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As a 20 year veteran of a successful offline sales career I can really appreciate what online marketing offers. It does amaze me however that some people really struggle to make money online.

I guess when you sit down in front of your computer the thought of doing Internet marketing can be very exciting. However, when you begin to look a little closer and everything involved it can also be very confusing.

Are you the type of person that's up for a good challenge? If you are you'll dive in with both feet and really become educated on how online marketing works to make money.

You should start with asking yourself three questions.

1. What is online marketing? Marketing online is simply getting your product or service on the World Wide Web where people can find it.

This can actually be in the form of advertising, promotion, or a passive approach such as social media with a blog or social networking.

Marketing something means you need to understand your target market. Many people make the mistake of trying to reach too broad of an audience.

Niche marketing has proven that zeroing in on a smaller audience is a better approach. The Internet is just too big to appeal to everyone.

Social media allows you to brand yourself as an expert while driving traffic to your website. You see people do this all the time by publishing helpful information on a blog, or just having a website URL in their profile on Facebook.

2. How much does it cost to promote things online? Marketing online can be done in the form of free advertising or paid advertising.

With free advertising you'll trade your time as opposed to spending money. Article marketing and blogging are 2 of the most popular ways to do this.

Paid advertising can be as expensive as you want it to be. Some successful marketers will spend money on ezine advertising in an attempt to build their own list.

If you have a little money to start with you may want to look at launch a pay per click advertising campaign on Google or Yahoo. This is the fastest way to start getting traffic to your website.

3. How can I best take advantage of online marketing?

Without getting traffic to your website you are never going to make any money online. The best way to capitalize on this is to focus on one form of traffic generation and really learn how to do it correctly.

In my case I have become an expert on article marketing. Over the years I've included blogging in that advertising mix as well.

List building is an important part of online marketing, so you should focus on it. The primary advantage to this is you will get the name and email address of your website visitor so you can follow up with them in the future.

If you are not doing this you're just hoping people will come back your website. Chances are they will forget about who you are in a few minutes after they leave your site and begin surfing other sites online.