On this page I reveal the tools and resources that I use every single day to build up my online business.
Many of the tools are free but all of them offer great value.
A downloadable, pdf version of this page can be found here
1. Email
The best free email service is Gmail by Google. You can set up a free account quickly and easily and even forward emails from your Gmail account to another email account.
Because of the amount of spam email that plagues the internet, it is best to offer a Gmail email account when you subscribe to a service. That way you won’t clog up the email space provided by your internet service provider.
2. Social Networking Sites
There are 2 main social sites that I use to network and communicate with people:
Both these sites are hot. Set up a free account right now and start inviting your friends, colleagues, etc to join you. You can end up developing networks of thousands of people and keep them up to date with the click of a button. Best of all, its free.
Here are my Facebook and Twitter pages:
http://www.facebook.com/johnlagoudakis
http://www.twitter.com/johnlagoudakis
3. Roboform
This handy little password tool saves you heaps of time. There is a free version (holds up to about 10 passwords) and a paid version (unlimited passwords). It installs on your PC and creates a new toolbar on your web browser.
Whenever you go to a site that you need to enter a username and password, Roboform will automatically enter the details for you with the click of a button! I couldn’t imagine life without it.
Roboform
Download the FREE version of Roboform here
Find out more about Roboform here
4. Domain Name Registration
I use Namecheap to register my domain names. As the name suggests, the prices are competitive. Also, they have an easy-to-use domain management interface.
5. Web Hosting
While Namecheap do offer web hosting services, instead I use Kiosk.
The main reason I use Kiosk is their understanding of internet marketing businesses. If I was to have a few complaints about spam, etc, Kiosk won’t shut down my domain and seize possession of it – as other hosting companies have done and will do.
Another reason I choose Kiosk is their excellent support services. I live in Australia and my hours are after-hours in North America but I know I can get live 24 hour support with Kiosk – and I have.
Also, they have a generous referral compensation program which you can use to your benefit as you recommend them to your friends and associates.
6. FTP Software
Once you have your own domain and a hosting account set up, you will need FTP software to easily upload/download content for your website.
I use Filezilla, a free open source solution that is the most widely-used FTP software available today.
Note: Make sure you download the “client” version.
7. Content Management System (CMS)
Wordpress
Wordpress is the best (and it’s totally FREE) content management system for your website. Wordpress is easy to install and is very user-friendly.
Wordpress makes it easy for you to write and maintain content for your website. Also, it is extremely search engine friendly which means that you’ll have greater presence in Google and Yahoo! and, therefore, more free visitors to your site!
You can install Wordpress from within Cpanel (in your web hosting account) under the “Fantastico Deluxe” section, this is the easiest way to install Wordpress, or you can download it directly from http://www.wordpress.org and follow their setup instructions.
8. Webpage Design (HTML Editor)
Because I own Microsoft Office I use FrontPage for my basic webpage designs, such as landing pages. There is a free, widely-used alternative called Nvu. Nvu allows you to create and edit your own web pages.
You don’t need any programming skills so don’t be concerned if you’re totally new to this.
9. Autoresponder
If you want to build a subscriber list for a newsletter or otherwise, I highly recommend AWeber.
AWeber is easy to use, highly customizable, and has a high delivery rate. It is considered the industry standard and is used by most of the biggest players in internet marketing.
Tech support is superb. My requests have always been responded to within 24 hours and they even have a live support chat feature.
Sign up today for a free test drive
10. Keyword Tools
Keyword research is so important to building an online business. There are 3 main keyword tools that I use:
This is an awesome, free tool provided by those who know keywords best; Google. With this tool you can find out how many people are searching a particular keyword and how competitive a keyword is with advertisers. The Google Keyword Tool is the best keyword tool.
ii) Keyword Elite
Great tool if you want to easily generate keywords lists of hundreds or thousands of keywords (the Google Keyword Tool will only give you back a maximum of 150 results per search).
With one click of a button, Keyword Elite will search Google, Yahoo, Ask, FreeKeywords, Meta Tages, misspelled words, Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery.
Also, you can easily filter keywords based on positive or negative keywords.
iii) Keyword Spy
Keyword Spy is a weapon that I’ve only recently discovered and added to my arsenal. With Keyword Spy you can search any website or affiliate offer and find out exactly who is promoting it and what the keywords are they are bidding on. Very powerful tool.
11. Payment Processors
Clickbank makes payment processing easy if you have a digital product you want to sell.
