INFORMATION
Buy information. Tools and money come into place after.
What he said...
Read, learn, digest.
Any tool in untrained hands can turn into cluster******** city.
Learn from the bottom up. If you really HAVE to spend some on tools now, then spend a few bucks on a keyword tool.
MS and MNF are also very handy tools to have when learning SEO in general. They point out what works and what doesn't - leaving you to find out how to implement what they suggest.
- 90% of internet marketers make ZERO in their first twelve months
- The VAST majority QUIT inside 12 months
- Stick at it and learn and it COULD be the best job you ever had.
There is a lot to learn.
Keywords.
- Which ones are profitable
- Which ones are achievable
- Who your competition is
Site building
- Domain names and registration
- Hosting accounts
- Basic Cpanel or similar
- CMS systems or HTML
On Site SEO including (probably)
- CMS or scripting packages
- Using FTP
- Graphic manipulation
- Copy writing
Off Site SEO
- Link building
- Social marketing
- RSS and directory submissions
- Article writing
- Account management
There are more, but this gives you an idea of the scope.
Develop a technique and only THEN buy the tools to implement it.
NO-ONE not even the "guru" twats will give you the exact methods they use NOW to make money (they either give you a crap generic method, or the method they USED to use) GIving you their current method would be like handing you their wallet.
Godoveryou is bang on. Learn first - implement later.
All the tool mentioned here can be used well, none of them on it's own is required, and they are all capable of screwing you up as well as gaining you sales.
Take care.
Scritty