--just to make the distinction clear. It's like the general confusion people get when they try to distinguish between "tactics" and "strategy".

Using Wiki-fu, we can break down the difference:

• Advertising "is a form of communication used to influence individuals to purchase products or services [...]."
• Marketing, on the other hand, is "an integrated process through which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return." (Italics and emphasis added.)

So, you market your products and services by means of making them known through advertising. Marketing plans, advertising promotes. How else are the two different?

People who are most likely to express interest in your product or service make up your target market. The challenge of marketing lies in finding the people who are most likely to want what you're selling, and then getting them to buy.

Correctly targeting your market saves time, money and effort in your advertising. Using a common image, rather than spattering buckshot everywhere in the hopes of hitting your target, targeted marketing is like using a rifle: with repetition and focused adjustment, the odds of you hitting what you aim for are much higher. 

What follows are 5 ways you can refine your targets.

For many first-timers, their first giddy rush in internet marketing can be something akin to falling in love. The product is perfect, the possibilities are endless, and they don't need anything else.

At this point, they're dazzled by the images of sure-fire success -- and totally getting ahead of themselves. When the time comes that the thrill and the glitz wear off after the initial rush, the disappointment and pain of the event can settle like lead in the belly, and sour them for anything similar in the future. Like a kid jumping into the deep end of the pool, it's a recipe for disaster.

If you're not that strong or prepared yet, it's better to do some research first before wading in: all that glitters in not gold (or e-cash), and all that.

What follows are 3 common myths that continually crop up and break newbie hearts, and can trip up even the more experienced players.

If you want get and direct more traffic to your squeeze page, this segment will cover 2 ways you can do so: article and forum marketing. At the end our goal is to give you enough information to help you gain more visitors to your site, help your sales and boost the traffic to your squeeze page. And you can do this all with no money down.

Article marketing is the marketing method where you submit original articles, which as a rule are composed of 400-500 words, to article directories. It's a very good traffic-generating approach: aside from the fact that many excellent article directories are free, the more high-quality articles you write, the better your odds of getting attention because of the quality of your work, attention that then can be redirected to your site.

When people uses article marketing, the generally use it for promotional means: pushing an affiliate product, for example. As a secondary (and even better) side-effect, article marketing is excellent for list building, because readers (without having to commit anything) get free, useful content, which enhances click through to your site, and attract potential subscribers. Article marketing is one great method to attract subscribers to your squeeze page, but not the only free one.

In a previous article, How To Engage Your Newsletter Readers , we went over important factors to consider when you want to keep the people on your hard-earned mailing lists. In this installment, we'll share 5 of the basic bits of information you can share with them.

Aside from the worry about the time you need to invest in setting up and creating engaging content for your newsletter, even if you think you're gong to run out of things to share, there are very basic (some may say essential) subjects you can stick to that can help you greatly in keeping your readers reading, and save you work in plotting out what to say.

If you only share information that helps them, the scheduling can be adjusted to whenever you have useful information, like software updates, special offers and 'Coming Soon' events. You don't need to flood your mailing list with updates on everything you're doing (you can use Twitter for that) and there's less pressure on keeping to a hard schedule of 'publication'.

If you don't have the time to network the 'old-fashioned' way, what do you do?

To move in pace with our time-driven world, we're required to do so at one speed: faster. In this vein, you may already have heard the term 'speed networking'. It's a very popular and fast growing method of networking and growing your business, and fits your time-scarce needs perfectly.

How does speed networking work? It works exactly like speed dating plus musical chairs, only with none of the romantic expectations. And the cheesy music.

At a speed-networking even, participants are paired up and each one has 2-5 minutes to introduce themselves and share what they do. At the end of the period a whistle blows, the pair dissolves, and each person moves on to another person from another dissolved pair until everyone's had a chance to meet. It’s the modern-day solution for people who have little time to meet others,  and find networking difficult. It's also an ice-breaker and launch spot for any general networking which can follow after the initial meeting, getting around the habit of talking only to people you already know.

So you've booked your place in a networking meeting, but what can you do to get the most out of the session? As with all marketing for your business, preparation is vital.

Build a band of peers. Support each other. Essentially, that's what you do when you network. You establish connections: people you know, people whose capabilities, experience and opinions you trust, and you help each other. So what can you do to create a network?

Newsflash: You're already part of many networks. Classmates, bandmates, schoolmates, for starters. People you work with. People you're related to. The kind of connections we're talking about here is composed of the people in your life, the ones you meet as you're living it, and the ones you keep in touch with.

Real connections take time and continued effort to sustain, so when you reach out or reach up for advice or assistance, pull others up with you even as the more experienced ones hunker down to your level to share what they know. Good networking  also has a self-policing effect. People who insist on taking without reciprocity get themselves weeded out, and if you and your colleagues invest real thought and good efforts in your interactions, you'll reach the point when you can't help someone else without getting helped in return, in one way or another. You build up your reputation and you strengthen your group's network.

If you haven't fully realized the full power of the many analytic reporting tools  online, know this: every ad you place can be tracked. Every single click that comes to your website can be monitored. For example, you can track your pay-per-click (PPC) ads down to the level of the keywords used to find your ad. From that you can follow any sales coming from that click. The implications (and helpfulness) of this kind of insight on your marketing strategy are enormous.

Whether you use free or paid advertising to boost your website traffic, as a serious business owner you should know your return on investment (ROI) for your advertising campaigns. Even if you started out because of your passions, when you're doing this for the money too, it's important to be able to measure the results of your efforts. How else would you know how much, and where, you've improved or not?

One of the many ways you can get the most out of your efforts to earn money on-line is by using PPC strategically.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an essential marketing tool for any Internet-based business using it to boost sales. Basically, PPC means that advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ads to go to their website.

With PPC, the traffic that you receive can be extremely targeted, depending on your choice of keywords. Major PPC platforms, like Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter are ones that you should really get to know. Of course, there's a learning curve associated with each one but if you get to know the ins and outs of how they can pay out for you, applying the principles behind their strategies can be financially rewarding.

Give them what they want, what's useful, what's entertaining -- in that order.

Look at it from the other side: if you're even remotely internet savvy, your inbox is layered with filters that shoot incoming mails to different folders. Anything with "SALE", "FREE", "Trial" or even "Work" gets shot down to the trashcan. Any email you send to your subscribers with these keywords can get you filtered out, unless you prove from the start that what you write is worthy to land in the inbox from the start.

Things to bear in mind: Speed, succinctness and impact. Important information comes first, in easily digestible chunks that explain its importance. Things to balance: frequency, relevance and entertainment. Short, sweet emails that share new information in a bulleted format can come with more frequency than longer, chattier newsletters. Above all: value, value, value

People are all too often pressed for time to read through everything that lands in their inbox. Your e-newsletters should be stick to giving useful information about your products (tips and shortcuts, newbie advice), late-breaking industry trends and developments etc., things you believe will only help your subscribers.