Tina Palacios

There are a lot of internet marketers out there these days.
As the economy spirals downward, many folks are looking for a way to earn
some extra cash. Hence, the idea of making money online seems very enticing.
It would seem that most new marketers are on a tight budget, since I am
constantly being asked “Are there any free marketing resources?”

With this in mind, I have put together a list of resources which can be utilized to
build your business. The most vital tool a marketer needs is training. You may come
from a background of self employment, or owning a brick and mortar business, but
internet marketing is a different animal altogether. Therefore, it’s VITAL that you get the right
training, and then be willing to train your downline members. If you are not willing to
create other leaders, your business will never move away from you, and you will burn out.
If you yourself are not willing to be trained, you will struggle and likely give up.

Say YES to Training!
There are very few true mentors who are willing to train you for free.
There are a lot, however, who will promise you the moon if you join their business.
I have found a very good trainer named Gerry Shroeder. He has a new program with the purpose of creating a lot of new “ten thousandaires”. This is Gerry’s definition of a person who earns at least ten thousand dollars per month. If you are truly willing to learn, apply, then teach others, I believe Gerry’s training program will be of great benefit to you. While there will be an upgrade option available, Gerry assures me that free members will have full access
to the weekly trainings with the exclusion of advanced market training. I feel confident this will be more than enough to get new marketers started in the right direction. Click here to take a look at Second Income Coach, also known as SIC.

Free Ways to Brand Yourself.
You may also need to create some web pages, or splash pages. Most marketers find these useful, since the idea of internet marketing is really and truly not about your product or business, it’s all about YOU. This is why you keep hearing over and over why it is so important to brand yourself. I have gathered a few resources for you which I have used to build splash or lead capture pages. Blinkweb and Weebly are both useful tools for building web pages, blogs, or entire websites. Freewebs is another site for this purpose, though admittedly, I don’t have any experience with it that I can recall. Click Voyager is actually a traffic exchange, but as a free member, you can create up to three splash pages, and it is quite easy to do. Another great one is Instant Splash. You can create 2 nice splash pages here in a jiffy.

Speaking of Traffic Exchanges…
There are tons of traffic exchanges which you can join for free. If you’re not familiar with traffic exchanges, this is how they work: you view the pages of other members in exchange for credits which you then use to have your pages viewed. This concept is called “surfing for credits.” You will NEVER want to use an affiliate link in any traffic exchange.  You can do this, of course, but you will quickly find that it is a complete waste of time, and credits. Remember, the idea is to brand yourself.  This is why you need to create your own splash pages and more preferably, your own capture pages. A capture page is much like a splash page, however, it contains an opt-in form so that potential buyers or business partners can get more information. Be aware, however, that you will need to have an autoresponder in place so that you can get the code for the opt-in form. Personally, I have no experience with free autoresponders. I’m sure Google has some suggestions, but  this is a tool you will very likely want to spend some money on at some point, since it is crucial that your messages are delivered. I know you’ve heard it… “the money is in the list”, right? It’s true, and “the list” is in the autoresponder.

Traffic Exchange Resources
As for traffic exchanges, here are some free resources you can use to see which ones are available, and higher up on the totem pole. Traffic Hoopla serves as a downline builder for traffic exchanges, and safelists. The owner, Bill Carr, tests each of these on a weekly basis to see which ones produce the best results, then ranks them for you. Another good resource for traffic exchanges is TE Command Post. This one is fairly new, but I have found that it is a great way to keep all of your traffic exchanges organized. Pretty much any TE you can name will be found in the list, and you can add up to ten of these to the command post. This is helpful because it allows you to see how many credits you have available in each exchange, and how many are assigned. This saves you the time of having to go to each individual exchange just to see your credits. This will show you which exchanges you may need to surf, as you will be able to see which ones are low on credits. You can also see how many banner and text impressions you have available, all right there in one place.

I hope this has been helpful. It is in no way comprehensive, but it does give you an overall view of the free training, traffic exchanges, and web page building sites that are available to you. If you have any questions regarding anything I have shared here, please feel free to contact me. I’m happy to help.