Tools

Here are my recommendations on tools that will make your life easier. These are the tools I use and recommend for anyone interested in being in the internet marketing business. Some of these are affiliate links... purchasing through an affiliate link doesn't increase the price you pay, in fact, it is often quite the opposite. However, if you buy one of these tools through an affiliate link, I will get a commission. (Yaay!)

Keyword Research

Long Tail Pro
The best tool that I have found for keyword research is Long Tail Pro. It allows you to quickly and efficiently explore your keyword ideas, check out the possible competition and gain an understanding as to whether there is any money in your set of keywords.

The Platinum version, which has an associated monthly fee, has one great feature that may make it worth the upgrade! It shows a competitiveness score (the Keyword Competitiveness number, or KC) that boils down competing websites to a single number that will help you tell, at a glance, how easy (or difficult!) it will be to rank for your keyword. Of course, you could come up with your own formula, but LTP Platinum will do it for you.

If you need to research keywords quickly and efficiently, I highly recommend Long Tail Pro to avoid making some potentially costly mistakes!

Or, you can use Google AdWords keyword tool to work on your ideas. AdWords Keyword Tool. However, it should be noted that this free tool will not last forever. In its continuing efforts to shift internet marketing to big companies only, it is likely that tools, like AdWords Keyword Tool, that the little guys use (for free) will probably be removed over time. Just something to watch out for... but a great place to start your research!

One absolutely fabulous aspect of Long Tail Pro that rarely gets mentioned is the fact that it runs on Adobe Air, which means that it is a cross-platform application. Although most folks run either Windows or Mac operating systems on their computers, I use Linux almost exclusively. I switched to Linux (Ubuntu), after having a computer at work that bluescreened every 15 minutes like clockwork.Now I use it at home, at the office, and, since Android is based on the Linux platform, it is my mobile OS as well! As Adobe Air shifts to the Android platform, you will see that, in the future, Long Tail Pro will work on your phone. And that is effing brilliant.

Traffic Travis

As I said, I use Linux as my day-to-day operating system, but I sometimes drop into Windows 7 for a select few programs. Traffic Travis is one of those programs. One of its best features is that it will score your site for you, and find lots of common (and some not so common) on-page SEO mistakes that you have made. Traffic Travis comes with tons of helpful videos that will take you as deep into the software as you want to go. Easy to use and very helpful, everyone should load up the free version at the very least!

Website Hosting and Setup

Niche Website Theme 2
After going through free WordPress after free WordPress for my niche site, constantly tinkering with it to make it work for my needs, only to have an update erase my hard work, or a typo cause the code to become unreadable, and having to revert to FTP to fix the site, I finally decided that I would just have to purchase a theme that was already adapted to making money online. I use the Niche Website Theme for all of my niche sites. It is easy to install, manage, and makes the placement of AdSense and Amazon affiliate banners a snap.  I used to spend almost all of my time working on the theme. Ten minutes after installing NWS, I have not had to mess with it since! Highly recommended!

Backlinking

Article Marketing
I am no convinced that old fashioned article marketing (and by "old fashioned" I mean Summer of 2012) still works. However, if it does, I recommend Article Marketing Robot as the best software to use for the job. The spinner part of the program is worth the price of admission just by itself! I use it whenever I need to spin anything, even if I dont then post it the giant list of article directories that the program allows.

I think the jury is still out on whether article marketing still works, but it seems to be leaning towards 'no'.

SocialBookmarking

One thing everyone agrees on is that social cues are the wave of the future. The problem seems to be one of stickiness. that is, do social hits last or are they just temporary? My experiments show that they are indeed temporary, and do not last for very long.

Using SocialADR, I recently ran a social bookmarking campaign to support one of my niche sites. Indeed, a week or so later, the links began showing up in Alexa, and I could see that my efforts were a success. Although G didnt show these backlinks, they do, of course, know about them... but over the last few years that have been sharing less and less accurate information about the web, partly to create a future market for themselves where they will sell data, and partly to discourage small businesses from entering the IM market. After a few weeks, all of the backlinks that were created using social bookmarking had vanished. In other words, social bookmarking works for as long as you do it. As soon as you stop, all of the backlinks disappear. Its like Rogain... stop using it, and your hair falls out!

This is a changing area, and it is difficult to say where it will be in six months.

However... I did use Just Retweet  with some success. It brings in traffic for a brief time after you post... a few hours at most. And although it doesnt result in any sticky backlinks, it does indeed increase the natural traffic, albeit briefly.

Alright... that's the quick list. I'll add more info and links later!