It is a well known fact that in the gold rush days of the Old West, most of the fortunes were made not by the gold miners themselves, but by the people and companies that supplied the tools and equipment the gold miners needed. Some, such as Levi Strauss and John Mohler Studebaker, became household names. The tools of the time included pick axes, wheel barrows and clothing.

Knowing this, and hoping to find my own fortune, I went in search of the "gold miners" of today. I looked high and low, read everything I could get my hands on, and finally, it came to me! Every day thousands and thousands of individuals go in search of their fortunes on the internet marketiing "gold mine." Then, I asked myself, "What are the tools today's gold miners need?" I came up with 5 key tools that everyone who is marketing on the internet needs.

First, they need a domain name. A domain is where you live on the internet. It is your address on the internet. It looks something like www.yourdomain.com. This is a unique name that belongs only to you. It is as unique as your home address, phone number, or Social Security number are. No one else has this domain name, except you. All of your webpages with associated graphics and documents are placed on your domain, so people can visit your website.

Secondly, they need a web hosting account. The internet works through servers - computers that are always online for the world to access. Your personal computer can access the internet, but the internet (generally) cannot access your computer. In order to make your website available to the world, you must first upload your domain to a host, or "webspace". Web hosts provide space on their servers so you can upload your webpages, graphics, audio, video, and text documents to your domain, enabling other people to access them via the internet.

The third tool they will need is an autoresponder. An autoresponder will automatically send a series of emails to potential customers who have signed up to receive them on a form on your website. Only a small percentage of visitors to your site will join on the first contact. Studies have shown time after time, people will still be signing up after 7 or more contacts. If you advertise only your affiliate link, you are losing out on a lot of potential money. Most prospect(or)s don't buy on their first visit, but they might submit their names and email addresses to get free information. With a good follow up system, you can convert several times more prospects into customers than one time visitors.

The next thing all modern gold miners will need is traffic. In order to get traffic, they will need to advertise. Without a way to get visitors to your site, no matter how good the site is, it would be worthless. No visitors, means no sales. There are numerous methods of advertising on the internet. We'll explore some of the paid methods here. There is pay-per-click. This means that everytime someone clicks on your advertisement, you are charged. Another type is traffic exchanges. Most traffic exchanges give you advertising credits in exchange for viewing other marketers ads. Some are completely free, while others charge a fee for premium services not available to free members. E-zine advertising is another type of advertising. This includes classifed and solo ads. Others who have built a large list or base of subscribers to a newsletter often sell advertising space. Classified ads are much like newspaper classifieds. Price is often determined by where they are placed. They are also called top sponsor, middle sponser or bottom sponsor. A solo ad, like the name implies, is sent to the subscriber list all by itself. These can be highly effective when targeted to the right market.

Lastly, they need a system. A system is an organized, established procedure that produces predictable results, no matter who is using it. Most successful internet marketing systems utilize advertising to drive traffic to a website, more specifically to a lead capture page (also known as a squeeze page), which entices the visitor to sign up to your mailing list. This, in turn, is usually connected to an autoresponder loaded with messages designed to build a relationship with the (potential) customer - and of course, make sales, all basically on auto-pilot.

You don't have to re-invent the wheel, create your own tools or even sell every tool to every miner out there. There are plenty of quality, established ones available already that will pay you a commission just for referring the prospect(or)s to them. All you need to do is find a way to supply the modern internet marketers/gold miners with any or all of these tools, and you may be on your way to your own fortune.