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

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:/ oolbar.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/index/40039

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/index/40039

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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