When a country has 420 million internet users, there may be no explanation for why some people, products and brands take off and others don't. That's why internet marketing on the mainland has characteristics that are so uniquely Chinese. Take Yang Xiuyu , for example. 'I was an internet hoo-ha maker [product promoter] between 2002 and 2006,' he said. 'The experience taught me what's interesting to internet users. It was like graduating with a university degree in internet marketing.' And in 2007 and 2008, Yang made it big with four unusual campaigns. A company hired him to fabricate a Chinese version of Kyle MacDonald, the Canadian who bartered a paper clip all the way to a house in 2005, and followed that with turning a 'guitar girl' and 'the most beautiful cleaning girl' into product spokeswomen, and finally creating a nationwide buyout of Wanglaoji, a herbal beverage. Today the 36-year-old is marketing director of Erma Interactive Marketing, a Beijing-based company. Such is the success story of one tui shou - literally 'pushing hands', a term taken from tai chi - or internet marketer. Yang and two other marketers coined the phrase in 2005. Yang describes early internet marketers as 'usually losers in life, either financially or spiritually. After all, who would waste time online if they were successful?' But how the industry has grown. The public relations market in China exceeded 14 billion yuan (HK$16 billion) in 2008, according to a survey by the China International Public Relations Association (Cipra). Internet PR accounted for only 6.3 per cent of that figure, but that's still 880 million yuan. And even though some people might look at what's being marketed and shake their heads, experts say its peak is still a long way off. Some of the most recognisable people - Sister Lotus, Sister Feng and Brother Sharp - along with products, catchwords and events - reached exalted status on the mainland after having premiered on the internet. What's more, far more Chinese rely on the Web to make purchasing decisions than in the West, Agence France-Presse quoted Roland Berger Strategy Consultants' Chinese Consumer Report 2010 as saying. They share opinions and experiences about brands by the millions. Almost 60 per cent of them said consumer-review sites, as well as discussion forums and blogs, influenced their buying. So the impact of internet marketing can't be denied. That's why 36 of the 40 top public relations companies on the mainland, each with a turnover of more than 12 million yuan, offered internet public relations services last year, according to the Cipra survey. 'No company can afford to ignore it now,' said Fan Feng , vice-secretary of the interactive marketing commission of the Internet Society of China, and founder of the internet news site Sootoo.com. 'Their marketing impact would be halved without internet marketing.' So, how does it work? Companies in need of promoting their brand or products go to PR companies or internet marketing companies, which design an internet marketing strategy. Compared with traditional public relations, online PR has the advantages of being faster, more interactive, more precise, more long-term and can reach a wider audience, according to iResearch Consulting, an internet-research company. But most importantly, this route - using social networking services, blogging and microblogging - is much cheaper. So when a company has to cut its publicity budget, Net PR seems an attractive option. 'The cost of internet PR is so cheap that I haven't seen any marketing companies go bust yet,' said Guo Kaisen , a former journalist and one of the founders of Newsbird Media. 'Some studios are willing to work on a project with very little profit.' But ironically, the money doesn't really start to flow until the object of the campaign attracts traditional media coverage, becomes a topical issue or reflects a social phenomenon. Only when Ma Nuo , one of the girls who looked for boyfriends on a Jiangsu match-making television show, said she would rather weep in a BMW than sit on a bike with her boyfriend did she become an internet sensation. 'What she said sparked a social discussion on money worship and materialism in the whole of society,' Yang said. But one of the other characteristics of today's Chinese society that has crossed over to the internet is reproduction - and even the fakes make money because, as sociologists have noted, the Chinese don't usually question a lie or a made-up story at the outset. 'Everything can be fabricated on the internet,' Guo said, and there are fabricators who make up sensational or controversial stories to grab attention and make profits. Curiously, when naive Chinese internet users find out something was a gimmick by online marketers, their feelings are hurt, and it's reflected in their forum posts. 'However, as internet users become better at distinguishing the genuine from the fake, it could push the industry to move in the right direction, allowing only creative and talented marketers to survive,' Guo said. That same naivete brings up another phenomenon rarely seen in the West but common in Chinese internet marketing - disparaging rivals. Although it's considered a breach of business ethics, companies will engage online marketers as 'internet thugs or gangs' to disparage their rivals. They not only write defamatory posts in forums, but also delete negative posts about their company. Well-managed websites forbid removing posts for profit, but it's an open secret that website masters and forum moderators do it anyway. In fact, although there is no data available on the number of operators, a Baidu search in Chinese of 'post-deleting companies' revealed a total of more than 3 million pages. An employee working in a small PR company revealed it usually cost between 500 yuan and 10,000 yuan to delete one post and generally ranged between 3,000 and 6,000 yuan. The fee depends on the size of the website, the popularity of the post, the difficulty of deletion and urgency of the client request. 'Real estate, cars, electronics ... are usually the most lucrative when it comes to deleting negative posts,' Ma Mingdong, 25, a Beijing blogger and online marketer told China Daily. 'Many people think it's complicated to delete posts, but it isn't.' Some companies say it's pointless to try to control online opinions, as the speed of transmitting on the internet would make any such efforts vain. But one internet-marketing-company employee said 99 per cent of its clients would approve deleting posts and call it part of advertising. The people who actually write the negative or positive posts about a brand or product are known in Chinese as the 'water army'. Liang Sai , founder of one such group, said he launched the website in December and had about 15,000 registered spammers in two days. Today it has more than 40,000 registered, with 2,000 to 3,000 logging on almost every day. 'We plan to register as a company later this year,' Liang said. 'Of course we don't badmouth others.' Most of the spammers are students, young white-collar workers, freelancers and the disabled. One successful post earns 0.1 to 0.5 yuan. Part-timers make an average of 500 to 600 yuan a month. Full-timers make 1,000 to 2,000 yuan. 'I spend about eight hours a day, making 1,500 yuan a month,' said Liu Lihua , 24, an unemployed journalism graduate who used to work for an advertising company. 'I have faith in online PR and I plan to go back to an advertising company with such services.' Internet marketing is at the beginning of its development, and Yang said he saw a bright future for the industry. 'With the fast-paced changing of information,' he said, 'creativity will never run out.'