Internet marketing is exciting, challenging, and confusing. It can make or break your internet business career and yet many people who depend on internet marketing don't have a full grasp of the essentials involved in internet marketing. 

In fact, many internet entrepreneurs waste a great deal of time, energy, and momentum because they do not fully understand internet marketing. Don't let this lack of understanding undermine your income potential. 

In order for you to better understand internet marketing and its impact on your internet business you must know the following: 

1.     Definition of Internet Marketing: Marketing is actually rather simple. Marketing is communication about an idea, product, service, or organization. Marketing therefore encompasses advertising, promotion and sales as well as the various techniques and forms of communication used to advertise, promote and sell. 

Marketing is broader than simple advertising or promotion in that it includes researching the market to learn what consumers want and then setting out to meet their needs with the appropriate product, price, and distribution method. Marketing includes market research, deciding on products and prices, advertising promoting distributing and selling. 

Marketing also covers all the activities involved in moving products and services from the source to the end user including making customers aware of products and services, attracting new customers to a product or service, keeping existing customers interested in a product or service, and building and maintaining a customer base for a product or service. 

Internet marketing includes these same activities but also pulls in various internet tools including web sites, email, ezines, banner advertising, blogging, RSS, text links, search engine optimization, affiliates, autoresponders, and other ecommerce applications. 

2.     Cost of Internet Marketing: The range of expenses for internet marketing is huge. There are a number of promotional and marketing ventures that can cost you nothing or only pennies a day while other advertising efforts can cost you thousands a day. 

It is important to consider your goals -- both long-term and short-term -- as well as how much each prospective customer is worth to you. This will help you determine a workable budget for your internet marketing campaign. 

Many internet promotions are free, you can set up a web site and/or blog for as low as $120 a year, and you can buy text links for $10 a month. You could easily spend $25-50 a day for advertising but there are many cheaper ad options available. 

The best program is to start small and cheap and slowly build as you test and learn what is successful for your market and product. There is no perfect advertising solution that works wonders for everyone. Each marketer and each product have a different formula. 

3.     Benefit of Internet Marketing: Internet marketing offers more benefits than many traditional marketing mediums. The very nature of web sites and blogs is that they continue working to promote and market your product long after your initial marketing effort is over. Similarly, many advertising efforts, such as ezines, newsletters, banners, and text links also continue to increase in power over time. 

Email marketing can be a tremendous surge in contacts and sales and offers the ability to personalize your message as well as reach a targeted audience so your chance for sales goes up exponentially. 

The other tremendous benefit of internet marketing is that it offers convenience and immediate satisfaction. Your potential customer sees your marketing message when it is convenient for them -- and often when they are seeking information about your specific topic. Then you offer them the ability to act on that interest right then. They can locate your product and buy in the time it would take to watch a commercial on television or turn a page in the newspaper. That is the power of internet marketing. 

Now that you know these basics of Internet Marketing, you are ready to begin your own internet marketing campaign -- and succeed with your internet venture.