There are many ways of learning Internet Marketing. I’ll highlight some of the ways in this post, starting with free resources and moving on up in expense.
Blogs
There are a lot of blogs out there providing Internet Marketing tips. The main problem is finding information that’s reliable. One key is to try and determine if the person who wrote the blog knows more than you do. If so, there’s a chance you can learn some useful information from them.
Another key in evaluating a blog is, when they link to a product or service, does their blog post sound like the sales page for that product or service? If so, then they might be trying to simply earn some affiliate income. I don’t have a problem with clicking on an affiliate link in a blog, but I want the review of the product or service to be a review, not a sales pitch.
My current “must reads” are Self Made Minds and DoshDosh. Both are ahead of me in the Internet Marketing curve, but not so far ahead that I can’t learn from their posts.
For a newcomer to Internet Marketing, of course, the archives here at Online Opportunity have some good information.
One of the problems learning from blogs is that it’s a bit like learning how to play piano by reading about it. At some point you have to start practicing Internet Marketing to gain the skill and confidence you’ll need to succeed.
Forums
The main problem with learning from forums is that low cost of entry to post in a forum. Anyone can post and claim to be an expert, and many forums are plagued by spam bots. Strong moderation in a forum is key.
The Digital Point Forums are one of my favorite forums. I found the logo design company who created my logo there, and they have boards for nearly every topic related to Internet Marketing you can imagine. The moderators are firm, keeping the spam to nearly nothing. The Digital Point Forums also share Adsense revenue with its members. You won’t get rich this way, but it’s a nice way of acknowledging the people who contribute most.
Forum Know How is a new forum about Internet Marketing. Forum Know How’s attraction is that they have 8 heavy hitters in the field recruited as experts, including names such as Pat Lovell and Liz Tomey. They each provide advice on a different aspect of Internet Marketing. The forum is so new some of the boards don’t have posts in them yet, but the potential is nice. Forum Know How does charge for access (currently $10 a year), and has disabled in-forum registrations to keep spam bots out. Instead you register through the link above.
Wealthy Affiliate is another experts forum, run by Kyle and Carson. I’m not a member of this one, since it costs $29.99 a month. The tools and services offered sound impressive, though. They offer tools for doing Adwords market research, and a mentoring program where Kyle and/or Carson will examine your landing pages and Adwords ads to give you advice on how to improve them. I personally don’t consider Wealthy Affiliate a good investment unless you’re looking to become serious about doing Adwords campaigns, and want some help getting past the learning curve.
Ebooks
Most ebooks available are not really worth the money. There are some notable exceptions, such as Aaron Wall’s SEO Book, but many ebooks provide information that is freely available elsewhere and don’t really add value. Providing a free ebook is also an Internet Marketing technique in itself, so they’ll often provide enough information to get you interested and link you to their website for the rest (where you often have to pay for it).
I do ebook reviews in this blog primarily to help newcomers to the field avoid ebooks that will just drain their money without providing any added value.
Trial and Error
I list trial and error last, because I consider it to be the most expensive way of learning Internet Marketing.
You can certainly try techniques to see what works, but be careful about how much money you spend to try the techniques. In particular, an Adwords campaign can suck a lot of money out of you if you’re not careful (set a budget you can stand to lose). Other forms of traffic generation may cost money, and seem like a good deal, but not be effective.
Trial and error can be the most effective way of learning, but be careful to not spend much money in the process.
What are your favorite resources for Internet Marketing?