Online Marketing is simply using the Internet as a marketing tool to sell products and services. Commercial websites began to proliferate around 1996 - 1997 and were used by most companies as an online brochure. As the use of the Internet increased commercial websites expanded to sell products online as opposed to just telling potential customers about the products.

Amazon.com was one of the first companies to use the Internet as its only method of retailing. There are no physical bricks and mortar Amazon.com stores. Just about every retailer that has a physical presence now also has an online presence. The Internet levels the playing field. Small companies can compete with mega businesses because of firms like MSN, Yahoo, and Google.

Current use of the term "Online Marketing" has taken on a different meaning than just marketing online. It has come to mean direct sales of mostly informational products through sales letters, or pitch pages and building lists of potential customers through giving away a free report in exchange for the customers email address. The informational products deal with a wide range of subjects from losing weight to training your dog to making money on the Internet.

Online Markeing has also morphed into a number of different types of activities on the Internet that can be undertaken by an individual to earn money, sometimes significant sums of money.

For example: Google offers paid advertising through the use of text linked ads placed on websites. Advertisers hope to subvert visitors to click on the text ad and visit their own websites through these text linked ads. The advertisers pay Google for every visitor that clicks through. Google passes on some of the money to the owner of the websites where the click originated. This is know as PPC or pay per click. Savvy Internet Marketers build websites on topics that have a high PPC with the sole purpose of earning money.

Some of these sites known as MFA or Made For Adsense contain little or no redeeming content. The website's owner's intent is to place high in the search engines for a niche key word phrase. Say Natural Cures for Whatever. People have a tendency to only look at the first page of results when searching. They click on the Natural Cures for Whatever site. When they arrive there is little information, so in an effort to leave the site quickly, they click on one of the text linked ads to navigate away.

Another philosophy is to make the site content rich to attract visitors and establish a level of trust. The visitor feels comfortable and when they've found the information they needed they are more likely to click on one of the text based ads.

This is just one of the ways an individual can make money in Online Marketing.