Free Stuff - Easy On The Pocket As Well As The Brain

  Written by susan coils on Nov 9, 2008 3:22 pm

Read More: Technology

• 0
   VOTES

  Up
• Tweet

One of the difficulties I found when I first started was that everything cost so much. In order to do good keyword research, I needed to be able to afford the best keyword research tool. If I wanted to submit lots of articles, I needed to invest in a good article spinner/submitter. If I was interested in using video as part of my marketing strategy then I would need to invest more money into video creation software.

This threw up a whole host of problems and to be honest, money was probably the least of them. I didn't know I needed half of this stuff, once I knew I did need it, I didn't know where to find it, and once I did find it, even assuming I could afford it, (which I usually couldn't) I couldn't figure out how to use it.

But thinking back to our previous chat about being organised I realised that over my time online, I've managed to find some pretty cool tools and resources that satisfied my 'newbie' need to be both free (or at the very least extremely cheap) and simple to understand. Of course, I wasn't very organised in the beginning and so heaven alone knows where on my hard drive half of this stuff is located.

However, we can get off to a pretty good start and meantime, I'll search through and see what else I can come up with. Please feel free to add any useful items you've come across yourselves.

Note that we're not looking for affiliate links to free programmes that offer free training, free capture pages, free leads, or free anything else. I don't want to sound harsh here, (well ok I do), but this isn't the place for you to generate your leads or promote your business, or give away your free e-book that does any or all of the above.

Webmaster Toolkit - a really cool site with a whole range of free tools you can use. Everything from a keyword research tool to a link popularity checker. Note these tools are really only any use if you have your own website.

Free Software - a very useful site where you can download lots of free software that is often just as good as the paid versions, certainly good enough to get you started. Anything and everything from video creation to easier blog posting to graphic editing.

SEO Training - a great site with lots of information on Search Engine Optimisation. Some really cool free training videos, including such topics as keyword research, building links and ppc.

FreeFoto - literally 1000's of images you can use in your site, your blog, your e-mails, etc. Note that you do have to provide a link back to the site, but it's a small price to pay when you see some of the images available here.

Free Video Creation Software - although I hate video (hate creating it anyway),I have to say that even I can manage to use CamStudio. Unless you're planning on doing video marketing big time, you really do not need to invest in anything past. Create a video about you, your business, your product, and go upload it to YouTube.

Comment Sniper - this is really cool. You set this little nugget up to monitor blogs of your choice and you are instantly notified when a new post is made to that blog. This allows you to head right over there and be the first to comment on the new post. Great for building backlinks but also for getting more traffic back to your own site. There is a much greater chance of other readers clicking back to your site if your comment is at the top.

If you're not too sure how to find the best blogs to comment on, check out Ferny's video. (Boy, I wish I could get that 'insert youtube video' to work here in the group posts)

Plagiarism Checker - really useful if you want to see whether your content is being swiped and resubmitted without you getting your due credit. I've found a number of my own articles that have been reprinted without my author resource box.

Free Banner Maker - does just what it says on the box. You will have to supply your e-mail in order for the finsihed banner to be mailed to you, but I haven't had any spam from doing so.

Okay, that's enough for now. I'm sure you all have your own little nuggets that you can share!

Talk soon

Susan

Login or register to post comments  |   Views: 377   |   Comments: 14