Top Internet Marketing Tools

My list…

One of the things that I found most confusing getting started in this game was just where to go for the different services that everyone was talking about.  For example – I totally understood why I needed a list, but had no idea who might be able to help me build one!  So here’s my list of useful online services – not exhaustive, but the ones that I use the most frequently.  Feel free to comment if you have something that I have missed.  And yes – where these are paid services, I have used my affiliate link – but feel free to strip that out if you wish…

Website Hosting:

Aplus.net – I’ve been with these guys for over 6 years now – very reliable service and awesome customer support – even for things that are not really their problem!  Everything from email to domain names (with hosting or with redirects).  There may be cheaper options out there – but I for one am not even looking because these guys just do the deal and let me get on with running my business.

Email list management:

Aweber.com – You’ll hear a lot about building your list, and you will also hear that there are free tools that you can host yourself to achieve the same thing.  Two problems with that – the technical side of managing thousands of emails a day is not trivial and the legal aspects of spam control are just as complex.  My advice?  Let the professionals deal with it and get on with your business!

Free services:

There’s a lot of things where paying someone else can bring a lot of value to your business, but there are also a lot of free services out there that can be just as effective.  Especially when you are starting out – leveraging your budget can be key!  So here’s a few that I have found useful:

1. Submitterbot.com – not the fastest process in the world, but a pretty neat way to submit your website or article to lots of directories from one place.
2. Headline Analyzer – ever wondered why some ads convert hugely and others do nothing?  A lot is in the title – this tool will assess your ad or article title and give you an idea of how powerful it is and what kind of audience you are reaching.
3. Website Traffic Monitoring – don’t ever create a commercial website without some way to track your traffic, and Google has all the tools you’ll need for free!  How many visitors, where they came from, how long they stayed and where they went next…  If you don’t know your numbers, you have no clue how to improve things!
4. Blog pinging – not sure how much longer this will be a free service, but pingoat.com will ping your blog to a whole bunch of directories for you automatically – once you’ve done it once, you just bookmark that URL to do it as often as you like.  Great service.
5. Hootsuite – in the spirit of tracking everything, if you use Twitter, I recommend using HootSuite to send out any tweets with links.  Just use Hootsuite to shorten the URL and you get free tracking of clicks!
6. Blog Pingler – another free blog pinging service – seems a bit more comprehensive than pingoat.com – running 92 directories at the time of writing!