10 “Must Have” Internet Marketing Tools

June 6th, 2008 | 33 comments

Just about every day I receive an email, ticket, comment etc. asking what tool I use for “xyz.”

I’ve been wanting to offer a list for a while and this is as good a time as any. The following list of Internet Marketing tools is composed of the tools I use on a somewhat regular basis. There are others I use as well, but less frequently.

I tried to stay away from the obvious, Autoresponders, Analytics etc.

Here they are in no particular order:

1. The SEO Book Keyword Tool - I use this on a daily basis, primarily for the keyword research of my mini-site and article marketing efforts, but it’s useful for selecting niche phrases on any type of site. Just like any other keyword tool, the results aren’t exact, but it’s worked well for me.

2. Internal PR Checker - While not pretty, this is one of only TLPR (toolbar pagerank) checkers I’ve seen that is up most of the time. It checks the TLPR of all internal pages, which is pretty cool. PR means very little these days, but it’s still nice to see your pages gain some…for your own ego if nothing else

3. Fresh Drop Domain Finder - This is a site I just recently came across, but I’m now addicted to. They show lists of recently expired domains, domains up for auction that are about to end, etc. and they have an excellent search tool. But, be very careful with this tool or any other related tool. There are alot of people out there offering domains with fake data.

4. PC Names Domain Search Engine - This is similar to Fresh Drop (above) but much simpler. It’s quite simply a search engine for domain names. Type in a keyword and it shows a list of related domains. Depending on your niche, you may have to go through a few, but on average I’d say about 50% of those shown are available. I’ve found some golden nuggets with this!

5. Article Post Robot - I’ve been using this for a very long time. If you’re a regular reader you’ve probably heard me mention APR several times in the past. It makes article submission much quicker and easier and allows you to insert multiple titles and summaries!

6. SEO for Firefox - This is possibly one of the most useful and time-saving tools I use. It inserts alot of useful data directly into the search results of Google and Yahoo. You just do a search as usual and directly below each result you’ll see data such as PR, Age, Cache date, Yahoo Links, DMOZ, Alexa etc. It makes competition analysis much quicker and easier and is just neat all around.

7. Rank Checker - This is Aaron Wall’s newest tool from SEO Book, which provides a very simple way to check your sites rankings on Google. This is also a Firefox addon. You just open it up, insert the domain name and the keywords you want to analyze and it shows you the rankings.

8. RoboForm - This isn’t just an Internet Marketing tool, it’s useful for all of your online activity. It works with Internet Explorer and FireFox for sure, and possibly other browsers, although I’m not sure. You enter all of your usernames and passwords and with the click of a button RoboForm inserts the details for you. With all of the UN’s and PW’s we deal with on a daily basis this tool is awesome. I’ve been using the pro version for several months now and I Love it!! You can also insert your personal details for forms if you like. Alot of neat features.

9. Instant Article Wizard Pro - This is the first article “creator” I’ve ever recommended. My initial feelings on this type of software was that it was impossible for software to create an article that was actually readable and useful to others. I can honestly say that I was wrong. I started using IAWP about a month ago and although some articles need a little editing, it’s cut huge amounts of time off of article writing. I’ve been having my sister write my articles lately and she’s been using this and sending twice as many articles than before. Just take a look at the videos!

10. Camtasia Studio - ok, I don’t use this on a daily basis. I’m actually HORRIBLE at video and produce very little of it, I do have a copy of Camtasia and use it on the rare occasions in which I do need to produce a tutorial. It’s very simple to use and understand and produces quality video. This is the industry standard for screen capture. I just wanted to mention it because I do see alot of value in it. If I were a better speaker and teacher I would be using this on a daily basis.

Tools Recommended by Readers - If you have a useful tool to add just let us know about it in the comment section and I’ll add it here. Please no affiliate links or links to tools you own or are affiliate with. Although I’m using some aff. links above, there is no way for me to tell whether or not a tool is recommended because of its affiliate program or not.

Edward Turner recommends Evernote

Alex Newell recommends Carbonite

Hock recommends Domain Dashboard

Robert Hedge recommends ClipMagic

Alejandro Reyes recommends Screenflow

Courtney Ramirez recommends Stay on Focus (Temporarily? down)

Steve recommends Unique Article Wizard

Sami recommends Mozy

Elliott recommends SEOQuake

Roy Sencio recommends SEO Elite

Computer Doc recommends Fast Directory Submitter

Sean Ray recommends GoogleRankings.com

Matt Wood recommends Gist Web

Dominic Valentine recommends Wordtracker

Brian Gidda recommends Edraw

Neil recommends iMacros®

Vern recommends SpyFu

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33 comments

Ron (1 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 4:15 pm

Many thanks again Josh, as usual I love reading all your newsletters, please do keep them coming!

