Beginners toolkit suggestions

Hi,

I'm relatively new to internet marketing, but am really enjoying what I am finding out about it so far.

I'm really wanting to make a clean break from my normal job - that is technology - software architecture. I have a couple of things that I am cooking up - a company to do SEO work, and I have a couple of old domain names that I was intending to drive traffic to, and sell. They're probably not the best domain names to sell, since one was a company, and the other just a side project. I'd like to sell affiliate product on these for a time, then possibly sell at a later date. Not sure if that is a good idea or not?

I digress; I have been doing a lot of reading recently, and it seems that there are a number of products out there that could help me out. I have had a look at things like SEO Powersuite, and Market Samurai, and both of these products appear to be timesavers.
I'm wondering particularly if there are any products that you good people could recommend that are likely to give me a leg up, and allow me to start earning sooner rather than later? I know that there are no guarantees, but if there are products out there that have a high probablility of success, I'd love to know about them. I'm thinking that with the SEO side of things, article marketing, particularly submission is very time consuming - I know manual submission is generally best, as it manually rewritten. I saw something on here about linkvana, but that it might not be that effective. I have tried article marketing robot, wasn't overly impressed.

Also, if anyone has any ideas on how else I might try to make money quickly, that would really be helpful to me.

Thank you so much for your help!