Our Recommended Internet Marketing, SEO, and General Business Resources for You
After many years of recommending various business and marketing resources to our friends, visitors, readers, clients, and everyone else individually, we have decided it would be useful to create a page that you can always reference any time you want for all of the tools, software, and other resources you may need for your business. We recommend saving/bookmarking/sharing it so you can always conveniently find it. And come back often because we will continually update as we find useful resources or if we feel any of these need to be replaced.
Everything you see on this page is either currently being used by us, or we have used it in the past with a positive experience, and we feel it is worth recommending as a useful resource. We never recommend anything that we haven’t directly used and benefited from ourselves.
Getting Started (Your First Important Steps):
* NameCheap – In order to start your own website or really any sort of online business, you will need a domain name. Our #1 choice for domain registration, by far, is NameCheap. We have domains at several different registrars, such as Godaddy, but none of them live up to namecheap.
* Hostgator – As soon as you have a domain registered, you need somewhere to host the website you plan to build on it. No website can be live in the internet without hosting. It is a vital part of online business. We have hundreds of websites and 99% of them are hosted on Hostgator because it is incredibly easy to use, pricing is amazing, and customer service is excellent! You can also use the same account for hosting multiple websites if you plan on creating more than one. We highly recommend using Hostgator as your webhost.
* Genesis Themes from Studiopress – Now that you have your domain and hosting from above, you need a theme to use for the actual website itself. Genesis is the WordPress theme and framework that the BAM site/blog runs on, and we highly recommend it. They offer numerous designs for any type of modern business, continual updates, SEO friendly themes, fast load times, responsiveness, countless options, and so much more. You can have a professionally built website without the high cost of a web designer.
Now That Your Site Is Built (Continuing Your Journey):
* Leadpages – Without a doubt the best tool for easily creating superb landing pages and squeeze pages. Simple, fast, high converting, responsive, and highly customizable. Great for driving traffic to from your various marketing and advertising sources.
* Aweber – Ask nearly any successful internet marketer and they will say, “the money is in the list!” which is why email marketing is so important. Aweber is the internet marketing world’s most powerful email marketing list opt-in service and broadcasting tool. This is what we have used to build our email list and send our newsletters for more than a decade.
SEO (Time to Get Serious!):
* Market Samurai – The best tool for keyword research available. Find high traffic, high profit, low competition industries with insane accuracy. Your niche research will never be the same!
* Bring the Fresh – If you are set on learning how to do SEO on your own then this is one of the best systems out there for doing so. It has been around since 2010 and keeps getting better every year. They have helped thousands of people make money online with SEO.
* SEObook – The top ranked online SEO training program from one of the most well-known and respected SEO communities in the world. Some of the information contained in the training is even being used as material at accredited colleges for their internet marketing courses.
* Source Wave – I couldn’t even begin to tell you how much I have learned from Alex Becker at Source Wave. I’ve been doing SEO and internet marketing full time since the summer of 2003 and in all those years, I cannot recall anyone who has taught me more real usable information. There are very few people I truly recommend following and he’s definitely one of them.
* OnlyWire – This is a service that will allow you to post your content to all of the top social sites at once. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Linkedin, Pinterest, and more than 40 of the other top social platforms. This is excellent for SEO, marketing, branding, and gaining authority. It also allows you to track your social media performance and measure return on investment. Whether you are an internet marketer, blogger, offline business owner, marketing manager, search engine optimization specialist, or social media professional, you can benefit greatly from OnlyWire.
Track Your Progress (Success Depends Upon It):
* IM Online Dashboard – Arming your business with valuable analytics, metrics, data, and other information prevents bad decision making and reduces risk by increasing knowledge and awareness. By exponentially and mathematically enhancing your business decisions; R.O.I. increases, income grows, and the business becomes more successful. This dashboard will allow you to track every vital piece of your business from traffic to sales, income and expenses, social media, SEO, advertising, conversions, demographics, and so MUCH MORE! Seriously it’s mindblowing how much data you can track and information you can learn about your business with this easy-to-use internet marketing dashboard. I’ve barely scratched the surface in this description.
* Google Analytics – Web analytics and reporting for your website.
* Clicky – Lets you see every visitor and every action they take on your website. And everything is in real time.
* Webmaster Tools – Another product from Google that gives you data, tools and diagnostics to help you maintain a healthy, search-friendly site.
Online Payments / Ecommerce (Sell Directly from Your Site):
* Shopify – These guys essentially give you everything you need to sell your products online or in person. Whether your customers are shopping online, in person, on mobile devices, or social media you can satisfy them all with this one platform.
* Paypal – This one is no secret. I think just about everyone in this day and age has at least heard of Paypal. Most people have even used it for one reason or another. It’s almost necessary to have an account these days, especially if you buy, sell, or send money online regularly.
Other Very Useful Business Resources (Don’t Overlook These):
* Infusionsoft – A complete sales and marketing automation software for small businesses that combines CRM, lead capture, email marketing, and e-commerce. This is something we use in one way or another every single day. It’s an integral and crucial part of our business, and we recommend it to our clients all the time. Infusionsoft is definitely on our VERY HIGHLY recommended list!
* Quickbooks – Most of us don’t like to do accounting or bookkeeping but it’s something that comes with being a business owner. So it’s important to do it as effectively and efficiently as possible. Quickbooks is the number one small business accounting software out there. It’s great for invoicing too. We find it very easy to use and definitely needed.
* Guru – There will almost certainly come a time when you need a task done for you from an expert who can do it relatively quickly and without breaking the bank. That’s where a freelancer can be a lifesaver. You can find someone here to do just about any job you need.
* Camtasia – This screen recorder and video editor allows you to easily record your on-screen activity, edit and enhance your content, and share with viewers anywhere. Great for training staff, sharing tips with the world, marketing videos, or any other reason you might need to make a screen capture video.
Full Disclosure: Please note that many of the links on this page are affiliate links. Don’t worry, they do exactly the same thing as if you went directly to the websites. There is no difference and there is no additional cost to you whatsoever. In fact, you may actually get a better price in certain instances where we have worked it out with the vendor. However, as a thank you for the recommendation, we will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase from said links. Please understand that we have direct experience with all of these resources, and we only recommend them because they are helpful and useful for us, and we believe they will be for you too. Please don’t spend any money on any of these products/services unless you also feel they will help you achieve your business goals.
As always, we remain dedicated to your success!
~The BAM Team