Zero Cost Im Startup

Zero Cost Internet Marketing Startup

Free resources for building an IM business

Zero Cost Internet Marketing Startup

Introduction One of the unique things about building an internet business is the low cost of entry.

You don't need to spend thousands of dollars on equipment, rent, staff, signage, inventory or any of the myriad of other things a traditional business would need to get started.

All you really need is a computer and an internet connection (and you can even use someone else's if necessary).

But what about the software and other tools you need to operate your business?

There's going to be a cost for those things, right?

Good news - there doesn't have to be.

Sure, you can spend hundreds of dollars on software like Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Camtasia Studio and various other things that are commonly used in this business. But virtually all of them have free alternatives.

In this report we're going to look at some of the best of those free alternatives, so you can get your business up and running - and making money - without having to spend a dime.

Building Websites

This is probably the most fundamental resource in this business - a website. No matter what strategy you're using in your internet marketing business, you're going to need a website.

Yes, there are strategies that promise you can make money without even having a website. And I'm sure some people do just that. But if you don't have your own website, you're always going to be at the mercy of some other person or company who can turn off the lights without any notice.

There are actually quite a few different tools that will help you build a website of your own, and don't cost anything. But we're going to look at two in particular.

WordPress

WordPress was designed as a "blogging platform" but over the years it has developed into a full content management system (CMS). Which basically means it Copyright Š 2012 – All Rights Reserved Page 2 How I Consistently Turn $20 into $2,000 in 7 DAYS or LESS!!

Zero Cost Internet Marketing Startup makes it really easy to post new content to your website, without having to worry about the design or layout of the content.

It manages all that stuff for you.

WordPress is free to use, and is available to download via the official WordPress website: http://wordpress.org

If you download it from there, you'll need to install it on your web server. This isn't a difficult process, and the instructions are all on their website.

The other option for installing WordPress is to use a service called Fantastico that is included with many hosting plans. Fantastico will install WordPress (along with a bunch of other packages) in just a few clicks.

One of the biggest advantages of WordPress is how easy it is to change the layout of your website, and add new functionality to your site.

There are hundreds of free WordPress themes available through the Free Themes Directory: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

No matter what type of site your building, you'll be able to find a suitable theme for it.

Adding new functions to your WordPress site is done through plugins, of which there are also hundreds available for free. They are available through the Plugin Directory: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

Because WordPress manages the content of your site separately from the design, you can change your theme or add plugins any time without affecting the content on your website.

Static HTML

Some people prefer to build static HTML websites. There are two main reasons that you might want to do this: Copyright Š 2012 – All Rights Reserved Page 3 How I Consistently Turn $20 into $2,000 in 7 DAYS or LESS!!

Zero Cost Internet Marketing Startup 1. Static HTML is faster, particularly if you get a lot of traffic

2. Static HTML gives you more fine-tuned control over the layout of your website

There are several free applications for building static HTML websites, but the one I recommend is KompoZer: http://kompozer.net

It has many of the same features as a commercial application like Adobe Dreamweaver but without the high cost.

Plus, it's available for Windows, Mac and Linux so you can use it on whichever operating system you prefer.

While static HTML doesn't let you switch designs on the fly the same way WordPress does, you can still find plenty of free templates to use for your site layout. Here are a few of the places you can find these templates: • • • •

http://www.freewebsitetemplates.com http://www.noupe.com/css/50-free-css-x-html-templates.html http://andreasviklund.com/templates/ http://www.templatemo.com

Email

Email generally doesn't have a cost associated with it. At least, not a monetary cost.

But there are some "hidden" costs that you might run into if you're not careful. Let's look at a couple of those costs, and why they're a problem before we get to the recommended tools.

There are two types of email addresses that most internet marketers use: 1. The one provided by their ISP (Internet Service Provider) 2. A free one like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, etc.

Neither of these options will cost you money (beyond what you’re paying for internet service anyway) but they could both ultimately cost you in other ways.

