If you are just starting out in this business it helps to have a broad understanding of the concept. I will try to give an easy definition of internet marketing. The big picture is very simple and if you keep focused on that you will have no problems handling the smaller tasks inside. Tasks like researching customers, finding products/services and finally giving them appropriate marketing messages. This article will explore these components of internet marketing and you will learn what areas you'll have to study if you are to become a professional internet marketer. You will also learn how you get paid.

So what's the big picture? Well, it consists of 3 parts.

1. A CUSTOMER WITH A NEED

2. YOU

3. A COMPANY WITH A PRODUCT THAT FILLS THE NEED

Your job as an internet marketer is simply to connect those customers with the product. Simple enough, eh? You do this with various techniques. Every technique involves the creation of inter-connected web-pages of some kind and/or ads. When you succeed in doing this and a customer buys the product the company will pay you a commission. Voila! Job done! This is a very simplified description of the process. Let's see how you can find the customers and what they want.

You find customers on the internet by researching how they behave and what they search for for inside search-engines like Google. This is often referred to as "keyword-research" and it is critical to the success of an internet marketer. All research boils down to finding out what the customers writes in that search-field of Google, Yahoo or MSN. What exact phrase does a customer write when she need to find a book on how to train her dog? Is it "how do I train my dog not to bark at people"? You can find this out with a free tool that Google supplies and it's very exciting to sit down and see what people are searching for. Let's say that many people search exactly for "how do I train my dog not to bark at people". Bingo!!! You may just have found a group of people that most likely would by an ebook on the subject. So where do you find an ebook on how to train dogs?

The supply of products is almost endless. Your job is to find products that customers already has a need for or will have a need for in the near future. You find these products at sites like clickbank.com etc. Another way to find products is to join different so-called affiliate networks like cj.com. In the case of our dog-barking ebook you simply go to clickbank.com and search their marketplace for suitable products. If you find one it's just a matter of telling the customers all the great benefits they will receive if they buy the book and how do you do that?

To market your product to the above customers you can use different free or paid methods. All have one thing in common and that is the fact that they all revolve around something called keyword optimizing and they all have the purpose of getting your customer pre-sold on the product. For instance, if you choose to use something called article marketing you write articles that is optimized for the chosen keywords (in this case "how do I train my dog not to bark at people"). In the article(s) you do not directly sell the product. You give away knowledge to the reader which the reader finds useful. Then at the bottom of the article you give the reader information on how to learn more about the subject. Hopefully they click and arrive at your website pre-sold and motivated to learn more and finally maybe they click on the links to your merchant (the company) and buys the product.

Now you have a broad understanding of the definition of internet marketing. It's a simple concept but it involves a lot of hard work and patience. Keep your eye on the big picture and what you're supposed to accomplish and you can't go wrong. There are many roads to travel upon inside the big picture to get to the final destination of that commission from a sale.