Internet Marketing Bits and Pieces

Free Tools to Make Marketing Life Easier (and cheaper!)

There are a lot of internet marketing tools available these days and I’m sure we’ve all used some of these now and again.  Tools are essential for making a successful and profitable website and, while there are many good ones on the market, if you get every tool you need, you could spend a fortune.  But, I have good news!  There are a lot of free products out there that work every bit as good as the high ticket ones.   I thought I’d highlight a few here that you can add to your marketing arsenal.

Google Alerts: Here is a little time saver that is completely free.  You can create an alert for certain keywords that you would like to follow and Google Alerts will send you an e-mail letting you know the latest Google results when someone looks for that keyword.  This is especially useful to keep up on news items or the latest happenings in that business or even the score of your favorite team.

Jing Project: Jing is a very easy, free program similar to Camtasia where you can capture an image or video and share it online, share with your friends or share in a blog.  The instructions are very simple.  It’s a nice little tool and the best part, it’s free.  This is a screen shot I took of the Jing logo to put in here.  It was quick and easy.

Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is free software that can be used as a simple paint program, a retouching program, an image-format converter and much more.  It’s very similar to Photoshop without the price tag (it’s free!).

CamStudio Video is a hot item these days and this is a good product that lets you get in on the video craze.  CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer, whether it be making teaching videos or a video-based information product to sell.  It’s not as strong as Camtasia, but it definitely has enough power to get your video made and is really easy to use.

CleverKeys CleverKeys is free software that provides instant access to definitions at Dictionary.com, synonyms at Thesaurus.com, facts at Reference.com and more.  This works from most all Windows and Mac programs, word processors, Web browsers and most e-mail programs. With CleverKeys, the answers are just a click away.  For anybody that has any writing to do, this is invaluable!! (unfortunately doesn’t yet run with Windows Vista).

Nvu Free HTML editor.  Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with    no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML. Nvu is designed to be extremely easy, especially for those who don’t have a lot of experience with building websites and no technical experience.   You can create web pages as easy as typing a letter.

This is by no means a complete list of available free tools, just a starting point.  I’ll research some more and make another post of the ones I think are the best (and free!).  Until then, this will keep you busy for a while.  Happy marketing!

Well, it was a success, as you can see, as I am writing a new post and you can actually read it. Amazing! When you are new to this business, until you really know what you are doing, it can take a while to get everything just right. Hopefully I have, time will tell.

I thought in this first real post I’d tell you a little bit about my “journey” in internet marketing.  I started 2 years ago when a friend told me all about internet marketing. He had attended a JV Alert conference and was all excited about this new venture. So, why not, I was looking for a new way to stretch my brain, had been doing my job a long time and was basically in a rut. So, here I am. I am still doing my job, to pay the bills, of course, while I’ve been learning and that is what has taken me so long to get going. My only real time to work is weekends and sometimes a little bit in the evenings, but usually just on the weekends.

My first venture was buying a Mini-Site Creator course and learned a ton about the mechanics of a website, which was invaluable information.   Then came the load of products that, being a newbie, I really wasn’t sure what to do with. But I learned a lot (I have to keep telling myself that!) and I have a lot of learning products I can use.   My next major purchase was a site builder, XSitePro, which is awesome!  I’m the type of person that needs to be organized and that helps me stay organized.  It’s really quite easy to use and they’ve just come out with a new version which does everything but wash your dishes!

Then, of course, as I get onto these “lists” I got offers for just about everything, some really hard to resist and, of course, I didn’t!! I took a mentoring course to teach me how to make membership sites. Now, membership sites made sense to me, a recurring source of money every month!! It would be a goldmine!! Well, not quite. But I learned a lot!! I still have that site up, needs some work, now that I really know what to do with it. It is quite specialized and related to the work I do, but it didn’t convert well, and I didn’t know how to fix it. Now I do, but I have other sites going and that one needs a lot of work to get it up to par, so for the moment it is on the back burner.

In the course of acquiring products I obtained the content for a poker instruction site.  There is a lot of content and a book to sell and actually a really nice site, BUT, I didn’t realize gambling sites are difficult to market in the usual ways.  Most article sites won’t accept gambling articles and Adsense and Adwords won’t accept gambling sites.  Knocks out quite a bit of marketing power.  (But I learned a lot!!)

So, for my last event I did what everyone said to do in the beginning.  I went to Clickbank and found an affiliate product for weight loss and put that up on a site.  That truly is the easiest for starting out and maybe even making a little bit of money in the process.  I’ve learned how to submit articles to article sites and how to put up Adsense and now for my final achievement to date, I’ve made my blog - And I’ve Learned A Lot!!  So all my time spent so far is worth it.  There is still a ton of information out there that I don’t know, and I still have a lot of learning to do but for now I’m going to stick with the sites I have going and make them better before I move to a new project.  And as I learn I’ll share these tidbits I find along the way with you all through my blog and maybe something I find will make someone’s internet marketing life a bit easier.

Thanks for reading my first blog post, it may be simple, but it is mine, I feel accomplished.  Any comments or advice from anyone with a thought is always welcome!!

Hi All This is my very first post and it is actually more of a test post to see if I have done everything right. Please bear with me and I will soon be adding some good content.