Which is why making money online remains one of the best ways for a regular person to make passive income online as the startup capital requires is pretty minimum. Most of the tools and software that you will require initially are free to begin with. As your online business grows and when you can afford it, you can upgrade to more premium services which should accelerate the growth of your online business.

Here’s a list of paid and free essential basic tools and software that will help you make money online and grow your business:

• Anti-Virus Software
• Article Submission Software
• Directory Submission Software
• Video Submission Software
• Chat Software
• Email Software
• Feed Reading Software
• FTP Software
• Graphics Editing Software
• HTML Editing software
• Web Browsers
• Rewriting Software

Anti-Virus Software

Protecting your computer and data is a must for any online entrepreneur which is why having anti-virus software is so very important. You do not want to be caught losing your important data to viruses, trojans etc. There are many free and paid versions of anti-virus software available. You can probably start off with these free anti-virus software before moving on to more secured paid versions.

• AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
• Avast Home Edition
• Avira Antivir Personal

Article Submission Software

Having a good article submission software is going to save you much time and effort in promoting your website. A good article submission software will help you to automate your submission process and let you focus your time and effort on other parts of your business. The article submission software that I used and which I highly recommended is Article Post Robot. There are other good article submission software around but Article Post Robot is one that serves me very well all these time.

Directory Submission Software

A directory submission software is a must if you want to get index in the search engines quickly. Basically, a directory submission software helps you to semi automate submission of your websites to hundreds if not thousands of feed directories, web directories and RSS directories. This is vital as manual submission is very tedious and takes up a lot of time. While there are some directory submission software that are fully automated, I have not done enough research to validate whether these software are the real thing. In the meantime, having a semi-automated solution is the next best thing. I highly recommend using Directory Submitter. I have been using Directory Submitter for a long time and this nifty software has helped me get my websites indexed quickly in the search engines. You will never go wrong with Directory Submitter.

Chat Software

There are many types of chat software around but I would recommend using Gtalk which is free and can synchronize with your gmail email account. A chat software will allow you to communicate with people easier and on a more personal note.

Email Account / Software

To receive and send out emails for personal or business purposes, you need an email account and an email software to manage your emails. Personally for me, I find that I can do everything with just Gmail. Before I was a convert, I used Yahoo! Mail as my choice of web based email account. Now, I practically cannot make do without Gmail. As for email software, you can try other alternatives such as Mozilla’s Thunderbird and Eudora.

Feed Reading Software

To get updated on the latest news and happenings in your niche is going to be very easy with a feed reading software. You can check out this post on a list of desktop and web based feed reading software that you may use to get updated on your favorite news sources.

FTP Software

For a good FTP software, you can go no further than FileZilla. I have been using FileZilla ever since I started making money online. It is a very fast FTP software which allows you to upload and download files easily. Speed is very important especially if you have a lot of files to download and upload.

Graphics Editing Software

Photoshop is one of the best graphics editing software out there although it is not free and cheap by any means. However, this is a worthy investment and one software that you should get as soon as possible. Changing and redesigning graphics is part and parcel of being an online entrepreneur and this is a skill that you should master the basics at the very minimum.

HTML Editing Software

Dreamweaver is my choice of HTML editing software. Although there is a learning curve attached to it, but once you master the basics, getting a simple HTML site up is going to be a piece of cake. Other HTML editing software that you can look at are Coffee Cup, FrontPage and NVU.

Rewriting Software

There are two programs that I highly recommended. One is WordFlood and the other is Power Article Rewriter. Both rewriting software will allows you to rewrite all those PLR articles that has been lying on your harddisk and put them to good use. You can also choose to spin your original and unique content into many different versions and submit them to various article directories to build links and drive traffic to your websites.

Video Submission Software

If you are going to use videos for promoting your websites, you should get a video submission software to help you automate your submission of videos to various videos sites. Using videos is a good way to build links and generate traffic to your websites fast. You can try Video Upload Pro which is a very good video submission software by the same person behind Article Post Robot.

Web Browsers

My choice of browser has to be FireFox. There are lots of plugins available to make this browser the top choice for online entrepreneur. Other worthy browsers are Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari. For your information, I used all five as I sometimes code and modified wordpress themes for my websites.