Marketing Online With Helpful Tools

Marketing online is both not as hard and not as easy as you might think. Okay, so what does that mean? What I mean is that many times the solutions to the mysteries of making a living online are very straightforward and indeed proven time and again. They just have to be executed. That's where many people fail. No one likes to do the work. Never mind that it works when applied; it's difficult to get people to apply themselves even on proven methods.
The other major problem online marketers encounter is the problem of scale. They may know the game, understand how it works, but don't ever work up enough scale to make any real difference. Perhaps they are under the misguided notion that they need to do it all themselves, that no one can possibly do it as well, or simply are too cheap (or short-sighted) to outsource. For these, there is little hope until this conceptual hurdle is cleared.
One thing any savvy marketer in search of more scale and more time can do is to make use of some of the many tools available to make you business more efficient and able to scale effectively. There are tools in many areas, but I'll list some of the more worthwhile ones.
•    Site building -- One of the best solutions here is a Wordpress blog. They are very easy to set up and are incredibly customizable. A great solution for an almost instant site.
•    Stats -- Google Analytics is a big one here. Market Samurai another, along with Traffic Travis. Some are free, some not, but something along these lines is essential, as marketing blindly is akin to speeding along the coast in pea-soup fog. You don't know where you're going and you are going to crash!
•    Keyword research tools -- There are many of these, but you should at least utilize Google's free tool. There are simply too many keywords to deal with, and this is too important to do a halfway job of it.
•    SEO Software -- Great tools to have for knowing what you need to do to properly optimize your site and webpages. There are many, but a good place to start is the aforementioned Market Samurai.
•    Autoresponders -- You've heard that the money is in the list. Well, unless you have a professional autoresponder such as Aweber or GetResponse handing your list building, you'll soon find yourself with a big mess, and a sticky one at that.
There are tools to automate or semi-automate almost any task associated with online marketing, even creating content. What it boils down to is how much do you want to spend, and how well you can create a plan to utilize these tools along with the humans working your plan in order to get the best results. Remember: they're only tools. You have to sail the ship!