Many thanks!

Ron
Edward Turner (2 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 4:20 pm

RoboForm:
I’ve used RoboForm until just recently. I had to give it up simply because I moved over to a Mac. However, there’s an equivelent for Mac (1Password) that rocks just as well. Don’t know what ‘d do without these tools.

Camtasia:
Again, used it until I got my Mac last month. Now I’m about to purchase ScreenFlow…which looks to be even better than Camtasia!

Ed
Edward Turner (2 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 4:25 pm

Here’s another tool I use daily:

Evernote. This note taking / screen clipping hybrid web / desktop application simply ROCKS!!! I can even take pics of hand written notes and Evernote OCR’s the text in the images and makes it searchable.

Hook it into Jott, and you can speak your notes via phone and they go right to your Evernote account.

Powerful stuff.

Ed
Alex Newell (6 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 4:27 pm

I was convinced to get Roboform by being locked out of a couple of my websites and blogs simply by losing the login data.

Never again I promised my self and Roboform has helped me ever since.

Josh another tool - off the I.M. track is Carbonite. It is an Online back up facility and it backs up automatically.

My laptop had Carbonite protection and had a hard disc crash. I bought a new desk top and restored the files to the new computer! Losing a whole hard drive is too awful to contemplate!

All The Best

Alex
Hock (1 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 4:28 pm

Josh - another great free tool I use very often for keyword research is Google’s own External Keyword Tool.

For keeping track of different domains and keyword rankings, I use Domain Dashboard which is a real time saver if you have anything more than 20 domains or so.
Josh Spaulding
6th June, 2008 at 4:46 pm

@ Edward - I think alot of people are moving over to Mac. The only reason I haven’t is that exact issue; compatibility.

Thanks for the recommendation on Evernote. I added it to the post. Looks interesting. I’ve actually been looking for something like that.

@ Alex - Yep, RoboForm is a huge time saver and stress reducer

Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve added to the post.

@ Hock - I’ve heard of Domain Dashboard before. Looking into that now. Thanks for the recommendation. Added it to the post.
Robert Hedge (1 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 4:50 pm

Josh, - We do share a couple of your programs. RoboForm I could not live without and I agree with you that IAWP is a great product.

Another small program I have recently got, solves the clipboard problem. In that the clipboard will only save one item and it is so easy to copy over the saved one. ClipMagic allows you more than one and you can do so much more with this useful bit of software.

All the Best - Rob
Alejandro Reyes (5 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 5:36 pm

Cool post Josh!

Screenflow hands down! Way better than camtasia plus you’ll feel a lot cooler using it because you’re on a Mac

Also another really cool tool that I use is Summize for Twitter. It’s great for market research, seeing what people are talking about, great if you’re a blogger to meet a lot of other bloggers and makes the twitter experience a lot more effective!
Courtney (11 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 6:06 pm

This isn’t really an IM tool, per se, but I really like Stay on Focus. It’s a little tool that you can set up to remind you every ten minutes or half hour (or whatever time frame you want) to remind you to get back to work. It makes it easy to stay on task.
Steve (3 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 6:34 pm

I use quite a few of those tools. Roboform is really good, you can use this for everything when filling out some type of form. APR is good, even though I like UAW better, because it submits for me unique articles. Will have to check out the others you mention.
Thanks
Steve
SuperFastProfit (3 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 6:35 pm

This is a fabulous post Josh … everyone sharing their tools & usage ideas which bnefits all readers. Well done.

I’d like to recommend Mozy.com for backups. At just $5/month for “unlimited backups” it (or a similar service) is an absolute must for everyone.

Hard disk failure due to faults or accidents is an inevitable fact of life. People don’t have to learn the backup lesson the hard way!

Sami
Elliott (7 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 6:36 pm

Josh,

Great list! I use the SEOQuake Toolbar for Firefox and love it. When I am checking PR, Links, etc on sites that I own or am interested in buying, I just turn it on and it gives some really good data. I think it is similar to the SEO for Firefox that you have listed, but not sure.

