Tools for Blogging

20+ Essential Tools and Applications For Bloggers

By Charnita Fance. Filed in Tools

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Blogging can be quite a process. First you may have to do some research, then put your thoughts together, and of course add any necessary screenshots and images. Let’s not forget the optimization part (SEO, keywords, etc) and sharing your content on the Web so that others will read it and hopefully share it. With all of these steps involved, blogging can be quite time-consuming and many bloggers get burnt out rather quickly doing these things on a daily basis.

Lucky for us, the process doesn’t have to be so difficult anymore. Thanks to the Web and technology, there are hundreds of tools out there to assist your blogging process and make it less of a headache. This list will take a look at some of the top tools for and applications for making blogging easier.

Save Ideas for Later

Tools that let you save items for later use are great time savers because you can save Web pages, images and files as you’re reading or browsing. If you come across an interesting tool that you may want to blog about later, you can just save it with a single click and then look at it later when you have the time. These tools are also great for storing and organizing all of your ideas and then finding them again when needed.

Read-it-Later

With this tool you can save Web pages to your Read-it-Later list to be read at a later time. Items can be saved from your computer or mobile devices via numerous applications and integrations. You can access your list just about anywhere for online or offline reading.
A similar tool is Instapaper, which works in the same way, but doesn’t have as many applications. One of the best things about Instapaper is that you can forward full emails to save for later (Read-it-Later only allows you to save links via email).

Evernote

You can capture anything from Web pages to images, text, and voice notes with Evernote. Just like Read-it-Later, there are numerous applications and integrations that let you save items to your account. Your notes can be accessed from just about anywhere via a computer or mobile device. Plus, with the ability to search through all of your notes (even text within images), you’ll be able to find things super fast.

Springpad

Springpad is much like Evernote, but refers to itself as “really, really smart notes.” It’s about more than just saving notes, you can also save tasks, set reminders with alerts, and look up items (like products, restaurants and recipes) to save. With Springpad, you don’t have to worry about organizing your thoughts because it does it all for you automatically. So if you want to blog about a specific product or location, Springpad lets you remember and access these items conveniently from your computer or mobile device.

Catch

Don’t let the simple design fool you, Catch is a very effective tool for privately saving notes, ideas, images, places, lists and more. You can then sync those items between your computer and mobile device. It uses a hashtag system (much like Twitter) to add tags to your items for organizing. If you’re looking for a simple too without all the bells, whistles and extra features then Catch is a great option. They have a variety of browser extensions and mobile apps.

Trail-Mix

Trail-Mix lets you “squirrel away” notes, images, Web pages and files right within your browser. It currently works as a Firefox sidebar only. You can drag and drop items like links, text and images right into the sidebar to save for later.
If you’re looking for a similar tool to use in Chrome, you may want to check out Read Later Fast from Diigo (no relation to Read-it-Later). Items are added via an option in the right click content menu. It’s a Chrome app, so it works in its own tab as opposed to the sidebar (like Firefox).

Diigo

With Diigo you can annotate the Web by highlighting, adding sticky notes, bookmarking, taking screenshots, saving images and more. You can then manage it all and reference your findings from your Diigo account for later use. Best of all, whenever you return to a page that you’ve annotated, your notes will still be there. You can even see annotations that others have added to pages as well. You can use Diigo to annotate specific parts of Web pages that you want to use for a blog post or to save items that you want to read at a later time.

Blog Editors

While many prefer to use the blog editor that comes with their blogging platform, it can be much more convenient to use a blog editor – especially if you have more than one blog to update. With most blog editors, you can even write offline and then publish whenever you’re online. They often also make it easier to add pictures to your posts (via drag and drop). You’ll also find many other features that you often can’t find in your blogging platform.

Windows Live Writer

Windows Live Writer is one of the most popular blog editors for the Windows platform. You can create new and edit previous blog posts, see what they’ll look like on your blog before publishing and set up multiple blogs. You can add things like images, videos, Bing maps. There are also 100+ plugins that you can use with Windows Live Writer in order to add more features and increase its functionality. Best of all, Windows Live Writer is complete free.

BlogJet

BlogJet considers itself to be the “most advanced Windows blog editor and manager.” With it’s WYSIWYG editor, you don’t have to have any HTML knowledge. It’s very speedy and lets you add Flickr images, YouTube videos and file attachments. There are numerous other amazing features and it works with numerous blogging formats. Unlike Windows Live Writer, BlogJet isn’t, but there is a free demo version.

ScribeFire

ScribeFire is an extension that you can get for Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. It’s a full featured blog editor that lets you create and publish blog posts right from your browser. You can drop and drop text and images, schedule blog posts for later, tag and categorize, edit pages, post to multiple blogs and more. While some find the endless features in ScribeFire overwhelming, others just can’t live without them.

Qumana

Qumana is another desktop blog editor that lets you edit and publish posts to one or more of your blogs. It can also be used offline and includes text formatting, Technorati tagging, and the ability to add images and advertising to your posts. Qumana works on both Windows and Mac and lets you type in the WYSIWYG editor or Source view (for editing your own HTML).

Veeeb

Veeeb is a unique editor that integrates with your blogging platform (currently only WordPress and Drupal). It uses a process called “semantic text analysis” in order to scan your content for significant keywords and suggest relevant media and links. You can then drag and drop images and videos right into your posts or store them for later use. If you need to find out more about a topic, you can do that as well with the integrated search.

Deepest Sender

Deepest Sender is another blog editor that lives in your browser. It runs inside Firefox, SeaMonkey and XULRunner. You can add multiple accounts to be used with the WYSIWYG editor. It can be used as a full page editor in a new tab or right from the sidebar, which lets you drag and drop text and images from the Web right into the editor. Other great features include crash recovery, drafts, post editing and offline mode.

More

• Desktop Blogging Software – The Ultimate List
• Complete guide to Live Blogging

Content

These tools will help you create content quicker and also help make your posts more interesting to your readers.

Zemanta

Zemanta is a tool that works on the side of your blog editor. There are quite a few browser and server-side plugins that you can use in order to enrich your blog posts. As you’re typing in your blog editor, Zemanta will analyze your words and then suggest images, tags, links and related articles for your content. Zemanta features over 10 million images that you can use, all with the proper licensing.

PollDaddy

If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to get opinions or feedback from your readers, creating surveys and polls through PollDaddy is a great option. You can get quick responses, plus it’s an easy way to keep tally instead of having to go through all of your comments individually. PollDaddy has a survey editor that is customizable and very easy to use. You can even get immediate responses from people using your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad with the iOS app.

Mobility

Dropbox

Dropbox is the ultimate tool for syncing files between your computer and mobile devices. There is a Dropbox app for just about every device and system and there even more integrations with other apps. So not only are your files always secure, but they’re always with you wherever you go. If you need to save files for use later, just add them to Dropbox or sync them using a supported app.

Google Docs

If you’re looking for a way to access your blog posts from anywhere, one of your best options it to create and save them in Google Docs. Since Google Docs is a Web based word processor, you can access your account no matter what device you’re on – computer or mobile device. This allows you to work on the go, from anywhere. You can also collaborate in real-time with others, which makes Google Docs great for collaborative posts and projects.

Dragon Dictation

While the Dragon Dictation computer software is pretty expensive, you can currently get it for free on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. With it you can speak right into your device and then have your words automatically transcribed for you. This is great for recording quick notes, thoughts or ideas for your blog posts. You can then email them to yourself to look over and reference whenever needed.

