Should I Pay for a Keyword Research Tool?

On blogs, and on webmaster forums all around the planet, internet business owners ask about the differences between free keyword research tools and software, or web-based tools, that they have to pay to use.  This question is more than fair, too, as many keyword tools can be quite costly — especially for a “newbie”.  Keyword research tools can run to ,000 or more for one-time purchase software, and to hundreds of dollars per month for subscription-based tools.  So, are the differences between the paid and free keyword tools worth the price tag?

First of all, you need to understand the differences between free keyword research tools and tools that you pay for, at least on a general level.  At face value, it seems that many free keyword tools, more or less, provide the same types of information that paid tools provide — number of competitors, estimated daily or monthly searches, related keywords, and sometimes even the KEI of a particular keyphrase.  However, even with all of their similarities, many for-payment keyword tools exceed the reach of their free counterparts in less obvious ways.

For instance, many paid keyword tools include the convenience of offering a number features on one screen, or at most, one-click away from the screen you’re viewing.  In other words, paid keyword tools, more often than not, are designed to allow you to perform all of your keyword research from the same interface.

In contrast to that — if you utilize free keyword tools to perform your research, there’s a good chance that you’re going to use several different tools — tools on different websites, and sometimes even a combination of desktop software and web-based software.  Not only can this be inconvenient, but it can be time consuming as well.

Also, paid keyword tools tend to delve deeper into the keyword market.  Not only can you receive more data from paid keyword tools, some also help you discover lateral keywords, or keyword phrases that are closely related to your primary keyphrase, but may or may not contain the primary keyphrase, and which are oftentimes ignored by your competition.

As an example, let’s say that you run a website devoted to headaches — you do your keyword research on “headaches” and you get all of the commonly-returned suggestions relating to the key term.  However, with a lateral keyword suggestion tool, you might discover terms like arthritis, pain, back pain, neck pain, healthcare, health, doctor, and so forth — keywords closely related to headaches, but just far enough out of the norm to remain outside of the reach of traditional keyword tools.

Feature differences aside, there is another important factor to consider — your needs.  If you only need occasional keyword research, and you only cater to one market — subscription-based keyword research services might be overkill.  However, if you are constantly working in new keyword markets, or you operate a business that requires ongoing keyword research — the paid solution is oftentimes completely justifiable.

Purchasing a keyword research tool, or subscribing to a service, is highly recommended under certain conditions.  If you need in-depth research on your keyword market, if you prefer an all-in-one solution instead of using several different tools, or if you regularly need to perform research in different markets — you might want to consider pursuing the paid route.  For the occasional keyword research though, free keyword tools can work just fine.

Making money online isn’t really that simple as most “online gurus” who want to sell their latest gimmicks make it sound like. There is quite a huge learning curve to overcome and some patience and discipline is required to make a living online.

On the other hand, if you stay focused and start treating the “whole game” more like a real business rather than just trying out one “secret tip” after the other to make a few quick and easy bucks, it actually becomes relatively easy (compared to other ventures) to make a living online.

So, what should a newbie do to get started making a living online?

To me, there are 3 crucial pillars, which build the foundation for long-term success (the kind of success you should be going after):

* Traffic

* Conversion

* Repeat Sales

Let’s have a closer look at these 3 pillars:

Traffic: There are many different ways to generate traffic and I’d like to warn you right upfront: There isn’t such a thing as free traffic – either you have to pay for it with money or with your time. To make a long story short, I think, the best kind of traffic is pay-per-click traffic. It’s targeted, converts well, provides a decent ROI and it gives you immediate feedback about what to expect from a particular niche.

Of course, you first have to master PPC before you can enjoy the advantages I mentioned above. Otherwise it’s more than likely that you will loose most of your money.

Conversion: Getting a lot of traffic is great, but if you don’t know how to convert it into leads and sales, it’s pretty useless. Conversion is all about understanding your niche and your market. Who are your most likely customers, where do you find them, what do they want, what are their concerns and problems…

Answer these questions and provide true value for “your people” and they will start listening to you, they will become your customers, your friends and even raving fans. They will buy from you and do it again and again as long as you are providing outstanding value. That’s conversion! It’s not always easy to achieve, but if you keep up that great work you’ll get there.

Repeat Sales: That’s actually the easiest part. The hardest part is to get people to buy from you the first time, but once they trust- and like you it’s a piece of cake to sell them again and again. Just make sure not to betray their trust in you or your business will quickly start going downhill.

Also, you don’t even need your own products. There are thousands of products and services you can sell as an affiliate – just make sure to select only top quality products.

All you need to do is to take one step after the other:

* Generate some traffic and direct it towards a squeeze page that appeals to your market.

* Study your market, find out about their concerns, problems, desires… and provide valuable information together with great offers.

* Optimize your lead generation- and sales process. Test and track everything, split test your ads, landing pages…

* Once you get a positive ROI, buy more traffic

* Rinse and repeat: Keep on growing your list, provide more great value, offer outstanding products, test, track and optimize your processes… you get the idea.

Now you have a great long-term business that runs almost on autopilot. And now you can go after other niches and do the same again and again – the sky is the limit.

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