Many Tools for Online Earning are Free!

There are many tools for online earning which can make it easier to get your business up and running. They can rummage through mountains of data and return just the bits that will help you earn money online. Unfortunately, many are not free.

If your budget is tight however, all is not lost. There are a multitude of tools for online earning which are free to use, and which will help you establish an online business. Once that business is up and running, those same tools can help you get traction – paving the way to your success.

Google comes to the rescue

There are a number of free tools offered by Google, but you need to know where to look. For example, Google Trends summarizes Internet search activity and reports trending searches back to you – for free! Could you benefit by knowing what subjects are hot (and which are not)? Would it be handy to have advance knowledge of subjects as they start going viral? Knowing ahead of time what is trending is a huge advantage – and it's one of many free tools for online earning available from Google.

Google isn't the only free resource you can use, however. Here are just a few more:

• You can make interesting (or hilarious) titles for your pages and posts at Portents, and you can go to the Title Generator to get 700 title ideas at a time! They may not always be grammatically correct, but they will get you thinking and help you past any writer's block.
• Download images you can use free on your site at Pixabay, FreeImages, or a host of other graphics websites.
• Make customized graphics using free graphics tools to exercise your creative muscle and  for your website using Gimp or Canva.
• Produce videos of your monitor screen and audio with your webcam by using CamStudio.
• Add music to your videos or slide shows with Bensound.
• Research your keyword search volumes at SERPS website.

Note that there is more sophisticated software is available – for a cost. Your first order of business is to get your site online and begin driving traffic to it. Resist the urge to purchase anything until that prime directive has been met. Wait until your site has begun earning online income. The speed with which premium tools operate and the features they offer will be tempting, but resist. Make a list, and treat yourself at some future point in time. Today, your efforts are only to get your new site online and to begin driving traffic to it, as inexpensively as possible.

Some site-specific free tools

You may want to try your hand at selling on eBay to earn money online – as many have done. Did you know that eBay has an advanced search feature? With it, you can see how much specific items have sold for in the past, which categories you should list items for best results, and a host of other things. Unknown to many, eBay wholesale is dedicated to scaling your income to new heights.

There are similarly keyword search tools available specifically for products sold on Amazon. You may be using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), and wonder how much money you're really making after Amazon takes its cut for storing, handling, and shipping your product. Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful service – but it's easy to lose your shirt to all the fees there. Here's a profit calculator to keep track of those pesky Amazon fees and how they'll affect your bottom line.

Consider using WordPress

When you're ready to build your web site, WordPress does most of the heavy lifting for you. You can change its appearance and functionality by changing themes or plugins. There are thousands available, significantly enhancing the functionality of WordPress. A few free plugins that I've found useful are Pretty Link Lite, Akismet Anti-Spam, and WP Edit. Rummage around a bit on WordPress.org a bit and see what you can find – I use many other plugins, too many to list here. Note that I'm recommending you visit WordPress.org – and not wordpress.com.

WordPress.org allows you to establish your own web site, even though it costs a few dollars to do so. WordPress.com imposes limits on your web site's name, design, and functionality. For example, you cannot upload any custom themes, you cannot upload any plugins, and you are severely restricted in how you can monetize your site. In fact, you don't even own your site, and you could lose months of work if wordpress.com decides you've violated some policy of theirs and shuts down your site. The only plus to using wordpress.com is that you can put up a web site for free – but don't do it. Spend just a few dollars and use the resources at WordPress.org to put up your site.

WordPress has become so popular that it now powers nearly a quarter of all web sites. You can harness all its power with just a few clicks of the mouse, leaving you free to concentrate on content for your site ranter than coding the site itself.

The next move is Yours!

It's all on you now. I've given you just a hint of the free tools for online earning, but there are many more. Dive deeper into this site to see what you can do for free, or for just a few dollars. Be warned though – there are premium tools for online earning available that can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars! You can quickly make your financial future very bleak if you begin buying tools, hoping they will live up to the hype that led you to buy them. Tools will not make money for you “on autopilot”, you will not “crack the code”, and there is no Easy button. Earning money online is exhilarating, but you have to put in the effort initially to get the ball rolling.

It's time to make your move.

Questions or Comments?

Do you have a question or comment about finding tools for online earning? Add it to the comment box below and let it fly!