Screenshots

If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to grab screenshots for your posts, without downloading any software, these 3 tools are very convenient.

Awesome Screenshot

Awesome Screenshot is a capture, annotation and sharing tool by Diigo for Chrome, Firefox and Safari. You can capture the visible part of a page, selected area or entire page. Annotation tools include adding shapes (rectangles, circles), arrows, lines and text. There is also a blur tool which is great for protecting your privacy and personal information that you may capture. There are 3 options for saving your screenshots; you can save to the Awesome Screenshot website for a month, save to Diigo forever, or save on your computer.

FireShot

FireShot is an extension for Firefox, Chrome, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and Internet Explorer. It lets you capture, edit, annotate, organize, export, upload and print screenshots from the Web. There are quite a few capture options: entire page, visible part of page, selection or browser window. One of the unique things about FireShot is the full set of editing and annotation tools that it provides. Plus, it can even allow you to capture flash content.

Pixlr Grabber

With Pixlr Grabber you can copy, save, edit and share screenshots and images from the Web. There is an extension for both Firefox and Chrome. You’ll be able to grab only the visible part of the page, a defined area or an entire Web page. You can then share it on Imm.io (an image sharing site by Pixlr) or save it to your desktop. Saving it your desktop then allows you to drag and drop or upload it to your blog post (depending on what you’re using to create your content).

More

• Desktop File & Image Sharing Tools
• Screen Capture Tools: 40+ Free Tools and Techniques

Optimization

SEO Blogger

With SEO Blogger, you can “find the most sought-after keywords for your subject without ever leaving your blog editing screen.” It currently works only in the Firefox sidebar via an extension. It allows you to research keywords, see how popular they are, and compare them instantly with other keywords. You’ll also be able to see how many times you’ve used specific keywords in your content. This is great for keeping track of the keyword density in your posts which is a big part of SEO.

SEO Book

SEO Book isn’t just one tool, it offers a large selection of free and premium SEO tools for bloggers, webmasters and SEO professionals. The tools offered range from Firefox extensions, to Web based tools. They also have numerous tutorials, tips and articles to help you learn how to properly optimize your blog to increase traffic and rankings. SEO Books is like an SEO goldmine; you’ll be glad that you stopped by.

More

• Ultimate Guide To Web Optimization (Tips & Best Practices)
• How to Measure Front End Performance
• Google Analytics: Why You Don’t Need The Rest

Sharing

Ping-O-Matic

Ping-O-Matic is a pinging service that lets search engines know that you’ve updated your blog. You can select the different services that you’d like to ping. The services listed are updated regularly, so you can be sure that only the most important ones are listed. You can ping your blog directly from the Ping-O-Matic site or by using the bookmarklet.

Shareaholic

Shareaholic makes it easy for you and others to quickly share your blog posts all over the social Web. There is an extension for just about every browser, plus an awesome WordPress plugin (called Sexy Bookmarks) that you’ve probably seen used all over the Web already. Shareaholic supports over 100 services for sharing and saving your content.
Another great all-in-one sharing tool is AddThis; you might want to try out the Sharebar or share buttons for your blog.

Feedburner

Feedburner is an RSS management service that provides custom RSS feeds and management tools for blogs. It also offers traffic analysis so that you can see how many people are viewing and clicking on the content in your feeds. There is an integrated advertising system that lets you inserts ads in your RSS feeds and earn money. A great feature is the ability to add links for content sharing at the bottom of your feed items via Feedflares. Feedburner really gives you total control and the ability to easily optimize your RSS feeds.
Now it’s your turn. What’s your favorite tool or application that makes blogging easier for you?

Internet Marketing Tools and Inspiration

From Zero to a Million: 20 Lessons for Starting an Internet Marketing Agency

September 19th, 2013 - Posted by Mike Ramsey to Entrepreneurship

The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Mike's disclaimer: This is not a post about how awesome I am, or how there is only one way to build an internet marketing agency. It's a combination of stories and thoughts about what I have gone through building Nifty Marketing.

When I started in 2009 there was very little information online about starting, running, or growing an Internet Marketing Agency. The ones that did exist were from superstars that charged a billion dollars an hour. I am not a superstar. My company started in Burley, Idaho. Here's a rap about my town I wrote.
My hope with this post is that a few of you who are out there hustling will benefit from doing some of the things that I did, and most of the things that I didn't.

Start smart

I was in my final semester at BYU-Idaho and had accepted a job to be the chief marketing officer of Rove Pest Control after spending my summers during college as a door-to-door salesman for them. I thought my future was set. But, due to some changes at Rove I knew that I was going to have to have to find a different career. My wife was pregnant, we had just started building a house in Burley, and I had a full load of credits. My two favorite classes were a basic HTML class (that used Don't Make Me Think as the textbook) and a web business class for which we had to start an online business and make/lose money. Naturally, as any true Idahoan would do, I started HugeIdahoPotato.com and sold potatoes bigger than heads to people across the country. The website sucks; I'm pretty sure I got it penalized within a year of creating it. But I fell in love with internet marketing in the process of building that site, and I keep it up as a remembrance of where I started.

Lesson 1: Start with a reason that's more than money

After making around $100 on the site I knew that I had found my career choice. I also knew that I was going to live in Burley, Idaho, and that I wanted to bring non-agricultural jobs to the town. I can't tell you how sad it is for many of my friends who grew up in a town they knew they couldn't move back to if they wanted to make a decent living. I wanted to change that. I still do. It's one of the main driving points for me. Of course you need to make money, but if that is the only thing you are looking for as a business owner then eventually you will fail. You will make decisions that aren't for your clients, or for your staff, or for the community; you will get short-term gains and create a long term failure.

Lesson 2: Start by interning/working at an agency

This is possibly my biggest regret of my career. I started Nifty Marketing with literally no experience at all. I had no friends in the industry, I had no idea what I was doing, how SEO companies were structured, or even how to do anything beyond what I had learned in college. I dove into blogs, but at that time I didn't know who to trust and read some really awful advice. I was not a good SEO. I was not a good PPC advertiser. I could have saved myself at least two years if I had worked for someone who could have pointed me in the right direction first.

Lesson 3: Focus on something specific

Business wasn't going very well. I had a few clients, and I decided I needed some help, so I signed up for SEOBook. There was a feedback forum, so I posted my super-awful website for Nifty Marketing. I didn't even own the domain at the time. (I had TheNiftyWay.com, and it wasn't until later—by some good grace of the heavens—that the person who owned NiftyMarketing.com let it go, and I bought it for $7.99 with a GoDaddy code.) When I posted my site on SEOBook, I got brutal feedback. People told me it sucked. But someone in the forum said something that changed my life forever.
He said something like:

"You offer SEO, Web Design, and PPC. That is exactly the same as 100,000s of companies around the world, who by the looks of things are better than you at it. What can you be the best at? What can you become known for?"

The comment hit me like a ton of bricks. The few clients I had at the time were really small businesses in Idaho, and I had been spending a lot of time in Google Maps. I realized that I enjoyed that aspect of marketing, and was getting clients ranked. So, I redesigned my site, changed my messaging, and decided to focus. I became a local SEO.

