When you hear the term “Internet Marketing Strategy” the first thing that comes to mind is probably something like Niche Blogging or Affiliate Marketing or Adsense Sites. But those aren't marketing strategies – those are marketing methods. To define the difference between the two, compare it to a General trying to overtake a hill in enemy territory. The method he's going to use to gain that piece of ground is to burn down all the trees and flush the enemy out into the open so he can capture them and claim the hill. His strategy though is his plan for how he's going to sneak his own men onto the hill so they can set the fire. Without a good strategy in place, his method of attack will fail.

 

You need a good, solid plan of attack if you expect to succeed at the Internet Marketing Method you've chosen to pursue. You may have decided you want to set up Adsense websites and that's a perfectly legitimate marketing method. Your method of Internet Marketing then is to set up websites with strict adherence to all SEO procedures, with special attention to keywords. But you can have the tightest Adsense website on the internet and not see a penny for your efforts. You need to have a marketing strategy in place to support your efforts.

 

Now I'm sure you're aware of several different strategies for getting traffic to your site – pay-per-click advertising, article marketing, social bookmarking, social networking, backlinking, blog commenting, and the list goes on and on. However, there are two fundamental facets of every good marketing strategy that most Internet Marketers tend to overlook. Money and discipline.

 

How Much Money Do You Need To Make Every Day?

 

When you get down to the bare bones of any marketing strategy, regardless of what you're marketing or how you're marketing it, the very first thing at the top of your list should always be the word “Money”. After all, that's why you're in this business. Your goal with any campaign should be defined in dollars – not traffic. If you want to achieve any goal you have to keep it clearly in sight and too often we forget that our goal here is to make money. And if you have a specific dollar amount in mind you'll be more focused on achieving that goal.

 

If you've quit your job and you're working full-time online maybe you've forgotten what payday was like. You knew exactly how much money you needed, every week, to meet your financial obligations. And you worked to achieve that goal every week. If that specific dollar amount wasn't in your paycheck, then you knew you were going to have to work extra hours the following week, or maybe even find a higher paying job. But you had that dollar amount set in your mind and you worked every week to achieve it.

 

Think of what you could accomplish if you were to apply that same concentration and focus to your online business. Let's say that in reality your household budget requires that you make £500 per week. Some weeks you've made £300 and some you've made £700...and more often than not, you've made no money at all. Yet day after day you sit down at your computer and keep doing the same thing you've been doing for the past few months. Or worse yet, you do nothing at all. Yet every day you hope that £500 will magically appear in your Paypal account and if it does you go merrily on your way. But if it doesn't, what do you do next?

 

What you need to do is start every day with £500 in the front of your mind. Then analyze your business to see what's been successful and what hasn't. Look at each of your websites and see where the money is coming from. Determine exactly how many widgets do you need to sell this week to put £500 in your pocket. And then determine exactly how you're going to sell that many widgets.

 

One thing you'll learn from this exercise is whether or not your expectations are realistic. If you've never sold more than 10 widgets in any given week but you need to sell 100 in order to get your £500 then you know you're either selling the wrong product, you need to do something to increase your sales, or you need to add more products.

 

Are You Taking Care Of Those Tedious Tasks Or Are You Putting Them Off Until Tomorrow?

 

Starting to work each morning with a specific financial goal in mind takes a little discipline which is something else that a lot of Internet Marketers are lacking in their strategy. You may have the best plan in the world for success but if you don't have the discipline to see it through to the end you'll never achieve all of your goals. Seeing you plans through to the end means disciplining yourself to complete those tedious tasks like writing articles and bookmarking your blog posts that you tend to put off til tomorrow. Eventually, tomorrow never comes, even though you know that those tedious little tasks will help improve your business.

 

If you're having problems focusing on your goals and disciplining yourself to take care of all those little chores you need to do in order to be successful, don't worry, you're not alone. It happens to the best of us. Most internet marketers have never had experience running a business before they started working online. You start out with the best intentions but then you get so caught up in learning all the technical things you need to learn that good business practices soon fall by the wayside.

 

Researchers have shown that it only takes 21 days of repetition to develop for something to become an habit. Try adding one new tedious little task back into your daily list of things to do every 3 weeks and soon you'll have developed an entire list of healthy business habits. And, as you start repeating these chores on a regular basis they'll also become easier to do. 

 

Develop A New Habit

 

I've found a neat little contest online to help you with your first new habit. The folks at Ezine Articles are getting ready to start their 4^th Hundred Articles In A Hundred Days Challenge. To participate, all you need to do is get a free account at Ezine. Once you've logged onto your account, over in the left sidebar you'll see a link for the 4^th HAHD Challenge. Just click that link and register to participate.

 

Then, beginning on May 1, all you have to do is submit one article to Ezine every day for 100 days. In order to quality, your articles have to be accepted for publication. And Ezine has some guidelines that they you have to follow before they'll publish your articles. For example:

 

·         Your articles must be unique and not published anywhere else on the internet.

·         Your articles must be in your own words and not copied from somewhere else on the web.

·         The best suggested length is a minimum of 450 words.

·         Your articles may not be promotional.

·         Your articles must be informative.

·         You may include one non-promotional link in the body of the article.

·         You may include 2 promotional links to your website in the resource box.

·         The author name and the name in the resource box must be the same.

 

Now if the idea of writing 450 or 500 words a day seems a little daunting, consider this. First of all, by the time you finish reading this article you will have read nearly 1400 words. Secondly, you probably speak a lot more than 500 words when you're gossiping on the telephone every day. 500 words is only about 5 to 7 paragraphs and if you write about something you're passionate about you probably won't even have to spend any time on research.

 

What are the benefits of taking up this HAHD Challenge? By the time you have 100 articles published at the end of the challenge, you may also qualify to be a Platinum Author at Ezine. Plus, Ezine will be issuing prizes for everyone who qualifies at the end of the Challenge. But the best benefit is all those backlinks you're going to be creating for your website.  More than that, you'll have developed a very healthy business habit and shown yourself that it's possible to develop even more.