Free Internet Marketing Tools And Resources

A lot of people new to Internet marketing have the desire to make money but they don't have much to invest. Some have the money to invest but they get caught up with schemes that promise fortunes but make none - except for the instigators! Then there are those who have the money to invest but are cautious and want to figure it all out before they start to spend.

I fell into the latter category. Not just because I'm cautious but because I built up a profitable offline home business from almost nothing in the late nineties. I was really broke back then, thought I was going to lose my home and was determined not to let that happen. I won the battle and only have one months mortgage payment left to make and the house will be mine.

When I think back to how hard it was 10 years ago I wouldn't like to do it all again, but then I remember that it was an exciting and challenging time.

All I had when I started out was about £20, a typewriter, a need to make more money, a determination to get out of financial difficulties and never go there again and the most important thing myself.

I got involved with home publishing and initially sold other peoples products on commission. I couldn't afford to mass mail prospects so I learned to advertise and placed low cost ads. My conversions were high enough to generate enough income to place more ads and so on - a sort of offline viral effect.

I said that I had myself and what I meant was that I learned that I could do more than I ever thought that I could. How I learned that was by making some good contacts initially and I don't mean contacts who were after the money that I didn't have. Contacts who talked to me, advised me and believed in me. Because they believed in me I began to believe in myself and instead of thinking about things I did them.

I quickly traded in my typewriter for a computer, taught myself how to use it and then created - guides, advertising medias, a desktop publishing service, a magazine and much more.

That was then, this is now. I moved to the Internet because in essence it's easier to run a business. I reclaimed my sitting room back from an office and don't have to go to the post office twice a day with piles of envelopes - just as well because they closed all of the post offices down near me.

Stubbornness or maybe being plain sensible I was determined to build an Internet business up at as little cost as possible just as I did with my offline business though it has often been tempting to dip into my capital. Fortunately there are so many free internet tools and resources that it makes it possible to build up a free or low cost income generating business for those who are prepared to learn and work hard at it.

Two years on I own 10 websites, 5 blogs and co own several websites and blogs. My main expenditure has been website design software and website hosting, but they were luxuries that I could have managed without and eventually pay for themselves. I own thousands of digital products yet altogether I have spent less than $100 and get new ones every week.

The key to all of this has been knowledge and last week I put a new blog online and set myself a challenge to get 300 visitors a day to that blog within 6 months and to do it all with free tools and resources. The only cost a domain name that I already owned and shared space on my reseller hosting account. so far my challenge is going really well and one week on there have been over 300 unique visitors. I've been writing about every step that I take in my traffic challenge on the blog providing information and an insight into traffic generation for my visitors who should be targeted traffic and gradually generate an income from the blog.

In this lens I am going to review some of the free tools and resources that I use or have used and let you know what I think about them.

I've gone the whole hog in setting up websites selling ebooks, software, website templates and graphics. It's time consuming, confusing at first and can be costly paying for website hosting. It takes time to cover your costs and especially if yours is a new website or blog with little or no traffic.

While you are building your traffic and sales, or even instead of there are some great free outlets for selling your digital downloads and I currently use 2 of them Tradebit for my own business and Payloadz with my business partner Gary.

Tradebit

I joined Tradebit.com over a year ago, uploaded a handful of products and forgot about it. Within a few weeks I got a notification from Tradebit that some money had been paid into my PayPal account for 2 sales. That was an excellent surprise, money from an unexpected source and I hadn't done much to earn it. Payments seem to follow within a few days of the sales and are all profit minus a 25% fee for the Tradebit.com service.

I think that the 25% fee is cheap considering that you are getting to sell your products free on a site with a high page rank and a high volume of traffic and you have no hosting fees. You get unlimited storage, I currently have 36 products on there and will be adding hundreds more products as time allows.

When you sign up you need to add your PayPal account id and your sales are completed with PayPal. You can upload your files to their web space. Add an image, description and price and there you go your product is on sale in a busy marketplace.

You can sell anything on Tradebit.com that is digitally downloadable: ebooks, software, graphics, website templates, scripts, music files, stock photos, films, sounds and even games. There are lots of different categories for each product type, making it easy for prospective buyers to find what they are interested in.

You can link to your products stored there on your own websites or blogs, or on eBay. You can easily make changes to your product listings at any time that you wish. Apart from your own sales area you get a sub domain where your products are automatically listed and you can edit the page with any details and advertisements that you might want to add. You can also join groups of like minded users or start your own.

There is also an affiliate programme where you can promote other members products and earn a percentage set by them. You can even use an affiliate link to promote your own products and earn more from your sales.

I'm pretty pleased with Tradebit.com and recommend their service to anybody with digital products to sell. There was a downside until recently in that it was difficult to figure out how to connect your products to the graphics but eveything has been simplified now and it's really quick to get your products in the marketplace. Since that change I've been adding more products and my sales have increased accordingly.

Payloadz

My business partner Gary and I have only just started to use Payloadz so I can't say how well this marketplace works just yet. We were going to buy some rather expensive software for a new venture and decided that we would earn the money to pay for it rather than dip into our individual business accounts. As we both own a lot of products it was an opportune time to test out Payloadz.

Gary dipped his feet into the water first yesterday and uploaded a product then today I have uploaded 11 products in between writing and working on several other projects. Multitasking at it's best!!

At first I found the product upload feature confusing - it took me over 4 hours to figure it out! Once I got the hang of it I was adding products very quickly and easily. The free account has an upload limit of 1,000 MB and a transaction limit of $100, but there are paying levels of membership where you can increase your upload and transaction limits. With 12 products we have used 43,717 KB and our dearest product is $7 so we still have some way to go before we need to upgrade.

Payloadz is much the same as Tradebit, but one thing that is better is that you can use html for your product descriptions. Hopefully tarting the descriptions up will help sales. Your products get listed on the Payloadz site and in their eBay listings.

You can also designate an affiliate fee for each individual product so other members can promote your products and earn whatever amount you designate for each sale. I can't see anywhere what percentage is taken from your sales, but any money earned will be profit so I'm not worried.

If you pay monthly fees Payloadz guarantee sales, they say that you are 700% more likely to make sales, but if we upgrade it will be when this site is paying for itself.

You can also become a reseller if you have a website and earn money for each click through from your link and for everybody that you refer.

I'm sure that there are a lot more features that I've missed on Tradebit and Payloadz but I'm sure that you get the general picture.