Lesson 4: Start with networking, not cold calls

I remember quite vividly trying to use my door-to-door sales skills to try and cold call businesses to get work. I grabbed a phone book and called people with big ads and no websites because I figured that they had budget. What I found was that I was caller #5 for that week offering the same thing as everyone else. Worst of all, everyone "knew a guy who knows a guy who could do it" for them. So, I put away the phonebook and started talking to my friends and asking if they knew people who needed websites and marketing. That's when leads started coming in. Then, I wrote an email to David Mihm on August 7, 2009, and asked him how I could become an expert in the local search field. This was his response:

The best advice I can give you is to optimize the local listings of a bunch of clients. The more you "play" in the space, the better you'll get at teasing out the parts of the algorithm that really matter.

Beyond that, subscribe to these blogs:

http://www.blumenthals.com/blog
http://www.localsearchnews.net [Editor's note: This site isn't around anymore.]
http://gesterling.wordpress.com
http://www.searchinfluence.com/blog
http://solaswebdesign.net/wordpress
http://www.smallbusinesssem.com
http://www.hyperlocalblogger.com
http://www.sixthmanmarketing.com/blog
http://www.expand2web.com/blog
http://www.devbasu.com
http://www.martijnbeijk.com
http://www.seoverflow.com/blog

I immediately dove into every one of these sites and learned everything I possibly could about local search. I took notes, and then I started testing and haven't ever stopped.
While doing that, I realized the most valuable networking lesson I ever learned was to simply share. I started blogging, which led to guest posts on SEJ, and I attended a few small conferences, one of which was the first ever LocalU. I offered to help any way that I could. Fast forward to 2013, and I am a LocalU Faculty Member and speak at conferences year-round. It isn't because I am special. It's because I am passionate about the space and I am willing to share information and help as much as I can. Almost every client we have at Nifty Marketing comes as a referral from clients, friends, blog posts, webinars, and conferences. Not one client came from a cold call. I will forever be in debt to David Mihm and the rest of the local search community for teaching me such a valuable lesson.

Lesson 5: It's good to have funding, it's better to have partners, and it's best to bootstrap alone

From the first year of my business until now I have had opportunities to get funding and take on partners. I have never done it. I am not saying that it's bad to do either of these things, but if you take a close look at our industry you will see that a lot of funded companies and partnerships don't make it.
I remember very clearly going to dinner with some guys from Blueglass in my first year and thinking, "Man, I wish I could be part of that company." And while I respect the founders a great deal they took a massive risk and it didn't workout. Many of them had successful businesses before then, and while the idea of a Mega Company that can make tens or hundreds of millions is alluring, the chance of you being successful and earning more on your own is better. Sure, extremely fast growth and funding means you come to market quicker. But by growing at the slow rate of 2x per year (which isn't that slow), I have been able to continually innovate and offer better services without taking do-or-die risks.
I am very glad I bootstrapped. I own 100% of my company. I can make 100% of the decisions about its future. I don't have to pay a silent partner a large chunk that makes cash flow an issue. I don't have to make short-term decisions for a board that hurts the long-term vision I have. And I make enough that I stopped caring about the money around year three; slow and steady wins the prize.
I know that there are many successful companies that haven't gone the way of solo bootstrapping. At the top of the partnership list for me is Avalaunch Media. But in order to do what they have done you have get big enough to support multiple owners and find amazing partners that can all pull in the same direction. With around 50% of marriages failing, how many partnerships in business actually work out? They are definitely not the norm, and I respect them immensely for it.

Grow smarter

Lesson 6: You are in the business of providing a service, not SEO

I remember becoming a good SEO. I also remember getting amazing results for clients and still getting complaints from them. I thought they were the problem. Then I realized I was. I thought back to the days of pest control and remember the company training techs to take their time at customers' houses. You see, you could service a house in 15 minutes or even less if you hustled. But if you did that, customers would complain that the work was sloppy and it shouldn't cost so much. Instead, you should take your time, get down on your hands and knees, and look around. Take notes and pace yourself. Then, customers felt like the service was worth it. They weren't paying for the product. They could buy the product at Home Depot. They were paying for the service.

Comparing this to Internet marketing, I knew I had done a great job gaining more traffic, but the clients had no idea what was being done. They didn't understand what they were paying for and subsequently thought that I was unnecessary. Most small businesses don't care or understand what a title tag, meta description, an exact match, a naked URL, duplicate content, etc is. So telling them you changed/created these in a report without actually showing them physical pictures is pointless.
We started creating custom reports with tons of arrows and screenshots explaining the work that we were doing. We starting giving them a complete list of the links and citations we were building. We stopped sending over a raw list of traffic counts and started providing analysis of the traffic that websites were getting, and our clients stopped complaining that they didn't know what we were doing. Clear communication is what the business of service is all about.

Lesson 7: Read The E-myth

I was doing everything myself. Everything. Then, I tried to have some people on oDesk help me. My wife even did some of the citation work. The only problem was all the information was in my head. I had very little of the processes and information organized, and I didn't have time to focus on organization when I had so much client work, sales, and bookkeeping to do. That is what The E-myth is about. It talks about the difference between being a technician and being a business owner. It talks about the need to build your business like a franchise with training manuals, easy to follow processes, and the need to not burn yourself or your first few employees out.
When I read this book, I changed my business, and I have never looked back. We were able to start hiring people locally instead of having contractors on oDesk, and we centralized information and grew. While we aren't perfect at systems and delegation, we could have never grown without improvement in those areas. It's still the case.

Lesson 8: Raise your prices; raise your minimums

When I was the only employee in my company, doing everything myself, I could still make good margins and be the lowest price around. I took clients at $200-$500 per month, built some websites, and put tons of hours in, and as long as I could get to where I had $40-50k per year in revenue, I had a decent wage for Burley. That was my first goal. I could be flexible with what I made and could literally have no cost other than a couple of tools and my personal time. Employees, though, cost more than time. Employees cost money. And regardless of how much money you bring in, an employee's wage is constant. If I wanted employees that were good, there way no way I could maintain my pricing and minimums, providing the level of service that was needed. We had to raise prices. We changed our minimum to $1,500 and determined that we would do work for no less than $100 per hour. The types of clients got better, and we had enough revenue to bring in talented people who increased the quality of our work. I know that many SEO firms/companies can charge a lot more than $100 per hour, and we do as well, depending on the type of project—but for the average small/medium business this is a price that they can afford and you can do good work for.

Lesson 9: Learn when to pass on bad clients

When I was hungry I took whatever client walked through the door. I took abuse. Emails that called me names, clients who would not listen to my advice and would then blame me when things went wrong. Clients that paid three or four months late but would complain when I didn't answer my phone on the first ring.
I kept them because I felt like I had to have the revenue. What I didn't realize is that if I had taken the time I was putting into their project and put it elsewhere, I could have replaced the revenue plus a lot more and had a much better quality of life.
If you are not happy, then no amount of money will make up for it, so fire your bad clients, pass on the red flags, and figure something else out. Remember Lesson 1.

Retain

Lesson 10: Be trustworthy

The fastest way to lose clients and employees is to lie to them. If you want both to stick with you through thick and thin, then there has to be 100% trust. I personally think that the more transparent you can be all around the more you will be trusted.
One of our core values at Nifty is to be "willingly naked." Not literally, but figuratively. We have to be willing to share what we learn, take feedback, tell our clients the brutal truth even if we know they don't want to hear it. But you have to be willing to take feedback yourself.

