23 Useful Internet Marketing Tools

 

Greetings!

Yes, I’m back! You may (or may not!) have noticed that I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks or so. There’s no profound reason for that other than a combination of illness and other tasks that have taken up my time. Rather than try to rush out a blog post for the sake of it, I chose to wait until I was able to give it my best, which is something I always try to live by in all things.

***Announcing the Winner of the Competition***

 

Recently, I ran a competition to win a copy of my forthcoming plugin, WP Pop Master. A winner was chosen at random from all those who were automatically entered by leaving a blog comment before the deadline and I am pleased to announce that the winner is….

Jerry Handy!

 Congratulations, Jerry! 🙂

Be sure to subscribe to be among the first to hear when WP Pop Master is available.

 

The List

 

Okay, down to business. I decided to do this post because I get a lot of questions regarding what I use to get such-and-such an effect, what tool I recommend for doing such-and-such, how I managed to get such-and-such to do such-and-such, etc.

While this isn’t going to be an exhaustive list of absolutely everything I use, I am going to try to list my ‘couldn’t-do-without’ Internet marketing tools and resources that I use all the time. Hopefully you’ll find something here that you’ll find useful.

Essentials

 

Plugins

 

Paper Template – This is an amazing plugin from Robert Plank and Lance Tamashiro that enables you to create squeeze pages, opt-in pages, sales, pages and more, right from within your existing WordPress dashboard, quickly and easily. All the formatting of my posts and pages is done with the use of Paper Template, both within my theme and on standalone pages.

Pretty Link Lite – Pretty Link comes in both free (Lite) and paid (Pro) versions. This plugin enables you to create custom links using your own domain name but, not only that, it also allows you to track clicks on your links and analyse the results. The Pro version does a lot more but I find that the Lite version does exactly what I want.

CommentLuv – CommentLuv is a widely used social engagement plugin that is extremely popular with bloggers. If you’ve left a comment on my blog before then you’ve likely seen CommentLuv in action. If you’re a blogger and you’re not already using CommentLuv, I’d highly recommend that you check it out. Again, it comes in both free and paid versions.

WP Page Boss – This plugin provides something that I have been crying out for right from the beginning – a quick, convenient way to see all your WordPress pages/posts together on one screen. No more wasting precious time wading through pages and pages, trying to guess whereabouts a particular post is. This plugin is an absolute lifesaver!

Graphics

 

Pixabay – Images! One of the banes of the online Marketer or, indeed, anyone who has a website and wants to find good quality,  free images that they are allowed to use legally. Well Pixabay gives you just that. It does offer a catalogue of paid images from Shutterstock, but I find that the catalogue of royalty-free images is usually more than adequate for my needs. If I need something a bit more tailored, personal or quirky, then I usually use…….

The Logo Creator – This is a fantastic and inexpensive piece of software from Laughingbird Software. The best way to see examples of what this is capable of is to click on the link and check out the demos. Also, there are plenty of examples dotted throughout my site, as it’s something that I use ALL the time!

Video

 

Custom Video Player 2 – I’ve seen a few different tools for enhancing video presentations, but for me, CVP2 beats them all. Once you’ve installed it on your website you can use it to customise your videos right across all your sites! I’ve used it here on my blog a couple of times: take a look at a couple of the things that are possible here and here.

Camstudio – An excellent, free alternative for recording on-screen activity if you can’t afford the likes of Camstasia.

BB FlashBack Express Recorder – This is another excellent, free recorder that I use if Camstudio isn’t suitable for some reason. I probably use both this and Camstudio equally.

Download Helper – We’ve all been there – there’s an embedded video on a site that we just wish we were able to download, perhaps because we want to keep it for future reference or maybe it’s a video that doesn’t have any way to pause it or skip to the end so we want to download it so that we can have full control of when we watch it and whether we want to skip or go back to a certain point. This is a browser add-on that enables you to do it.

Universal Downloader – This is another add-on that does the same thing that Download Helper does. It’s good to have them both because sometimes you may find that Download Helper won’t download a particular video whereas Universal Downloader will.

StreamTransport – Again, this does the same thing as Download Helper and Universal Download, but StreamTransport is a standalone program that you install on your computer. This is a useful piece of kit for the occasions when neither Download Helper nor Universal Downloader will download a video because, oftentimes in those cases, StreamTransport will successfully do the job.

*NB Of course, it should go without saying that I am not advocating downloading videos that you don’t have the right or permission to download. I can not take any responsibility for the way in which you use this information.

Audio

 

Audacity – Audacity is a free, open source, cross-platform recording and editing program. I don’t use this for any of my pro recording projects, but due to its easy, intuitive interface I find that it’s perfect for all my IM needs and it’s a great tool for beginners.

MySpeed – There are many accelerated learning techniques, this one I picked up from Rich Schefren. You’ve probably heard of speed reading, but have you ever heard of speed listening? That’s what Enounce’s MySpeed program enables you to do. Apparently, the average reader digests 200 – 250 words per minute while the speed of most speech is just 100 – 125 words per minute. In theory, this means that there is room to speed up audio and it still be understood and absorbed fully. I don’t know about you, but if I can reduce an hour long training to 30 minutes, then I’m all for it! I use MySpeed a lot and can vouch for its effectiveness. It’s a good idea to increase the speed by small increments to allow your brain to adjust, but it’s amazing just how natural it soon feels to be listening to something at 1.5x or even 2.0x the original speed! Note that it’s only the speed that is increased and not the pitch.

