Construction Marketing

Due to the popularity of the last list I posted, I got greedy and decided to do another list.

This time, the topic is online marketing. There is not a single contractor left on earth who hasn’t considered online marketing, perhaps even if only to curse, spit, and sip moonshine to the idea that the internet is a huge conspiracy that will destroy all civilization. That’s still consideration in my book.

Anyway, lets get to the list:

 

1. Warrior Forum

Wow, this site is a huge time suck. And a huge worldwide pseudo-university waiting to be explored for free. You can learn more here about online marketing than any one person on earth knows by himself. Be careful what you wish for.

 

2. OpenOffice.org

The Open Office suite of programs is simply awesome. You do not need Microsoft Office. You just don’t. Why buy it? There’s no reason anymore.

 

3. Mozilla Thunderbird

Ditto on Microsoft Outlook. There’s no justification I can think of for buying it nowadays. Oh yeah, and I also love Vista. Yeah, I said it.

 

4. Nameboy.com

I do not buy my domain names here. But I do research domain name ideas here. It’s free for that.

Here’s how you use it: You put in your keywords and it gives you a huge list of potential URL combinations and whether they are available in .com, .net, .org, .info, etc.

This matters because when you’re dealing with small niche markets online, specific keywords in your URL can mean instant google love.

 

5. Gimp

GNU Image Manipulation Program. It’s free Photoshop, pretty much. I used it just today to alter a website template. It’s pretty nifty.

 

6. SurveyGizmo.com

Survey Gizmo allows you to compile more data for free than Wufuu and SurveyMonkey. I like it. I use it. You can use it for everything from job applications to customer service to love notes to your girl (Do you like me? Check Yes or No).

 

7. Ezine Articles

It’s not that difficult to get an article published with ezine articles. But it’s just difficult enough. Learning what it takes to make them happy will teach you a lot about what also makes the search engines happy. Try one sometime. It can also help you push your website up the rankings.

 

8. Squidoo

A while back there was a hardcore Squidoo slap across the board. But Squidoo is back and better than ever. You can come up with creative ways to use it to help build your existing web empire.

Oh yeah, and Seth Godin created it. So it definitely sucks.

 

9. Picnik

Easy peasey quick photo editing for FREE. Sweet.

 

10. Dooce.com

You might be surprised by this one. It’s a blog by a stay at home mom (SAHM). But here’s the kicker:

This blog reportedly generates over $40,000 per MONTH for Ms. Heather B. Armstrong.

So, why does that matter? Because we can learn from dooce.com what makes a compelling blog. Here’s a hint. It’s called “Voice”.

 

11. 100 Ways to Get BackLinks

This is just an article on a forum. Some of these techniques are legit, some are sketchy, and some are funny. But I dare you to try to read the list and not come up with a list of good ideas.

 

12. Scribd

Another article submission site. I’ve seen some Scribd articles make it up very high in the search engines. Give it a try, who knows?

 

13. Weebly

Sort of a mixture between Squidoo and Ezinearticles. Also a good SEO site.

 

BONUS - 14. Wordpress.org

Everybody knows about Wordpress, right? But there was no way I could leave it off. I’m using it as we speak!

 

There you go. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Good luck with your online empire building! Let me know your favorites I may have left out.

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 8:21 pm and is filed under Construction Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.