Nowadays buying products online is second nature to most people. It is hard to believe that only 15 years ago the Internet was mainly used for file sharing and emails, rather than ecommerce. At this time many people protested at the idea of using the Internet for marketing and ecommerce.

The introduction of the web browser Netscape in 1995 made the Internet easier to use and more people started to log on. This resulted in a surge of simple text based sales websites. There was not a lot of competition at this time, but there were also not as many buyers.

Security, when shopping online, was a big problem in the beginning, but with Netscape’s introduction of Secure Sockets Layer Protocol (SSL) this began to improve and SSL is still widely used today. This improvement gave buyers the confidence they needed to shop online.

One of the oldest forms of online marketing, that are still used today, are banner ads. These adverts are an image or animation that is embedded into a website and links to the advertiser’s website. Banner ads played a strong part in Internet Marketing throughout the 1990s and are still used today. However, these days many people find them annoying and often times they are disregarded.

Another old method of Internet marketing, that is still used today, is the ezine. Companies create these online newsletters, which they send out via email. People who subscribe receive valuable information and there are usually relevant adverts and links within the newsletter.

People started to witness the benefits of Internet marketing, compared to offline methods. They found there were lower costs, more specific targeting and the results were far easier to track. More sales sites started to spring up.

As more competition grew in each niche, people began to compete to get a high place in the search engines. They did this by learning what the search engines were looking for and complying with this. This is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is an important part of Internet marketing, as the higher your position in the search engines, for your target keywords, the more traffic you will get, resulting in more sales.

In 2000 Google introduced the option of purchasing a sponsored position in the search results. This product was called Google Adwords and is a form of advertising called pay-per-click. Companies bid to get a high placement and are charged each time someone clicks on their ad. Google Adwords is a great way to get instant traffic, but you have to be careful not to end up paying exuberant amounts for competitive keywords.

Google Adsense is a program which allows webmasters to host adverts on their website. The webmaster will get paid every time someone clicks the ad. Many webmasters used this to their advantage, by bidding on less competitive Google Adwords keywords for a low price and making money by selling competitive Adsense keywords for a higher price, on their website. This is called Adsense Arbitrage.

Internet marketing is a fast growing industry and now there are many websites that fall into the Web 2.0 category. Web 2.0 sites provide greater functionality to the user and allow them to perform live actions, such as bookmarking their favorite sites and sharing them with other users. Users will find Web 2.0 sites a lot more interactive. The user has the feeling of more participation. These sites mean that there are even more Internet marketing options available and people can now use eBay, Craigslist, Facebook and social bookmarking sites to make sales.

As the Internet keeps advancing, so too does Internet Marketing. When I look back over the past 15 years it is hard to comprehend the changes that have taken place. I can only imagine what will happen in the next 15 years.