If you're on this website and reading this article, it means that you're interested in internet marketing and want to learn as much as you want about what's required to generate money as a marketer.
Internet Marketing, like any other trade that you could use to generate money requires certain skills and a specific set of tools.
I assure you that it is practically impossible to make money online in internet marketing if you don't have the right toolset.
This is so important that you grasp, that it's worth repeating one more time:
"You CANNOT make money online in internet marketing without the right TOOLSET!"
That's sounds so obvious!
However, you would have no idea how many people don't realize the importance of having the appropriate set of tools that helps them achieve their goal to make some extra money through online marketing.
You need tools to succeed. Of course, you need the tools of the internet marketing trade. In other words, you need tools that match what you're trying to achieve.
Just think about it. Can you imagine a carpenter carrying around a mechanic's toolbox, or a florist's one? No! It wouldn't make sense to do such a thing.
Now imagine doing it and trying to make the wrong tools do a job they were not designed to do? It would make you mad, irritable, lose you money and require lots of unnecessary extra energy. Exactly the same applies in the internet marketing world.
It's clear then, that you need to have the appropriate tools to make money online. The question is:
What are the right Tools for Internet Marketing?
Well, here is a small list of some things or tools you'd NEED to make money online through marketing on a consistent basis. Please don't laugh at me, but I'm going as basic as possible for the benefit of the non-initiated:
- A computer (this one is way too obvious)
- Access to the Internet
- An Email account
- A blog or website
- A domain name
- A place online to host the domain
- Squeeze pages or Lead capture pages
- Sales pages
- List Manager
- Tracking software
- Software to create the blog and all the other pages
- A way to collect the money you make online and send it to your bank account
As you can see, even though you can wake up one day and just decide, today I'm going to start to make money online out of the blue. You, most likely, will not make any money on that day, specially if you're going solo and have no clue.
Don't get me wrong, the decision is of utmost importance, because that's the moment everything changes, in fact, it can make you or break you. But massive action is required as well, and part of that action is to gain access to the appropriate set of tools.
And that's precisely the problem that lot of people encounter. They don't realize that you must have certain tools in order to do marketing and make money online. It doesn't work any other way.
So, let's just take a look at some of these tools and let's keep track in our minds, how much it would cost to acquire all of them ourselves.
A Computer and a connection to the Internet
This, to be honest, should be more than obvious. I mean, no computer and no Internet, no way to do marketing, no online business. As simple as that!
Remember we're talking here about an online marketing business. In other type of businesses you might forego a connection to the internet, but as an internet marketing it would make absolutely no sense to even try without it. Therefore, make sure you have a reliable provider.
An Email account
An email account is another given. You have to, somehow, get in touch with people and the best and least intrusive method is email. In fact, your email communication with your prospects and customers is at the heart of your internet marketing.
For practical purposes, make sure you have a SEPARATE email account for your business. You WILL get lots and lots of emails there. So, go to Google and open a new email account. It costs nothing!
One thing that's very important for branding purposes, is to create an email based on your own domain (see below how to get it).
It gives your business a huge bump in credibility when you have an email like "[email protected]" instead of a free gmail account.
A Website or a Blog
As an internet marketer, it's very important to brand yourself. One of the best ways to do this is through having your own website, preferable a blog that will serve as a hub for your marketing. You have 2 options here. You can either go gratis or you can have paid version. Let me explain.
There are places on the internet where you can create your own blog for free. Among the most popular are WordPress.com and Blogger.com. These two are huge and you can and SHOULD create accounts there for blogging. By the way, the account you just created in Google for the email, can and should be used for Blogger as well.
It's important that you understand the quality of the tools you have available. Just like a carpenter can have a manual saw as well as an electric one and use both to do make his job easier, you can have free and paid tools in the online money making world.
And in the same manner, you'll be more effective with the paid tools, just like it would be easier for the carpenter to make a table using the electric saw, it doesn't mean that he cannot make it using just a manual saw, it will just take longer and require a bit more effort. However, you can still achieve results. As mentioned, it will only take longer and require much more technical knowledge from you.
