Graham Cox.com

I‘ve not had much time to post here of late.  Reason being, I’ve been frantically working into the small hours to finish my first major product, Ultimate Footer Ad.

UFA is the script that generates the ads that slide up from the bottom of the page that you might have seen running here for the last few weeks.

It works great on any type of website, but I think it’s particularly suited to blogs, where the footer ad is an excellent alternative to those annoying hover opt-in boxes. But it’s not just for building your list. You can use it to get more rss feed subscribers, more Twitter followers, or just more clicks to another site.

And the early results from my beta testers have been fantastic. Here’s just a few of the comments I’ve received…

10 minutes to install…added $1164 to my bottom line…….

One of the best promotional tools I have ever used.

126 extra new subscribers to my list just in the past week…

I’ve seen the average daily subscription rate increase by 249.84%…

Oh by the way, those are no ordinary beta testers. But being the tease that I am, you’ll have to visit Ultimate Footer Ad to find out who I’m talking about!

>> Grab your copy of Ultimate Footer Ad Here

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Ok, a little later than planned, here are the final 9 internet marketing resources. All are free to use and hopefully you’ll find atleast one or two extremely useful for your business.

Without further ado, here they are…

1. - SEO For Firefox
This is an incredibly useful market research and competitive analysis tool from SEOBook. It provides a goldmine of useful SEO information on pages returned from Google searches including Pagerank, Alexa Ranking, number of backlinks, diggs and a whole bunch more. It’s an addon for firefox. Once installed, just click the SEO icon in the bottom right hand corner of your Firefox browser to run it.

5. - Rescue Time
I’ve just started using this nifty web-based time management tool and so far I really like it. It monitors where you spend your time online, including which sites you spend the most time on. You can then tag sites you visit by category such as work or personal to see how productive you are.

It also allows you to set specific productivity goals. For instance, I’ve just created a goal of spending no more than an hour a day checking and answering email.

If you know you could be more productive, but need help keeping on track, then RescueTime is well worth checking out.

3. - HTML Dog
My favourite html/css resource. It’s beautifully laid out and contains dozens of tutorials and examples showing you how to create standards based web design. The reference guide to all the various tags and attributes is particularly useful. Seperate beginner, intermediate and advanced sections means you’ll find something of interest, no matter what your level of design experience.

4. - Google Keyword Tool
Google’s external keyword tool is an absolute must for anyone marketing online (or even offline for that matter). Use it to build your PPC keyword lists, check out the level of competition in your market, and research profitable niches. There are literally dozens of ways you can use it. As all the keyword data is mined direct from Google’s own datacenters, it’s relatively accurate too.

5. - PPC Keyword Expansion Tool
Enter up to five columns of keywords into this handy desktop application and it will output all possible permutations of those keywords in broad, phrase or exact match (or all three).

The app exports to .txt, .csv file formats. Alternatively place them in the google friendly editor where you can automatically append your cost per click and destination url to the end of each keyword phrase before copying into your Google Adwords account.

6. - FireFTP - FTP Client
Another Firefox addon . I used to use filezilla for ftp’ing but I just find being able to upload files to my websites from within Firefox so much more convenient. It’s stable, regularly updated and dead simple to configure and use.

7. - FreeMind - Mind Mapping Software
This open-source mind mapping desktop application is a great way to brainstorm ideas or marketing strategies. You can also plan product launches with it. I’ve used it to map out the Ultimate Footer Ad launch and found it an excellent ‘big picture’ planning tool.

8. - Audacity - Audio Editor and Recorder
Audacity is an amazing and comprehensive sound editing and recording tool which comes into it’s own for editing podcasts or other audio recordings. I use it mainly for editing interviews I record in Skype but you can use it for many other purposes; recording the audio track in Camtasia screen capture videos for instance. There are loads of additional plugins you can install to increase it’s versatility too.

9. - Google Reader
There are dozens of different RSS reader’s out there but for ease of use and more importantly, speed of use, Google Reader comes out on top. You can create folders to categorize feeds by topic but the best time-saving feature is the All Items link which displays all the latest feed items on one page, allowing you to quickly scan all your subscriptions. It’s a great way to keep abreast of what’s happening in your marketplace without spending hours visiting every site.

Ok, so that’s it. you’ve now seen all 25 resources. Did you find these three posts useful? What tools and resources would you have in this list? Let me know what you think by posting a comment below…it would be great to get your feedback.
And if you want to send me a little link love by sharing or linking to this post or the other two in the series (links below), I’d be very appreciative!

