Internet marketing is exciting, challenging, and confusing.>

It can make or break your Internet business career and yet many people who depend on Internet Marketing don’t have a full grasp of the essentials involved in Internet Marketing.

In fact, many Internet entrepreneurs waste a great deal of time, energy, and momentum because they do not fully understand Internet marketing. Don’t let this lack of understanding undermine your income potential.

To know Internet Marketing is to love Internet Marketing

In order for you to better understand Internet Marketing and its impact on your Internet business you must know the answers to these three key questions:

1. What Is Internet Marketing?
2. What Is The Cost Of Internet Marketing?
3. What Is The Benefit of Internet Marketing?

So, over the next few days, I’ll discuss these questions in a bit of detail. And begin with the first:

What Is Internet Marketing?

Once you get the hang of it, marketing is actually rather simple. It’s really about communication about an idea, product, service, or organization. This means marketing encompasses advertising, promotion and sales, as well as the various techniques and forms of communication used to advertise, promote and sell anything else.

Marketing, though, is broader than simple advertising or promotion in that it includes researching the market to learn what consumers want and then just making it a point to meet their needs with the appropriate product, price, and best distribution method that meets yours.

Marketing includes market research, deciding on products and prices, advertising promoting distributing and selling.

With marketing, you also cover all the activities involved in moving products and services from the source to the end user including making customers aware of products and services, attracting new customers to a product or service, keeping existing customers interested in a product or service, and building and maintaining a customer base for a product or service.

Internet marketing includes these same activities, but also draws in various Internet tools such as web sites, email, ezines, banner advertising, blogging, RSS, text links, search engine optimization, affiliates, autoresponders, and other ecommerce applications.

And just about anything else you can think of!

Do take a few minutes to come by tomorrow for the “rest of the story” because we’ll take a look at: the Cost Of Internet Marketing.

James Derk, Scripps-Howard News Service computer columnist, recently wrote about a “security gap” issue with Windows XP.

Rather than try to paraphrase Derk’s article, which was published in our local newspaper, the Globe-Gazette and risk losing the emphasis, I’m posting the article in its entirety. Except for the link to the Microsoft Support Web site. Mr. Derk used a “tiny url” link. Instead, I have included the whole link.

The article is as follows:

“Microsoft has taken the unusual step of releasing information on a security hole in Windows XP that it hasn’t fixed yet, so I am using my space to help secure your computer.

First things first. Microsoft has acknowledged that a gaping hole in Windows can allow a malicious user to take over your PC All you need to do is visit a hacked Web site using Internet Explorer to allow this to happen.

While MS works on a patch, the company recommends interim steps to ward off hackers. You can get the fix for this very serious exploitation at Microsoft Support.

I strongly recommend applying this fix to every Windows XP machine you have as soon as possible.

I strongly urge you to take a few other steps.

First, copy the contents of your “My Documents” folder to another hard drive. (I assume you have a flash drive, an external drive or even a DVD burner. Just do something to protect your data.)

Second. Go the “Start” menu and run “Windows update.” Let it run and install all of the “critical” updates. Your machine may have to reboot a few times. Microsoft may ask you to install Internet Explorer8; if you have a home computer with 1GB of RAM or more, go ahead; on a business computer I would not install it until told to by your IT department.

Finally, I assume you’ve installed an anti-virus product. If so, run a full scan. (Most products are set to run” quick” scan as to not annoy you.) If you do not have a product, go to free Avg.com and install the fee version of AVG.

The bottom line; you must run an anti-virus product if you run Windows. As the saying goes, when you go online you’re interfacing with every computer that computer has ever interfaced with. And you can’t do that without protection.

James Derk owns CyberDads, a computer repair firm. Email him at Jim@cyberdads.com”

If you stopped in here yesterday/Thursday, you saw the beginning of our tips on “How Blogging Can Boost Your Business”.. Rather than put “all our eggs in one basket”, so to speak, we decided to break up the points and give you a few hints yesterday. We’d then come back today with the rest.

So, here we are and here you go…

He Said, She Said

Testimonies! You might even think about having someone blog for you for pay. You can offer them products to try and give them the task of finding blogs where they can appropriately “praise” your products. By paying these people to do the task, you will be getting the work done that you need without you having to take time from your schedule. And, your “Consumer testimonials” will go a long way with other potential consumers. Further, if these bloggers are productive enough, you will see an increase because of it.

It’s Who You Know

Just watch Twitter and Facebook! Building relationships is extremely important to building a business, and smart business owners know they can go further with the help of others.

A great way to connect and build relationships with other businesses is via their blog. If you are a regular poster who values their business, they will be more likely to work with you. Working together with advertising is a great idea. You can even swap ad space for no fee if you like.

These are great ideas for business owners and are easy to get into when you blog regularly.

As you can see, blogging can be a great way to do business. It may seem like tricky advertising, and in some ways it is. However, it is free advertising that does the same thing as a commercial on television does.

It reaches a targeted marketing group and lets them know your company’s name, products, and perhaps sometimes offers an endorsement. Overall, it is an effective way to get your business out there. Especially, when people have no idea who you are; they are less inclined to be comfortable working with you. So, the better your reputation is, the more likely they will trust you. It’s that “know, like and trust”.

When you have no reputation at all, they will not trust you either. So, even if you just want to use blogging to build your company’s reputation, getting involved with blogging will be worth your while.

Try it, you might like it!

Give it a try. See what type of results you can get using these and yesterday’s tips. It these don’t work, you can always go back to the drawing board.

Building your business can be a difficult task.

Your probably already know that you can put hundreds of hours of effort into the business. You also know that if you still don’t have important components you will not be successful.

Today, more and more business owners are realizing that blogging boosts business. Although many still see blogs as personal places to express yourself and your views.

The fact is, however, blogs are also great places to reach key people with information about your business or your products.

There are several ways to do this type of blogging, so we’ll take the next couple days to look at some of these options.

The best way a business can use blogging to boost their business is by taking part in the blogs of others.

You can easily create quality posts with your business in mind and without the need to set up a blog of your own. Search for blogs that pertain to your area of business or your area of expertise.

This will help you get started.

With millions of blogs out there, you should be able to find some with no problem.

Choose to post on all of them, or choose the few that get the most activity. Then begin posting. When you do, you will see positive results come in. If you are still curious about how this can boost your business, check out the following reasons blogging boosts business.

Quick Name Recognition

The fastest way to get your business’s name out in the public is to get the word to your targeted marketing group. For instance, if you want to men who like fishing to know about your company, find a blog that is just about fishing.

When you find the blogs pertaining to this marketing group, post useful and intelligent information about topics that pertain to your company.

Although, you might not want to sound like an advertisement.

Think about responding to another comment and then simply tag your signature with your company’s Web site. This is a subtle way to get their attention.

You will find that the more you post on blogs, the more widely known your company’s name will become with the select marketing group. And when they tell their friends and family about the site, your consumer group will have grown even more.

This is a fast way to get started.

You will have to invest some time, however. At least an hour a day can be used for this type of task.

But in the long run, the rewards will be many!

Tomorrow, I’ll post two more tips to help you boost your business through blogging!

See you then!

Last week I posted that I was working on an ebook to help the “beginner” who wants to start an online business.

It’s finished now, so I’m making the link live. You can get in line right now for your copy.

Read all about it here. You’ll also be able to access the “Get it now” button from there.

And if you have questions, be sure to contact us.