Internet Marketing Tools

December 5, 2009 Written by Jason Parker 7 Comments

This post includes, in my opinion, the best internet marketing tools. This isn’t a post to display every single script, service, or piece of software on the net… what use would that have but only to appear like an impressive list? So some sections have a few tools, some only 1 recommended tool.

Email AutoResponders

GetResponse: Recommended 3rd party autoresponder. High deliverability. Can use single opt-in and your list will have the same deliverability as those with double opt-in.

AWeber: Recommended 3rd party autoresponder for double opt-in. If you’re hesitant to use single opt-in, I recommend AWeber because of their high deliverability. They’re the oldest autoresponder company on the net (GetResponse is only a couple years behind).

AutoResponsePlus: Recommended autoresponder for hosting on your own dedicated server. This is ideal for gigantic lists because you pay for the script once and install it. 3rd party autoresponders charge more and more money as your list gets bigger. The only downside is that you handle spam complaints and deliverability issues. The only quality autoresponder I know of that you can export your ARP3 list to without having to confirm email addresses in case deliverability is low is iContact.

WebHosting

HostGator: One of the top hosting companies online who just reached over 200,000 customers. They’ve been around for a long time and have great support.

SiteGround: Recommended hosting company for the technically challenged. They provide fast support, which is their USP. If you’re going to need a lot of support, go with them.

Keyword Research Tools

Google AdWords Tool: This keyword research tool gives you the most accurate results based on searches in Google’s engine. I’ve found that other popular keyword tools like SEO Book’s are inaccurate in comparison. And if you’re using inaccurate KW research tools, you’re going to be in a world of hurt when you spend months going after ranking high for a keyword when it doesn’t get as much traffic as you might think. Also with Google’s tool, make sure to select “Exact Match” because it’ll show you the amount of searches for the exact keyword. Do not select a keyword based on “Broad Match” or the other 2.

WordTracker: WordTracker can display data of daily searches and competition of keyword terms, which is ideal for winning over longtail keywords for small amounts of traffic at a time.

Social Media Tools

ping.fm: ping.fm allows you to post on multiple social media sites at one time. For example, instead of just making a Tweet on Twitter, you can “Tweet” across MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, and Livejournal at the same time.

Social Bookmarking Tools

OnlyWire: OnlyWire has a free ad supported service and a paid service. You can bookmark several social bookmarking sites at the same time.

AutoSocialPoster: This internet marketing tool allows you randomize the act of social bookmarking to appear more natural to search engines and also the social bookmarking sites, so that your accounts don’t get banned for excessive bookmarking.

Merchant and Affiliate Program Tools

Rapid Action Profits: This is a script that allows you to have your own instant PayPal commission affiliate program. There are several other features as well, but the big perk in this script is that affiliates love instant commissions instead of waiting up to over a month for commission payouts. They get commissions instantly and therefore promote your product like crazy.

InfusionSoft: InfusionSoft is extremely expensive and reserved for businesses that are already doing well over 6 figures. What is it? You can have your own affiliate program, but the main perk is the direct response followup marketing technology.

Pinging Tools

Ping-O-Matic: Allows you to ping your RSS feed.

Link Submission Tools

Incansoft RSSBot: This is a piece of software that submits your RSS feed to around 50 aggregators or RSS directories.

Article Submission Tools

iSnare: This is actually a service that mass submits your articles to directories and other outlets. The reason why I recommend it over article submission tools such as Article Post Robot and Incansoft ArticleBot is because signing up for all the article directories is time consuming, whereas with iSnare, you don’t have to spend sometimes days setting up your accounts.

Website Data Collection Tools

Alexa: Alexa can tell you roughly where your site ranks among the rest on the net according to how much traffic you’re generating. However, there is a flaw in that the data is collected based on who has the Alexa toolbar installed on their browser. So a tech-savvy website may have a significantly better Alexa ranking than a site on motorcycles which actually generates more traffic… because bikers don’t download the Alexa toolbar. I don’t even have it.

Quantcast: This tool will tell you about related sites and where visitors go from various sites.

RSS Syndication Tools

Twitter Feed: Twitter Feed allows you to syndicate your RSS feed through ping.fm or your Twitter account.