Clickbank take care of everything; they handle credit card payments and also refunds. Also, they handle affiliate commissions.
To set up a merchant account with Clickbank, sign up as a vendor.
PayPal is a great free alternative for payment processing.
12. Office Software
For my word processing, spreadsheets and databases I use Microsoft Office mainly but there are a couple of free solutions that are just as good:
i) Open Office
ii) Google Docs
Open Office works just like Microsoft Office and is even compatible with it. You can exchange and modify documents with other Microsoft Office users.
Google Docs is awesome. You can use an online word processor, spreadsheet and calendar just like you would use Microsoft Office. The one major advantage with Google Docs is that you can access the program and all your documents from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection. Also, you can assign anyone permissions to view and/or modify one, any or all of your documents!
13. PDF Creator
If you create reports, such as this one, you will need to have a PDF printer to convert your word documents to PDFs. There is a free one that I use called PDF995.
There are a few free PDF converters out there but I like PDF995 because you can download free add-ons that allow you to create customized hyperlinks within your PDF document.
14. Paint Program
Editing images can be a big part of creating an online presence. An excellent free image editing program is called Paint.NET.
15. Screen Capture
Capturing screenshots is a great resource, especially when you are preparing a how-to guide. Below is an example screenshot that I took with ScreenHunter:
ScreenHunter screen capture software
ScreenHunter is a free program.
16. Video Creation
Creating videos is a must these days. We all know how to create videos with our video cameras but creating screen recording videos is extremely useful.
The most widely-used screen recording video software is Camtasia Studio. It is not cheap but it is a great product. I have a copy and used it to create a video ecourse and other projects.
Download the 30-day trial version of Camtasia here
There is a free alternative but I haven’t used it myself so I can’t comment from personal experience. It is called CamStudio and it comes highly recommended by those that do use it.
Get your FREE copy of CamStudio here
Creating screen recordings is a great way to teach others how to do something. You can then use that knowledge to drive traffic to your site by posting your videos online. Which brings us to the next resource I use…
17. Video Hosting
The most popular video hosting service on the net today is YouTube. YouTube membership is free and it also costs you nothing to upload as many videos as you want. The only limitation is that the video length can be no more than 10 minutes (unless you are willing to pay for a different plan).
YouTube is a great source of free traffic. Videos are so popular and they will only continue to attract more and more visitors in the years to come.
Even better than hosting your video just on YouTube is to get it on 20+ sites, all with the push of one button… how do you do this? With an awesome free service called TubeMogul.
Download the pdf version of this page here
Free?
Marko´s last blog ..Clasic Curls Tutorial
Yes, it’s 100% free
I don’t think a demo version is available. However, it does come with a 100% money-back guarantee so there’s no risk
Hi
I bought Auto Profit Launcher and when I found it was not what I expected it to be, I checked the website for refund gurantees and I found this:
———————————————-
Auto Launch Your Profits,
Or Rob Us Blind Guarantee
Try out Auto Profit Launcher with zero risk for 30 days. And we mean really try it.
Create your websites during that time, get them out there and send traffic to them. Keep all those profits — they’re all yours.
After 30 days, if you’re if you’re not completely happy with Auto Profit Launcher, we’ll refund your money, no questions asked.
—————————————————————-
So after 30 days I applied for refund and got a shock ! The support staff drew my attention their “terms of use” which is not readily visible and it says you have to apply for refund with 30 days.
So I think this is a deliberate attempt to avoid refunds. One the website, the customer is asked to apply for refund after 30 days and when he does point to terms of use and refuse refund. What do you all make of this devious plan of Auto profit launcher ?
I am a newbie and $497/- is my hard earned money.
Hi Eric,
I think you should be able to get a refund. If the site says “Try out Auto Profit Launcher… After 30 days, if you’re if you’re not completely happy with Auto Profit Launcher, we’ll refund your money, no questions asked.” but then they tell you that you need to apply for the refund within 30 days this is certainly misleading on their part.
This is what I would do if I were you; I’d reopen the refund request support ticket or open a new one and tell them exactly what you have mentioned above. Also add that if they do not promptly refund your money that you will alert the appropriate authorities.
Let me know how you go.
This is absolutely true – goals can really mean the difference between wanting to do something and actually doing it. I always think that I’m pretty good at setting goals, but judging by how I don’t find myself reaching those goals very often I am starting to think that maybe I’m not that good at it. It’s important to set realistic and specific goals, and maybe put them a little higher than realistic so that you’re always stretching a little harder to reach them.