Lesson 11: Reward your team

I am not going to pretend to be good at this. I know I should say "thank you" about a thousand times more than I do. Instead, I find myself more apt to criticize when things go poorly. It's something I am hoping to constantly get better at. The team at Nifty is amazing and they take a ton of stress, responsibility, and problems on themselves and do an awesome job.

Here's a few things that I have done at times:

• Thank-you gift cards
• Revenue sharing
• Company lunches
• Pop-Tarts (long story)
• Big Christmas parties
• The best office in Burley, Idaho (complete with a moose, a monster, bricks, and staked firewood)

Lesson 12: Auto-renew your contracts

When it comes to smaller businesses, I have found that month-to-month contracts that auto-renew and are paid by automatic credit card last longer than contracts that are 3, 6, or 12 months with renegotiations required. Bottom line, people don't like re-signing up for a committed amount of time. Especially small business owners who believe the word "contract" is a cuss word.

Change

Lesson 13: Never stop learning new things

There are many search companies that fall behind. It's because they don't change. They keep blasting away at the same spammy links, the same old school designs, and the same tactics from 5-10 years ago, and they wonder why a massive amount of their client portfolio drops in rankings.
I personally start every morning by reading blogs, and I have for years. The staff spends the first part of every day doing the same thing, and we pass around articles that make an impression. It keeps us constantly thinking about innovation and learning from our great community. Another way to keep up is to constantly pitch to speak at conferences. You have deadlines around which you can build tests and case studies, and you will do everything you possibly can to be up on the latest news in the industry because you never know what questions the attendees might ask you.

Lesson 14: Request feedback

The best way to find issues in your organization is to request feedback from your staff and clients. The other day, we had a client that paused his account. This is usually a soft way to end the relationship. But, upon asking for his feedback, he said he loved working with his project manager and the work we had done, saying he would be back on track in 2 months. Then he mentioned he was hoping for faster results on a side project we were doing for him. Whose fault was it that he felt that way? It was ours. I took the opportunity to clear up the miscommunication and he was very grateful for it. If we hadn't asked for the feedback, we might not have ever heard from him again and he definitely would have had the issue on his mind.

Lesson 15: Be pleased, but never satisfied

Nobody is perfect. Which means there is always room for improvement. There is always more than can be done, and there is always a better way. The day you stop growing and say that "it's good enough" is the day that a competitor is going to come in and do more that you are willing to.
We have redone our proposal process multiple times. We haven't ever been bad at it, but every time we go back to the drawing boards there is something more that we find that helps to bring in better clients. Right now we are testing out a live walk-through of the proposal, as compared to just sending over a PDF and asking for questions.

SAVE

Lesson 16: Content isn't king, cash is

If you want to run a successful business of any type, then ensure that you aren't running cash-poor. I have followed Dave Ramsey's personal financial guidelines for my business and find that it's very conservative. While it might limit the speed at which we grow, it eliminates a massive amount of risk.
Dave recommends having a personal emergency fund (and in this case business fund) of 3-6 months of expenses on hand at all times. That means that if you are going to pay yourself (your only start-up expense) $3,000 per month, then you should have between $9,000-$18,000 in cash before starting up. At $65,000 per month of expenses, you should have between $195,000-$390,000 in reserves. That's a lot of cash on hand for a small business, but if clients unexpectedly drop, or major industry changes necessitate a completely new model, you will have the cash to make good decisions and not desperate ones. I started out around the six-month reserve when I was smaller, and as time has gone by and we have a more diversified revenue stream, I am comfortable between 3-4 months of cash on hand.

Lesson 17: Pay yourself modestly, and get out of personal debt

I pay myself $4,000 per month. The rest goes to growing the business, savings, and other ventures. Now, you need to realize that I live in Burley, Idaho, and it's literally hard to spend money here. I could pay myself $2,000 if it wasn't for Amazon Prime. But, at a very young age, my wife and I decided that we would have no personal debt and worked really hard to pay off our house and buy cars with cash.

I know many financial experts will tell you that leveraging your home is the best financing you have but let me tell you that the freedom of owning your house outright means that you can make better business decisions over the course of your life. You wont have the "what if I lose my family's home" question circling around in the back of your mind and you can actually take bigger risks, and never make business financial decisions based off of your personal financial needs.

Lesson 18: Don't sign up for every Internet marketing tool under the sun

Tool subscriptions are reoccurring costs. It's very easy to spend thousands of dollars a month on different tools you don't have the cash to do that when you start up. When I first started, I only used Raven Tools, but quickly added a list of 10 to 15 tools like Moz. Occasionally, we have to go through the list of tools and find out what we are actually using and get rid of the rest. I'm not going to pretend there is one tool to rule them all, because everyone has very different needs. The key is to quickly identify which tools work for you and which don't, and to stop paying monthly for the ones that don't.

Lesson 19: Diversify

If you get to where you own a successful guest-blogging company, or a successful SEO company, or a successful content-marketing company, or whatever niche you decide to work in, then realize the problem with a niche is that you are putting all of your eggs in one basket. If that basket disappears, you're screwed.
Try going after more than one niche. We opened a division focused on SEO and website development for lawyers called NiftyLaw.com. I also owned a newspaper in my home town, and am working on some new projects so that I am not 100% reliant on Internet marketing revenue.

Lesson 20: Find a few things to help save yourself

Owning a business is hard work. It's mentally draining, and it's very hard to shut down your mind after constantly thinking. There will be times where you need to save yourself from burning out, so ensure that you have hobbies that can get your mind completely off of work. I golf, mountain bike, and travel with my family. I also don't do any work on Sundays at all.

Overall

I have loved starting an Internet marketing company. It's been hard; I'm going gray and I'm only 29.
I know that you might not agree with certain things I think are important, and that's fine. The best part about business is that it's a "choose your own adventure" storybook with no "right" answers.
Please add your own questions and advice in the comments. I hope that this is a post that can have more insight in the comments than the article itself, and I look forward to learning from all of you!

How to Write a Great Headline for Blog

by  Brian Clark 26 Comments

10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work

So, you’re seeing too many of those “how to” and list headlines, and want to try a few different angles?
Let’s move beyond those common headline formulas you see over and over, and add some new blood to your attention-grabbing arsenal.

1. Who Else Wants [blank]?

Starting a headline with “Who Else Wants…” is a classic social proof strategy that implies an already existing consensus desire. While overused in the Internet marketing arena, it still works like gangbusters for other subject matter.

• Who Else Wants a Great WordPress Theme?
• Who Else Wants a Higher Paying Job?
• Who Else Wants More Fun and Less Stress When on Vacation?

2. The Secret of [blank]

This one is used quite a bit, but that’s because it works. Share insider knowledge and translate it into a benefit for the reader.

• The Secret of Successful Podcasting
• The Secret of Protecting Your Assets in Litigation
• The Secret of Getting Your Home Loan Approved

3. Here is a Method That is Helping [blank] to [blank]

Simply identify your target audience and the benefit you can provide them, and fill in the blanks.

• Here is a Method That is Helping Homeowners Save Hundreds on Insurance
• Here is a Method That is Helping Children Learn to Read Sooner
• Here is a Method That is Helping Bloggers Write Better Post Titles

4. Little Known Ways to [blank]

A more intriguing (and less common) way of accomplishing the same thing as “The Secret of…” headline.