Press Release Submission Tools

Webwire: Webwire is actually a service that will syndicate your press release submissions. If you put a press release on here, you can often be on the first page of Google for a term instantly. Whenever there’s any kind of news with your online business, you ought to submit a press release to Webwire.

Video Submission Tools

TubeMogul: TubeMogul allows you to submit to several video sites at the same time such as Viddler, YouTube, and Dailymotion.

Directory Submission Tools

Incansoft DirectoryBot: This is the best internet marketing tool as for directory submissions go in my opinion. Your site gets submitted to hundreds of website directories without having to sign up for any sites. Though you’ll need to fill out any captchas that popup.

Affiliate Marketing Tools

OfferBuzz: OfferBuzz is a search engine that will display results on various affiliate offers across several networks, including ClickBank.

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CREATING YOUR OWN E-ZINE

July 2, 2009 Written by Mr X 0 Comment

Now that we have established that creating your own E-zine is actually a good idea, we’re going to begin the process of actually creating the e-zine itself. The first step in doing this is deciding exactly what kind of e-zine you want to create.

Remember what we said in the previous article? There is more than one way to create an e-zine.

One is to offer what we call an e-zine newsletter. This is an e-zine that will be emailed to your subscriber base on a regular basis, whether it be daily, weekly, monthly or whatever frequency you choose.

In creating an e-zine newsletter that will be emailed, you also need to decide on the format of the newsletter itself. Are you going to send out text emails or are you going to send out your e-zine in HTML format? Just a word of caution; HTML emails are many times flagged as spam by Internet service providers, so you may want to stay away from them unless you have a really reliable autoresponder service that has an excellent delivery rate and reputation with the ISPs.

While we’re on the subject of autoresponders for your e-zine, there are a couple of ways you can go with this.

The first, and simplest, is to go with an autoresponder service like Aweber or GetResponse. Both are good services and you can’t go wrong with either one of them. They will both make sure that the bulk of your emails get delivered to where they need to go. The advantage of having an outside service is that you don’t have to worry about spam complaints, as they will handle all of them, including all opt-ins and opt-outs, or as is most commonly referred to as unsubscribes.

The downside to going with an autoresponder service is that you are pretty much at the mercy of their system. If there are things about it you don’t like, well, you either have to live with them or switch to a new service.

The second option is to have an autoresponder script set up on your own server. The advantages of this are that you are in complete control of your list and how your autoresponder works.

However, there is a HUGE downside to going with your own autoresponder script. Should one of your subscribers happen to scream spam (yes, it DOES happen), the complaint goes to your ISP. If you get enough of these complaints, your ISP can pull the plug on you and you’ll end up losing your hosting.

My personal recommendation is to go with a service like Aweber or GetResponse. You will save yourself a ton of grief.

Aside from offering your own newsletter through email, you can choose to offer your e-zine in the form of a web page that you would update every so often.

There are pros and cons to this as well.

The pros to having your e-zine on a web page are that you don’t have to worry about spam complaints. No emails are sent. The person just goes to the site, signs up for membership, gets his login and password and then accesses the site whenever he wants to. This makes for very little work for you as far as notifying members.

A good idea would be to have the last time the site was updated somewhere on the main page with what the update was so that people don’t have to go looking all around for the new information.

The cons of having your own web site e-zine are numerous.

For starters, maintaining a website is a lot more difficult and time consuming than typing up a 2 page letter and sending it out to subscribers. If you’re not an expert at web design, updating your site can be quite a painful process.

Another negative of having a member’s e-zine is that, unless you still have them opt-in, you have no way of contacting these people to let them know that the site has been updated. Many people, if not reminded about the e-zine, will simply forget that it exists and as a result will not come to the site at all after a period of time.

Another negative about having a website e-zine is security. If you want to keep the site only open to members, you’re going to have to have certain scripts written to keep people from hacking into your site. All of this is going to cost a lot more money than just sending out a newsletter, even if you do have to pay monthly fees to some autoresponder service.

Regardless of which format you decide to go with, there are going to be administrative headaches with each. Because of that fact, I strongly recommend staying away from the website and go with the email newsletter, at least when you first start out. As time goes by, you can “graduate” to a web based e-zine.

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