Monday, May 3, 2010

Free Online Tools for Bloggers

Image: Andy Newson / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There is this saying - why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free? This little saying is easily applicable to online tools. If your searching for online tools to improve your blog or website, put your wallet away, make sure you plug in that four letter word “free” in the search box, sit back and enjoy your “free milk”.

Free Email Marketing Software

When I worked with Jane at Make Ahead Meals for Busy Moms, I helped her to set up her email marketing software. She used 1shoppingcart.com and then made the switch to Benchmark.com. Both email marketing software programs charge a monthly fee for use. I assumed all of this type of software would require a monthly fee. When I did a search for “free email marketing,” I was pleasantly surprised to find mailchimp and email marketing pro, each are free email marketing software solutions.

Email Marketing Pro

“Email Marketing Professional 2.0 is free email marketing software that allows you to create and send promotional emails in seconds. Seconds after installing, you will be able to send promotional ads, newsletters, coupons, and more. This powerful software has all the features of the top commercial email marketing software on the market today.”

Mailchimp offers a free service that allows you to store up to 500 subscribers, send up to 3,000 emails per month. There are no contracts or credit cards required.

Free Wordpress Templates

I’ve been toying with the idea of changing over from Blogger to Wordpress for months now. According to everyone in the blogging world, this is something that I must do for several reasons. Why pay for a template if you or I can find a versatile template for free? Check out these sites for free Wordpress templates.

Wordpressthemesbase.com

Top Wordpress Themes

Freethemelayouts.com

Free Photo Images

While the selection of images may not be as impressive as istockphoto.com, you may find just the image for your blog post or article at any of these free photo/image sites…did I mention that many images are absolutely free? I tested the sites myself. There is no sign-up required. Just navigate to the images and download!

freephotosbanks

stockvault free

openphoto free

turbophoto

freedigitalphotos.net

Freedigitalphotos.net requires acknowledgment of photographer.




Image: Michal Marcol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Keep in mind free images are considered public domain. There are other images on these sites that are not free.

Free Tools for Improving your Writing Skills

I never claimed to be a genius when it comes to writing. I rely on my spell and grammar checker and still question whether or not I need a comma there, or not :)

The article by Vitaly Friedman - 50 Free Resources that will improve your writing skills -contains great free resources like the Grammar Girl - on her blog you will find quick and dirty little tips for better writing. Wordweb is a one-click English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows.

Free Virtual Notes

Now that every service/industry is going paperless, why shouldn’t I? Instead of having the clutter of post-notes and papers all over my desk, now I can have small virtual sticky notes neatly placed in my upper right corner to keep me organized and on task. Well organized anyway…To get your free desktop notes, check out Inbox.com.

Be the first to comment on your favorite online tools.


4 comments:

prophetess said...

the google friend connect offers the newsletter option for free, you can simply use nuview for the template and copy it into the gfc for free without restrictions on how many sign up for it

Kristi Maloney said...

Cool. I haven't done much with GFC. Great to know Prophetess. Thanks for the tip!

prerna said...

Wow.. These are helpful.. Thanks.. Will check out inbox.com. Meanwhile All Freelance Writing. com has a great free income calculator and other such tools you may wanna check out.

Kristi Maloney said...

Thanks for the tip!I will check out the calculator. Thanks for stopping by Prerna.

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