Online marketing is great business.

You probably already know that , otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this blog post.

It’s a great business for a number of reasons:

There are no huge barriers to entry.

The entire world is your potential customer.

There’s a great variety of business models and ways to create income.

You are not tied down to any geographical location.

Unlimited income potential.

Outsource for skills you don’t possess

There are no huge barriers to entry

If you want to be fully operational in online marketing, you don’t need to invest huge sums of money.

At a minimum, all you’ll need is a computer and an internet connection to get started.

As your business grows you’ll need other tools such as web hosting, a page builder, and an autoresponder (more on those later), but you don’t need them to start.

Compare this to buying a franchise for a fast food restaurant. You would need funds for the franchise fee, furniture and equipment, a lease and employees—all before you could even open the doors and earn your first cent!

The entire world is your potential customer

If you’re operating a retail business or a professional practice, chances are that your customers are all located within a narrow geographical location close to you.

Nobody is located far away.

Let’s face it—no one is going to drive twenty miles out of their way to buy a hamburger.

But, with online marketing everybody is your potential customer, whether they’re around the corner or around the world.

The only thing needed to reach them with your offer is an internet connection—and you’re in business.

There’s a great variety of business models and ways to create income

You have a ton of choices with online marketing.

You can promote digital products or physical products. They can be products you created yourself or they can be someone else’s products that you promote as an affiliate.

You can also promote services. Are you an expert at search engine optimization or graphic design? These services are always in demand and they can be digitally delivered.

How about coaching? Folks are always looking for competent coaches and are willing to pay well for them.

You can pick one path for your business or even several if you so chose. For example, you can develop your own product for a specific niche and also promote related products as an affiliate.

You can create as many different businesses as you choose. There are marketers who have developed lucrative businesses in several unrelated niches.

You are not tied down to any geographical location

Online marketing is the perfect lifestyle choice for someone who likes to travel or to experience new places and cultures.

Your business is located wherever you and your computer are located. It makes no difference where in the world you are as long as you have your computer and an internet connection.

Compare that to going every day to the same location to run your business and worrying about it constantly when you’re not there.

It’s impossible to enjoy a family vacation when you’re constantly on the phone checking on your business.

Unlimited income potential

Online marketers can earn millions of dollars—even from their kitchen tables.

Since online marketers have such a huge a potential audience (worldwide, in fact), their earning ability is unlimited.

You can develop a sizeable clientele in one niche and create and promote many products in that niche or you can branch into as many different niches as you desire—the choice is yours to make.

And, each niche has the potential to be lucrative.

Online marketers are even making money promoting products on how to build chicken coops!

There’s a ready market for any product or service. You’re only limited by your imagination and creativity.

Outsource for skills you don’t possess

In the online marketing industry you can easily find experts to whom you can send work for things you don’t want or know how to do.

There are experts, literally, all over the world who possess technical skills and will provide them relatively cheaply.

Even an individual who possesses no technical skills can be a successful online marketer. For every skill you can imagine, there are qualified experts available to perform them for you.

There are websites devoted entirely to provide these experts.

For example, on fiverr.com you can find experts in hundreds of fields who will perform professional services at a nominal cost (currently $5.00 plus a $1.00 processing charge).

A quick computer search will turn up experts in website design, graphics and content creation. All you really need to get started.

You can be in business in a week with a fully functioning authority website; all at a very reasonable cost.

You can also find “private label rights” products on any topic. This is content created by someone else that you can use. Depending on the license, you may even be able to revise the content and claim authorship.

Not only can this provide content for your website, but it can even provide a product that you can sell.

Okay, so now you know why I believe online marketing is one of the best business models available today.

Once you’ve decided this is the business for you, what do you do next?

This is a much bigger problem than you might think.

Do you know that 96% of online marketers earn less than $1,000 a month? Do you know that 88% of them earn no more than $100 per month?

So, what’s the problem?

I believe the number one problem for online marketers is overwhelm.

We are bombarded daily in our email inboxes. Each email is promoting a different new product that’s supposed to be the greatest innovation for online marketers.

This sets our heads spinning in many directions at once. So many marketers suffer from the “shiny object syndrome” which causes us to lose our focus.

When you’re going in numerous directions at once and the “promised” results are not happening, you get frustrated fast.

The Solution

I believe the solution lies in getting back to the basics. Focus on simplicity and revenue producing tasks.

These basics are the things that have always worked successfully in online marketing. And, none of them require us to pursue the “latest greatest innovation” in internet marketing.

First, there are some basic tools needed to properly run your business.

Hosting

You will need hosting for your websites. Web hosting is defined as “A service provider that provides the technologies and services needed for the website or webpage to be viewed in the internet. Websites are hosted, or stored, on special computers called servers”.

If you plan on having an online business, you must have a website and you must have hosting.

Hosting plans are very inexpensive; you can have web hosting for as little as ten dollars ($10.00) a month.

The web host I highly recommend is Bluehost.

Websites remain online and their support is excellent.

A Page Builder

I’m sure that you’ve heard “the money is in the list” and it really is.

You cannot overemphasize the importance to your business of building an email list. Your list can be grown as an income source and, over time, can become your business’ most valuable asset.

Regardless of any changes in Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc., you’ll always have your list.

To properly grow your list you’ll need two tools: a page builder and an autoresponder.

You use the page builder to create the various pages you’ll need for your business. These include lead capture pages, thank you pages, and sales funnels, just to name a few.

Your lead capture page is critical to your email list building because that is where your visitors can enter their email addresses that will put them on your list.

Your lead capture page will usually contain a strong marketing message with an offer and a place for them to provide their email address.

The page builder which I recommend is Click Funnels.

The software can be used to build virtually any page your business will ever need.

It’s very flexible and comes with excellent training. It’s very popular and used by many of the most successful internet marketers.

Autoresponder

The autoresponder is the system which keeps track of your email subscribers and sends emails to your list. As individuals are added to your list, the autoresponder will begin to drip feed them your pre-written messages on a regularly scheduled basis.

You would write the email only once and it will be seen automatically by everyone on your list as they are added.

Autoresponders also have a feature which allows you to send broadcast messages to your list when you have relevant information which must be delivered immediately.

The autoresponder I recommend and use myself is Aweber

It has all the email functions necessary for your business and it’s very easy to use.

A Tracking System

A tracking system will measure the success of your promotional campaigns and will let you know which promotions are working the best.

The system should very simply measure the effectiveness of your promotional efforts. You must be able to measure in order to make the proper decisions for your business.

You need to know which promotions are yielding the best results, which promotions should be optimized and which promotions should be completely abandoned.

A tracking system will efficiently provide you all this information in a timely fashion.

The tracking system I unequivocally recommend is Click Magick.

It has a ton of features, an entire library of tutorials and it’s simple to use—even for a “non-techie”.

Once all your tools are in place, you need a system for your business.

I’m a strong believer in step-by-step, over the shoulder training systems.

Show me what to do, why I should do it and how to do it. I really don’t need all the fluff about how great a particular product is and how it will revolutionize my business.

The most important thing about a system is that it will finally let you completely focus on your business without any distractions.

Your system should tell you exactly what steps to take and in what order to take them.

It eliminates all the guesswork. It also eliminates the “shiny object syndrome” because you already know, step-by-step what you have to do and when you have to do it.

I have been using exactly such a system. It comes complete with over the shoulder training that leaves nothing to chance.

It even contains step-by-step guidance on how to reach $100,000 in income within 90 days.

It also has an entire portfolio of affiliate relationships that you can tap into. Best of all, the system does all the “selling and telling” for you,so you don’t have to do it yourself.

To learn more about this program CLICK HERE.