Recommended Domain Tools, Scripts & Software

What is the most important aspects of succeeding online, either as a domainer who monetizes domain names, affiliate marketer or high adsense earner? It is a rather simple question, one that many people need to ask them self prior to jumping into any of these Internet marketing opportunities. Those that have been plugging away online for any given amount of time will probably answer that question with one signal word. Traffic.

Traffic

With the right kind of traffic (often referred to as targeted traffic) your web site can bring in bucket loads of money. Or if your a domainer one of the primary selling points of a premium domain name is traffic. The domain name computers.com recently sold for more than 2 million dollars – why do you think someone or a company would be willing to shell out so much money for a name? Yep, traffic.

When think about the types of tools, software applications and online services that I use regularly many of them are “keyword tools” and or tools that sift through hundreds of domain listing allowing me to “cherry pick” domains I think will produce more traffic. So with out any further ado, here is a list of recommended services, software programs and website scripts that have taken my business to the next level.

1. Keyword Tools – Both Free & Paid Tools
   
1. Google Adwords Keyword Tool – Free
   This is one of the best keyword tools on the market today, best of all it is free. The Google adwords tool offers the type of data that many “guru’s” have been selling for years. Any time I am looking at domain names, or have thought about adding additional webpages to sites I often find myself at the adwords tool. I love the fact that I can pull up the following: estimated cost per click, average traffic from the previous month and advertiser competition. That last one is really powerful, if your able to find a niche term with lots of advertisers, lots of traffic and keywords bids over a buck or two your golden.
2. Wordtracker.com
   I have been a yearly subscriber now to wordtracker for probably about three or four years. While the Adwords tool also offers plenty of data wordtracker offers more search terms. If your making more than $500 a month you should also be a yearly member of wordtracker. I personally used wordtracker in combination with other tools to find some great niche domain names. I also build every site based on search terms, often looking for the terms with some traffic but little competition (other web sites using the same terms).
3. Nichebot.com
   You would think with the two keyword sites above that would be all that is needed for a serious online marketer. However both of these services do a poor job with seasonal data. Example, lets say you acquire the domain name valentinesday.com during the middle of the summer. You want to start developing the domain now into a full blown site. However wordtracker.com only offers the last three months of keyword data. The adwords tool will cough up around 150 keyword phrase anytime of the year. However nichebot.com … the holy grail. Nichebot pulls from the keyword discovery database which pulls from one year of search traffic. During the month of May and June I put together keyword lists of more than 6 thousands terms for Halloween (ok I might have gone overboard). I also like nichebot because you can filter and clean your lists much more easily than you can at wordtracker.com. They also allow you to store your searches in your own personal “folders” which your able to name. Nice keyword site for sure.
4. Ebay Keywords
   The holy grail of commercial product keyword phrases, and this one is free too 
2. Data “Trend” Mining Web Sites – More Free Goodies
   If your after traffic online than it is important to know what is hot online. Their are several large search sites such as Yahoo and Google that offer a glimpse into what are big searches right now and what “could be big” in the coming weeks.
1. The Best Trend Miner – Yahoo Buzz
   A great site that offers what is hot right now on the yahoo search engine. This site is great to stop by once in a while, it can give you some great ideas for possible domain names and or full websites.
2. Google Zeigeist – Googles Answer To Yahoo Buzz
   Not as good as Yahoo Buzz but still may give you some money making ideas.
3. Search.com – Popular Searches
4. Lycos 50
3. Internet Marketing Software Programs
   Most worthy software programs online today allow to “automate” or speed up daily tasks. Some of the tools I use daily and I “have to have” others are nice but I could function without them.
1. Domain Research Tool
   This is a fantastic tool that has so many uses, you can scan thousands of domains names and gather data from Yahoo, archive.com, whois and more. This is great when your trying to find some expired domains that have pagerank and what I call “future” ranking ability. I am not going to go into depth about this program, I do however highly recommended.
2. Blog Jet – Cheap
   Most of the developed websites I create are based on the FREE blogging script Wordpress. Blogjet allows me to add new “blog posts” to my various blogs from my desktop. It is cheap and also allows for great formating with no problems. This is a tool that simply makes my life easier and speeds up my productivity.
3. David Watsons Website Header Wizard – Cheap
   I really suck at creating nice images, stuff like headers, buttons, ect … I guess I spent all my “early” online years learning about keyword research (thank god for that). Since I crank out lots and lots of websites I decided I needed a quick and easy way to create “ok looking” headers. While many people have no problem at all using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements it is past me. With this graphics tool I can create a fair looking header in less than 5 minutes. Cool.
4. PureText – Free
   This is a free little application that simply strips out any formating that is done within MS Word, or html & php tags. Sometimes I want to copy and paste from Word or from another web page into a site of my own. By using puretext I can get just the content just a bit quicker 
4. Website Scrips
   
1. Build A Niche Store – The Best Domain Parking Script For Certain Domains
   This is an amazing website script that can help you quickly and easily launch a website that is filled with ebay results with your affiliate link embedded into the product links. Why is this such a great script, well first of all it is “fairly” flexible to allow you to customize your ebay product website with your own content. This helps you create a unique site in Googles eyes, one that is different from the other “bans sites”. You can also launch a site in less than ten minutes once you get the hang of the system. Bottom line, I the right domain you can make good money, I launched a bans site on an expired domain that cost me $40 and have made around $2500 since the site was re-launched (the site continues to earn as of this writing).
2. Rss2Blog – Great Product – Support Sucks
   I really love this website script, often used by “Black Hat Webmasters” to create sites full of junky search engine results pages and rss generated splogs it can be used in a white hat method to once again “speed up” and simplify site creation. What does this script do? It enables you to set up regular postings to a blog over time. My method has been to create my own content by combining my own written articles, datafeeds and spun content into my own website “feeds”. I then import my unique content to RssToBlog and have this content posted to my blog on a regular basis. This keeps the content fresh, and the traffic and revenue up