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Making money online is not usually described as an ?easy? process.
It can be even more difficult if you don?t use some of the tools that can help you reach your goals.
Because I prefer blogging and video marketing, I will focus on the tools that might be useful for you if you want to do either or both of them.
And I would highly encourage you to choose both because, with the right tools and some hard work, they can become quite profitable.
Whether you run a big business or a small business, you should have a blog. Why?
Because this way you?re building your brand and can acquire new prospects.
It?s ?a proven way for companies to attract and convert leads, and impact the bottom line of their business.?
According to Kapost
1. Brands that create 15 blog posts per month average 1,200 new leads per month.
2. Blogs on company sites result in 55% more visitors.
3. Interesting content is a top 3 reason people follow brands on social media.
4. B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those that do not blog.
5. 68% of marketers are planning to increase blogging activity.
I would say that blogging today is not an alternative – it is a ?must have.?
If you want to build your brand online, acquire customers and make money, you must have a blog.
OK. So what tools do you need to make sure that your blogging brings results and makes sense to you?
Of course the first tool you need to build a blog and have it be visible online is a hosting company.
There are many hosting companies online. Personally I would recommend either one:
Bluehost or Siteground.
Both of them are relatively cheap and provide reliable services.
The next tool you?ll want to use is a domain registration provider.
By choosing an actual domain for your blog, you begin to create a brand.
And domain registration is incredibly affordable today.
Of course you can stick with the free domain option if you wish to save money while starting the blog.
You can purchase a domain later and then redirect your free URL to it when you do feel like taking advantage of this tool.
If you want to register a domain name, then I would recommend using Namechaep or Wealthy Affiliate.
Here?s a Pro Tip. Avoid creating a free blog on wordpress.com or blogger.com if you can.
If you?re serious about your online business, then you should have a self-hosted blog over which you have a full control.
3 More Online Marketing Tools for a Small Business
Once your blog is ready, then here are a few more tools to take into account if you want to make money with it.
#1. Email marketing service
For this tool, I?m talking about autoresponder.
You can?t go without it if you want to grow your online business.
Autoresponders allow you to build relationships with your leads and essentially sell to them on autopilot.
A good autoresponder, however, not only allows you to create newsletters and autoresponder messages, which are emails that should be sent out to your subscribers on every given day, but also landing pages and opt-in forms that can help to create conversions on your site or blog.
There are several different autoresponders on the market.
Some of them are more expensive and more sophisticated than others, but if you?re just starting out or you run a small business, you don?t need anything fancy to begin building your online presence.
My favorite autoresponder is GetResponse.
Here you can read about a few things you should look for when choosing an autoresponder.
And if you want to learn more about GetResponse and how to create landing pages with GetResponse, the be sure to click on the appropriate links included in this sentence.
#2. Grow your list of subscribers
?Money is in the list, in the leads, and in the subscribers.?
It?s something that is told to many small businesses who are looking for online marketing tools.
This is because email marketing was and still is one of the best ways to make money online.
Imagine that you have 5000 subscribers on your list. You promote a product or service to them which costs $10.
5% of them decide to purchase the product or service for the price of $10.
5% out of 5000 subscribers equate to 250 people.
250 x $10 = $2,500. This is the potential of how much you can make by sending out a single email.
Even if only 3%-4% of them would make a purchase from you, then you would still make a nice profit.
For me, this means having a good, responsive email list is almost like having a personal ATM in your room.
Many marketers say that it?s like literally printing money.
OK – that sounds great, but how do you grow your email list?
You already know that you need an autoresponder.
To use that online marketing tool effectively, you will need to collect those email addresses somehow.
For this purpose, you need another tool that is called a ?lead magnet.?
It could be a short report, an ebook, a video, or anything else that the visitors to your blog might be interested in having or using ? and a landing page or an opt-in form.
Of course you can build high-quality and high-responsive landing pages with GetResponse, but there is one more tool that I recommend for this purpose.
It is called PopUp Domination and Thrive Leads.
People do not like pop-ups, but they?re very effective.
Many bloggers notice an increase in email list opt-ins after installing a pop-up on their blogs.
I would recommend to use delayed pop-ups, which appear maybe 10 seconds after the visitor lands on your page, or exit pop-ups ? these are my favorite ones.
It basically means that a pop-up appears when a visitor to your blog tries to leave the page.
Thrive Leads allows you to place opt-in forms in different spots on your blog.
You can place an opt-in form at the top of the page, at the bottom of the page, between paragraphs in a blog post, in the sidebar, or you can activate an opt-in box by clicking on a link somewhere on the page.
For example: you can write an article about 10 best ways to collect leads. Somewhere in the article, you can then place a clickable link. Once you click on it, an opt-in form pops up.
These are the things you can do with Thrive Leads.
These two online marketing tools should boost your subscription rates.
A third to consider from Thrive Themes is called Thrive Content Builder.
This is probably one of the most useful plugins for all bloggers. It will change your blogging experience.
Don?t believe me? Check for yourself what Thrive Content Builder can do for your blog.
If you want to learn more about building your email list, please read: How to Build My Email List? [11 Awesome Ways to Grow Your List of Subscribers].
