If you are into internet marketing business, you know how important it is that you have a toolbox that you can turn to for all the necessary tools you need to make profit. The tools I am referring to here are the plugins, websites, and other resources that could make your life easier and your business more productive.
Table of Contents
BLOGGING & WEBSITE
WordPress – WordPress is easily the leading Blog Publishing Platform you can find. You can have yours for free and you may customize it to suit your particular needs.
How to Start a Blog That Matters – A course that any aspiring online entrepreneur must have.
Optimize Press – The best option if you are building a membership site.
WEBSITE THEMES/WORDPRESS THEMES
Studiopress Themes – This is a highly customizable theme framework by Copyblogger.
Woo Themes – You need WordPress themes that will make your blogs look professional, and Woo Themes is the best source you’ve got.
Thesis Theme – Thesis Theme is a WordPress theme and framework that offers highly effective and unique search engine optimization. It also allows for faster page loading, easy font controls, point-and-click design, and maximum readability for your site visitors’ convenience.
PageLines Theme – This theme features incredible drag and drop features.
HOSTING
Bluehost – Bluehost is definitely easy to use. It takes only one click to install WordPress and it offers excellent customer service. Bluehost is the perfect choice if you are to build your first site.
Justhost – Offers one of the cheapest hosting for bloggers.
JustCloud – Provides Free cloud backup for your online backup needs.
Carbonite – Not for free, but offers automatic backup for your website.
PRODUCT DISTRIBUTION & SHOPPING CARTS
E-Junkie – This is an excellent shopping cart to use to sell your eBook. It works with Paypal Standard, Paypal Pro, Google Checkout, Authorize.net, TrialPay, Clickbank & 2CheckOut. What’s more, it is very affordable to use. It also has a great affiliate program you can use for your products.
Clickbank – Click bank is another retailer for digital product. It is perhaps the most popular product distribution platform because it is affordable and it also offers an excellent affiliate program for your products.
Paypal – PayPal is a good choice if you just want to sell your products through them. However, you will need an account to configure with as well as accept payments from the shopping carts mentioned above.
ShoppingCart – Best for more complicated affiliate tracking and sales.
Google Checkout – A great addition to PayPal for accepting credit cards.
KEYWORD RESEARCH
Market Samurai – This is the number one tool for keyword research available, no question about it.
Long Tail Pro – This is perhaps next to Market Samurai in excellence as a keyword research tool. I have been using this for a while, and I could say that it really competes with Market Samurai in terms of efficiency and accuracy.
Keyword Researcher – This is one of the best tools you can use to find popular long tail keywords for your niche.
Google Adwords Tool – This is a proven and classic tool you can use to figure out what keywords you should use for your Adwords campaigns. This also enables you to see the popularity of particular keywords along with the competition for ads in those keywords.
SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool – This is also an impressive keyword research tool that comes with more information and numbers you can use to compare and pick the perfect keywords.
SEO Keyword Ranking – You can use this amazing tool to monitor the keywords you’re working on. It comes with a really good interface that makes it very user-friendly.
IMAGES & PHOTOS
iStockPhoto – It offers royalty-free images that you can use on your sites.
Flickr Creative Commons – This site also offers free images for your website. However, there are some restrictions to using it. So you need to know the policy first before you get the images that you need.
Killer eCover Scripts – This site offers a collection of beautiful and easy eBook covers.
Dreamstime – You can get royalty free images at low cost.
Photodropper – This allows you to insert Flickr photos into your posts automatically.
EMAIL SUBSCRIPTIONS & MARKETING
Aweber – This is perhaps the internet’s most powerful email marketing/broadcasting tool and email opt-in service. You can use it to build your email list and newsletter.
MailChimp – Has an interface that’s easy to use. They also offer a free starter plan, making it a great choice for beginners.
ADVERTISING STUFF
Google Adsense – Making money becomes easier by including in your site some relevant ads generated from advertisers using Google Adwords. There are no fees to use it, but you have to register for an account.
Google Adwords – For advertising on Google, you may select keywords and locations, and when someone clicks on your ads, you can make some money.
SpeechPad – This is what you need to get transcripts done for all your podcasts and videos.
TESTING RESULTS
Google Analytics – This is Google’s free website tracking and analytical tool. This is an essential tool for anyone with any type of website.
Clicky – Much like Google Analytics, Clicky allows you to view how many people are visiting your site in real time! You can use it for your first site at no cost.
Google Optimizer – Another free tool from Google that allows you to test various webpages having same content. It will only change one or two things, so that it will be easier for you to see which one converts best. We can say that it is a website optimizer testing tool.
Survey Monkey – One of the best ways to survey email subscribers.
SITE OPTIMIZATION
SEOmoz – Can be considered the best SEO tool online. It offers SEO recommendations, social media monitoring, and so on.
Google Traffic Estimator – A tool you can use to know how much traffic is available.
Backlink Checker – This is what you should have if you want to know who is linking to your blog.
Google Website Optimizer – This is a free tool you can use to optimize conversion on your sites.
Optimizely – If you can afford a paid optimization tool, this one is so much easier to use and offers more comprehensive results.
SITE PROTECTION
Sucuri – If you want to make sure that nobody tampers with your sites, you can turn to Sucuri. It comes with alerts/notifications that will tell everything that’s happening in your site.
OUTSOURCING WORK
Elance – This platform will help you find hired service for almost everything you need for your business.
Odesk – This is another reliable outsource website where you can find freelancers, IT companies, programmers as well as web designers overseas.
99Designs – A unique website where you can get the logo design that you want. What makes this site unique is that it’s in a contest format. You just have to submit the description of what you want, and there will be several designers who will compete against one another to win the project.
SpeechPad – This is a useful site where you can find the service in which you can have all your transcripts done for your podcasts and videos.
Virtual Staff Finder – This is a platform in which you can hire a full-time VA to assist you in this business. Virtual Staff Finder is actually the most reliable headhunter service on the web that provides only the best and most qualified VAs for your outsourcing needs.
LEGAL STUFF
LegalZoom – This is an Easy online incorporation or LLC creation.
VIDEO & PODCASTING
ScreenFlow (for Mac users) – The screen capture software that is easy to use.
Camtasia for PC (Camtasia Studio) – For screen recording and video editing.
Omnidazzle – Tool you can use to easily draw on your screen (free)
SplashEO – If you are looking to have professional looking intros for your videos, this is where you should go.
Audacity – This is an easy to use music and podcast editor.
About Carson Derrow