Your OWN Domain Name
The more serious you look to a customer, the higher the chances that they will be willing to pay you money for something you are offering. And since your purpose here is making money, you then should do the best to show that you take your business seriously.
One thing that helps in this regard is having your own domain name. What's that?
Well, you've used them since you started on the internet. For example, on this page, the domain name would be hermann-bock.com (the one you are at right now).
When you want to google something, you go to their domain, google.com.
And so on... amazon.com, ebay.com, paypal.com and cnn.com are all domain names. You have to buy them and they belong to you for, at least a year. They cost about $10 a year and you can get them from websites like: godaddy.com or namecheap.com which is the leader domain name registrar at this time.
A place to HOST your Domain
Once you have a domain, you are required to host it somewhere. That means, you need space on a computer that's connected permanently to the internet, to save your domain name and all the pages that you want to create under that domain name.
By the way, that's precisely one the of advantages of having your own domain. You can make as many pages, posts, squeeze and sales pages and even host applications, like tracking software, that will allow you to be more functional on the internet.
Normally, you have to pay between $5 to $50 monthly, depending of the space and amount of traffic allowed, to host your domain in places like hostgator.com, hostzilla.com, godaddy.com or one of the gazillion options available online. Make sure you find a good hosting provider, because it can make your business or destroy it.
Oh no, that's way too complicated! - you might be thinking. And you're thinking right! It can certainly be. However, the benefits are worth the trouble. On the other hand, as I'll show you in a bit, there's a way to avoid all the technical hassle and still get the MUST HAVE tools. Just bear with me for a bit still.
A LIST Manager
You've probably heard that if you've been interested in online marketing for some time you need to build a list because THE MONEY IS IN THE LIST. And it is certainly true:
the money is in the list!
But how do you manage and make that list bigger and bigger?
You need one of the most important tools in online marketing, namely, a List Manager. The most popular ones are Aweber and Getresponse. They've been around for almost 20 years, so they're reliable and know their business.
If your goal is to make money online, you must have an account with one of these providers. It will make it easier to collect prospects, using web forms like the one at the top of this page urging you to "Subscribe Today", which will give you the ability to collect your prospect's email addresses. Remember, the money is in the list!
Once you have a tool like this setup, you will be able to communicate with your leads and prospects, even after they've left your website. Allowing you to provide lots of value and thus build a relationship with them. Which in turn permits you to market to them on a regular basis and make more money.
A way to collect MONEY
As mentioned above, as you're building your list, you want to make some money with your internet marketing business. But, how are you going to collect the money?
Imagine that you live overseas, can you make money online? You bet!
To do that, you need something like PayPal at least, that will allow you to channel the money you make in your direction, independently of where in the world your customers are. Obviously, if your online business is bigger, you need what is called a "Merchant Account", which makes it easier for your customers to pay using credit cards and other methods of payment.
An EASIER way!
You're probably thinking, WOW! that's a lot of stuff that I would need to start my own business online. And yes, it is!
However, you can make all this a lot less complicated. And it's basically by using OPT or, spelled out, Other People's Tools.
If you've read the section about Education, you probably noticed that I said, that there are online education centers that offer, not only the education, but also provide you with the MUST HAVE TOOLS you require to start your make money online internet marketing business. In other words, you don't have to worry about MOST of the stuff mentioned above. Well, you still must have a computer and a connection to the Internet. 🙂
Another exception would be the List Management System (AWeber or Getresponse).
All the other tools required to make money online are provided. Which means that you DON'T have to worry about those things, plus you're getting a world class education for the way of making money in the 21st century.
The point is that you can start easily building your online business as you learn how to build your online business.
Again, I recommend very few systems right now, because they not only offer the best tools, but because they're constantly evolving and improving themselves for the benefit of their members.
You can see the my approved systems below:
