As the IM gurus love to repeat over and over: “you must spend money to make money,” and even though I reluctantly agree with it, there is no reason why you should not be able to find great tools to help in your efforts to earn money online, without having to pay for all of it. So, I decided to share ten super-useful free tools for marketers!

Ten Super-Useful Free Tools for Marketers

1. Niche Market Finder

Have you heard about Micro Niche Finder, a $97 product that helps you find market niches to monetize with? Niche Market Finder is a simplified version created by another team, and even though it doesn’t have the features of MNF, it is definitely worth trying. To use Niche Market Finder, simply type in a keyword for whichever niches you would be interested in promoting, like “blue baby shoes,” for instance.

2. Your Mailing List Provider

“Your Maling List Provider” is a free autoresponder software that covers most Internet Marketers needs. Moreover, it is easy to set up and configure in a way to make it as efficient as possible for your website. A free account allows for up to 1,000 list subscribers, which is plentiful for building a decent size opt-in list. I have signed up and will be using it in my EMC blog.

3. Banner Fans

Banner fans is yet another free and easy to use online banner creator. It offers a wide range of features, and although you can hardly expect to produce professional looking banner graphics simply with a few clicks, it could come in handy for when you need a banner for promoting a product or service, and they didn’t give you any promo graphics. Many CPA networks only give you a text link and little or no graphics. When that’s the case, you’d want this.

4. Stock XCHNG

Especially when creating mini-websites for Adsense, landing pages, squeeze pages and so on, you will want some nice photos that you can edit to your liking and use to spice up your web pages. I consider Stock.XCHNG (are you as amused by their tongue-knotting name as I am?) a valuable resource for exactly this; free and sometimes even pretty high quality, royalty-free photos. I use it for building new Adsense sites, among other things.

5. SubmitterBot

SubmitterBot is a free online service for indexing your new domain names and web content. On their website, they claim that your website URL will be submitted to at least 683 directories, and you can also submit links to 18 Social Bookmarking services from the same website. If you write articles, you can submit each of your articles to minimum 34 article directories, from SubmitterBot’s website. Membership is free, so sign up and use it today.

6. Mega Do-Follow List on Squidoo

Seriously wholeheartedly kudos to the Squidoo author Pixelrage for his most generous contribution to what is still considered one of the better social web communities for marketers. In his Squidoo lens, Pixelrage gives a brief but thorough enough explanation on the do-follow phenomenon, then follows up with a humongous do-follow list for you to use. There are many golden nuggets to be found on Squidoo, this being one of them.

7. Wipee List

Have you ever procrastinated? You know, when you keep telling yourself “it’s about time I put up that bookself, but… *yawn* I’ll do it tomorrow.” Especially Internet Marketers are often bothered with this; postponing the article writing, site building, product testing and so on. Wipee List is meant to help you overcome this problem and focus on what you need to get done. Sign up for a free account today.

8. HeatMap Ads Theme for WordPress

If you want to go nuts with Adsense and other types of advertising on your WordPress site, the HeatMap Ads Theme is one of the better free themes. The website offers a HeatMap Ads Insider membership, which costs $35 annually and includes 17 new additional theme variations, child themes, drop-down menu updates and access to the support forum. To get the free main theme download, simply go to their website and click the download link.

9. Free Software Box Creator (Photoshop Action)

Like those cool looking 3D cover graphics in ads for software, e-books and video series, but don’t know how to create something like it yourself? If you have access to Photoshop, you can use this free Action to create your own, professional looking e-covers with a neat 3D look. It is possible to design cover graphics using GIMP, and I even had a tutorial on it somewhere, but it looks like it’s been removed from the site. No problem, though… check below!

10. My E-cover Maker – design your e-cover in your browser

My E-cover Maker is a browser tool which lets you design your own, good looking 3D covers without having to download any software or paying recurring membership fees of any kind. All you have to do is visit the website, click the button and start putting together a great looking DVD cover, box cover, or why not a 3D book cover! It’s perfect for your new e-book, video course or whatever it is that you want to sell like a pro.

To sum it up

In one word: Phew! I hope you will enjoy exploring these sites as much as I did putting the list together. I already had most of these links in my bookmarks, and writing the list reminded me to re-visit. These are free tools, some of which offer an upgrade to paid membership, but the premise is it will be free to use on a basic level at least. There are many excellent free IM tools out there, and I make a list like this from time to time to help you find it.

Enjoy!