Windows Media Player – The reason I’ve included this is, not so much for the software itself, but rather for the speed adjustment functionality, following on from what I talked about above with regards to MySpeed. This is because MySpeed allows you to adjust the speed of online flash videos, such as on YouTube or those that are often embedded in training courses. For downloaded files such as mp3s, mp4s, etc you need another option and, while I’m sure that most media players offer speed change functionality, I find that Windows Media Player does the job perfectly. All you need to do is go to “Enhancements”, select “Play speed settings” and this brings up a little window that contains a slider control that enables you to easily adjust the speed to your liking. Just like MySpeed, this only adjusts the speed and not the pitch. No chipmunk sounding voices here!

Listen N Write Free – This is another tool that facilitates speed adjustment, however this one is geared towards transcription. So if you had a PLR video or audio that you wanted to redo with your own voice, you could load up the file into the program, adjust it to a manageable speed and use the built-in text editor to transcribe your reference document. Equally you could do the same if you just wanted to create a written version of an audio or video file. Now, of course you can do this with, say, Windows Media Player and Notepad, but the beauty of Listen N Write Free is that the audio and writing elements are combined in a convenient and easy-to-use, purpose-built program.

Organisational

 

POP Peeper – Many of us have a number of e-mail accounts across a variety of providers. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to keep track of all of them and receive immediate notifications all in the same place? Well, you can with POP Peeper. For example, maybe you have 3 Yahoo addresses, 4 GMail addresses, 2 Windows Live addresses. You can keep track of all of them all at once with this nifty little program.

FeedReader – RSS feeds are a great way to keep up-to-date with websites, especially blogs. Feedreader enables you to keep track of your favourites with ease and ensure that you never miss an update. Apparently they offer an online version now too.

X Mind – Mindmaps. Some people love them, some loathe them. For a long while I just didn’t ‘get’ the concept of mindmaps and simply had no interest in them at all. But after seeing Alex Jeffreys recommending them in some of his training I decided to play around with them. After just a few minutes experimenting with the free version of X Mind I was hooked. I found myself coming up with new ways of organising things and even product ideas, simply by experimenting with the software! So yes, I am definitely a convert and highly recommend you look into using mindmaps if you don’t already. X Mind is very easy to use and you’ll be creating mindmaps in no time at all. There is a paid version but the free version is packed with features and is more than enough for me.

Evernote – Evernote is another of those things that I’d heard people talking a lot about but I didn’t quite ‘get’ until curiosity got the better of me and I actually played around with it myself. I think that this is an essential tool for anyone doing any kind of work online as it provides a convenient place for you to store all your notes on the fly, it facilitates an easy way for you to clip content to read later on or save to an archive, plus it automatically syncs any content you have in it across all your Evernote enabled devices. I’m sure that there are many more things that it can do but I know that I haven’t yet got to grip fully with the program. But even with my limited knowledge of it I’m still finding it to be an invaluable tool.

Solo Ads

 

Safe Swaps – Safe Swaps is the number one go-to resource for buying and selling solo ads and for doing ad-swaps. You can join and use it for free but are there are a few limitations that could prove to be restrictive if you want to do anything on a larger scale. Still, it’s an excellent resource that features a number of established solo ad sellers and also features a good ratings and review system so you can thoroughly check out a prospective partner.

Solo Ad Marketplace – This is another good resource for solo ad buyers/sellers. To me it looks a bit like a cross between Clickbank and Fiverr, which isn’t a bad thing as it means that it’s nice and simple to navigate and to use. The only gripe I have is that the site is usually very slow. But again, you have access to a good number of solo ad sellers and again, many are well-known in the industry.

Solochecker – Solochecker is a newer player on the solo ads field, but it is growing all the time and is another excellent resource. Like Solo Ad Marketplace I find it to be frustratingly slow and it isn’t very intuitive to a new user, but the site contains excellent and helpful tutorials that will get you going in no time.

Cool Stuff

Although these aren’t what I’d described as being ‘essentials’, they are things that I use and have received a lot of questions about:

iRibbon Pro – I get a LOT of questions asking me what theme it is that is on my blog. I started out using a free version of iRibbon but it wasn’t long before I upgraded to iRibbon Pro as I really liked the look, feel and customisation options of the theme. Importantly, it is a responsive theme, which is an absolute must in today’s mobile oriented market. The latest version of the theme is iRibbon Pro 2, which I do have but I have to confess to still using the first version as I’ve been too lazy to upgrade it!

WebcasterWP – How would you like famous meteorologist, Todd Gross to actually appear on your screen and welcome your visitors to your WordPress site? Perhaps you would prefer a pretty lady (I’m sure Todd won’t be offended!)? Or maybe a fun puppet would be more your thing? All this and more is possible with WebcasterWP.

Notification Ninja – More and more people are becoming ‘ad blind’, something which makes it harder than ever to market to them. One thing that is sure to get their attention is using a technique known as a pattern interrupt. If you don’t know what this is, basically it’s a technique that uses something unexpected to throw your prospect off guard and grab their attention. Notification Ninja does just that by drawing on our familiarity with social media to cause surprise when confronted with a little, unexpected message window. This is a plugin that again I have had a lot of questions about – it shows that it works! 😉

From $0 to My First $1000 Day?

 

Just how did I do it?

A secret, push-button software program? No.

An underground loophole? No.

Pure, dumb luck? No.

An actual proven, working system with the backing, training and support of an established millionaire, a like-minded community and access to a complete sales funnel? YES!

Click below to see how I did it:

 

How about your essential Internet marketing tools and resources? If there are any that you find to be invaluable then please share them in the comments section below. And, as usual, don’t forget to give Dr. Einstein a nice click – it keeps him happy! 🙂

Until next time,

Glenn