5 free software tools for content creation

It 's been said many times before, but the most important thing for driving traffic to your site content. Good, solid, unique content is what attract visitors, invite backlinks, and will help you to rank well with search engines.

No matter if you are creating blogs, ebooks, reports, articles, podcasts, software or video, content is what attracts visitors to your site, and convert them into customers or subscribers.

Now, content creation will take some 'effort, but the great news is that you can do all this with free software. Of course you could spend thousands of dollars on high-end tools if you want, but the free ones that I recommend here will be more than enough to start.

Open Office for text based content
Open Office is an office suite like Microsoft Office. It has a word processor and spreadsheet along with several other tools such as an image editor and database. What we want is for all the reporting and ebooks. The reason Open Office is so powerful is that it has the native ability to export any document in PDF format. This means that you simply type in your ebook or report and press the export button and bam, you have a product ready to sell or give away!

Nvu for web pages
Nvu is a WYSIWYG HTML editor. It allows you to create and edit Web pages without knowing HTML. Simply create and change as you change a word processor document, and Nvu writes all the HTML code for you). The ability to get their hands dirty with HTML is there for those times when you need to do some tweaking, but for the most part you can get away with leaving it up to the software.

GIMP for image
GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program and essentially it is an open source 'Photoshop'. It will go to this software when you need to change or preparing images for your site, or create an ebook cover, or put screenshots in a report. It 'a very powerful piece software that is able to do much more than you probably ever need. Do not let the complexity put you off though, just learn the basic functions needed and this will be a demand for real workhorse for you.

Audacity for audio
Audacity is used for recording and editing audio. Whether you're doing an interview, review of the product, podcasts or testimonials to your sales page, Audacity is quick to learn, easy to use and produces great results. Simply connect a microphone, press record and you're away.

Camstudio for the video screen
The video is by far the most powerful way to get your message, and is quickly becoming the most popular method of distributing content on the web. Until recently, the production and publication of video on the Internet means expensive software, specialist equipment and high-end hosting account. Not now ... CamStudio is free and easy to use. Just a few mouse clicks and you can record whatever you're doing on the screen with a voiceover and let your visitors to look over his shoulder to give great tutorials and reviews. Combine this with Youtube hosting and you have a winning formula for posting the video at low cost.

So there you go, 5 free tools for creating killer content for your online business .......