Internet marketing can seem mystifying not only for beginners, but for moderately skilled internet marketers. With all the courses, forums, blogs, reports, seminars and teleconferences available to help people learn how to get traffic to their sites, it is one of the most overwhelmingly dense subjects on the internet.

Unfortunately, and this is perfectly true, most of the advice or "expert" tips are outdated or completely false. Since anyone can publish on the internet, you have a mixed bag of good information followed with much more bad information.

The mysticism of internet marketing is created largely by this glut of some good and mostly bad information. It makes the whole topic SEEM like rocket science when, in fact, much of what was true about internet marketing years ago is true today.

Most people think that since search engine marketing changes every five minutes, that ALL internet marketing tactics must have changed as much in the same amount of time. Not true.

The basics, like trading links, article syndication, testimonials, forum signatures, joint ventures, affiliate programs - most work as well today as they did years ago. That is, if you know how to value the work above for what it will truly do for your website traffic.

Funny thing is, no one places much value on the above tactics anymore because there is always some "new" tactic around the corner that claims the death of everything that came before it. And most people blindly follow that advice as if it were true.

Most of the time, this is to the detriment of their internet marketing efforts. The basics are what work all the time and what have always worked on the internet.

You can always experiment with new things, as long as you have not forgotten to do the basics. The basics proven to drive traffic, page rank, link popularity, and branding to your business.

Conservative, relevant reciprocal linking
Article syndication
Participation in your field and among your market (forums)
Blogging
Offline advertising
Non-reciprocal linking tactics
Press releases
...and many other proven methods.

Everything else is just a big experiment until proven to work over time. "Over time" being the operative words. Lots of flash in the pan crack pot schemes work for awhile. But most never stand the test of time.

Links from a widely syndicated article will never fade away, yet I see people chasing down fly-by-night linking pyramid schemes as if they truly believe something like that is a smart thing to base their internet business on!

Tens of thousands have walked away from their dreams, gone back to their depressing, predictable, slave-labor jobs never knowing how close they were to actually succeeding.

Good people have left this business proclaiming it an utter lie that any average person can make it with an internet business and an internet marketing plan.

I guess there is truth in that statement. Average people do in fact quit this business before they ever get started because average people fall for tricks and schemes that above average people avoid on their way to success.

If you have read this far, you are probably in the above average category. Why? Because average people would have take one look at the list of things I mentioned that are the bread and butter of internet marketing and saw nothing but hard work. And they'd be right!

Above average people don't shy away from work though. I don't know a single soul (and my rolodex has some of the biggest names in internet marketing in it) who got where they are today without a lot of hard work.

You can succeed in internet marketing if you are not afraid to work, and not constantly tempted by those who say you can succeed without it!

Focus on the basics of internet marketing and stay with them as you try new strategies. We all experiment. But successful internet marketers never leave their bread and butter tactics behind unless they cease to be effective.

Copyright 2005 Jack Humphrey