• Little Known Ways to Save on Your Heating Bill
• Little Known Ways to Hack Google’s Gmail
• Little Known Ways to Lose Weight Quickly and Safely

5. Get Rid of [problem] Once and For All

A classic formula that identifies either a painful problem or an unfulfilled desire that the reader wants to remedy.

• Get Rid of Your Unproductive Work Habits Once and For All
• Get Rid of That Carpet Stain Once and For All
• Get Rid of That Lame Mullet Hairdo Once and For All

6. Here’s a Quick Way to [solve a problem]

People love quick and easy when it comes to solving a nagging problem.

• Here’s a Quick Way to Get Over a Cold
• Here’s a Quick Way to Potty Train Junior
• Here’s a Quick Way to Backup Your Hard Drive

7. Now You Can Have [something desirable] [great circumstance]

The is the classic “have your cake and eat it too” headline — and who doesn’t like that?

• Now You Can Quit Your Job and Make Even More Money
• Now You Can Meet Sexy Singles Online Without Spending a Dime
• Now You Can Own a Cool Mac and Still Run Windows

8. [Do something] like [world-class example]

Gatorade milked this one fully with the “Be Like Mike” campaign featuring Michael Jordan in the early 1990s.

• Speak Spanish Like a Diplomat
• Party Like Paris Hilton
• Blog Like an A-Lister

9. Have a [or] Build a [blank] You Can Be Proud Of

Appeal to vanity, dissatisfaction, or shame. Enough said.

• Build a Body You Can Be Proud Of
• Have a Smile You Can Be Proud Of
• Build a Blog Network You Can Be Proud Of

10. What Everybody Ought to Know About [blank]

Big curiosity draw with this type of headline, and it acts almost as a challenge to the reader to go ahead and see if they are missing something.

• What Everybody Ought to Know About ASP
• What Everybody Ought to Know About Adjustable Rate Mortgages
• What Everybody Ought to Know About Writing Great Headlines

Find these headline templates useful? Pick up our comprehensive ebook on Magnetic Headlines as well as a full content marketing library … for free. You can click here to learn how.

Alternatives to Business Coaching

(Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

By Laura Roeder, social media marketing expert.

As a business owner, what do you do when you’re seriously stuck but have no boss or partner to go to for advice?

Soak up the wisdom online or at the library for free.

This may sound like overly basic advice, but I can’t emphasize enough how much I’ve learned about running a business just by spending some time reading. I’ve applied systems, practices and tools to my own startup with visibly great results. Here are my go-to business books (some of them travel with me everywhere I go):

1. “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm”: This book has helped me and my team focus on serious growth. Establishing a business that works is great, but the playing field does change when you’re trying to go from 100 customers to 10,000. I recommend it for anyone ready to take their success to a whole new level.
2. “Double Double: How to Double Your Revenue and Profit in 3 Years or Less”: Cameron Herold’s book is also focused on growing your business. What really opened my eyes about this book though, are the parts about building a team that will facilitate growth, and how to lead that team. This is one of those books I read over and over, and I would highly recommend it — especially if you’re looking to stop doing everything yourself and bring on one (or many) team members.
3. “Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle”: This was the book I used as my guide when I was first starting out as a freelance web designer. When you’re a freelancer, finding the clients is just as important — if not more important than — actually executing work for them. One of the major things I got from this book is about going after what he calls the “red velvet rope clients.” In other words, these are your 100 percent ideal customers. It can be really hard to say no when someone comes to you saying “I want to work with you AND give you money!” But Michael Port breaks it down clearly and explains why being choosy is the absolute best thing you can do as a freelancer.
4. “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us”: Tribes is essentially our marketing bible here at Roeder Studios. It teaches you that building a fanatical community (your “tribe”) is far more important than the specs of your next product. Unless you run a collections agency, this book is for you.

I love books. But chances are you aren’t going to get through multiple books in one day. So when I can get an almost-daily dose of advice from the blogs of business-owners who are doing things right, I happily consume it as fast as a pint of ice cream. Below are my favorite read-first business blogs:

1. Seth Godin: Seth has been writing about marketing and growing your business for so many years that you could basically devote your time to reading through the archives and you’d pretty much know everything there is to know. Lots of his articles are super-short and easy to consume while on the go.
2. Derek Sivers: Derek, a friend of mine, writes this amazing blog on all aspects of life, camouflaged as a business blog. What I love about Derek’s writing is that it always makes you stop and think deeper, regardless of the particular topic of any given post.
3. Neil Patel: Neil shells out the most practical advice about everything that’s currently happening in the world of marketing in Quick Sprout. His posts are extremely detailed and he’s constantly giving away the step-by-step systems that brought him such enormous success at a young age.

Finally, the only thing better than books and blogs for getting really tangible advice is in-person events and conferences. I try to never miss:

1. Microconf: Microconf is a conference dedicated to bootstrapped startups. These are a collection of businesses who have unique struggles from the both the startup and small business worlds, and have some really amazing solutions to share with you.
2. World Domination Summit: The absolute best conference for anyone thinking about making their mark in the world is World Domination Summit. I’ve met some of my closest friends at this inspiring event. Tickets sell out in about 30 seconds every year — it’s that good. (Here’s why I loved it this year.)
3. Summit Series: This is a series of conferences that collect some of the brightest minds, thought leaders and entrepreneurs from around the world. Get ready to get blown away by what these people are up to.

There you have it: 10 sources to turn to for advice as a solo business owner. I’m not against paying for an experienced business coach to help you go after that big growth. In fact, I’ve been coached at different points in my business. But there’s nothing quite like having a free (or inexpensive) resource that you can turn to again and again. So fire up that library card. Your credit card bill — and your business — will thank you.

Courtesy of YEC

Laura Roeder is a social media marketing expert who teaches small businesses how to become known as #1 in their field and claim their brand online. She is the creator of Creating Fame and Your Backstage Pass to Twitter.

Increasing Subscribers

How I Gained Over 1,000% New Subscribers Per Month June 5, 2011 Posted by Tyler Cruz click here Paid Advertisement Late last year, I started noticing that more and more bloggers in the make money online niche were using lightbox pop-ups to encourage their visitors to sign up to their mailing list. Since I was only averaging between 1-2 new signups a month to my own blog’s mailing list, I thought that I would try this method myself. I did a bit of research to see what the most popular and reputable software that people were using for this, and discovered that it was Popup Domination. The claims and testimonials on the sales page seemed too good to be true and rather extraordinary, but then again I had been seeing it used on a lot of big blogs (actually, almost all the big blogs), so I decided it would be worth trying. And so, on January 1st, 2011, I installed it on my blog to test it out. The Results The reason I waited so long to post this review was because I wanted to see the long-term effects of Popup Domination. I didn’t want to post a rave review about it after a month, only to see things dwindle shortly after. And so, I have a full 5 months of data to show you. I’ll get straight to the results. The best, and simplest way, is to show you the monthly new signup stats from my AWeber account on my blog’s list: 67 From the chart and stats, it’s obvious when I added Popup Domination to my blog. The red arrows are really unnecessary :-) As you can see, the moment I added it to my blog, my signups skyrocketed. I went from averaging 1.5 new signups a month to 17, which works out to an increase of 1,033%! I should also mention that this is without giving away anything for free. I basically just invite users to subscribe to my free newsletter to stay updated with my posts and other news and offers. Unlike almost every other blogger who uses this, I’m not offering a free e-Book or access to anything special. Just as impressive is the fact that these numbers have stayed consistent ever since adding Popup Domination to my blog. I didn’t see 1 or 2 good months and then a decline – it has been completely steady. Even though my actual numbers are very small and not very impressive, the fact still remains that I dramatically increased my new signup rate by installing this software. And from everyone that I’ve spoken to who uses this, they absolutely love it and have seen results similar to mine. Features I won’t bog you guys down with all the details of the features of the software like I normally do, but I still wanted to briefly describe some of them. First, it’s extremely fast and simple to both set up and customize, for both the WordPress and standalone versions (I installed the standalone version on my RobotWarz site). Below is what I customized mine to look like, which did not take long to do at all since there are a surprising number of nice premade templates to choose from: 66 Secondly, you have great control over how often the lightbox appears and on what pages it appears. For example, I have mine set up to only display once every 7 days for visitors, but I could change that to once a day, or once a month if I wanted to. I could even change it to display after the visitor has made X amount of views on my website. Here’s a quick rundown of its features: WordPress Plugin & Stand Alone Version 8 Beautiful themes with 15 Colour Options Works with ALL mailing list providers Works with all caching software Select specific pages for it to appear Exit Pop-up functionality Ability to pop up after a certain number of impressions The Price I can’t remember for sure, but I could almost swear that when I got mine, the price was $77. But I just checked the price, and it appears to be $47 right now. Even at $150 though, it’s still well worth the price if you want to dramatically increase your mailing list subscriber rate. The software just works, plain and simple. At least, it did for me. It also comes with a 60-day money back guarantee, so you really have nothing to lose, but a lot to gain. If you do get it, be sure to leave a comment here with your own review after letting it run for a little while.