I also use Freshdrop and have had some great success with it. The only things I really concern myself with is the age of the domain and then check it out from there. I have snagged some really good sites in the last month for my niche sites and they have taken off pretty good!
Roy Sencio (2 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 7:16 pm

- SEO Quake
- SEO Elite
- Affiliate Elite
- Niche Inspector
Josh Spaulding
6th June, 2008 at 7:51 pm

@ Robert - Yeah, RoboForm is great. The only problem is that when I’m on another system I forget all of my passwords

@ Alejandro - Thanks. I guess ScreenFlow is Camtasia of Mac. I’ve been hearing more and more people switching to Mac. Maybe I should look into it.

@ Courtney - I believe I found what you’re speaking of, but there are server issues. Can you verify I have the correct link? Thanks.

@ Steve - I’ve been hearing more and more about UAW. Hopefully it isn’t submitting them without the user looking over them first?

@ Sami - Thanks, I’m glad you’re enjoying it

I need to get something like that. Right now I’m just putting important files on an external hard drive manually. Sounds interesting.

I hope you don’t mind, I removed your other link. Nothing personal, I’m just not a big fan of those tools these days.

@ Elliott - Sounds similar, but worth a look, thanks!

@ Roy - Cat got your fingers?
Shaun (1 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 7:58 pm

CommentKahuna is awesome. It’s basically a way to get links on blogs that allow follow, only it’s not spammy…you can be completely relevant.

I have to ask, though, when you are using the SEO firefox addon, does the yahoo directory thing mean that’s how many links it has pointing to the page? How do you know how many links?
Thanks!
ComputerDoc (5 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 8:05 pm

I use Article Post Robot and it is very good. Especially, its feature that allows you to randomly modify the title and and offer different variations of portions of the text so that it comes out as multiple articles.

However, it’s getting to be a little long in tooth and is overdue for an upgrade. A nice modification would be to provide the ability to automatically login to new article sites.

Free blog finder is a very good tool for finding blogs in your niche. It doesn’t allow for insuring that blogs have been posted recently but it finds a lot of good ones.

Julia Gulevitch has a very good free Directory Submitter.

I have used Camtasia and it’s very good. However, it needs to be more seamless in providing videos for YouTube.
Josh Spaulding
6th June, 2008 at 8:13 pm

@ Shaun - Thanks for the recommendation, but I don’t support dofollow search software. I understand that it doesn’t have to be used as a spam tool, and this isn’t personal, but too many people use these tools for the wrong reason.

Feel free to leave another recommendation on another type of tool you enjoy and I’ll get your link up there, sorry about that.

To answer your question; It shows how many pages on the site are included in the Yahoo Directory (dir.yahoo.com.) But it also shows you how many links are pointing to the site (not page) according to Yahoo Site Explorer (Y! Links).\

@ Computer Doc - I’ve head a few others say APR needs updated too. I don’t see the need myself, but updates are always nice. I just insert all of logins once and they are all there for good. Unless you’re submitting to hundreds of sites, which is a bad idea to begin with, I don’t see an issue with the logins?

Thanks for the recommendation on free blog finder, but I don’t support dofollow search software. I understand that it doesn’t have to be used as a spam tool, and this isn’t personal, but too many people use these tools for the wrong reason.
Omarra Byrd (1 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 9:40 pm

I actually love the RoboForm software myself. I use it all of the time and it takes all the menial everyday tasks that I have to perform on my computer daily and shortens them extremely! What once took me fifteen minutes to complete now takes me only one second because RoboForm does the same task with just one click. In fact I wrote a Report about a lot of RoboForm’s capabilities for use that aren’t even touched on in the User’s Manual for RoboForm. You can get that Report here:
http://www.booksbonkers.com/TheRoboFormReport!.html
Sean.Ray (1 comments.)
6th June, 2008 at 11:18 pm

This is a great. I also use a tool regularly, which is: http://www.googlerankings.com/. It’s used to check the ranking in the search result against some key words. What make it different with others SERPs tools is that it will allow you see whether your site is listed in top 1000
Matt Wood (4 comments.)
7th June, 2008 at 3:36 am

Hi, Josh

Gistweb.com saves me a bunch of time doing basic research. I give it a topic or question and it makes a fairly readable short article. It’s free and fast.

Seobook is full of useful tools.

I use Google’s adwords traffic estimator toolbox for a lot of traffic guestimates, but most importantly, for a keyword’s season. I used to use nichebot for that.