Previous posts in this series:
25 Free Internet Marketing Resources - Part 1

25 Free Internet Marketing Resources - Part 2

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Today I’m revealing the 2nd part of my list of free internet marketing resources. Here’s the next eight in the list and I’ll reveal the final nine resources very soon. So stay tuned.

All these resources are free to use though some offer paid upgrades or require an opt-in.

1. - Wordpress.TV
Launched only this week, Wordpress.tv is a brand new wordpress training site with an extensive array of video tutorials and other resources including videos from the latest Wordcamp seminars. I wish I’d had access to this when I first started using Wordpress…it would have made the learning curve so much quicker. No doubt it will get even better over the coming months too. Well worth bookmarking.

2. - TypeTester.org
Type Tester is a handy little site which allows you to view and compare different fonts and font sizes. Perfect if you design your own sites or salespages. You can compare up to 3 different fonts side-by-side and even change the leading (the line-height css property), tracking (letter spacing) and word spacing.

3. - Comment Kahuna
The first of two blog commenting tools in this list (see 4 below), Comment Kahuna is a free desktop app that allows you to find relevant blogs in your chosen niche and semi-automate the posting of comments on them. It even finds Do-Follow blogs for you (ie blogs that don’t use the nofollow anchor text attribute in hyperlinks) which is a great way to build backlinks to your site and improve your search engine rankings.

4. - Comment Sniper
Another desktop app, this time from SEO expert Duncan Carver. It sits in your PC’s system tray and pops up a little message box notifying you as soon as one of your favourite blogs posts new content. You just enter each of your chosen blogs rss feed into the software and it automatically notifies you of updates. You can even get SMS alerts to your mobile phone if you’re out and about.

By being the first to comment you have a much higher chance of generating traffic back to your own blog or website. The only downside is that the message boxes can be a tad irritating so I’d recommend only monitoring a handful of blogs at a time.

Ofcourse you can use Comment Kahuna to find high traffic, high page rank, Do-Follow blogs in your niche and then use Comment Sniper to be first to comment on them. A nice little one-two punch!

5. - Browsershots.org

Another webmaster tool. Browser Shots allows you to check your website design for cross browser compatability across all the major browsers including IE6 and 7, Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera and many more.

6. - Google Analytics
Very fast and easy to set up, GA will give you incredible insight into your website’s traffic. Discover which referring sites are sending you the most traffic, which keywords visitors are searching for to find you, ppc tracking, average visitor times, most popular pages and a ton more. All beautifully laid out too.

7. - Good Keyords
Good Keywords has expanded beyond it’s original desktop app and now encompasses a suite of freeware applications for keyword research, and ppc management. Amongst other things, it allows you to expand keyword lists quickly, modify existing lists, and even track how other sites are using your keywords.

8. - SocialMarker.com
Social Marker is a social bookmarking service that allows you to submit content to up to 49 social bookmarking sites much more quickly than if you submitted to each of them individually. It includes most of the major bookmarking sites like Delicous, Stumbleupon, Sphinn etc aswell as Twitter.

Ok, so that’s it for part 2. Do leave a comment below to share your experiences of these tools (or others you’ve come across) and any tips you have for getting the best out of them.

To ensure you don’t miss part 3, sign up to my Email alerts email list below or at the top of this page

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Well with the New Year celebrations now a blurred and distant memory, and having just celebrated my 40th birthday (where did my 30’s go?), I thought it high time I welcome this blog to 2009.

To kickstart the New Year off with a bang, here’s a list of 25 of the best free tools and resources for Internet marketers. Some you’ll be familiar with, others less so, but I’m sure you’ll discover a few gems in this list you havn’t come across before. Best of all, they are all completely free to use, though some do offer paid upgrades and one or two require an email opt-in.

None of the provided links are affiliate links, these are simply recommendations that I think you will like and find useful.

This list is in three parts with parts two and three following in the next couple of weeks. Here’s part one…

1. - ClickTale.com
This is an incredible analytics package that allows you to watch recordings of your visitors mouse and eye movements on your website to better understand their behaviour. It’s a great complement to Google analytics and the free package gives you up to 400 page views. Perfect for improving your salespages and squeeze pages.

2. - JingProject.com
A very cool screen capture tool from Techsmith, the makers of Camtasia Studio.  It has social networking tools built-in and you can add captions and effects to spice up your presentations too.  Fantastic for demonstrating software or sharing information.