Affiliate Marketing Resources

Recommended Resources Below is a list of some of the various ad networks, online services, and software tools that I personally use and recommend. I made this resource section on my blog to share these valuable resources with you, as well as to help lessen the amount of e-mails I get requesting to know who designed my logo or what specific tools and services I use for this and that. I do use other resources from the ones listed below, but these are my favourite and the ones that I can highly recommend. This page is fairly long, so below are the topics in case you are looking for a specific type of source: Affiliate Networks Ad Networks Affiliate Marketing Tools & Services Paid Traffic Sources Blogging Tools Graphic Design Programming Outsourcing Websites SEO Tools E-mail List Management Web Hosting Domain Registrars Buying & Selling Domains and Websites Social Media Tools & Services [Last revised and updated: May 24th, 2013] Affiliate Networks (CPA) PeerFly – I’ve been working with PeerFly since they launched and can’t recommend them enough. They are an awesome affiliate network that has a fantastic custom-made backend, the highest payouts anywhere (guaranteed), and great customer support. Read this post to see photos and a video from when I met up with them in person in Florida. AmpedMedia – AmpedMedia is another good solid affiliate network that I use. They have never failed to send me a Christmas card every year, hand-signed by their entire staff. Read this post to see photos and a video from when I met up with them in person in Florida. Neverblue – Neverblue is an established network in the industry, being in business since 2004 (a long time for an affiliate network). They are a very solid network with a great custom backend, good payouts, and a nice balanced selection of offers. Neverblue is definitely a network you want to add to your "portfolio". Ad Networks (CPC/CPM) Casale Media – I have been using Casale Media for over 5 years, since 2006. They pay out 70%, have a good advertiser base, a great control panel, and a referral program which pays out for life. Tribal Fusion – Tribal Fusion is a fantastic ad network for high volume sites due to the high quality publishers they attract. By requiring their publishers to have high quality, large traffic sites, they are able to attract big brand advertisers and in turn offer very high payouts. However, you will need to have a minimum of 500,000 unique visitors a month in order to be accepted. I’d highly recommend them if you can get accepted into them. Affiliate Marketing Tools & Services CPVLab – If I could only choose ONE affiliate marketing program or service to use, it’d be CPVLab, no question. I simply cannot recommend this tracking software enough. It is not free, and costs a one-time fee of $297, but it is worth every damn penny! In fact, it could be priced at $2,977 and still be worth every damn penny. I now use CPVLab on all of my campaigns and it has saved me countless hours of analysis, as well as helped me make a lot of money. The main features that make CPVLab stand out from other tracking platforms is its blazing speed, extremely clean and easy-to-use interface and design, and built-in features such as landing and offer split-testing. Honestly, if you’re doing affiliate marketing (or any type of traffic analysis), you need to get CPVLab now. You’re welcome. Prosper202 – Prosper202 is a 100% free self-hosted tracking software that you install and set up on your server. Prosper202 is well known in the affiliate marketing world as it was really the first tracking platform developed specifically for the affiliate marketing community. Talk to any super affiliate, and chances are they are either using Prosper202 now, or have in the past. It is simply the best free affiliate tracking platform out there, hands down. GeoEdge – GeoEdge is a proxy service that allows you to surf the web as if you were coming from another country (it currently offers 80+ countries plus 25 major US cities). It works with Flash, videos, rich media – basically everything. In addition to being extremely useful for affiliate marketers (no more "This offer is not available in your location" landing pages), it is also an extremely useful service to view country-specific ads. I use their browser add-on nearly everyday when working on my campaigns. For me, it is a must-have tool as an affiliate marketer who promotes international offers. It is also essential for me since I am a Canadian and many offers are US-only and will geo-redirect based on my IP. GeoEdge is also perfect for mobile advertisers as it has a mobile emulator tool. StackThatMoney – StackThatMoney is a private affiliate marketing forum that costs a monthly subscription fee of $99/month. While not free, it is worth every penny and will pay for itself many times over. For example, last week, I was browsing the forums when I discovered a small network I never heard about before. The first campaign I ran with the network was profitable right off the bat with no optimization or targeting. It’s little gems like these that easily justify the subscription fee. Whether you’re a newcomer struggling to find your first profitable campaign, or an experienced affiliate marketer who is making 6-figures a month, StackThatMoney will have something for you. If you’re serious about affiliate marketing, I highly recommend joining. IMGrind – A lot of people ask me how to get started in affiliate marketing and learn the industry. Well, here’s a great resource for that. IMGrind is a paid, private training forum for affiliate marketers. It is run by super affiliates Ralph "Ruck" Ruckman and Ryan Gray, two guys who are extremely well known in the industry. While Ryan and Ruck are active on the forum and will definitely help you out, the real beauty of the forum is that it consists of hundreds of other experienced affiliates and super affiliates. As a result, you are learning a hell of a lot more; it is not just 2 guys you are learning from, it is hundreds of successful affiliates. Some of the biggest guys in the industry are members there, and it is up to you how you decide to interact. You could be a "fly on the wall" and just sit back and read all the valuable information, or you could be an active member and participate and engage in discussion and ask questions. If you really want to learn, you’ll do both. For a more information, be sure to check out my review. CrazyCTR – CrazyCTR is a paid service that allows you to instantly make countless variations of your ad images so that you can focus on actually split-testing the ads instead of spending all of your time creating the images manually. Be sure to check out the review I wrote about them which includes a 17-minute screencast video. Also, enter the coupon code: TYLERCRUZ to receive 20% off your subscription price for LIFE. SocialAdNinja – If you use Facebook as a traffic source for affiliate marketing, then you should definitely look into trying SocialAdNinja. SocialAdNinja is a Facebook ad spy service that gathers and harvests ads from Facebook and allows you to browse and search through nearly half a million (and growing) ads. Basically, it allows you to spy on your competition and copy their ads and/or ideas. Check out the review I wrote about them which includes a very detailed 33-minute screencast video. In addition, use the promo code: TYLERCRUZ when signing up to get 15% off your monthly subscription for life. Paid Traffic Sources Google AdWords – AdWords has been extremely heavy handed on affiliate advertisers over the past few years – so much so, that most affiliates will scoff upon the sheer mention of their name. And while seemingly random bannings do still happen, as long as you’re not promoting anything super shady, you should be okay. AdWords is great because you can target people who you know are interested in your ad because they are proactively searching for it. The content network is also a fantastic source, as Google has amassed a huge publisher base over the years, allowing for seemingly endless traffic. Facebook – A lot of people have turned away from Facebook over the past couple of years, because just like Google AdWords, competition quickly grew and made it rather expensive to use. But if you stick with it and can get the hang of it, Facebook offers some of the best targeting out there, and a never-ending supply of traffic that you can scale upwards forever. Blogging Tools WordPress – I use the free blogging software WordPress for my