All industries have their own unique terminology and colloquialisms - Internet Marketing is no different. If you're just starting out, before you get to achieve anything you need to get past this new terminology without letting it blind you or stunt your enthusiasm! Here's a short glossary or guide to 12 key terms you'll come across and in some cases disciplines you'll master on your way to becoming a great internet marketer.

1. Affiliate Programs - This is an enormously popular way to help other people sell your products or provide you the ability to sell someone else's product. You either give or receive a commission for each sale - 20-50% is the normal range of commission.

2. Auto Responders - Automatically send your clients or potential clients multiple 'personal' emails over a period of time. This is perhaps the most critical tool in your box for relationship building using what is usually referred to as email marketing.

3. Blogging - Blogs (short for web logs) are a relatively new and popular way to publish content on the Internet. They allow the blogger to publish content (thoughts, ideas, tips...) very quickly AND get feedback from the people that read it. Because they are new and content is created regularly, search engines love indexing them - and if search engines love them, you should too.

4. Copywriting - The process of writing compelling copy or content for your web site (or other written medium). You'll see the term 'sales copywriter' or similar ones for those people that are skilled in writing in a way that compels the reader to buy. Hmm, quite important then!

5. Domain Name - Domain simply means 'area' or 'sphere of influence.' A domain name is the name for your area on the Internet - the name that people will use to reach your web site. Its also called your Internet address. There are restrictions imposed on the address - it must be unique anywhere on the internet and must conform to simple a set of rules. Whenever you type the address of a web site you'll notice it doesn't contain spaces and has several portions separated by dots. In fact there are two parts to a domain name, the name itself and an ending something like '.com', '.co.uk', '.ca' or '.au'. The ending is intended to denote the country of the site, though some global sites simply use '.com' originally intended for names in the USA. So, OnlineMarketersChoice.co.uk and ValuedClientSystem.com are both examples of domain names.

Sometimes you'll want to buy domain names for multiple countries so you can tailor your web site to the needs of the readers country. For example Amazon.com, Amazon.ca & Amazon.co.uk lead to versions of the online store specific to the USA, Canada and the UK.

When you type an address you'll often put 'http://' followed by the letters 'www', standing for 'world wide web', followed by the domain name. The 'http://' piece tells your web browser that you're looking for a web site, rather than say, an 'ftp' site (a different kind of internet model) and actually the letters 'www' mean the same thing - 'this is a web site we're browsing to.' Often 'www' is not required, try typing http://www.OnlineMarketersChoice.com and http://OnlineMarketersChoice.com you should find that they both give you the same result.

6. eZines / Newsletters - Electronic magazines are another popular way to create a relationship with your clients. Published regularly - say bi-weekly, entirely electronically, that is online via your web site or blog, this can be a great way to stay in the forefront of your clients mind.

7. Joint Ventures - Do it with a partner. That's the motto of the Joint Venture. They combine the client base, marketing, skills and products of two or more businesses to create a new business venture. Those business ventures may be small and short - one product, one short marketing campaign or serve as the base for a complete long term business.

8. Merchant Account - In order to process payments directly from your web site, you have two basic choices: use a 3rd party payment processor (such as clickbank.com), who will take a commission and pass on the reminder after a period of say, 30 days. Or, pay for your own payment processor and open a merchant account with your bank to allow you to process credit card payments directly.

9. Search Engine Optimization - Search engines are a key route to free web traffic. Most people use search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and so on to find web sites. If your site appears early in the often very long list of results returned from a search, you've probably done a good job optimizing your site for search engines.

10. Shopping Cart - The software that keeps track of the many, many products your client is planning to purchase on a particular visit to your site. When they've finished browsing it will take them though the process of providing their details, like name and address and taking payment details to pass on to your payment processor. Some web sites build their own carts but most choose to use a 3rd party service.

11. Web Hosting - Your web site needs to 'live' somewhere. That place is either your own computer(s) or more typically on a computer managed by a Web Hosting company. You create the content and manage the site and the hosting company provide you the computing power and technical administration.

12. Website - Creating your own website can be both fun and challenging. If you do it yourself, you might create and edit web pages using a tool like Microsoft FrontPage, as in fact I'm doing to write this. But you don't have to create it yourself. You may choose to use one of the 'instant web site creators' (try searching on that term) or pay somebody else to create your site for you. Which ever route you choose - your web site is 'you' on the Internet, so make it compelling.
About the Author
Between them Paul Quirk and Mark Quirk have more than 40 years experience in the IT industry.
OnlineMarketersChoice.com is their site to help new internet marketers learn their craft and for seasoned professionals to share their advice.

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