you just want to create a little extra money to supplement your 9 to 5 earnings, or whether you want to develop a full time money making empire; the principles of making money online from internet marketing are the same.

Step 1 - Get your product(s) to sell
Perhaps the cheapest way to get products to sell is to create your own ebooks or reports; this involves minimum upfront costs (just the purchase of a good pdf compiler, available from less than $20) and each report or ebook you sell represents 100% profit.

Alternatively, find a suitable product to promote as an affiliate (there is a huge range on Clickbank, or try Commission Junction). Marketing an affiliate program may well be the best choice if you're completely new to internet marketing as you not only get a ready made product but will often get marketing materials as well. Using the affiliate marketing route, you will receive a commission for every sale you make (which could be up to around 75% of the sale).

Whichever route you choose, try to ensure that your products are for a market that is in demand and for which there are ready buyers.

Step 2 - Create your web site
Even if you have no experience designing and creating a web site, the days when you needed an in depth knowledge of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) coding have long since passed. If you have this skill then great, but it's now very easy to create your site without any knowledge of HTML at all. There are numerous (free) web site design programs you can use - Microsoft's Frontpage, Nvu (available from download.com) or the excellent MyFreeWebsiteBuilder are the best known examples - which are true visual design programs (i.e. what you see is what your get, aka wysiwyg) which don't require any knowledge of HTML at all.

There are however a few rules to follow when designing your web page(s):

-Keep it simple - visitors to your page(s) should be able to see at a glance what you have to offer.If you are promoting more than one product, place them on seperate pages so that you focus your visitor's attention on one product at a time
-Use the minimum number of typefaces (fonts) that are easy to read
-Use colours in graphics that are compatible and easy on the eye, and avoid blocks of text that use colour. As a general guide, use red text for headlines, and black or blue for the body text
-Show your enthusiasm for the products your are promoting. If you don't demonstrate enthusiasm then you're unlikely to get a positive response from your prospects.

Sending good quality traffic to your site and it not converting into sales has to be one of the most frustrating things as an internet marketer. A number of reasons can cause this, of which poor site layout is one - visitors aren't turned into customers and leave the site without making a purchase, so engaging the visitor is something you should always keep in mind.

Step 3 - Get your page(s) hosted
You could spend hundreds of dollars getting your pages hosted, but why do that when you can get quality, professional hosting for only a few dollars per month? Try to ensure that whoever you choose to host your site provides an easy to use panel for uploading and editing your pages, has sufficient web space for your site to grow, and provides built-in email (so that your personal email remains seperate from business emails).If you really want to get up and running with minimal cost, why not create your web site using the free hosting provided by Wordpress? Although Wordpress is intended for simple blogging, there's no reason why you can't generate a blog that is marketing related!

Step 4 - Get visitors to your web pages
Once you have created and uploaded your page(s), your next step is to drive visitors to them. You could pay for ads using Google Adwords, MSN, or Yahoo, but why not start with generating your own free traffic? Join a traffic exchange (most are free for basic membership), create interesting articles related to your market and post them on article directory sites (free, and great for getting links back to your site).

It's perfectly possible to generate a large and growing number of visitors just using these free methods.

Just remember when placing ads on traffic exchanges that you have a limited amount of text space to grab attention, so make sure the headline and subtext will entice viewers to click!

For best results with articles, compose them with a liberal sprinkling of keywords related to your topic throughout the text, and make sure you include a link back to your web page(s) in the resource box at the end of your articles.

Monitor the results of your traffic generation strategies, and apply your main energies to those that produce the best results first before spending too much time modifying those that are not producing results.

Once you have followed all 4 steps above, you should be well on your way to generating that extra income. Best of luck!

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About the Author:
The author is CEO of http://www.moneymaker4u.com a resource centre for internet marketers. More articles on making money from home with internet marketing at http://www.moneymaker4u.com/wordpress