It is true that the world of Internet marketing seems daunting to most people. Not helping the fact is the steady development of this genre, where a lot of new techniques are being introduced with each passing day. Things do seem to be difficult on the face of it, marketers do seem to be doing a lot of technical things all the time… but if you scratch the surface, the truth of it becomes quite clear.
If every age in history could be called by the greatest invention of that time, this would definitely be called the Age of the Internet. The Internet has proliferated each and every aspect of our being, and indeed, it has given a whole new dimension to the way we live on the planet.
Today, for each and every thing, whether it is just about buying a toothbrush to spreading global awareness about the growing hole in the ozone layer, people are using the Internet as their medium. And, the Internet has proved to be an unrelenting medium, unfalteringly providing people what they are looking for.
Of all these different purposes that the Internet world serves, there is one very important trend that has caught on of late. This is the trend of selling and buying things over the Internet. A whole parallel world has spawned up here, a world of online entrepreneurs, who are making money out of selling things over the Internet. The money that is transacted here is immense. That is obvious.
With such a huge population in the online world, it is understandable that the businesses here are huge. Below are some facts and figures of internet users as at June ending 2015.
Understanding What Internet Marketing Really Means
Internet marketing is the umbrella term used for a collection of ways in which products and services are sold over the Internet. It is also known variably as online marketing and web marketing, and sometimes as digital marketing.
To put it as a definition…
“Internet marketing is the art of advertising and marketing goods and services through the Internet.”
This is normally done through the use of placing advertisements on websites that are on the Internet. These websites will vary according to the goods and services that they are offering. Therefore, adverts are placed according to the sites that have similar content.
Internet marketing started off when people realized that there was a lot of marketing potential on the Internet. This being the case, people had to advertise their goods and services on the Internet to get a larger amount of clientele. Most of the individuals and companies that started Internet marketing were those that were targeting international clientele. Advertising using print and electronic media in every country had proved to be cumbersome. It also proved to be a difficult task. Nevertheless, with the introduction of the Internet, a solution was seen to be possible.
The Internet marketing world has blossomed in the last decades of the 20th Century. It is a relatively new world, but more and more people are getting warmed up to the concept in recent times.
Now, there are different ways in which money can be made over the Internet. All of these techniques could be combined under the collective definition of Internet marketing. The definition also expands to include all the different models in which the businesses are carried out. Taking that into account, there are different types of Internet marketing models.
The following are some of the common ways in which Internet marketing is carried out in today’s times.
Via Ecommerce
Ecommerce is a method in which products and services are sold to the consumer directly, without employing any intermediary agency. Hence, if you are buying something through an online website directly, then you are using an ecommerce website. Generally, ecommerce websites have a typical layout. They will most definitely have a catalogue of the products on their website, with detailed descriptions of all these products. Next, they will have a shopping cart. You can select the products and they enter the shopping cart. The shopping cart feature is generally used when there is more than one product on the website. When you are checking out, you are prompted to pay for your purchases through a variety of methods.
All ecommerce websites have their own membership options. You will have to make an account on these websites to access them and then use your login information to sign in whenever you want to make a purchase through these websites.
Right now, ecommerce websites are quite cautious about their security requirements, especially for their customers. This is because monetary transactions are done directly through the website. Hence, they need to provide methods such as SSL encryption, which keeps the online identity of their customers safe.
There are some other variations of ecommerce websites. If a website sells products to another business, which will likely sell it forward, then too it is called as an ecommerce website. Similarly, some ecommerce websites will allow their customers to sell products for a marginally higher amount to other customers, thus making a profit in the commissions they can earn.
Via Affiliate Marketing
Strictly speaking, affiliate marketing is not directly selling of any goods or services. All an affiliate marketer does is to promote a particular link on their website, blog or another similar place that they own on the Internet, and earn through the clicks that they are able to get from visitors.
The people whom they are promoting are called as the advertisers, while the affiliate marketers themselves are called as the hosts. The advertisers will usually pay the hosts a proportion of the sales that they get from them (known as the Pay Per Sale model) or a direct commission based on the number of clicks that they obtain (known as the Pay Per Click model). The latter is the more popular method of the two.