Teenagers in bedrooms around the world are making money online at this very moment in time. As you sit here reading this, a spotty youth has just had money drop into their inbox with a welcoming "bing bong".

It's easy to make money online. You just go along to somewhere like Clickbank, sign up for a few products and start selling them with a basic web site and pocket the cash. Almost no work - certainly nothing very creative - and you get money in your bank account. Sounds perfect doesn't it?

But it's all "smoke and mirrors". True, you can make quite reasonable amounts of money online relatively easily. The problem is, that for the youth who sees money in their inbox from a few Google AdWords campaigns and an affiliate link, they believe this is "marketing".

In fact, everywhere you look online these days there seems to be advice about "internet marketing". However, the definition of "marketing" appears to be very loose. Much of the advice centres around finding or creating a product - usually an ebook - then setting up a "sales page" style web site and seeing the money "roll in" after an optimized Google AdWords campaign.

Indeed, to many so-called "Internet Marketers" this is the essence of their business. But as any venture capitalist will tell you it is not a sustainable business. So "Internet Marketers" end up being like inept market traders, rushing from fad to fad, shouting out "roll up, roll up" and moving on to the next craze in order to make a quick buck.

Serious money is made online, but the top - real - Internet marketers, treat what they do as a business, with plans, marketing campaigns and the usual mix of communications vehicles that help them achieve strategically set targets. The gurus of Internet marketing - and there are only a handful of them - are serious business people with staff, meetings, plans, and so on. The rest of the world of Internet marketing is living in something of a dream world.

The problem is that Google has actually made it so easy for people to make money online that many individuals now think that all you have to do is have some relatively weak product, a good advert and a means of collecting cash. That's not business - it's luck.

Labels: internet marketing

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At November 06, 2007 10:12 AM  Sam said…

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