#3. Keywords are still very important
Some bloggers say that targeting specific keywords in your blog posts is not important any more.
While this might be partly true for Google, there is still a certain value that comes with the inclusion of keywords.
Google will know what your article is about and will rank it accordingly based on its overall quality.
That quality is judged by how reflective your content is toward the keyword search terms potential visitors are inputting into Google.
Keywords are still very important for such search engines like Yahoo or Bing, which may only be a small percentage of overall search traffic, but still an important part of the internet experience.
Google is important. There?s no question about it. Many online blogs and businesses only focus on Google, however, and that means they could be missing hundreds, if not thousands, of unique visitors every day.
According to Search Engine Land, Bing controlled 33% of online search traffic in 2015.
This means that you shouldn?t rely on Google alone for new visitors.
Try to optimize your content for other search engines as well.
What if Google one day changes its algorithm and you end up losing 50% of your rankings overnight?
Your business will either die or significantly slow down. And Google has had numerous algorithm changes since 2000.
That is why creating blog posts around specific keywords is still very essential.
It?s like creating a thesis statement for your post.
There are several different online marketing tools that may help you find the right keywords to pursue.
Remember to target only long-tail keywords, that is keywords consisting of at least 4-5 words.
My favorite keyword research tool is Jaaxy.
It?s an easy-to-use keyword research tool that spits out lots of closely-related keywords.
Other good keyword research tools that you can use too are for example: Google Keyword Planner, Long Tail Pro, and SECockpit.
Check out this article to learn more about how to find keywords for your website.
Why Video Marketing is an Important Online Marketing Tool to Use
Like I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I prefer blogging and video marketing.
I?ve already covered the blogging part and the tools you need if you want to run a successful blog and it doesn?t matter if you have a small or big business.
Now, let?s focus a little bit on video marketing.
The first question is why video marketing? Why should I use it in my online business?
First of all, it is pretty easy to rank videos both on YouTube and Google. It?s not so easy to rank a blog or website.
If you manage to rank your videos highly on Google, they may bring a lot of traffic to your blog, website, landing page, or wherever else you need it.
And as you probably know, if you want to make money online, you need several targeted sources of traffic.
Secondly, videos are becoming more popular every day.
According to Cisco: by 2019, 80% of the world?s internet traffic will be video.
That speaks for itself.
If you want to run a successful online business, you need to get involved in video marketing and start creating videos that will be driving potential customers to your business.
What tools can you use to create videos?
Personally my favorite online marketing tools for video content are VideoScribe and Video Spinn.
The former creates whiteboard videos and the latter creates a slide presentation.
Another great video marketing tool is Powtoon.
VideoScribe lets you create promotional or educational videos that you can use for different purposes.
To learn more about VideoScribe, read the following article: Best WhiteBoard Animation Video Software.
Another way to create videos is to record your computer screen.
It is very useful when you want to create a step by step presentation of how something works, how to use certain product or service and for many other purposes.
You can record your computer screen to create instructional and educational videos.
Two of the most popular online marketing tools which can create such videos are Camtasia and Screencast?O-Matic.
Of course if you?re going to record videos using either Camtasia or Screencast-O-Matic, you need to record your voice, that is why you need to have a good quality microphone, such as Yeti.
A high quality headset microphone can also be useful when creating a screencast video because it keeps your hands free without compromising the quality of the audio recording.
One more online marketing tool that can be useful in your online business is Youzign.
This tools lets you create images, banners, social media covers, 3d ebook covers and more.
You can try it out for free for 14 days.
I?m using Youzing almost everyday. This is definitely one of the best tools that I invested my money in.
By the way, if you?re new to blogging or video marketing and you don?t know how you could use these to make money online, consider joining an online educational platform where you will learn how to monetize your blog and VidPenguin, where you will learn how to rank your videos on Google and YouTube and make money with them.
Are You Ready to Use Online Marketing Tools for Your Business?
There are several more online marketing tools that you could use to make your online business run smoother, but if you?re going to do blogging and video marketing, which I recommend, then these several tools that I mentioned above will do – at least for a start.
Remember that online marketing tools won?t work for you on their own.
You?re the one who must put in the effort into your online business in order for it to thrive.
Let me quickly sum up the tools that I included in this article:
1.????? GetResponse
2.????? PopUp Domination, Thrive Leads, Thrive Content Builder
3.????? VideoScribe, Powtoon, Video Spinn
4.????? Screencast-O-Matic, Camtasia
5.????? Yeti mike,
6.????? Jaaxy, Long Tail Pro, SECockpit
7.????? Youzing
8.????? And two services where you can learn to make money with your blog and videos.
Promoting your business through these two channels (blog and videos) is a sure way to increase its visibility and popularity.
It?s also a great source of traffic, which is the lifeblood of every small or big company be it offline or online.
Many businesses do not realize that blogging and video marketing can have a significantly positive impact on the growth of their brand.
Do not miss this opportunity.
Get your blog up and running, create a YouTube channel or use Vimeo, check out the tools from this article, and after some time you should start seeing some positive results.