Asher Aw

You and I both know the internet is a huge place and that it’s an open field for anyone to come in to make some money for themselves.

Often, we’ll need to use some tools to help us out. However, the tools available to us can be expensive and filled with many extra options which we don’t really use, other times, there are free tools which aren’t perfect but they get the job done.

Today, I’m going to give you some free tools you can use to start “panning for gold” or “digging for gold”. No “Free 30 Day Trial” here, it’s all free and good stuff.

Remember though, these are tools. And like any tool, if you leave them in the shed for a period of time, gold will not magically appear on them. You gotta use them to reap the benefits.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

Office, PDF, Productivity Tools

1. OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org) – Don’t want to get Microsoft Office? This is an excellent alternative
2. PrimoPDF (http://www.primopdf.com) – A free, high-quality PDF creation utility that enables printing to PDF from virtually any Windows application.
3. FruitfulTime (http://www.fruitfultime.com) – This site was develops simple and effective productivity software to help individuals and small teams be more productive, as of 4 December 2009, all products are free for both commercial and private use.
4. FreeMind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net) – A free mind-mapping software. If you’re a fan of mind-mapping to structure your thought processes, this will be a godsend.
5. FileZilla (http://filezilla-project.org) – One of the best free FTP (file transfer protocol) software available.
6. Article Submission Helper (http://www.articlesubmissionhelper.com) – Unlike most “free” article submitters, this one actually supports automated account registration – so you won’t have to waste hours just signing up. It also has inbuilt article spinner. Great time saver if you use articles to market your business.

Web Authoring, Image Editing Tools

1. PSPad (http://www.pspad.com) – A freeware editor, useful for people who like to code by hand
2. NVU (http://net2.com/nvu) – One of the most well known free WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) web editors available on the net. A free alternative to FrontPage or Dreamweaver
3. Gimp (http://www.gimp.org) – This is a free software for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. For people who don’t want to spend money on Photoshop.
4. Paint.net (http://getpaint.net) – A free image and photo editing software for computers running on Windows. It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software.
5. Picnik (http://www.picnik.com) – An online photo editor. If you only have a browser to help you do image editing, this site is amazing.
6. MyECoverMaker (http://www.myecovermaker.com) – An amazing  resource to help create your online ecovers. Mark Monciardini creator of CoverActionPro has revolutionized the way ecovers are presented. Here, at this site, you won’t get Mark but you can create amazing ecovers at drag-and-drop simplicity.

Multimedia Tools

1. CamStudio (http://camstudio.org) – A free alternative to TechSmith’s Camtasia software.
2. BSRSoft (http://www.bsrsoft.com) –  Another really good free screen recorder
3. Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) – This free, open source software can be used for recording and editing sounds.

Image Resources

1. Stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu) – One of the best sites for free stock photos.
2. Photos8 (http://www.photos8.com) – All photos here are free for any use.
3. morgueFile (http://www.morguefile.com) – This site contains lots of high resolution photos and graphics.
4. FreeDigitalPhotos (http://www.freedigitalphotos.net) – Tons of great stuff for web use but if you want to use for print or graphic design, you’ll have to buy the higher resolutions.

Other Useful Resources/Tools

1. Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org) – Of course, Wikipedia is known as the web’s largest free encyclopedia. But did you know there’s a page where there’s a list of free and open source software packages ?
2. DupeFree (http://www.dupefreepro.com) – This software is fantastic if you are using it to check for plagiarism, unique content.
3. Empressr (http://www.empressr.com) – This online site can create 3D presentations for your otherwise boring “click to go to next slide” presentations.
4. Zoho (http://show.zoho.com) – Another online site to create presentations but very much like an online Microsoft Powerpoint, also allows you to share presentations and lots more.
5. Mint (http://www.mint.com) – One of the safest places for accounting of where you’ve been spending your money. The site’s headline is “the best free way to manage your money”
6. Sugar (http://www.sugarforge.org/content/open-source) – Sugar is an amazing free CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. Watch the demo videos to be amazed.
7. BrowserShots (http://www.browsershots.org) – This is a great resource to see how your webpage looks like across 6 commonly used browsers at 800×600 and 1024×768 resolutions.
8. Osalt (http://www.osalt.com) – This site will list various open source alternatives to the already existing commercial software. Got software you want? You’ll likely find an alternative here

I could go on for a lot more but then again, too much may be… well, too much.

Check out these resources and tools, use them to your hearts content.