blog. WordPress is great because it’s a free open-source software which is heavily supported by developers offering free plugins. WordPress releases new versions with new features and improvements regularly, and is theme-based meaning you can easily customize your own theme or download one of the thousands of free themes available. There are also countless plugins available to extend functionality as well. Windows Live Writer – I actually don’t use WordPress to write, edit, or publish my blog posts. Instead, I use the free blogging editor software Windows Live Writer (made by Microsoft). I always find formatting posts within WordPress to be a real pain which is why I started using WLW. In addition, WLW has a plethora of features and tools including: built-in image cropping and watermarking, spell-checking, auto-linking, word count, and tabs for easy view switching. WLW also works with a number of different blogging platforms including WordPress, Blogger, Live Journal, and TypePad to name a few. Graphic Design SOSFactory – Sergio from SOSFactory is the talent behind my mascot, and has done a number of variations of them for me now. Without hyperbole, I can confidently say that Sergio is a world-class artist, especially when it comes to mascots. He charges around $600 per logo, and while that may sound expensive, it’s really not. In fact, it’s quite cheap considering the sheer quality of it. In addition, Sergio will provide you with the PSD and any other sources (such as fonts) used in high resolution so that you can print offline material such as business cards, posters, or T-Shirts with your mascot. He also guarantees his work – he’ll provide you with early sketches and revisions along the way to make sure you’re happy with the way it’s taking shape. If not, he’ll do it until you are. In addition to mascots and logos, Sergio also does traditional print, web, and stationery design. Just check out his portfolio to see his awesome work for yourself. Tell Sergio that Tyler sent you and he’ll take care of you. Webdesignbe – Formerly 4Design.tv, Webdesignbe.com is one of those hidden resource gems that isn’t widely marketed and linked everywhere but rather spread through word of mouth. In fact, that is how I found out about them – through a friend. I hire them for all my graphic work now. Webdesignbe is a small but great design company from Belgium run by husband and wife. Check out their portfolio to see examples of their work. They do pretty much anything graphic-related including: website design, banners, logos, business cards, etc. They offer very unique and creative design, a fast turnaround, free revisions, are very affordable considering their quality, and give the source files (PSDs, fonts, etc.). I highly recommend them. Tell Nathalie that Tyler says “Hi” :-) Programming Interberry – Interberry is a programming company that I have regularly hired since finding them several years ago. They have done all my programming work since, including Movie-Vault.com, PublisherChallenge, and several other sites and projects. Being a perfectionist and having a lot of experience with developing websites and outsourcing, I can be very demanding. Interberry impresses me in that they never complain or hesitate to do anything I request. That’s saying a lot because I often send 3-4 e-mails per day with lists of new things to add or other changes, and they won’t complain at all, they’d just get it done. You can contact them via their website at Interberry.com, e-mail them at info@interberry.com, phone them at +1-888-367-1110 (during 9:30 am to 6:30 pm Indian Standard Time), or if you’re like me you’ll want to talk to them via Skype chat. Add cheb.iberry to your Skype contacts for that. For more information, you can read some of my past posts on Interberry at: The Programmers Behind PublisherChallenge, My Christmas Gift to You: Interberry, and 2 More Reasons Why You Should Hire Interberry. Be sure to tell Interberry that I sent you, and they’ll treat you extra nice :-) Outsourcing Websites Elance – Elance.com is the most established and leading authority for outsourcing work online. I’ve personally used them since 2004 to find programmers for my various projects (before finding Interberry). Elance has 2 million providers, allowing you to you hire professionals in almost any field relating to business including: programming, design, writing, admin support, accounting, marketing, and even legal services. Freelancer – Freelancer is similar to Elance, only its providers seem to offer cheaper prices. They also have over 7 million freelancers in their system, and have grown at a tremendous pace the past few years, and seem to have now overtaken Elance as the largest outsourcing work site. It’s partly the higher number of freelancers on Freelancer that tends to drive the bids down. For smaller, simpler, projects, I tend to use Freelancer over Elance. oDesk – oDesk tends to have a lot more European providers compared to Elance and Freelancer, which have mostly Indian providers. oDesk also tends to have higher bids from their providers as well. However, I really like how oDesk presents their providers, clearly displaying their hourly rate, description, portfolio, and past projects and rating. oDesk also has a test feature, in which providers can take certain tests in their field so you can get an idea as to their level of skill in that particular field. Overall, oDesk has a much higher quality of providers than other freelance sites, in my opinion, but they’re also far more expensive. SEO Tools RankPay – RankPay is a very unique SEO firm in that they have a business model in which they only charge based on the results they provide. Basically, the higher you rank, the more you pay. The prices are per keyword and will vary depending on the keyword and your website. The are also tiered, so the higher you rank, the more you will pay. What’s nice though is that you only have to pay once you are ranked in the top 30 – you won’t have to pay a cent if you’re ranked #31, for example. I worked out a special deal with them, and so if you decide to sign up with them, be sure to use TYLERCRUZ as the promo code when you register, as it will give you an instant $50 credit applied to your account. RankTracker – I absolutely love RankTracker and highly recommend it. It tracks the rankings of your keywords and provides graphs, charts, and reports on their progress. There is no program that is as accurate and has as many features as RankTracker. It will search virtually any search engine, and provide accurate rankings up to the 1,000th result. You can watch an early screencast review I made for more details, or look at some screenshots of the results from any of my past SEO Case Study posts. I highly recommend RankTracker for anyone wanting to keep track of their keyword rankings. E-mail List Management AWeber – AWeber is an e-mail list management service that allows you to collect e-mail addresses from your visitors. Ask any top internet marketer the one thing they regret, and they’ll likely tell you that it’s not building an e-mail list sooner. Starting at only $19/month, it’s pretty affordable. AWeber is very popular because they are an extremely “whitehat” company. They are very strict in how their users conduct their e-mail lists such as all e-mail list subscriptions having to be confirmed and opted-in, and having a zero-tolerance policy for using their services for spamming of any kind. This strictness is actually a very good thing as it establishes themselves as a respected company and are therefore often safelisted (as opposed to blacklisted!) on many ISP’s and servers. AWeber also offers a horde of features, such as awesome tracking, great analytics, and the ability to collect e-mail addresses by providing something to the user, such as a download to your e-book, for example (ever wonder why so many internet marketers pitch their free e-book?). If used correctly, AWeber will easily pay for itself and then some. Popup Domination – Popup Domination is a web script that overlays a lightbox sign-up form over your website in order to encourage visitors to sign up to your mailing list. While the concept is simple, the fact is that it works. In fact, most of the top internet marketers are using it, such as John Chow, Zac Johnson, Shoemoney, etc. They’re using it not to annoy their readers, but because it works. You can check out a short case study I did with adding Popup Domination on my blog. Basically, I increased my subscription rate by 1,033%. It works. Popup