3. - Google Website Optimiser
GWO allows you to split test different versions of your sales pages to see which version converts the best.  Do simple A/B split tests or multivariate testing (i.e. multiple headlines, fonts, colours, order links etc).  Very easy to setup and Google provide excellent clear stats. You should have split testing software installed on all your websites. After all, if you’re not testing your sales pages, how do you know if they are performing well or not?

4. - The Twitter Handbook
An excellent and comprehensive guide to all things Twitter.  Deborah Micek and Warren Whitlock explain what Twitter is, how to post Tweets and why you should consider using it in the first place.  Includes links to several nifty Twitter Tools to make your Twittering easier.  Well worth checking out.  Sign-Up Required to download.

5. - Open Office
If you write ebooks or viral reports, this is an essential tool.  Open Office is a 100% free office application suite from Sun Microsystems that rivals MS’s Office for functionality.  Use the Writer  word processor to write reports and then export them to pdf format using the built-in pdf creator.  Brilliant.

6. - CSS-Discuss
The members of this mailing list have helped me out many a time over the years.  If you code your own web pages and can’t work out why your website’s navigation bar looks fine in Firefox but misaligned in IE, or what doctype you should be using, this is well worth joining.  Send an email to the list members with your question and you’ll usually receive an answer within a few hours.

7. - Google Docs
There’s all manner of things you can do with Google Docs, an online office suite you can access from anywhere with a web connection. Write reports, create financial reports, even survey customers for product creation ideas.

I find it particularly useful for outsourcing tasks, as you can see the progress your contractor is making in real time.  You can even track how much traffic your published documents are getting by tracking them using Google Analytics.  Google Account required.

8. - SpyFu
Spyfu is a fantastic online service that allows you to check out your website’s competition in Google Adwords® and organic listings. Guage the potential profitability of your niche by seeing how many competitors you face, and how much it costs to advertise. Free basic service with paid upgrades if you need bigger, more advanced searches.

Well that’s it for part 1. Let me know what you think about any of the above resources by posting a comment below. I’d love to hear your opinions!

Make sure you don’t miss part 2 of this blog post by signing up to my Email alerts mailing list below or at the top of this page

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Following on from the launch of Small Lists Big Profits last month, I thought I’d let you know about my brand new software product currently under development, called Ultimate Footer Ad

It’s a neat php script advertising solution that can be used on any kind of website including blogs, forums and even ecommerce sites to dramatically increase sales and build your list too. In fact I think it will have particular appeal as a list building mechanism for bloggers. However I’ll have more on that and exactly what UFA does early in the new year when I’ll be releasing a video demo.

The script is almost finished and I’ll be sending it out to a select bunch of beta testers early in the new year for testing and to generate some testimonials. The aim then is to launch on Thursday January 22nd.

In the meantime, I’ve set up a priority notification list if you’d like to ensure you are informed when UFA goes live. As a reward for subscribing, you’ll also receive a very special discount price when the product launches.

Update: The launch date has now been pushed back to early February. Exact launch date to be announced soon.

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You may have noticed a brand new design on this blog if you have visited in the last few days.

It’s a custom design based on Chris Pearson’s astoundingly good Thesis wordpress theme. I wanted a unique design that would help me stand out from the internet marketing crowd and brand my business going forward into 2009. Hopefully the new look will do just that.

For the logo I ran a competition over at 99designs.com which is fantastic if you are looking for a high quality logo or web design. You simply create a design brief, nominate how much you are willing to pay for the winning entry and then designers from all over the world submit their work for your consideration. There are some amazing designers on there so it’s well worth checking out.

Not only has the blog look changed but from now on I’m going to be making much more use of camtasia video screencasts on this blog, showing you what I’m doing to drive my marketing business forward and how you can do the same. So stay tuned!

So what do you think about the new look? Let me know if you like it or prefer the old vanilla (not that I’m leading you or anything…lol!) Thesis style.

P.S. Look out for a video from me early next week, showing you how incredibly versatile Thesis is and why you should consider it for your blog.

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Have you ever seen a really cool feature on another blogger’s site and wanted to implement it on your own? Or your wordpress install has gone wrong and now you’re getting strange database errors appearing? Or how about if your visual editor suddently stops working?

