Tool Box
Every professional has tools and resources to make them better at their career. Over the years I have built my own online marketing tool box and now I am going to share it with you. I will be adding my favorite tools, marketing resources, and services I use every day. I hope you can find these as helpful as I do, and please feel free to tell me of any tools you like and would make a great addition, I’ll be sure to check it out.
SEM | SEO | PPC | Email | Social | Advertising | Online Services | Research | Affiliate Marketing
SEM
Google – The reigning king of all search engines!
Google Analytics – Free easy to use analytics, not the best, but pretty darn good.
Google Webmaster Central Blog – Useful for hearing the latest from the Google complex.
Matt Cutts – If you don’t know who Matt Cutts is, I suggest you meet him on his blog.
Yahoo – Second largest search engine, they suck in so many ways, but I still use them.
Yahoo Blog – Get the latest on what Yahoo has to say about search.
MSN Live Search – Third of the “big” three in search. I like MSN, and see them coming up eventually.
MSN Live Search Webmaster Blog – See where MSN stands with their Live Search.
Search Engine Land – Great resource for all of the latest search engine industry news and gossip. I read these guys everyday! I recommend getting their newsletter, its the easiest way to stay up to date with these guys.
SEO
SEOmoz – These guys claim “The web’s best SEO resources” and they might just be right. I really like this site and what they provide. I highly recommend.
SEO Chat – Great resource for everything SEO. I don’t visit these guys everyday, of course my job requires my attention on other online marketing projects most of the time, but when I do want to see what’s happening in the SEO world I visit these guys to see what’s up.
PPC
Google AdWords – Largest and most popular Pay-Per-Click in the world. I have managed millions of dollars through this program over the years and I can honestly say this is a “must have” if your going to do any real PPC advertising.
Yahoo! Sponsored Search - Lists your business on top sites like Yahoo!, AltaVista and CNN. I find these guys harder to work with than Google or MSN but since they are the second most used search engine, you pretty much have to use them. So Sign up and get a $25 credit.
Microsoft Advertising on Live Search – This PPC service has way less traffic than Google and Yahoo, but I have found that I get better ROI with these guys because there is less competition. If I only had a small budget of $500 – 2k, I would probably use it with Live Search.
Ask Sponsored Links – I’ve always had pretty good luck with these guys. They have a smaller amount of the search engine market, but overall a pretty good PPC program.
MIVA - Is one of the smaller search engines that provide targeted, cost effective Pay-Per-Click advertising solutions. I have used these guys with some success in the past and they typically cost me less money per sale or lead, but because they are smaller they also don’t send as much traffic, still useful to have programs running with them.
Constant Contact - For the money versus the service, these guys are my favorite. For full disclosure I should tell you that I have been using Constant Contact for quite awhile at my work, so I might be biased. I can tell you this email service provider is easy to use, has lots of features, only thing I don’t like is they sometimes go overboard in making sure your lists are compliant to email laws, but that could be considered a good thing if your not familiar with current laws and regulations.
iContact – I haven’t actually used these guys, but a good friend recommends these guys, he says he has been using them for awhile and is pleased with the service so far. They offer a Free Trial.
OnMarketer - Create HTML emails and newsletters. This service is relatively inexpensive and highly effective and can work within Outlook. They also offer a Free Trial.
Delivery Watch - Do you know if your mail server is on a public blacklist? Blacklist Monitoring is a must if you’re using your own servers to do your email marketing. They also provide many other email analytic tools to help your email campaigns perform better.
Social
Twitter – Best way to explain twitter is in their own words “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”
TweetDeck – This application is running all day everyday on my desktop. I can manage all of my Twitter followers and who I am following, search for users, post tweets to Twitter and Facebook, look up people, pretty much anything I want to do. I give this application 2 thumbs up and best part is it’s free.
Twaitter – This very cool application for Tweeter is designed to let you schedule your tweets so your business tells the world right when you need it too!
Advertising
Facebook – I have had some success with advertising on Facebook and they have some really nice ways to target your traffic from all the Facebook users. I can normally get decent traffic for less than .50 per click.
MySpace – I typically don’t get as good results from MySpace as with Facebook, but still worth being in the ad space. I would love if someone who is a power user of MySpace would like to write an article to be posted here on OMPundit about how to maximize your success on MySpace, if your interested send me an email.
Online Services
GoDaddy.com - World’s No.1 domain registrar, and I have all my domains with these guys. The pro’s about using Go Daddy is they have an easy to use domain control panel, always good prices on domains and they have a lot of other services that are top notch if you need them. Warning buying domains can be addictive but fun.
Hostgator Hosting - Looking for web hosting with quality support? 24/7 Support Via Phone, Live Chat, and Email! I have been using these guys for both business and personal hosting for more than seven years.
Hostgator Reseller Hosting - Reseller hosting starting at $24.95! This is great if your looking to manage and host lots of web sites you want to keep separate.
Research
Google Webmaster Tools – Easy to use and a must for any webmaster.
Yahoo Site Explorer – Great for researching your site or your competitions.
MSN Live Webmaster Tools – Another tool to see how MSN is treating your site.
ClickZ – This is another favorite of mine for a huge array of industry news, articles, and general online marketing resources. I took the easy way out with these guys and just get all of the daily newsletters that I need, keeps it nice and simple to review their new content.
Affiliate Marketing
AffiliateReporting.com – Fully integrates with all the major search engines and affiliate networks, even some tier 2 affiliate networks. This application delivers powerful analytics of all your affiliate programs so you can pinpoint what’s making you money and what’s costing you cash.
Advaliant – This is a great affiliate network that I have used in the past. They have a lot of tier 2 programs that have some great payouts, more flexible terms, and less competition in the market space.
Google AdSense – Googles affiliate program where they show ads on your site and you get a cut of every click through. This program is pretty easy to run and can be effective but don’t expect to get rich off of it unless you have tons of traffic. You can see and example of my own account below.
NickyCakes – Nicky is hilarious and a very smart and successful affiliate marketer. If you’re new to affiliate marketing, and looking for more information, you should check Nicky out! Make sure to read his newbie guide and be warned his blog would not be considered work safe imo.
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