Domination is designed to work with all the major mailing list services, such as AWeber (see above), and offers a number of customizable features such as being able to set it so that the lightbox doesn’t appear until after the visitor has made a certain number of pageviews on your site. Web Hosting HostGator – I’ve stated in several interviews now that the best business decision I made in 2009 was switching to HostGator. They have amazing hosting packages which will suit 99% of you, from basic web hosting starting at $3.96 a month to powerful dedicated servers. HostGator has a spotless reputation online and is an Inc. 5000 company. Their customer support is beyond outstanding – what I especially like is their 24/7 live chat support (with literally over a hundred agents ready to help you instantly). They even do free site transfers for you, if you’re switching from another provider. I am a complete fanboy when it comes to HostGator and simply cannot recommend them highly enough. Use the coupon code TYLERCRUZ25 when signing up to receive a full 25% off your initial order (it’s therefore recommended to prepay a year in advance to take advantage of the discount). LiquidWeb – I mention above that HostGator will work for 99% of you. After all, I use HostGator myself. But I also use LiquidWeb. In the Spring of 2011, I bought a website that was receiving mad traffic and utilizing a lot of server resources. My dedicated server at HostGator wouldn’t be able to handle it properly, at least not with any growth, which is saying a lot because the Pro Dedicated Server at HostGator is pretty damn powerful. And so I purchased a new dedicated at LiquidWeb. LiquidWeb specializes in dedicated servers and can offer custom packages much bigger than HostGator’s largest available server. For example, my server with them is a 16x core! LiquidWeb has great customer support with 24/7 live chat support and a wide selection of server customizable and upgrade options available. I therefore recommend LiquidWeb for those 1% of you who need something REALLY powerful. Domain Registrars GoDaddy – GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain name registrar, and most professional domainers (those who buy and sell domains for a living) use GoDaddy. GoDaddy has awesome customer support. To give you an idea of just how great their support is: on two separate occasions I accidentally registered domains with an accidental typo. Both times I contacted support and they kindly refunded my money within minutes and wished me a good day. They have great prices, especially if you become a member of the Domain Discount Club (very useful if you have a lot of domains), and allow for easy and instant domain transfers (which is why most domainers use GoDaddy). They have one downside though. Their site is extremely ad heavy and you will be bombarded with offer after offer as you use their site, but once you get used to them you quickly learn to ignore them. NameCheap – While I mainly use GoDaddy, I also use NameCheap since it’s also a very popular registrar and many domainers use it an alternative. NameCheap is nice because their site is much cleaner than GoDaddy’s, and they don’t try to hard-sell you on their products and services like GoDaddy does. Their prices are awesome, as their name suggests, and probably their best perk is that all the domains come with free WhoisGuard protection. I wouldn’t recommend them if you plan on flipping domains, though. They are rather bitter when you transfer a domain away from them to another registrar… waiting until the last possible second according to the ICANN rules (the end of the 5th working day) to approve the transfer. Buying & Selling Domains + Websites Flippa – Flippa is hands-down the best place to buy and sell established websites. You can find websites there from as low as $50 to as high as $1,000,000+. I have been using Flippa for many years (it used to be Sitepoint Marketplace before becoming its own site), both buying and selling sites on it, and can highly recommend it. Be sure to watch a video of a webinar I did with e John Chow, Zac Johnson, and Matt Mickiewicz (the co-founder of Flippa) in which I was a panellist. My presentation begins around the 24-minute mark. There are invaluable tips for buying and selling sites there. DNForum – I’ve been a member of DNForum since early 2004. DNForum is an absolute massive domain name forum in which you can discuss anything pertaining to domain names. But its main purpose is for members to post their domains for sale, where potential buyers can then contact them. In order to gain access to some of the buying and selling sections, you’ll need to upgrade your membership on the site. Fortunately, there are lifetime options available, and I recommend getting the lifetime Platinum membership (that’s what I have). If you do a lot of domain buying and selling, this one-time cost will pay for itself quickly. NamePros – NamePros is just like DNForum, only it’s completely free. Whenever I post my domains for sale or am looking for some domains to buy, I always use both DNForum and NamePros. In fact, you’ll find many posts duplicated on both sites from other people doing the same thing. Sedo – Sedo is a large domain marketplace. However, unlike DNForum and NamePros, Sedo takes a commission (10%) for every domain you sell. It does not cost anything to list your domain(s) for sale, however. Sedo is most beneficial for sellers of premium domain names who are looking to get a high price tag. It is therefore not so great for buyers, as the prices for most of the domains listed on Sedo tend to be quite inflated. BuyDomains – BuyDomains is another domain marketplace, only they tend to focus on higher-quality domains when compared to Sedo. What I like about BuyDomains is that if you have a higher budget, you can find some pretty nice domains for fair prices. It is therefore not-so-good to list your domain for sale there, but as a buyer it’s pretty nice. If you’re willing to spend $1,500 – $20,000+ for a domain, I’d recommend taking a look at BuyDomains first to see if they have anything that suits your needs. Social Media Tools & Services Twiends – Twiends is a service that allows Twitter users to list themselves in which is essentially a giant Twitter directory. The secret is to purchase seeds instead of using their free service. I personally grew my number of followers from 1,000 to over 60,000+ by using them. Be sure to read my very detailed review and case study of Twiends, as well as my follow-up post: How I Gained 25,000 Real Twitter Followers. FeedBurner – FeedBurner is an RSS feed management provider owned and operated by Google. By creating an account (free) and adding your RSS feed(s), you can gain access to a large number of features such as keeping track of how many people are subscribed to your feed(s), offering e-mail delivery whenever you make a new post, and most importantly – having a centralized source for your RSS feed. If you switch domains, for example, you won’t need to rebuild your RSS followers from scratch again. FeedBurner is a must-have for any blogger or anyone with an RSS feed. Tube Toolbox – Tube Toolbox is an absolute awesome software program that dramatically boosts your YouTube friends, followers, and video views. The best part is that as long as you use the software tool properly, that these are highly-targeted users who are genuinely interested in being your friend and subscribing to your channel. You can see an early case study I published in my post: How I Gained 5,000 Friends and 260 Subscribers on YouTube in 1 Month. I purchased the lifetime account and would recommend you do so as well, as it’s a one-time fee. As long as you own it for 13 months, you’ll save $10 a month each month thereafter. SocialCrocodile – SocialCrocodile is a service in which you can pay to boost your social media metrics. They currently offer packages for: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube/Vimeo/MetaCafe, LinkedIn, Google +1, and are working on adding some new sources such as RSS. Their packages are very affordable. For example, you can get 10,000 Twitter followers for $93 or 5,000 Facebook fans for $98. They also deliver results fast. I received 5,000 Facebook fans and 2,000 Twitter followers in 5 days. I worked out a special deal with them: if you use the coupon code: tylercruz when placing your order, they will issue you back a 10% refund after you pay (this is a makeshift deal which is why you don’t receive the discount until after you pay).