Recently joined an affiliate marketing program and most of the tools they give you are free. They say you can purchase things to advance you business but it is not mandatory. I have a feel for things now and have noticed there are many tools that a person can get that will help with your success. For example, you can get a nifty device that finds "golden" keywords in seconds. It claims it saves you time. And there are many more. I was wondering since there are so many choices can anyone give me advice on what I should invest in first? What have you seen the most success with that you have purchased? I have a website, blog, and lens. I write articles on a daily basis and have a handful in circulation. Any suggestions, thought, ideas?
Hi gridellas, Make sure you have the fundamentals of online marketing down well. Since you have experience with a free (?) blog and a Squidoo lens, I suggest that you also look into paid hosting and wordpress.org. That'll keep you busy for several months at a minimum. In the mean time, interact on this forum and read from online marketing sites. ~Newbie Shield~
gridellas: What have you seen the most success with that you have purchased? That will vary with everyone as we are all at different places in our learning curve. I have my favorite tools and so do others, so the best thing is to do as Newbie Shield suggested, thoroughly study the fundamentals of internet marketing - and even then, I have times when I pick up a new tool or nugget somewhere that makes me scratch my head in an U-DUH moment..... as something just clicks... and the light bulb goes on. I love lightbulb moments and I have a good bit of them as I am a mite more dull headed than some. Newbie Shield:
Great, I will continue to be more familiar with the fundamentals and keep reading the forum before I jump out and buy anything.
gridellas: What have you seen the most success with that you have purchased? My greatest investment has been SiteBuildIt, hands down. It has provided me with the most success in so many ways - tools, training, and income. I don't know if that's the type of thing you are referring to since you already have a website (that link won't open, by the way). SBI is more of a set of sitebuilding tools, including a "nifty" keyword researching tool called the "brainstormer." I've only made two other purchases so far to enhance my business. The first was a membership to Popshops which is very handy in organizing and managing your affiliate products within your website. If I remember correctly, it cost me about $60 per year and is well worth it to me. The second is an additional feature available through SBI called Content 2.0. It costs me $99 per year and allows me to enable my visitors to submit content and comments wherever I choose throughout my site. It has also been well worth the money. For instance, my visitors on my chocolate-candy-mall.com site have added nearly 300 pages of content for me. That's 300 pages that I didn't have to come up with, but that help my site to rank for more and more keyword phrases and bring in more and more traffic. So, yes there are tools and resources that can enhance your business, but the most important thing, in my opinion is to get your foundation built correctly. When you do that, the money for the additional tools is there to re-invest which will ultimately create even more benefit for your business. SBI was my foundation. Blessings, Angie
Hi gridellas, You really don't need any nifty keyword tools just for finding golden keywords. Many of these tools only give you a handful of the top ones and you have to pay extra to see the others. My experience has been that most of these tools use Google's API (Application Programmable Interface) to access Google's database and just report back what you can already get for free. Google has a keyword tool that you can use for free without having to sign up for anything. Just Google on: google keyword tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal In the tool enter your keywords or have the tool search a specific page to extract keywords. Either way, you'll get a list of keywords and suggestions. Here is a really cool tip: When the results are displayed, there is a list box on the right side called Choose columns to display, do Select All. You'll see a wealth of information about each keyword. Then any of the column titles above the keywords that appear in blue, you can click on them to order the keywords by that particular column.
I have been using the Google keyword tool but was unaware of that little tid bit. Thanx for sharing that. I will have to go and give it a try.