Toronto Movers´s last blog ..Mississauga Movers
These are some great advice to rank high on Google (or any other search engine). But finding a keyword with good search volume and low seo competition can be much more challenging than it might seem, trust me.
Moreover, if we make it a practice to write based ONLY upon keyword research, it might cause us to drift away from our blog’s main niche, some times.
Apart from these possible dangers, overall great advice!
TechChunks´s last blog ..Watch Google’s 11 Year Evolution in Just 2 Minutes!
This looks interesting, I’m going to check it out. Brian Tracy’s books are really entertaining and informative about selling, that’s for sure.
Hi John,
Thanks for understanding the situation and for the support. It is a very clear and devious ploy to avoid refunds. They are completely ignoring all references to their “30 days” statement and keep harping on their “within 30 days” in the emails.
Some gurus had promoted this product and I am going to inform them and also all other gurus on whose list I am. Everyone should become aware of such practices.
I am planning to report this to the FTC. Such unscruplulous marketers shouldn’t be allowed to fool customers.
Now this is not something new with aweber.. I have had frequent problems with Aweber earlier.
This is great info…
I did not think eZine articles was the to rank high with.
This is incredibly good advice. Especially the part about being an expert in a field. Alle successful people are experts in their field. Study 10.000 hours and more.
Goals could be achieved when you put your heart on what your doing. Gather all the resources that you can use and able to utilize those resources to commit your goals. Failure could sometimes happen but those failure can make them your motivation to work hard.
Thanks for those patterns and it will come in handy for me.
Love, love, love Jeff Johnson. He has some awesome information and tools that help people get top paying careers online. We plan to tweet this posting for our readers as well. Thanks for sharing!
Top Paying Jobs´s last blog ..Top Paying Careers May Not Be Found in Florida
Your first step, writing down your goal, is absolutely essential in achieving goals. I find that writing things down somehow solidifies what you’ve written down – it’s like setting something in stone. And once it’s set, there’s no other turning back from it.
I agree with adding a PayPal cart to your website if you want to sell stuff online. It just makes things easier and faster! Although I confess didn’t bother watching the video – I outsourced the techie stuff to a freelancer and he was the one who added the PayPal cart to my website.
Clickbank is the top-of-mind brand, at least over here, for affiliate marketing. That’s how powerful it is. Even for non-newbies, Clickbank is still one of the better affiliate networks out there.
Good post! your right – supply and demmand, its the first thing people should think of when deciding to sell on ebay..
Dave´s last blog ..Sell Affiliate products using eBay classified Ads
C’mon blogger is easy, you don’t have to be clued up on HTML scrits or anything, how easy can it get..?
Dave´s last blog ..Sell Affiliate products using eBay classified Ads
As a business we think about, I’m the manager and this is what I need my team to do. But people aren’t motivated by what’s important to you as the manager. There motivated by what’s important to them.
I’m not sure I’m preselling properly. I was recently informed that I need to use a “call to action statement” in my articles. But isn’t that selling?
SFaith´s last blog ..Feb 25, Assembly at Home – Work at Home Crafts – Work from Home Assembling Crafts
Hi SFaith,
Yes, you’ll want to have a strong call to action at the end of your articles. This call to action is allowed to be included in the resource box which is added at the end of the article. This is acceptable (and even recommended) by all the article directories.
John
Really timely news for me as I’ve just put together a Rock Music antoresponder sequence on Aweber. So I have just made sure I’m not tracking the click-throughs, until this issues resolved. Much appreciated info.
The latest news I have about the League of Extraordinary Minds is that Jay Abraham and Rich Schefren are pulling together groups of the experts into panels.
If you sign up all she has to do is your email and pass word then she can use your account, statements will go to you, or if authorized you can let her inter you account info (bank access) and use as hers.
I think this one is getting overlooked because no “real brands” use Aweber… it’s primarily an “affiliate marketing” ESP… so no one like MarketingSherpa, who has a considerable amount of value in their brand, are complaining loudly.
Thanks for posting this John. I am presently using Aweber’s Javascript web form. I will change it to RAW HTML.
I’ve joined up with ClickBank a while ago and have not made any considerable income, maybe I need to work with them a bit more. Thanks for the read though.
Hi Readbud,
What methods are you using to promote Clickbank products?