In the first case - an ISP provided email address - if you ever want to switch ISPs, you're going to lose that email address. You might get a better offer from another Copyright © 2012 – All Rights Reserved Page 4

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Zero Cost Internet Marketing Startup company, your ISP's service might deteriorate or you might move to another city or even another country where they aren't available.

Whatever the reason, if you have to make the switch you will lose that email address. So everything that you've ever signed up for using that address, every place you've shared it and everybody you know who uses it will no longer be able to contact you there.

The free email option is more portable, but the cost here is more intangible - a less "professional" appearance.

If you're dealing with other people - whether customers, partners or anything else using a free email address doesn't look as professional as one that's on your own domain.

Which of the following would you consider more professional-looking: • abcmarketingservices@hotmail.com • johnsmith@abcmarketingservices.com

Like it or not, appearances do have a bearing on how people perceive you online.

Fortunately, you can get the best of both worlds - the spam filtering, ease of use and massive storage of Gmail along with your own domain name.

Google offers a free version of their Google Apps service:

https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/standard/new3

This lets you use many of Google's services - Gmail, Google Docs, Contacts, Reader, etc. - through your own domain. You can set up your domain name to use Gmail as the "backend" service for email, giving you all the same features you get with a gmail.com email address but a more professional appearance.

Setting up your email this way has another advantage as well. If you ever decide to move to a different email service, you can simply redirect your domain to the new one. You won't have to change the address, so all your contacts, promotional materials and other places that have your email address won't need to change a thing.

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Zero Cost Internet Marketing Startup

Graphics Graphics and images for your websites, reports, ebooks, videos and other forms of content can get expensive, in a couple of ways.

First, if you buy them through stock image sellers, you can wind up spending quite a bit if you use very many. And second, if you just go out and grab images from the internet, you could wind up getting sued for copyright infringement, which would cost you even more.

Fortunately there are some free sources for graphics.

If you're looking for photos to use on your website or in other types of content, you can get royalty-free images from a couple of sources: • http://www.sxc.hu • http://search.creativecommons.org

The first, Stock.XCHNG is a stock photo website that has a pretty good selection of free images. When you search for a photo, you'll get both free and "premium" images that will cost something. Make sure you're grabbing images from the free section to ensure you're complying with copyright licensing.

The second is a search engine for Creative Commons licensed images. The CC license allows you to use the image without paying royalties to anyone. There are some rules, however, so make sure you read the terms of the license on any image you want to use.

In most cases, the CC license states that you have to give attribution to the original photographer, usually through a caption below the image. The details are all on the Creative Commons search site.

If you're looking for other types of graphics, such as buttons, bullets, and so on, here are a few free resources: • http://www.freegraphicsworld.com • http://www.studiopress.com/graphics • http://www.free-graphics.com

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Zero Cost Internet Marketing Startup

Customer Support If you're selling your own products or services, or have a need for your customers to be able to interact with you, there are a couple of options. You can just use regular old email, of course, but the problem you'll run into is that it's not 100% reliable.

Messages get marked as spam by mistake sometimes, and you may not get them immediately if you don't scan your spam folder every day. This can lead to delays in responding to questions or feedback, and ultimately to unhappy customers.

The better way to handle customer support is through a help desk that tracks everything and ensures you don't miss anything.

There are a number of options here but the one I recommend is Hesk help desk software: http://www.hesk.com

The software can be downloaded for free from that site or some hosts let you install it with a single click using a service called Scriptaculous, which is very similar to Fantastico but not as widely offered.

Once you have Hesk installed, you can refer people to your support website rather than tell them to email you. When they open a support "ticket" it will all get tracked through the system, giving you a full history of your interaction.

I recommend registering a dedicated domain for your help desk or at least setting up a dedicated subdomain for it (something like support.mywebsite.com). If you sell multiple products or deal with customers in different capacities, they can all be handled through a single help desk. Centralizing it in a single place will make it easier for you to keep track of it all, and your customers will get to know how to contact you for anything they buy.