If so, then I’ve recently come across an excellent outsourcing site specifically devoted to all things wordpress, which you might be interested in…

WP-Pro is a one-stop shop for getting new blog themes designed, fixing database errors, customising a plugin or whatever else you need done to your wordpress blog.

I just used it for the first time the other day. It’s not a conventional outsource site. It’s actually a private mailing list anyone can subscribe to and it’s run by Automattic, the company behind wordpress itself.

If you want to post, you simply send an email listing the job spec (and what you can afford to pay) to the list members and they reply (usually within hours) directly to your inbox. The quality of responses I received to my post were excellent and both of the bugs in my wordpress install were fixed within hours.

I’m now employing the same freelancer to make a customisation to this blog.

Bear in mind that many of the freelancers on WP-Pro are highly skilled in wordpress and charge accordingly. But if you wait until plenty of responses to your job have come in, chances are you can find someone within budget. Often a price can be negotiated down too if you can offer future work.

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Do you spend half your working day answering emails rather than working on building your online business?

I know I certainly do at times. Not only can answering email be incredibly time-sapping, but a new email in your inbox can be a seductive beast too…like an unopened Christmas present just waiting to be unwrapped.

Manage Your Email More Efficiently

Well recently I’ve taken a few important steps to handle my email more efficiently. Some of them are the suggestions of Tim Ferriss’ eye-opening book, the ‘Four Hour Work Week’ , which you can read about at his eponymously titled blog.

So here’s what I’m doing to reduce the time spent answering emails…

1. Stopped checking my email as soon as I switch on the PC in the morning. Instead I now just check it twice daily at noon and 4pm GMT.  I also notify people in my email signature that I’m doing this.
2. Turned off the auto send/receive so I’m not constantly distracted by new messages in my inbox.
3. Installed Frank Haywood’s Ticket Desk Pro script on my new Customer Support Desk.  Whilst it sends automated notification messages whenever I reply to a support ticket, I know that even if it goes into the customer’s spam or junk email folder by error, the customer can still read my reply by opening up the ticket.  Not having to spend time locating email messages I’ve already sent customers will be a massive time saver as my customer base grows.
4. Unsubscribed from those newsletters, ezines and blog mailing lists I’m no longer reading.  I’m still subscribed to far too many. But atleast I’ve made a start in the right direction.  A work in progress.

Improve Your Productivity

Why not give these suggestions a try yourself. Particularly numbers 1 and 2. I won’t lie…doing email cold turkey hasn’t been easy! I’ve had some lapses along the way. But overall, I’ve noticed a big improvement in my productivity since implementing them.

Why not try it for a week and see what difference it makes to your business? And let me know if you’ve got any other suggestions for managing the inbox by posting a comment below.

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If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work involved in running your own internet business, then you’ve probably considered outsourcing various tasks at one point or another.

Let’s face it, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything. So if you’re still trying to blog, social bookmark, recruit JV’s and affiliates, write articles and do all the other myriad jobs involved in marketing online, then it’s time to consider outsourcing.

In fact, don’t just consider it…actually start outsourcing as soon as your pocket allows. If you have your own products to sell, the cost of outsourcing work should more than pay for itself in increased revenue anyway. Plus you’ll have more time to focus on the aspects of your business you enjoy the most, whilst giving the more mundane, tedious tasks to someone else.

Since I became a full-time marketer online in July 2008, I’ve been focussing my efforts on creating automated processes for outsourcing different areas of my marketing. For instance I’ve created a process for recruiting JV partners and affiliates. The process is simply a templated html document which gives step-by-step details (usually a mix of camtasia screen recordings and written instructions) on how to contact other marketers for JV’s. I just give the url of the doc to the person I’m outsourcing the task to and let them get on with it.

If I then ask another outsourcer to do the same task a week later, I just customize the instructions accordingly.

Currently I’m using 5 freelancers to help build my business. One is developing my first software product Ultimate Footer Ad, two are blog commenting to get backlinks to drive traffic back to this blog and other sites I own like Small Lists Big Profits, and another two are doing webmaster work such as installing scripts, setting up split tests and creating squeezepages etc.

And you’ll be surprised how little it can cost to outsource tasks too.

Btw, one of my favourite sites for finding freelancers is GetAFreelancer.com.  I much prefer it to Rentacoder as projects are much quicker to post and the site just seems much easier to use generally.

Whilst it might feel a little daunting at first, outsourcing a task is actually pretty easy once you’ve done it a few times.  Why not give it a try and start leveraging the work of others to benefit your business.

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