Resources
Jun 29th, 2007 by Martin Lee
These are some of my recommended tools and resources.
Autoresponders & Mass Emailing Tools
Autoresponders are the most important tool in your marketing as they save you a great deal of time by automating your email correspondence with your prospects/clients. They are a great way to build a relationship with them and will help to increase your sales conversions.
Aweber is an easy to use yet feature rich autoresponder system that is ready for use without any installation. Provides unlimited campaigns, high email delivery rate and ‘hover-type’ forms. My recommended solution.
GetResponse is an autoresponder used by many people. I started with this as it has a free plan (with less features). Stopped using it as it had an email delivery problem with hotmail accounts. Not sure whether it still has the same problem now.
Derek Gehl Internet Marketing Center
Tools and products from Derek Gehl’s Internet Marketing Center.
Internet Marketing Center Affiliate Program
Become an affiliate (free to join) and earn commissions by promoting Derek Gehl’s product. As an affiliate, you will also get cutting edge internet marketing strategies from him.
The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on The Internet — Version 2008 (new!)
This is my recommended course for anyone who wants a blueprint this course contains Internet marketing strategies and tactics you can apply to your business today. In TWO 8″ x 11″ full-color three ring binders containing 800+ pages, broken down into 64 easy-to-follow lessons…
“Insider Secrets” walks both Internet newbies AND seasoned website owners through how to start, grow, and promote a profitable e-business step-by-step.
Keyword Research Tools
GoogSpy is an extremely powerful tool that allows you to check 1) The keywords a specific website is bidding for and 2) the websites that are bidding for specific keywords. The best part is that it is free to use.
KwMap.com is a complex keyword refining tool, aiming to help you discover new keywords. You can search all common concepts and you will be presented with related keywords.
Search It! is a very handy all-in-one free keyword research tool that allows you to conveniently do your keyword research from many different other sources.
Use Wordtracker to discover the best keywords for your website. Wordtracker is one of the leading keyword research tools in the market. Use this tool to do your keyword research to make sure you are targeting a profitable niche. If you only need to do keyword research for a short time, you can consider their one week or one month subscription.
This is a free keyword research tool provided by Wordtracker. The limitation is that it only shows you the top ten search terms.
Keyword Discovery is a more comprehensive tool than Wordtracker and is the main keyword tool I personally use. This is the tool to consider if you need to use a professional keyword research tool regularly.
This is a free keyword tool provided by Google. I use this quite a fair bit for my Google Adwords campaign.
Site Building Tools
For the non-technical person, building a site might seem difficult. Whichever method you choose, the learning curve might be a bit steep initially. However, once you have acquired the skill, you can simply repeat the process to build more websites. These are some tools/platforms that I use personally.
Joomla is a very powerful content management software (CMS) that can be used to build community sites. It is completely free and comes with many functions that you can customise for your site. Will take a longer time to learn.
Microsoft Frontpage is a relatively simple html editor that you can use to build your website. If you know how to use Microsoft Word, you should have little trouble learning this. Unsuitable for complex sites or those that require frequent updating.
NVU (which stands for new view), is a complete html editor system that works on Windows, Macintosh and Linux. It is an opensource software (free to use) and has similar features to Frontpage and Dreamweaver.
SBI or Sitesell is an all-in-one solution complete with site building tools, autoresponders, optin-form and newsletter, keyword research (including wordtracker), PPC campaigns, Search Engine Optimization and tracking, links exchange management, directory listing, blogs and RSS, and more. Friendly user interface and ideal for the non-technical person. Video tutorials and a large community of users available to help you along the way.
Wordpress is originally meant as a blogging platform, but it can easily be used to build a normal website as well. I recommend it as a quick and cheap way for a person wanting to start his own website. For more details, please refer to this article on site building that I wrote previously.
Webhosting and Domain Name Registration
One mistake that many people make is that they like to compare webhosting packages solely on price and features.A company that offers you an incredible package (unlimited bandwidth on a shared server, for eg) at an low price might be overselling their capacity. What usually happens is that if one day your site gets too big, they will suspend your account and explain that you are using too much cpu resources and need to upgrade to a dedicated server.
The really bad ones shut your sites down and do not have the decency to even tell you about it.They can oversell (and get away with it) because they know that 99% of their customers will use very little of their allocated quota, so they just need to get rid of those who do. And this will be written in their terms and conditions, which most of us never read anyway.
I have used many webhosting companies in the past and it is also amazing how some of them can go bad really quickly. The webhosting service and customer support might be excellent for a while, then all out of a sudden it goes bad. There could be a variety of reasons for this: change of owner, overselling, etc.
The moral of the the story is NOT to put all your websites at one webhosting company. This applies also for domain name registration. Do your research before signing any plan, try not to commit to long term deals and diversify wisely. There are many websites and forums around where you can read genuine customer reviews.Below is a list of webhosting companies that I currently use and recommend.
BlueHost is an option if you are using Wordpress. It is the recommended choice by Wordpress and it even does the Wordpress installation for you free.
HostGator is a reliable webhosting company that offers reseller packages, shared hosting and dedicated hosting. This allows you to easily upgrade later on. Use the link above and this hostgator coupon “HOSTGATOR” to get a US$9.94 discount.
ServInt specializes in full-service and high-bandwidth webhosting. This is a good place to consider when your sites start to outgrow shared hosting packages and you need virtual private servers (VPS) or dedicated hosting.
Namecheap is one of the biggest domain names registrars around. This is one of the places that I use for my domain name registration.
Share ThisPopularity: 18% [?]
[…] Resources […]