Another useful tool for customer support is the survey. You can survey your audience to get all kinds of valuable information: • • • •

Solutions they need (and would make good products for you to create) What their biggest sticking points are Why they haven't bought from you Why the have bought from you

There are two options for survey services, both of which are free:

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Zero Cost Internet Marketing Startup • http://www.surveymonkey.com • http://docs.google.com

Survey Monkey is a paid service, but they have a free plan that will let you create surveys with up to 10 questions and up to 100 responses. They track all the responses for you so you can analyze the feedback you get.

Google Docs has a Forms feature that lets you create a survey, and it automatically creates a Google Docs spreadsheet that contains all the results for you to analyze however you want. You can even export that spreadsheet to a different format (Excel, csv, etc.) if you want to be able to analyze it using your favorite spreadsheet app.

Content Creation

Content can take many forms - text, video, audio, images and more. There are commercial applications for all of these, but you don't need to spend that money.

You can get very capable free software that will handle all the basics.

Text

If you're writing a report, an ebook or some other type of product that is going to wind up in print or as a PDF, the best free option is Open Office: http://www.openoffice.org

It is a very capable alternative to Microsoft Office that won't cost you a thing. Plus, it's available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Another option for these types of document is Google Docs: http://docs.google.com

Google's solution isn't quite as powerful as Open Office, but it still works very well.

And it has the advantage of allowing multiple people to collaborate on a document, so if you outsource your writing or work with a partner, it may be your best choice.

If you're writing content for the web, you're often better off using a pure text editor.

Word processors like Open Office can add formatting that doesn't translate well to the web. You could just use Notepad on Windows or Textedit on the Mac, or you could use something a little more powerful: Copyright © 2012 – All Rights Reserved Page 8

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Zero Cost Internet Marketing Startup

• http://notepad-plus-plus.org (Notepad++ for Windows) • http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/ (TextWrangler for Mac)

Audio

If you're recording audio content, most computers include some kind of recording software. But the built-in apps don't give you a great deal of control over your recording, and their editing features are not so good (if they even let you edit at all).

For recording and editing audio files, the best choice is Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Again, Audacity is available for Windows, Mac and Linux so you can use it with whichever operating system you prefer.

Video

There are a couple of styles of video that are common in internet marketing - live action and screen capture.

If you're recording live action video, such as you in front of the camera giving a presentation, the best free editing software is probably already installed on your computer. Windows PCs include Microsoft Movie Maker and Macs normally come with iMovie. These are both pretty good applications that will give you all the editing features you need when you're starting out.

If you want to do screen capture videos, you have a couple of options:

• http://camstudio.org (Windows only) • http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html (Jing - Windows and Mac) • Quicktime X (Mac)

Quicktime X is included as part of the Mac operating system, since OS X Snow Leopard (10.6).

The only limitation is with Jing - it will only let you record up to 5 minutes of video.

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Zero Cost Internet Marketing Startup

Communication Tools The main communication tool you'll probably use as an internet marketer is email, which we've already discussed. But there are a couple of other tools that can be very helpful as well.

The first is Skype:

http://www.skype.com

Skype gives you several benefits:

• You can talk to other Skype users for free, anywhere in the world • You can create or join Skype Groups, for masterminds, collaborations and other uses • You can use instant messaging if you prefer to text chat

Skype is widely used in the internet marketing community, but there are other instant messaging platforms as well: • Google Talk - http://www.google.com/talk • AIM - http://www.aim.com • Windows Messenger - http://windows.microsoft.com/enus/messenger/home (Works on the Mac too)

These services all have similar features, so the biggest deciding factor for most people is which one most of their contacts are using. In the internet marketing world, that's usually going to be Skype.

Storage & Backup

One of the most important - and all-too-often overlooked - parts of running an online business is having a good backup system. Practically everything you do is in digital form, and computers have parts that wear out. If a hard drive fails and you don't have a backup, you can lose a lot of important work.

One of the best forms of backup is "cloud" storage - storage that's internet-based.

