Online marketing more often than not takes a beating in the press. In truth, it is one of the singularly great things about the net if you can get the hang of it.

If you can figure online marketing out, it gives you the ability to spend your time, not your money, advertising your business. It gives you access to a much broader market than any brick and mortar business. It allows you to kick the crap out of big companies that just throw money at Internet marketing, a tactic often used to crush smaller business in the brick and mortar world.

When you get down to brass knuckles, online marketing not only gives you a level playing field with the big or bigger boys, it gives you an advantage. I like to call this the leverage and arrogance advantage.

Assume you write one piece of great software and try to start a small company in the brick and mortar world. If you are deemed to be a threat by the big software companies, what is going to happen? If you dont get bought out, they are going to wipe you out. Since you have limited resources and little leverage with retailers, you are screwed, blue and tattooed. Not on the web.

Online marketing is beautiful because it flattens the playing field for all players, big and small. The key is search engine optimization. Regardless of how much money a dominant company in an industry throws at search engine rankings, they will never have an inherent advantage over you. They have no leverage, because there is nobody to buy off. The best they can do is buy advertisements, which fewer people click. If you get the top ranking on Google, Yahoo and MSN for your keywords, nobody can knock you off unless they do a better optimization job than you do. In no way, shape or form would this ever be possible in the brick and mortar world unless you have a monstrous amount of cash.

The second reason you should use online marketing is arrogance. Dominant brick and mortar companies use marketing firms to push their brands on television, billboards, magazines and so on. When the companies open a site, they often have the same marketing firms handle their internet efforts as well. Crushing them on search engines is like taking candy from a baby. They just throw money at the problem, a strategy that fails every time on the web.

You, however, are not going to waste money by purchasing banner ads and other junk that will waste your money. Nope, you are going to pursue search engine optimization on your own or through a credible group. While the dominant company is spending $20 a click for their ads, you are going to be laughing your way to the bank as customers pour in from your top rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Does online marketing deserve the criticism it gets? Sometimes it does. Once you figure it out, however, you will never slander it again.