Misconceptions About Online Marketing

By Jeff William Rogers

A lot of people write about online marketing and offer advise for free, or for a fee. As we attempt to sift through the avalanche of material and to make some sense of it, there are a few things that begin to come clear through the fog. The subject is very complex and there are many variations on a theme. Let's try to distill a few important fundamental facts out of the fray.

By far, the vast majority of so called experts in "Internet Marketing" are really not what they claim to be. There are many gullible fish that have bitten the bait of real online marketers and who then try to get others to bite smaller hooks with less compelling bait, and on down the line in like manner. Rather than biting more skanky bait, we need to look carefully at the basics.

What people and companies really want to do is to promote their message or their product and to get it out as widely as they possibly can. That's what you want to do if you're an online marketer on interested in being one. Behind the effort to do that is a pretty basic motivation. We need to earn a living. The better their income, the better we like it. So when we evaluate a marketing effort, we need to be able to see the motives of everyone involved. Just getting into an affiliate program is not going to do us much good. That program represents a long list of interests, and the chances of anyone at the bottom of that chain understanding what's really going on are pretty small. The rewards for promoting that chain are smaller at the bottom too.

The best thing to do is to get in at the top. Even better yet, be the top. So, what should we really do? Again, the answer to that question comes down to the basics. The internet is all about networking. That is what Internet Marketing is. It is exactly the same as if a Pet Store on the corner by your house asked you to put a sign in your yard promoting their business. Think of it like Real Estate and traffic.

The Pet Store wouldn't want to put it's ad on your lawn if you were the last house on a dead end street. They are interested in the house on the corner of two major arterials. So if you want to have a valuable marketing presence, then you need a busy piece of online real estate. Your ADDRESS should see a lot of traffic.

Getting an address is pretty easy (Real Esatate). Putting a site up on it is easy too. Getting the traffic to your site is the hard part, and it takes some commitment, some time, and some expertise to do that. Actually, if you think about it, that's what the Pet Store was trying to do in the first place, increase their traffic. So, if the Pet Store has a lot of traffic coming into their store because they've done a good job of putting signage on every busy corner in town, then other companies will be wanting to put signs in their store window, put brochures on their front desk, put flyers on their bulletin boards, and business cards in their cookie jars. This is networking. This is what the internet does so well, and that's what true internet marketing is all about.

So, when you're listening to people talk about affiliate links, or about viral marketing, or about blogging, or article submission, or whatever else, just remember that real value comes when you have your own real estate and when you have a lot of traffic in and around that site. If it's not YOUR site, what value you are able to attain and what income you do generate will be mostly for other people. For example, if you were renting the house on the corner of the arterials and you allowed companies to put signs in your yard, the landlord may allow you to share some of the value of that, but when you moved out, who would retain the value of what you had built?

Here is where the problem for many so called experts lies. They are advocating that you work very hard to promote other people's interests. Why would they do that? Because that is what they are doing, and if they can get you to do that too, then they make a few temporary dollars off your trafficking. Now you're suppose to be the last guy on the totem pole and try to make money by getting people even lower than you? Most of it is really very shallow.

Find local companies and network with them. That's how to really build value. Before you can do that though, you will need to have your own presence with a value point. Putting ads on a website is not hard. Finding companies that will network with you is pretty easy too. Start local and work up to regional. Put together groups of non-competitive companies and promote them. That is what the internet is all about. We do not have to give all of our efforts out to the huge internet interests and receive little and temporary benefit. Put the same effort into building real value for yourself and for organizations that are reachable.

Jeff Rogers is the President and Founder of http://www.dragnetmarketing.com. He is an online networking strategist who believes that relationships are just as important online as they are face to face. In order to have good relationships one has to give something up to get something back. See Jeff's Blog at viralvideopage.blogspot.com