I am a self-diagnosed "Internet Marketing Junkie"!

That being said, there is a tremendous amount of "hype" and just plain "you-know-what!" on the Internet. It is very difficult to decipher what will really work and what won't.

In fact, it is darn near impossible if you have no experience with online marketing and sometimes, even if you do!

I decided to start this lens to show some of the tools that I use that work. I will be adding more as "stuff" comes across my desk. I am mostly full-time on the Internet and I get a lot of junk coming my way. Occasionally there is a "gem" in the midst of the junk!

Over the last seven or so years I have learned the basic elements that must be present to be successful. The basics haven't changed but some of the methods have! This is what makes the Internet so exciting and challenging... it is always changing!

Recently, I decided to explore some of the new tools that are out there and not widely known as marketing tools. Most of these don't cost a bunch of money and, therefore, anybody can get started using them.

I have found a couple of new resources that I am learning from and I am excited about the preliminary results! Anybody can use these tools!

Visit my "Marketing Strategies, Tools and Techniques " site (in the link section below) to see what I am using...

This is not to imply that you are DUMB! However, when you first start investigating internet marketing, it might feel like it. Once you open up the floodgates by requesting information, the amount of "stuff" bombarding you can be overwhelming and confusing. Rest assured, there is a way to emerge with valuable training and a plan of action. Having a reliable guide through the mess is definitely helpful. But the first step is definition...

What Internet Marketing is

Internet marketing is the business of both advertising and selling goods and services over the internet. This form of business is ever-increasing in popularity, with millions of people now making purchases on the internet. Internet marketing began in the early 1990s as primarily a means of product description, consisting merely of text descriptions. As technology progressed, internet marketing rapidly advanced to include pictures and other rich graphics as part of advertisements for products and services. After realizing the remarkable potential of this means of marketing, internet-based companies started opening their virtual doors for business. As opposed to what are now known as "brick and mortar" operations, these e-businesses offer their products and services to a growing number of consumers, conducting all, or nearly all, of their business in the virtual world of the internet.

There are many forms of marketing on the internet. Among them are article marketing, blog marketing, e-mail marketing, search engine marketing (to include search engine optimization), banner ads, pay-per-click ads, and pop-up ads, and more. In fact, the internet is constantly changing and new methods emerge all the time. It is important to note that each of these forms catches the attention of the target market in different ways, and some may be more effective than others depending on the product or service, the target market, and the strategy and goal of the business marketing itself.

This is where I come in. Since the internet is constantly changing, the methods of marketing that work are as well. New possibilities come on the scene all the time. It is important to stay in contact with someone who has an inside track to new methods.

In this lens I will be reviewing new products and tools as they come into the mainstream. In fact, you are experiencing one right here with Squidoo.

For additional information and to keep in touch check out my blog.. PlugIn4Profit Blog

Regardless of how you have come to this page, you are currently witnessing the phenomenon called Squidoo. Squidoo was invented by a master marketer, author, and entrepreneur by the name of Seth Godin. It's primary purpose is to act as a central place for information... information of any type, by anyone for free.

Squidoo allows the average person to create their own "lens" about a topic that they are interested in. There is a build process provided that makes it easy for anyone to create a "lens" or site of their own. Although "easy" is sometimes misleading on the computer, in this case, it really is easy to create your site. You have complete control over the content that is included and it is immediately formatted into a site like you see here. You also have the option of including additional modules such as a guest book, Ebay info, Amazon and many more.

As it gains popularity with the internet marketing crowd, Squidoo is starting to appear in the marketing blogs, newsletters, ezines, ebooks, etc. There are many places that provide information about how to use Squidoo to create growth for your business. You can use it with any business niche or to just gain attention for your hobby ...globally. Because anyone can join, your audience is virtually limitless!

Recently I came across a website created by "Bob the Teacher" called Squidoo Secrets. This is a membership site that you can join for free and obtain some immediate information on how to use Squidoo. You also have the option of joining at a couple of higher levels to discover how to hurry up the process of integrating Squidoo into your overall marketing plan.

I really like the information provided by Bob through Squidoo Secrets and highly recommend everyone take a look at what he has to offer. It has certainly helped me to get started with Squidoo! At the very least, sign on as a free apprentice member and start using Squidoo right away. It is not only a powerful but also a fun tool for communicating your message to the world.

Blogging is definitely a way to communicate with your prospects and clients and to create a relationship with them. You might be thinking that autoresponders do that as well. You would be right...at least partially.

However, autoresponders are preloaded and generally are followups to a request for more information about a particular topic. Blogs, on the other hand, allow you to communicate on a number of topics business and otherwise. Blog entries allow you to include images and it's much easier to communicate on them because you don't have to worry about spam complaints or ISP filters.

WordPress is the best platform for business because it allows you to create your blog either on the WordPress site or on your own domain. Your own domain is preferable because it gives you much more freedom and still allows you to utilize all of the WordPress plugins.

I recently purchased this ebook about how to set up your WordPress blog. It breaks down the steps so that anyone can follow and get started blogging in a minimum amount of time. It even covers how to get traffic to your blog after you start blogging.

I would like to provide this as a free gift for visiting my Squidoo lens. You can download it at WordPress Guru. All I ask is that if you would like to get the rights to give this away or sell it, please send me an email so I can give you the resell license link (the one in the book is not correct).

I hope you enjoy this resource and get started on your own blog right away.

If you would like to promote products in different niches, articles are a great way to do that and to get great Search Engine positioning very quickly.

Although there are a multitude of article sites, if you are going to publish them you will either have to start with your own work, public domain information reworked or private label information reworked. Recently, one of the owners of a PLR site I belong to started a daily download of 5 fresh PLR articles that you can use as source material for a website or for publishing in article directories. These are purposely rough so that nobody will use them directly.

All you need to do to get a daily download of these articles is to go to PLR Articles Daily and sign up. It's free and you will receive an email with the download link in it daily.

Enjoy your articles!