10 Free Business Resources I Wish I’d Known About When I Started Out

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10 Free Business Resources I Wish I’d Known About When I Started Out

By Richard Adams

© 2004. All rights reserved.
http://MerchantAccountForum.com
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The impression that you need large sums of money to set up a successful (and profitable) website is totally wrong.

Indeed, the longer that I do business on the Internet the more I find that there are numerous free resources out there that can be amazingly helpful.

I thought therefore that I’d put together a list of my ten favourite free business-building resources and exactly what they can do for you.

Ready?

1) Link Checkers

Visitors to websites hate "dead links" - links that don't got anywhere.

And because visitors hate it, so do search engines. They’ll penalise you for dead links.

Therefore, by just making sure all your links work properly you’ll look more professional, get better rankings in the search engines and build better rapport with your visitors.

> http://validator.w3.org/checklink

2) Alexa

Alexa ranks websites by traffic. The smaller the number of their ranking, the more traffic they get.

You can use it to keep a running tab of whether your traffic is increasing or decreasing - and compare it to your competitors.

Another useful feature is to check out potential link partners. Someone emails you and asks for a reciprocal link. But if you’re getting more visitors each day than they’ll get all year then it’s not a fair deal - you’ll send them tons of traffic and get virtually nothing back in exchange.

> http://www.alexa.com

3) Google Toolbar

The Google toolbar has two particurly useful features.

Firstly by installing it on your browser, whenever you visit a website it’ll tell you their Google PageRank. PageRank is Google’s measure of how "important" a site is. A PR of 1-2 is typical for new sites. 5 is reasonable and 7+ is very impressive indeed.

By only linking to high PR sites (5+) Google will see you in a better light.

Secondly, is that the Google Toolbar effortlessly lets you check "backwards links".

That way, you simply surf over to each of your main competitors, and use this feature to see which websites are linking to them. Then assess each website based on their PR and Alexa ranking to quickly come up with a powerful list of potential link partners. Easy!

> http://toolbar.google.com/

4) BetterWhois

You’ve got a list of potential link partners with high quality sites. Next visit each one to check for the quality of the site and that it’s theme is closely related to yours.

Then find some way to contact them.

But what if you can’t find one anywhere?

Just visit BetterWhois, type in the domain name, and up will pop all the information - including their email address. Sorted.

> http://www.betterwhois.com

5) Link Partners

Done all of that, and still want more link partners? Well how about a website that lists dozens of websites, all actively looking for link partners?

> http://www.linkpartners.com

6) The Warrior Forum

Probably the greatest internet marketing discussion forum of all time, run by a select group of very helpful and successful internet marketers.

Together with links to tons of free articles, ebooks and special offers for visitors to the forum you’d have to be mad not to become a regular.

> http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/

7) Internet Marketing Index

The real strength of this site is that it is a *huge* database of marketing products and services.

All the links are categorised under dozens of headings - search engine optimisation, running a newsletter, writing ebooks etc.

So if you have a problem but don’t know where to start - you just find the relevant heading and follow all the links to see masses of ebooks, programs and member sites that’ll tell you everything you need to know about that topic.

> http://www.internetmarketingindex.com

8) GetResponse

The very least you should be doing with your website is gathering email addresses of your visitors. You can then use this information to market to them time and again.

You may decide to run a full-blown newsletter, and you might even like to use an autoresponder to distribute useful articles or sales letters to your prospects.

Whichever of these you decide to do, GetResponse will do it for you.

> http://www.getresponse.com

9) HyperTracker

Produced by the same people as GetResponse, HyperTracker is an ad tracking service. If you place adverts anywhere on the net HyperTracker will let you keep ontop of the results.

> http://www.hypertracker.com

10) Sitesell’s Free Ebooks

Sitesell have made some free "trial" copies of their ebooks available - which are a fantastic introduction to their company, and e-commerce in general.

You’d have to be mad not to try them all out if you’re new to e-commerce.

> http://freetrial.sitesell.com/buynow.html

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Richard Adams is the founder of Merchant Account Forum, one of the net's most popular merchant account advice sites. Click Here Now =>
MerchantAccountForum.com
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