You will find that there are many places where you can purchase essential marketing tools, such as email marketing software, back office website consoles and perhaps even forum software. But have you considered the possibility, that even though you feel you're getting a good deal - you may not be.

Let's take a look at your email marketing; you need a subscription box and a means to issue your important newsletters, email campaigns and/or eCourses. You find a recommended and popular email system and sign up for the low fee of $15 a month for up to 500 emails. This is great - you're on your way!

Then you need a website where you can add your subscribe box. You would also want some really good features such as a blog, a forum, web apps, and of course hosting - you'll also discover a great deal for this online, for the small fee of $14 a month. You add your subscribe box and you have your 2 systems up and running.

But then you would like to sell your products online, so we throw in a shopping cart too. As this involves payment gateways, and checkouts, this may be a bit more expensive. So you find the best deal you can, at a modest $34 per month for the basic version, and of course when the capacity runs out and your business grows, this could leap up to $99 per month, but we'll worry about that later, right?

So, now we would like a member's area. We want to offer exceptional customer service, which means making sure that our customers details are secure and accessible, and as we certainly don't want the frustration of sorting it out through a hosting company, we invest in another low cost option - essential SSL, the lowest cost around at $10 per month. Along with our customer service we need a really good CRM (customer relationship management) system. So, we throw in another $10 a month.

Such small amounts of money to part with, but essential for your marketing to run effectively. So, let's see what freebie services we can add on... Analytics, and a Blog in addition to standard email. Let's take a look and see our result.

* Email marketing $15

* Online business console $14

* eCommerce $34

* Additional extra's $20

* Total $83 per month minimum...

Then consider, how much is your time worth? Does it really make sense to deal with your online business in 7 different systems?

So, at $83 a month for bare minimum basic fees - and several hours of your time, exactly how cost effective are your marketing tools?