The sandbox will also tell you what Google thinks a specified page is about.
SK (1 comments.)
7th June, 2008 at 5:59 am

hmms, still counting how many do I have and which I I actually use. Sometimes we get so woke up on new gadget that we bought or download before we started to use it fully or even finish the instruction a new gadget come out faster and better, so now I decide to stick to the basic.
Dominic Valentine (2 comments.)
7th June, 2008 at 11:59 am

I’d recommend, as a basic research tool
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/
It works the same as standard Wordtracker in that you fill in your keyword and hit the button but then the little icon to the right gives a breakdown of Google search data and Trend graphs also links to affiliate and exact match data on Google.
Dominic Valentine (2 comments.)
7th June, 2008 at 12:02 pm

Sorry Josh
I would laso recommend the web2.0 tools such as Stumbleupon and Digg as useful tools to boost rankings.
The great thing is they are available as Firefox add-ons..takes a lot of strain out of daily business.
I would also recommend social networking tools but they may be “dofollow” products so I won’t name them here.
Thanks Josh
Brian Gidda (7 comments.)
7th June, 2008 at 7:23 pm

A good free tool for mindmapping and creating blueprints is Edraw. http://www.edrawsoft.com/freemind.php
Dennis Edell (36 comments.)
7th June, 2008 at 8:16 pm

Well this certainly goes in the “reference file”; awesome list!

Most of which I’ve never heard of but have been looking for (that makes sense if ya think about it).
Rich Williams (1 comments.)
8th June, 2008 at 2:18 am

This a great post that cuts to the chase on what is working for you. Also, thanks also for the comment (the first) at my new blog. Best. Rich W.
Neil (24 comments.)
9th June, 2008 at 11:14 am

Hi Josh

I’ve just started using the iMacro addon for IE/Firefox which looks really good.

With a bit of effort I’ve managed to use it to create an article submission script for the 50 or so article directories that I’m using.

It’s not any competition for APR because you need to do a bit more setup, but it is still a timesaver over submitting manually. This application of iMacro is for those people who are really “careful” with money (In the UK this means the type of people who never buy you a drink!)

It would also be good for the type of things that you automate with Roboform. I would suggest using the IE version though because I think I discovered a couple of bugs with the latest Firefox release.

Neil
Matthew (1 comments.)
10th June, 2008 at 5:12 pm

Hey guys, I was just wondering if anyone knows of a free video recording tool, like Camtasia Studio. I downloaded the Camtasia free trial, and I actually really like it. It’s just that, at the moment, I don’t have the budget for that product. So I’m hoping there may be a free one of some decent quality. Thanks.

P.S. Josh, this is my first comment on your blog, but I’ve been keeping up with you for quite awhile. I have to say, you are clearly one of the best Internet Marketers on the Internet. I truly mean that and appreciate your work.
Brian Gidda (7 comments.)
11th June, 2008 at 6:48 am

Matthew… there is an open source version of Camtasia… it’s called CamStudio. It sounds like what you might be looking for at this point…

Here’s one url for Cam Studio… http://www.atomixbuttons.com/vsc/page2.html
Brian Gidda (7 comments.)
11th June, 2008 at 6:52 am

oops… bad link

try this one for Cam Studio… http://camstudio.org/
Josh Spaulding
11th June, 2008 at 1:51 pm

Thanks for all the recommendations everyone. I’ve added them all to the post. If I missed any just let me know.
Vern (17 comments.)
27th June, 2008 at 6:59 am

Hi Josh,

I think you just need to add this one in, it’s like an all in one cheat tool for researching niches.

You can see the CPC, trend, even your competition and how they rank organically or non-organically in the SEs

http://www.spyfu.com

It rocks, bro.

Vern

PS: i noticed no one had suggested this yet so I’m going to pounce on this!
Registry Repair Review (9 comments.)
30th August, 2008 at 11:59 pm

Quote: “Free blog finder is a very good tool for finding blogs in your niche. It doesn’t allow for insuring that blogs have been posted recently but it finds a lot of good ones.

“Julia Gulevitch has a very good free Directory Submitter.”

Actually, it is Fast Blog Finder, by G-Lock Software. There’s a free and a paid version of it. Works pretty smooth. I use it along with Comment Kahuna, which is free.

I agree that G-Lock’s Directory Submitter is also a great way to submit your newly born websites to website directories rather than having to pay someone (if you’re on a budget). The free version allows for 150 submissions. The paid version for unlimited.