Running a website requires a lot of work and attention from the webmaster. A lot of things can go wrong at any minute, and someone has to be there to fix them. From the software on the server and the scripts that power the site to the database and monetization methods – everything requires at least some kind of maintenance; otherwise it will not last long.

On the front end of the site, you need to constantly be aware of how the site is doing in terms of traffic, user retention, subscriptions and of course monetization, along with many other less important things. You always need to find ways to improve the number of people that visit your site, the number of first time visitors that like it and become permanent readers by subscribing to your RSS or email newsletter and the amount of money you make per click, view, lead or sale.

Without adequate traffic, no site will ever take off, no matter how good it is. Without regular readers, the site will always be at risk of failing, as you’ll strongly depend on search engines and other sites to send you traffic. And without income, a site will not be able to sustain itself – who wants a property which requires constant investments and doesn’t provide anything in return?

Taking care of all of the above things seems like hard work, especially for a single webmaster. Thankfully, nowadays there are a lot of advanced tools that can significantly improve the speed and quality with which you take care of this stuff, as well as automate the most mundane tasks that have to be performed regularly. Here are some of the best:

Google Analytics. Google Analytics is the go-to service for all of your web analytics needs. It is completely free and allows you to track probably the biggest amount of data and variables on your site. You can view almost anything you want – from the usual visitors and page views to downloads of certain files, clicks on ads and banners, time spent on various pages and other things.

Also, as the service is provided by Google, they have decided to let you track the ranking of your pages for any keywords you want, in real time, which is very impressive and very useful (for example, you can easily and quickly decide which keywords you want to focus on and rank on the first page next). The interface is very nice, and the graphs allow you to easily analyze large amounts of information that will help you decide what to do next.

DoubleClick for Publishers. Formerly called Google Ad Manager, this tool is invaluable for any website. Not many people know about it, and even fewer know that it is also completely free for small and medium sized web sites. What it allows you to do is automate the delivery display of various ads and banners on different pages based on a variety of factors.

You can use it for your advertising and monetization purposes in a lot of creative ways, from simple ad delivery and advertiser billing to managing hundreds of banners targeted by page views, geo location, user computer settings and other things. The tool is much like OpenX, which you may have heard of, but is not self-hosted and therefore, removes the need for maintenance and high server processing power.

CrazyEgg. Along with the 2 tools above, CrazyEgg completes the trio of “absolutely must have” tools for any self-respecting web site owner that wants to know what’s going on with his site and how he can improve it. This tool lets you see where exactly do visitors click the most, so that you can place whatever you want to be clicked more often there. You can use it to easily increase your banner and ad click through rates by orders of magnitude at times, increase the number of subscribers to your email list or do anything else that will benefit your site.

Internet marketing is one of the easiest ways to start your own business and make money without worrying about deadlines, vacation times and other things that you would normally care about when you’re on a payroll. Of course, there are a lot of other things to worry about and you’re basically on your own when it comes to decisions and results, but the freedom to do whatever you want, when you want and from anywhere you want is worth the risk most of the times.

But you don’t necessarily have to do all the work by yourself – thanks to the Internet, you can now hire talented professionals and even full time employees from other countries (usually poorer countries from Asia and Eastern Europe) at very low rates, which are not even comparable to the usual salaries that Westerners receive. And if these people can do the same work for a fourth of the price, then why not give it to them?

There are quite a lot of so-called “crowd-sourcing” sites online, which operate on a contest/multiple applications principle. For example, you post a task you need to get done (create a script, design a site, setup your new server), and more members take on the work, but you only select or pay the one you think will do/has done the best job. This is a great way to do a task right from the first time and avoid any delays and other problems. It also motivates the workers to do better, and accomplish the task from the first try.

Here are just some of the best and most popular crowd-sourcing sites, which you can start using for your online business today:

Mturk. Amazon’s Mturk service is the most popular crowd sourcing site on the Web. It is a site for general tasks that don’t require any special skills, but you can easily post and get some pretty complex tasks done there (like writing articles, programs, etc.). But the best way to use it is to outsource time-consuming tasks like checking sites, posting forum posts and links, researching and finding information, etc. All of this can be done for very cheap prices in very short amounts of time, thanks to the thousands of active users that are always on the site.

Microworkers. Microworkers is another service similar to MTurk, and it’s also tailored for general tasks that need no specific skills from the workers. However, this site is a bit different in that it allows you to post tasks like Digg submissions (for quickly getting to the front page) and site registrations (if you want to create multiple accounts fast on one or more sites), which is pretty important for some areas of Internet Marketing.

99Designs. 99Designs is the most popular destination for everyone who wants to get a graphical design for any purpose (logos, sites, landing pages, apps, etc.) done fast. There are a lot of professional designers there, and the site has successfully created logos and other graphics for popular companies, including major banks and retail stores. The rates are pretty cheap, and you get a lot of choices to choose from, plus you can further ask the designer to customize the design to perfectly fit your liking.

NameThis. NameThis is a crowdsourcing service that specializes in creating brand names. If you’re having trouble coming up with a good name for a site, product, service, show or anything else, this is the site you should use. By the end of your contest, you will most definitely get one or more great names, which you can immediately use for yourself.

Threadless. Threadless is a great site for designing your own T-Shirt. If you want to give away T-Shirts as part of an action, for example, or even sell them, but have no idea what people in certain demographics like to wear, you can use the power of thousands of minds who know exactly what is fashionable and what is not nowadays. Using the designs created by them and voted the most popular, you can be sure your T-Shirts will be popular with their intended receivers.

There are quite a few other great sites for outsourcing anything, but the above ones have been around for a while and already have a big user base, which is simply vital for such sites (the more people you have working on your task, the better, right?). If you need to create a logo, brand name or perform any kind of task and don’t have the time or any idea where to start, the above sites are the perfect starting point.

Today is the launch of SEOPreneur.com, a blog that will focus on entrepreneurship, search engine optimization (SEO), website management, and ultimately, how to make money online.