As an Internet marketer you have only four options when it comes to CGI scripts. One, you can ignore them and not make nearly as much money as you could. Two, you could pay someone big bucks to create and set them up for you. Three, you can use inferior and profit-robbing free services.

Or four, you could spend an afternoon learnings the basics -- and profit from your newfound knowledge forever. It seems like an obvious choice doesn't it? I'm absolutely amazed at the number of people who want to profit online, but make no effort to understand and use CGI scripts.

Maybe they don't know just how powerful and profitable they can be. Or maybe they are just completely overwhelmed by CGI scripts, and don't realize that the basics can be learned in a day. Whatever the case, the purpose of this article is to introduce you to your new best friend.

Common Gateway Interface

CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface, and that's as technical as this article is going to get. My intention is not to teach you the technical stuff. Not at all. The purpose of this article is to simply give you an idea of what is possible, and dispel any myths you may have about it being "too hard."

If you know absolutely nothing about CGI scripts right now, don't worry. You don't need to be a computer geek or a rocket scientist to learn a few basics. At the end of this article I've included links to a few resources that will get you up and running in an afternoon if you're ready to learn.

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The first example of a CGI script that comes to mind is the Link-O-Matic free for all links page -- the heart of it is a simple CGI script written in the Perl programming language. Another example would be a CGI script that emails you the contents of a web form when a visitor fills it out.

Visitors to your web site will get really bored, really quickly, if there is nothing to do but read the content you have written. Even if your site targets a niche market and your content is excellent, you should still strive to make your web site interactive and to get visitors involved.

Until recently, just about anything interactive on the web was handled using CGI scripts. These days there's Java and other new technology, but CGI is still the easiest way to get started. Let's take a look at the types of things that CGI scripts can do for you and your business.

An Internet Marketer's Best Friend

From a marketing standpoint, one of the first things your site needs to be able to do is collect information from your visitors. Using simple web forms visitors can contact you, request more information, fill out surveys, and lots more. A simple CGI script is used to do this.

Another goal should be to log and analyze the traffic to your web site. Doing so will allow you to make changes to your site that make it more effective, and it will also help you determine which of your advertising strategies are working best. CGI scripts are the easiest way to do so.

Maybe you want to set up a links page, guestbook, classified ad system, discussion forum, or shopping cart on your web site. Or maybe you want to sell banner ads on your site and need a way to track impressions or click-throughs. All of this can easily be accomplished using CGI scripts.

At the Link-O-Matic web site visitors can enter a contest, submit URLs, download files, join discussion forums, and subscribe to our newsletter. All of these things can be done automatically with the help of CGI scripts. Imagine how boring the web site would be without them. Very boring.

And the beauty of it is, you don't actually need to learn how to create your own CGI scripts. There are literally thousands of scripts to do everything mentioned above, and lots more, available for free. You just need to learn the basics so you can set them up on your site.

I Challenge You

As an Internet marketer myself with almost four years of experience, I can honestly say that learning basic CGI programming was one of the best decisions I ever made. And I guarantee the same will hold true for you. The investment in time learning will reward you tenfold over time.

Just about every day someone emails me asking for help setting up a links page. 9 out of 10 ask me to just set it up for them, rather than asking me to point them in the right direction so they can learn the basics themselves. Let me tell you, that's not how to succeed online.

As an Internet marketer, you need to know a little about a lot of things. And CGI scripts are one of those things. If you let the fear of learning something new hold you back, you're going to pay for it in one way or another -- whether it's CGI or anything else in life for that matter.

I challenge you to visit the 2 web sites listed below and spend some time learning about CGI scripts. All you really need to learn is how to install them on your web server, so you can take advantage of the thousands of free scripts available to you. Do it and you'll soon thank me for it.

The CGI Resource Index
       http://www.cgi-resources.com/

Here you'll find literally thousands of CGI-related resources, and more free CGI scripts than you could ever want. Once you learn how to install them, I promise that this will become one of your favorite sites on the web. It is a virtual goldmine, and new resources are added daily.

The Perl Homepage
      http://www.perl.com

CGI isn't a programming language, it's an interface between a browser and your web server. If you want to customize or create your own CGI scripts, you'll want to learn the basics of Perl -- a very easy to learn programming language that's commonly used to create CGI scripts.