Everyone loves free.

We all want to get something for nothing.

Funnily enough, there is a lot you can get for free. And that is especially useful when you are starting your online business on a shoestring. As you gain more experience and funds you can upgrade to even better products if they suit your need. In the meantime, if you use a free or open-source product, be sure to make a contribution or donation  – whatever you can afford.

What goes around, comes around, you know 🙂

FREE HTML EDITORS – WEB PAGES

Kompozer is open source and I use it all the time. It is quick and easy but has a bucket load of functions. I rarely have any issues with it and it renders my pages fine.

I have also used Trellian and CoffeeCup – both are free as well. But for me, I find Kompozer unbloated and fast in comparison. You may prefer the others. All of them have been around for years.

FREE FTP PROGRAM

CoreFTP is what I’ve used for years. It’s not flash but gee it works for me. It’s easy to use, quick and I can set up lots of ftp access and back them up easily too. There are fancier, more popular ones around but this is great.

You could also try FileZilla – it’s popular but I didn’t like it as much as I like CoreFTP. Really, it’s about what you get used to using – many are good.

FREE KEYWORD RESEARCH

When it comes to researching Keywords, there’s a lot to learn. Google makes its Adwords tool available for all. The Google Keyword Tool is useful as a starting point although it’s only one of many tools in your arsenal. Step up to paid tools when you can.

On the basis you can’t have too many keyword tools, another great free one is Traffic Travis. You get more than one tool for free in this suite and it’s a great way to learn about SEO and Keywords at no cost but your time.

FREE FILE ARCHIVER (UNZIP TOOL)

 7ZIP is my tool of choice. I find it handles nearly any file I throw at it to zip or unzip. It does zip and rar which are the 2 most common and more. Nothing flash about it, it just does what it says on the lid, and does it well.

You could also look up a range of others.  IZArc is pretty good – I like the way it automatically opens the archive so you can see what’s in it.

FREE IMAGE EDITOR

If you had the money you’d buy something like Adobe Photoshop. If you don’t, you get your hands on GIMP. It’s the poor-man’s Photoshop but powerful enough for anyone. Manipulate or create images at will.

I’ve heard PhotoScape is an alternative but I’ve not used it. Also Fotor looks neat. So does PicMonkey.

FREE VIDEO RECORDING AND EDITING SUITE

FREE GRAPHICS, IMAGES

There’s a difference between ‘free’ and ‘royalty free’. Free means no cost to use; royalty free gives you a right to use the image but you normally pay for that right. ALWAYS check the rights you have to use any image.

• http://sxc.hu – need to register. Variable quality but improving all the time
• http://morguefile.com – great selection of free to use images and ones you can buy
• http://us.fotolia.com – register for free but images are very reasonable prices
• http://www.everystockphoto.com – an aggregator of images – not all free
• http://www.kozzi.com – register and get 30 images free a month – not vector ones though
• http://www.depositphotos.com – 5 free for 7 days but you need to subscribe
• http://flickr.com – public photos but be careful of rights
• http://pixabay.com – free images but again check rights

I’m sure there are more  let me know if I’ve missed any.

If you find an image on Google search – check the usage rights. (go to /options/advanced search/usage rights)

Just bear in mind that in nearly all cases, you need to credit the source of the image. It’s best to assume you can’t use anything unless it says you can and under what conditions eg attribution. So play nice 🙂

All images in this article created by redhotinternetmarketing.com

BEST FREE CD/DVD BURNING SOFTWARE

• ImgBurn  http://www.imgburn.com/
• Ashampoo Burning Studio Advanced FREE 2012 10.0.15 http://www.softpedia.com/get/CD- -Tools/Data-CD-DVD-Burning/Ashampoo-Burning-Studio-Free.shtml
• (Portable) CDBurnerXP  http://www.cdburnerxp.se/en/features
• (Portable) cdrtfe 1.4.1 http://cdrtfe.sourceforge.net/cdrtfe/index_en.html
• (Portable) InfraRecorder http://infrarecorder.org/
• StarBurn http://www.starburnsoftware.com/products/starburn/features

To extract audio tracks from CDs and convert them to MP3, MP4/M4A, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC etc….:

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de

https://www.goodkatshare.com/kat-cd-ripper.html

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Audio/Audio-CD-Rippers-Encoders/CDex.shtml

To extract data from an unreadable disk

http://code.google.com/p/copycat http://www.softpedia.com/get/CD-DVD-Tools/CD-DVD-Rip-Other-Tools/Recovery-Star.shtml

FREE FONTS

Love this site – some fabulous type and generously 100% free  http://www.fontsquirrel.com/

FREE MINDMAP SOFTWARE

Great little software program to jot out your ideas, presentations, notes, whatever. Mind-mapping has tons of uses. Freeplane is freely available here – http://goo.gl/gEujb

Another free mindmap tool is FREEMIND. I’ve used it for years (still do) – it’s foolproof, quick and reliable. Grab it here – http://goo.gl/sjbyU

FREE TITLE GENERATORS

http://tweakyourbiz.com/tools/title-generator/

http://www.portent.com/tools/title-maker

http://www.hubspot.com/blog-topic-generator

http://www.hubspot.com/blog-topic-generator

http://www.contentrow.com/tools/link-bait-title-generator

http://www.impactbnd.com/blog-title-generator/blogabout

http://www.inboundnow.com/apps/kill-writers-block/

http://ideas.contentforest.com/

http://www.backlinkgenerator.net/titlegenerator