How NOT to Do Internet Marketing

Are you a newbie of the internet marketing world? If so, you need to be careful because there are a lot of mistakes you can make with your online marketing efforts from the start without even knowing you are doing anything wrong. There’s a ton of misinformation out there that you need to avoid. And when you are learning how to make money online there are several things that you really don’t want to do. Here are some of them…

1) Getting Traffic from Just One Source

Relying on just one web traffic source is a great way to put yourself on the fast track to total failure! What happens if that source goes away, or changes are made to it that kill your traffic? You are screwed! Not to mention the fact that one source can only give you so much traffic. If you want to maximize your website traffic, you need to use a combination of marketing strategies. Diversifying traffic sources is what smart internet marketers do.

It’s best to use a lot of different techniques so you can bring traffic to your site from all angles, and if one goes away it won’t impact your income very much. You can use article syndication, video marketing, content marketing, SEO, forums, blogs, social media, pay per click, paid advertising, press releases, and so much more. There’s no reason to rely on just one source.

2) Spamming Forums and/or Blog Comments

This is a huge example of what NOT to do in the world of internet marketing. Never do it! I know it’s tempting, especially when there are so many automated tools that will do it for you. But it’s just not worth it.

The only thing that you want to do on the forums or blog comments is be truly helpful and leave legitimate information. Ask questions, give answers, engage in discussion, and so on. They are not for dropping your ads or links in the hopes of gaining something from it.

It does you no good because your marketing message will be ignored and you will likely get banned, and it does the other members or readers no good because they don’t get anything useful from your spamming message. Don’t spam forums, comments, email, or anything else. It’s not going to get you far.

3) Not Tracking PPC Campaigns

If you are doing pay per click (PPC) marketing and are wondering why you aren’t getting the sales that you should be, then it could very well be that you aren’t tracking your campaigns. You need to know which keywords are performing and which ones aren’t. You need to tweak ads. You need to know how much to bid on certain keywords and how much to spend total each day. You need to know how many click you are getting and what percentage of those are converting into sales.

There are a lot of things you need to know and it all comes down to tracking. Quickly throwing up an ad with a bunch of keywords and letting it go is a big beginner mistake. Most things you do with online marketing will require tracking, but it is vitally important with PPC campaigns.

4) Trying to Exploit Social Media

Creating a zillion twitter and facebook accounts then building up a crap load of fake followers, and using them to blast out your messages/links to anyone and everyone is NOT the way to do social media marketing. Abusing the system might work for a while but in the long run it’s not going to get you far. As an internet marketer, you should be trying to get a loyal following and repeat customers. You will never get that if you try taking the easy route of simply flooding social sites with your affiliate links.

5) SEO on the Dark Side

Are you using link wheels, paid link services, link farms, xrumer, senuke, or other automated tools to build backlinks? If so, you are going to get penalized or all out deindexed at some point. Yes, black hat SEO techniques do sometimes work for a while, but eventually you will get caught, and it will come back to bite you. That is a huge thing to NOT do if you want to succeed at internet marketing into the future.

Alright, those are some ways for how NOT to do internet marketing. Don’t make these mistakes with your home business. Instead, do it right from the start and keep yourself out of trouble later. Diversify your online marketing efforts and avoid the temptation to take the easy route. It might suck at first but you will be thanking me later!