Internet marketing is second nature to veteran online marketers. They can list down the different methods of Internet marketing in their sleep. There's e-mail marketing, display advertising, affiliate marketing, viral marketing, pay per click advertising, and blog marketing, among others.

Meanwhile, those who are new to Internet marketing can easily be confused with all those methods of marketing online. Don't be intimidated by the crazy world of Internet marketing. Here are some of its secrets.

The first secret is to 'think free'. Not freedom for either you or your customers, but, literally, think free of charge. Try offering something for free on your site and see how rapidly this increases your traffic. Some free things that you can consider are newsletters, background wallpapers, software downloads, e-books, and free trial periods of your product.

Aside from generating traffic to your Web site, freebies can also be an effective way of creating leads. Offering something of value at no cost will make your visitors more willing to provide their e-mail addresses and to sign up for your mailing list. From here, you can regularly advertise your products to them and, hopefully, generate sales.

The second secret to becoming successful in Internet marketing is to provide valuable information. With this, people will keep coming back to your site for the quality content you provide. This translates to high traffic and income.

Build your credibility and reputation by constantly providing quality content to your visitors. People will perceive you as an expert and trust you as a reliable source. Ideally, your content will be so valuable that your visitors will pass it on to their friends and bring even more new visitors to your Web site.

The third Internet marketing secret is improving your Web site's ranking in search engines. You can do this by employing search engine optimization or by tapping pay per click advertising, wherein links to your Web site are positioned in search engine results every time someone does a search of keywords related to your site. Every timean Internet user types in those keywords in a search engine, an advertisement with a link to your Web site will come up as part of the results. You, the advertiser, will only pay the search engine when an Internet user actually clicks on the advertisement and visits your site. Those are guaranteed results.

The fourth secret is to network. Networking is just as important in Internet marketing as it is in traditional marketing. By having partners and creating joint ventures, you can officially put up links to each other's Web sites and gain access to each other's Web site traffic. Choose who you network with carefully as they will become representatives of you and your business.

The fifth and last secret to successful Internet marketing is to think outside of the Internet. Just because your business is online doesn't mean that your marketing has to be limited to cyberspace. Explore other forms of advertising such as TV, newspapers or radio so that your online business reaches beyond the confines of the Internet.