Why Internet Marketing?

Not everyone is obsessed with internet marketing. Just visit the offline marketing board here and you'll see many people who are happily selling offline and wouldn't have it any other way. However, some people are just really good at internet marketing. There are lots of ways to be involved and earn money, even if your product is offline.

Think about the crafts person who is selling a a work of art online via Etsy. Or, the guy who repairs and restores computers and then ships out to customers on eBay. These people are combining the best of the offline and online world, with a tangible offline product sold to customers they would not have been able to reach otherwise (such as in real life).

Being an Online Marketing forum, it stands to reason that most people's main area of knowledge and expertise in marketing in the digital world.

However, I've personally worked with a lot of people from here who also do offline marketing and I've seen lots of WSO's selling offline marketing methods do extremely well, so I think a lot of people are aware of and dabble in it.

I disagree though that Online Marketing is primarily suited to sell lower priced items. I've seen companies sell 4 and 5 figure bootcamps, seminars, private coaching and much more using the Internet as their primary marketing medium. And I'm not just talking about in the make money online niche either.

I'd suggest that people should consider broadening their knowledge on all areas of marketing and test what works best for their business.

Online gives you more options and a larger reach to markets around the world for the small business. The costs are much lower than what offline businesses would have.

It also allows you to highly target an audience than some of the other offline resources provide. This could mean that the cost of getting an offline customer is more than an online customer.

Many offline businesses have a much higher overhead that has to be met before a profit can be realized. Plus more and more people are using the online market place every day.

The Internet marketing niche teaches many different ways to market online so learning Internet marketing allows people to move more easily into other niches.

The growth of online marketing is expanding so quickly that most offline companies are trying to get into the online format. Some are not being that successful because some things are different than marketing offline.

The offline forum is a good indication of the problems and the need to move to online marketing.

Best regards,
Steve

The majority of my working life was spent marketing goods & services offline, exclusively. In my experience it was time consuming, physically & mentally exhausting, and financially expensive to maintain.

Personally, I see the internet as a massive marketing platform that anyone willing to endure the learning curve can benefit from, and this is not to exclude offline business owners who have goods and services to offer in the physical sense, either - for they too can expand their reach and expand beyond the traditional revenues generated through only providing goods and services to localized markets/consumers.

Instead, the 'addiction' if you will (for me personally) is in exploiting my writing passions, and reaching those whom my 'words' may inspire, encourage, or assist in guiding them to find that which they are seeking... to enhance ones quality of life, and do so virtually - for pennies on the dollar.

I won't say, I'll never invest in another offline business, but at the moment - I see no reason to enslave myself to the physical demand, mental stress, time restrictions, and financial outpouring of 1,000's of dollars just to see a menial return on the grueling aforementioned investments (i.e. time, money, physical presence, and mental wherewithal.)

The internet and IM to me is a vehicle to which can only be limited by ones own imagination, and has the ability to provide limitless potential... so long as we have the continuity to connect to it, and stream fresh ideas through it!

I guess ... why not IM.. it's the future, even the big boys are focusing on it, moreso than traditional marketing, but it doesn't mean I don't do offline as well, but my main focus is online marketing.

I got into internet marketing by accident. First I found an avenue of actually making money off of my writing, and then started copying the people who were at least making enough to keep buying my work.

There are a few aspects of IM that really appeal to me, and that keep me at it. I'm sure a lot of people here can relate.

1. Passive income is awesome. Who wouldn't love getting paid when they're not actively working? I won't lie, I'm a huge slacker. Forty hour work weeks for months or years at a time are super depressing to me. I'd rather hustle when I want and have a lot of free time to do whatever I want.
2. The better I do, the more money I make. I've mostly had unskilled desk jobs, where it really doesn't matter how efficient I am, but there's a direct correlation in IM to my skill at doing it and the amount of paper I stack.
3. I can work anywhere. I can stay home, or go out of town for months at a time. As long as I have phone coverage, I have internet and I can do things that help me make money.
4. I get paid to write. I've known so many people over the years who've wanted to be writers, and I always just thought it was one of those out-of-reach things, but now I'm getting paid to do something I enjoy and that I've always been good at. (Although, to be fair, I now mostly write about things I have no interest in.)
5. I've always been an internet nerd, anyway. I was writing blogs before they had a name. I've probably been online over 9,000 hours already, I may as well make some money while I'm at.

I'm sure there's more, that's just off the top of my head. And yeah, obviously everyone on an IM forum is all about IM. I don't have anything against offline marketing, it's just I happened to stumble into this and it's working, so that's where my focus is right now.

I see two reasons IM is as popular as it is.
1. Low barrier of entry. IM doesn't require the huge monetary investments that offline businesses have to come up with.
2. Nearly unlimited market. With IM, your market reach doesn't face the geographical limits offline businesses face. Niches can be targeted online that would never be profitable offline because you would never find a critical mass of potential customers in any one local area.

Well I am also very into offline marketing because I have a real world cover band.

However, even with the cover band Facebook is the main way we get the word out about our shows and email is how we book gigs.

So I believe even with offline businesses you need online tools to have leverage.