When you backup to the cloud, that backup is inherently kept offsite, which is a critical piece of a good backup system.

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Zero Cost Internet Marketing Startup You might be backing up regularly, but if those backups are on an external hard drive that's sitting right beside the computer what happens if someone breaks in and steals it, or the house burns down? The backup is going to be gone along with the primary copy on your computer.

Cloud storage fixes that problem.

There are several cloud storage systems that give you a certain amount of space for free: • • • •

https://www.dropbox.com (2GB free) http://skydrive.live.com (7GB free) https://drive.google.com/start (5GB free) https://www.box.com (5GB free)

Dropbox is the most widely used of these services, and it has very effective syncing capabilities if you use multiple computers and want to keep them in sync. But it also offers the least amount of storage in the free account, so it's a bit of a trade off one way or the other.

There's no reason you can't use them all, however, and store different things on each one.

If you're mainly backing up text-based content, even 2GB is a ton of space. Audio and video files take up quite a bit more space, however, so if you're storing much multimedia you may need to use more than one to get enough space.

Research Tools

There are several types of research that internet marketers do on a regular basis: • Market research • Keyword research • Niche mining

There are a number of paid tools for each of these, but you can get almost all the same functionality using free tools. The biggest difference between free and paid here is the level of automation. Paid tools often combine several of these free tools in a single place, so they can be faster. But you can get started without paying a thing and invest in a paid tool once you start generating some revenue.

Google offers a couple of very useful research tools:

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Zero Cost Internet Marketing Startup

• Google Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool) • Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends)

The keyword tool will help you develop a keyword list, based on your seed keywords. It gives you competition numbers, search quantities and lets you filter based on geographic location and several other factors.

Google Trends is helpful for tracking the popularity of a given market or niche, or comparing two different markets. You can use it to gauge which of several markets is the most popular, seasonality of a given market and various other trends.

If you're looking for more general ideas for markets to tackle, or products to promote, there are two very useful resources: • Amazon Best Sellers (http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers/zgbs) • eBay Pulse (http://pulse.ebay.com)

These will show you the top sellers on the respective websites, and you can drill down into specific categories and other more detailed information.

Another very helpful resource in virtually any market is market-related forums. You can find these by searching Google for something like: <market keyword> forum

These forums are filled with people who are interested in the market, and you can find all kinds of valuable information there: • • • • •

Common questions and problems Most popular topics What people are buying What people aren't buying What other marketers are promoting

This can be particularly helpful if you're not immersed in the market yourself and need to study up on it before you get involved.

Tracking all your research can become a bit of a chore sometimes as well, particularly when you don't know the market all that well. There is a free software application that is useful for putting all the information together: http://evernote.com

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Zero Cost Internet Marketing Startup Evernote will clip websites, store text notes, store images and much more. You can tag the information or sort it into folders, to keep your research organized by market or website. And the software is available for Windows, Mac and even most smartphones so you can store data from almost anywhere.

For example, if you're in your local magazine shop and see a headline that you want to swipe for your own content, just snap a picture of it with your smartphone. When you get back to your computer, that picture will be synchronized with Evernote on the desktop so it's available for you almost instantly.

Conclusion

There are lots of paid tools for internet marketers, and even more people trying to convince you to buy them. In many cases, those tools are in fact very useful, but you can usually find free alternatives.

When you're starting out or trying to cut costs, these free resources are perfect. In some cases, you might find they are all you need. In others, you might decide to invest in a paid tool once you start generating some income.

But either way, there's no excuse for not getting started today!

As I mentioned earlier, I recommend the GateWay Profits System for in-depth information and action items that apply to generating traffic and sales immediately for your products and services. They have some excellent testimonials from people who lives were changed by this product.

It's easy to follow and incredibly insightful, filled with solutions to all of your traffic and money problems alike... an excellent resource for anyone with a struggling online business, and great for those who see it coming and want to put in the time now to prevent business hardship down the road.

For more information, click here to visit the official thread.

To your success!

Sean Williams

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