Free Tools for the Internet Entrepreneur Grad

Creating your first website can be expensive if you don’t know where to get the tools you need to get started. You don’t want to spend too much money setting up a website unless you think your idea has a good chance of being successful. I’ve put together a list of free software online to help young entrepreneurs start a killer website for next to nothing.

Web Design and Blogging Tools

Web design software such as Dreamweaver or Microsoft's Expression Web are very expensive tools for a novice web designer. It's always better to learn how to create a simple website using the free site builders included in most web hosting plans. These drag-and-drop page editors let you design a page without ever learning a line of code. They've come a long way, and with a some practice, you'll be designing pages like a pro.  

If your hosting service doesn't have a site builder, check out WebDwarf which is an easy-to-use web page editor with FTP functionality. Depending on the type of website you want to start, I encourage you to take a look at a robust content management system like Drupal, to set up a website that will be easy to maintain in the long run.  I'd also recommend checking into Wordpress and Blogger hosted solutions to start a site in minutes. Both blogging tools include a variety of templates, and can be customized in minutes. What's great is they both have options to upgrade, in case you need more features in the future. If you need more alternatives, check out this break down of available content management options.
 

Graphics Software

There's no doubt Photoshop is the most popular image editing software available, but it's also very expensive. There's a lighter version called Photoshop Elements though, which you can find at a very affordable price. I got mine free with a digital camera purchase that included it as photo editing software. 

But don't worry if you don't have Photoshop because there's plenty of good image editing software out there. One of them is Paint.net, a free image editing and photo manipulation software for Windows users. It supports special effects, layers, unlimited undo, and other powerful tools.

IrfanView is another good image editor that supports slideshows, batch processing, photo retouching, and enhancements. But for heavy duty image editing, check out GNU Image Manipulation Program, a free alternative to Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. You can do almost anything you can do in Photoshop with this program.
 
Hope this helps for now. I'll be following up soon with more free tools such as free faxing software, voicemail, office productivity suites, and other goodies. Stay tuned!

Here are a few more articles regarding web hosting:
Free vs Paid Web Hosting
What your webhost won't tell you