You've heard it all before.
When first starting to build your business online, you need to first find a niche.
Of course, you'll need a web host and domain name.
You then must decide how you intend to advertise your blog or website in order to attract traffic.
After all, you can have the best website online but it will be unsuccessful without real visitors to view your content.
There's a little known secret that true internet money makers use to make sales and live the lifestyle that most often dream of.
That secret is none other than trust and credibility.
It may sound a little odd when you first hear that, but think about it.
Those who make money online through selling, whether it's with affiliate marketing or the selling their own product, do so by gaining the trust of the customer.
The days of sales being made just because you have a website published and "live" are over.
For those who are starting out in today's internet marketing world, you must learn this art of gaining trust as well as establishing yourself as credible in the niche you're working in.
It would be great if you were already an expert, but you at least need to know more than you're audience.
This may require some work and research into the niche so you can have the knowledge to speak and write intelligently on the subject.
The best way to build this trust is by combing two marketing strategies.
Those two strategies are Article Marketing and Email Follow-Up.
Writing Articles Article marketing continues to be one of the better ways to market your business online, and there are a few reasons why.
For one thing you don't need to spend money to write articles.
It will cost you your time, however, so that is something you need to keep in mind.
Time is money and we'll never get it back, so approach article writing with the thinking that "time is money.
" Time will eventually become just that, as long as you're consistent with your writing and distribution.
This can be as simple as writing one quality article a day and posting it to 25-35 article directories, and including a link back to your site in the resource box at the end of the article.
The chance of your article being syndicated, or picked up by other publishers for use on their blog or website, provides another great reason to write articles.
Site owners search various article directories daily in search of quality content they can reprint for their website visitors.
Your resource box with a link back to your site will remain as is, thus bringing you more traffic.
This also helps to build backlinks which betters your chances of getting an organic search result listing from Google.
Always write with quality over quantity in mind, and you can't go wrong just because of the syndication possibilities alone.
My favorite benefit of article writing goes back to the introduction of this piece.
By writing quality articles that are niche related, you are establishing yourself as an expert and earning trust from readers.
This is the most effective pre-sell to a product or service you can possibly get in my opinion.
Readers get a glimpse of who you are, and will click to your site to learn more about how you can help them in whatever the niche is.
This point of building trust and establishing credibility can't be emphasized enough.
It's truly how you gain customers who will buy products or services simply from your recommendation! How will they do that? That's where email follow-up takes over.
Email Follow-Up One thing to understand first is that your resource in box, in every article you write and have published, should have a link back to a lead capture page (also referred to as a squeeze page).
This type of webpage is designed with the sole purpose of acquiring the reader's name and email address for future contact or follow-up.
You need an autoresponder to collect this information.
The creation and setup of autoresponders and squeeze pages is beyond the scope of this article, however if you Google search the two terms you'll find plenty of information on how to set both up.
Most autoresponder services allow you to schedule follow-up messages that can be sent to your article readers.
You'll want to create emails and program them to be sent to your readers at certain intervals.
Your emails should continue to establish trust and credibility by providing even more quality content the reader is looking for.
The most effective way to have people opt-in to your email list is to provide an additional report or download for free, which will build upon the information you just shared in your article.
This is the point where the two methods fuse together to begin the money-making process.
Along with continued quality information, you can now begin to recommend or suggest products and services that will enable your reader to fulfill their objectives.
The really nice thing is that you can run your promotions on auto-pilot.
By writing articles you'll begin establishing the credibility and trust that people are looking for.
With email follow-up, you'll be able to stay in contact with your readers and promote relevant products or services that can truly help them.
Consistency in writing and distribution, along with continued relationship building will pay for itself over time.
The money is in the list, but only if you have built a relationship with your subscribers.
Trust and credibility are the keys to that, as well as these two marketing methods.