According to various reports, there are an estimated 1.6 billion internet users throughout the world, and this figure is increasing at a rapid rate.

Whilst this gives you some indication of the potential market available, not all of these are potential customers.

This of course is true with Newspapers, who love to tempt you with their impressive circulations. But just because a newspaper may have two or three million readers, that does not mean all of them will see your advert, or buy anything even if they do.

However, there are a number of advantages in promoting your business on the internet, compared to a local or national newspaper. The first is obviously the number of people you can reach and the cost in doing this. But the greatest advantage is the ability to "target" your customers.

If your site specialised in "Fake Jokes" for example and someone made a search on Google for the word "Jokes", they would receive around 62 million results! However, if they were more specific and entered the words "Fake Jokes", they would receive less results and these would be more relevant. Incidentally, our site appears in the first two results for this search on Google.

The point is, the people using search engines to find what they are looking for, will only be given results that are relevant. This means your visitors are looking for what you have to offer and all you have to do is make your offer attractive enough for them to buy it.

The more unique your product or service, the greater chance you have of being listed high up in the search results. Whilst it would be nice to be in first place for a very common search word (like "software"), the chances of achieving this are very slim. Always try to be realistic and target a word (or words) that you have a real chance of getting noticed with.

Even if you are not looking for customers on the other side of the world, you can still use the internet to attract local visitors by making sure your address appears on your pages (and mentioning your postcode and the country you are in). If someone is searching for a plumber in Birmingham, they will find companies listed from Birmingham Alabama (USA), as well as Birmingham (UK), so do not forget to specify the country in your search.

Although Asia contains the highest number of internet users, only a small percentage will (or can) purchase items over the internet. The majority of actual customers will be found in North America and Europe (at the moment). But as this amounts to close on half the number of users in the world, there are plenty of potential customers to go around.

India is a growing market with huge potential and certainly one to consider in your marketing plans.