newb question

You don't have to buy anything for your purpose. You can use blogger blog and free autoresponder like listwire.com.

Of course paid autoresponder is better, getresponse have free option so you might want to take a look. Or you can try Imnica mail, which I use, for an affordable autoresponder.

Good luck!

First you need to decide what niche you want to be in and what free offer would compliment that. You don't want to be in the gardening for profit niche (random made up niche) and give out a free how to get cheap tv's and resell on ebay (made up niche). But if you were in the traffic niche a free report on how to dominate forums for traffic would be awesome.

Secondly start with something basic. Maybe try some Squidoo sites, hubpages, or free wordpress sites to get a handle on these. Take things one step at a time. Don't overwhelm yourself freaking out over something you haven't learned how to do. First start with a site, then maybe a free report, then the audio if you still want. You don't necessarily even need to give something away to build a list, though it will build much faster that way. You can simply say opt in to my newsletter for updates.. etc.

No one said you have to create something. How many reports have you seen with resell rights? I know I have seen a ton. You build a list while their report goes viral. You get to take your time creating something really good to brand your name on while your list grows. If it takes you a week imagine all the people you could market too by offering maybe a 5 page report with the other pages at a few dollars. Even if it was 5 bucks for 15 more pages, what if you had 100 people on your list. That would be 500 dollars. It would be better quality than if you just through something together. Alternatively you could do the report and offer a special audio. There are tons of free audio sources. I believe wavepad has a free option. Audacity is alright but not as good.

Another thing you could do is build you traffic and list and then create a video. There are both free and paid versions. While you are doing this you could be branding your name and backlinks by making some web 2.0 sites. Think of Tiffany Dow. She is on several web 2.0 sites and maximizes free resources. You can also purchase your name as a domain to build name branding. As your build your free sites see if they have free traffic stats. Squidoo for example and Wordpress trackers keywords you are found for. Take this time to learn SEO. SEO is very important for a business is my opinion.

I would say the three things you need are excellent OPSEO, quality backlinks, and good content/ good offer. If your site is a free site or a domain it is not going to matter. Content and what you offer is more important. Tiffany Dow made over $10,000 getting ghostwriting jobs and started her business that way.

You don't have to start out with everything you can build up. Internet Marketing is not overnight and definitely not for the lazy. Take you time and learn things because IM is a huge learning curve and it's ok to take your time learning.

Good luck and much success!

I signed up with wordpress. it said my blog name can be bought as a domain. do most use this option? should I be worried some will try and nab the domain and piggy back off the blog...
On a totally different note, i was think that sending people to a squeeze page would better, which make me think...do i even need wordpress?

*remember im a total newb

I appreciate the help so far.