Shopping Carts |
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X-Cart: shopping cart software & ecommerce solutions. - This is the platform TheGolfCollection.com, PrimetimeSportingGoods.com, and many other sites we've been involved with are on. If you have some HTML or technical skills you can have it running yourself in an hour.and if you do need help a hosted solution one is available from FinestShop.com. Once you become an old pro you can backup the template, buy an X-Cart license and can be off and running on your own server, without having to learn a new shopping cart. X-Cart is PHP based so there are plenty of third-party add-on available (versus ASP and Windows servers with very few programmers available) |
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1ShoppingCart - If you are selling one or only a handful of products a catalog shopping cart like X-Cart is a bit of over-kill. We have many friends in the info and one product "sales page" niche that highly recommend 1 shopping cart. You can dress it up with a built in auto-responder, and even merchant processing. |
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aMember - This is the cart you used to join this program. |
Automation Software |
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WPDFI - I was looking for an automated way to handle data feed import for one of our members, and I ran across WPDFI. This is really a clever idea - using as the back end content management system of Word Press for affiliate product web sites WPDFI imports Data Feeds from affiliate programs and creates Word Press product pages. Not only fast but you get the "blog Boost" factor in the search engines as well. Pretty cool |
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Mass Account Manager - Automatically add large numbers of domains, sub-domains or add-on domains to one or multiple cPanels with just a few clicks. You can also automatically import existing domains and sub-domains. Saving you the time it would take to normally enter that data manually. Easily upload multiple files to multiple domains, sub-domains or groups with just a few clicks. If you use FTP and have a lot of websites that you need to add pages to, this alone is priceless. Imagine being able to update thousands of websites at the click of a button. |
Membership/Social Network software |
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PHP Fox - If your looking for something to create a "MySpace" type site PHP Fox has gotten High recommendations from our friends. It supports SEO friendly URL's and title tags, Live Chat, Instant Messenger, and PayPal IPN Membership System. At $300 it's a bargain. And while I haven't tested it it PHP fox claims to be hacker safe. The other alternative is DZOIC, while nice enough features, I found with the DZOIC site I personally built, DZOIC was being hacked constantly. |
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Moodle - The platform you are on right this minute. Moodle is designed to present educational material, an online classroom, so to speak. The good news - Its free The bad News - the documentation leaves something to be desired and there isn't much in the way of professional help to be had. |
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Auto Social Poster - The Auto Social Poster is a Wordpress plugin that allows you to post to bookmarking sites on a mass level.It randomizes your tags and accounts posted to so that your bookmarks are not mistaken for SPAM! |
Hosting |
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We have many sites/blogs and spread them around to different host companies in order to get IP addresses on different C classes. These are a few of the host companies we been pleased with, plus a new addition thanks to Tom (one of our members) a new company run by HostGator for the sole purpose of giving a webmaster multiple C classes in one account. Love it when my work load is reduced
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SEO Tools |
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SEO Elite -My secret weapon for getting sites to the top of the search engines. If used the way I recommend in our course, you can actually beat the Google Sandbox by using this tool to manage the one variable that has the ability to move your site forward up the SERPs or banish you for months, maybe years in the Sandbox. I love the way I can keep tabs on all my sites' rankings and how this super cool software actually builds an historical chart of my progress. This is the one tool no serious website owner should be without. If you're brand new put you wallet away for now... you won't need this until later. |
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Directory Maximizer -This service now has over 750 directories to submit to and what I like about them is that they are inexpensive, fast and responsive. Better yet, the more you use them, the cheaper they get. You get monies placed on account for future submissions every time you place a paid submit order. Directory Maximizer has several very nice features that when used correctly (we explain more in the SEO Blueprint) can dramatically improve your site's standings. |
Toll-Free Phone Numbers |
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RingCentral: "Best for Toll Free Numbers" Inc. Magazine |
Accept Credit Cards |
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PowerPay - You may not think of your merchant processor as a web "tool", but it is probably the most important "tool" in your web arsenal. It's a tough world out there, and you'll need guidance and a processor that will stand by you. After being with a processor that was willing to "throw us to the wolves" we moved to PowerPay, have been with them for a while now, and can absolutely rave about how well they have taken care of us. |
Product Sourcing |
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WorldWide Brands/One Source-If you're interested in either drop shipping or inventory (without buying warehouse quantities) this directory is a great resource of REAL drop shippers and wholesalers. There are a lot of pretend drop shippers selling to merchants at retail prices. Tough to make a buck if your markup is 10 cents. We've used both the Dropship and Wholesale directories for almost three years and have established some really good relationships with business on the wholesale side of the street. |
Auto responders (Build an Opt-in List) |
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AWeber or GetResponseWe have had excellent results with both AWeber and Get Response. Reliable, Easy to use, Provide plenty of on-line instruction, provide the HTML/JavaScript to plop down on your site, and tracking mechanisms. You can't go wrong picking either one, but you should probably pick only one.We just happen to have accounts with both because my husband and I set up accounts independently of each other.. yeah I know.. silly. My personal preference is aWeber because of the email parsing function (capture your buyers on an opt-in list) - Bob |
On-Page Stuff |
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iStock Photos This is a fabulous resource for quality royalty free images ( and even video clips) Far better quality than you'll find on the "free clip art" sites. Images are priced starting a $1. Why pay for images? If you simply take images from Google Images or the other search engine sources, you could be in a world of hurt if the owner discovers you used their image without permission. (We know of one rather famous guy that ended up paying $50,000 to the owner in a lawsuit.) Don't mess with copyright laws! |
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Adobe Photoshop Elements |
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Fireworks Creative Suite 3. This was the first graphic package we owned, as part of Macromedia's Studio MX, which has now morphed into Creative Suite 3 Web Premium. Fireworks by itself is a great graphics program to create images (similar to Photoshop) and then do things like create "hotspots" (clickable areas in an image), or slice an image into smaller pieces so the image will load faster (see the main image on the home page of theGolfCollection.com) |
Our Favorite Link Directories |
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Get instant credit with Google and other search engines by having this blue blood set of directories linking to you.
Optional Links to Get which can Help Conversion as well as Authority Status • Better Business Bureau – Cost varies about $435– must be in business 1 year or more to get. • Scan Alert – Hacker Safe – Can cost up to $1,000 worth it for large sites but new sites can skip • Miscellaneous Industry Association Links |
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