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Have you heard of Matt Wadsworth? Up until last week, I had no idea who he was, but now, he’s one of my favourite people online. Matt is someone that has managed to build a 7-figure internet business in the space of three years. That’s impressive in itself, but what’s even more mind-blowing is that Matt is blind. He has no sight at all.
I instantly like Matt not only because of his achievements, but he’s someone that – like me – doesn’t make a living online by teaching people how to make a living online. Instead, his lessons are of providing value, staying consistent, and focusing on what you love.
To me, these are the core fundamentals involved in building a successful, legitimate business online. Whilst the fundamentals are the key, there are also some great tools and services to help you get the most out of your internet ventures.
My aim with this website is to be as transparent as I can in everything that I do, so today I want to take you through all of the tools and programs that help me to get things done. As with everything I share, I’m not saying that you have to use these, but if something looks useful or like a better alternative to what you’re currently using, then add it to your internet marketing arsenal.
Analytics & Research
In a survey across thousands of large companies who actively monitor their stats online, only 35% stated that they actually changed their website based on what they saw. If you’re going to use any of the tools below, I recommend you use them not only to give you an overview of your projects, but as indicators as to what you can change to increase your conversions.
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg was created by one of my favourite guys in the internet marketing space, Neil Patel. Crazy Egg allows you to see the most popular areas of your website pages and find out where visitors from different sources are clicking on your site. There are three modes: Overlay (click data), Heatmap (popular areas) and Confetti (each individual click on the page).
Above you can see the Confetti view, and you can also open up the referrers box to see which colour matches which traffic source. If you see that a certain site is sending a lot of RSS subscribers, you can work to get more traffic from that source. If you find that your readers go to the top right hand side of the page, you can put an ad there or something else that you want to get viewed.
There used to be a free plan that comes with Crazy Egg but the cheapest option now is $9 per month. If you’re serious about your website, you can learn a lot from this tool.
Google Analytics
Before Google Analytics came along there weren’t really that many decent tracking tools available. I started using this service back in 2007 after receiving a beta invite and have been using it ever since.
It’s completely free and one of the most powerful analytics tools on the market. It certainly isn’t 100% accurate (though no analytics tool is) and the only downside in my opinion is the delay in reporting. If you want to check the stats for today, you have to wait until tomorrow.
Get Clicky
Get Clicky is another free analytics tool, but this one reports analytics in real-time. Instead of waiting around for Google to catch up, you can see what is happening on your website, right now.
Live analytics can be a crucial tool, especially if you’re experiencing a large wave of traffic to a certain web page. When you can see what is happening in real-time, you can tweak specific pages to get the most from the visitors there.
With Google Analytics, you would see huge traffic spikes the next day, and miss the opportunity to maximise conversions on that traffic.
Feedburner
If you’re a blogger and you’re not using Feedburner, I first of all want to know where you’ve been, and secondly need to say that you have been missing out. Feedburner basically provides the little yellow “chicklet” that you see on the top right hand corner of this blog.
You can see how many people are subscribing to your RSS feed and from which sources, and if you use the new Google Analytics integration, you can see how many clicks each individual post is getting from feed readers.
Other cool features include allowing people to subscribe to your blog via email, and being able to add email and social bookmarking links to the bottom of your posts.
Postrank
I have been using Postrank Analytics for about 3 weeks now and find it really impressive. As a quick disclaimer, I was given a free membership for two months to try out the service, but will not be renewing my account until new features are added.
It integrates directly with Google Analytics, so each morning I get a summary of:
- How many pageviews my top posts had
- How many saves to delicious were added that day
- How many new tweets were made that day
- How many new comments were made that day
Content is given a score called Engagement Points so you can clearly see what type of content you are adding that your audience reacts to the most. Once they add functionality to sort my most tweeted, bookmarked, and commented posts, I’ll be happy to pay for the service.
Google Keyword Tool
When I’m testing the size of a market for pretty much anything, I like to use the Google Keywords tool which gives you an idea of how many people are searching for X (where X is your keyphrase) each month.
If you market via PPC it gives you a decent estimate of the advertiser competition as well. To give you more accurate results, I recommend you select ‘All Countries and Territories’ on the left drop-down box and then when the results appear, choose ‘Exact match’ from the right hand side.
Finally, click on the top of one of the column headings to see terms with the highest search volume first.
Wordtracker Free Keywords
Wordtracker offer a paid keyword research tool, but their free tool is always enough for my needs. I don’t use it so much for the figures that they give, but it gives far better phrases that I wouldn’t think of using or typing into the Google Keyword tool.
Google Trends
I rarely build new sites these days (I buy profitable ones, instead) but my most recent was in December, with my $1m case study. Even if I find a niche with a large audience or a keyphrase with a large search volume, I won’t just jump into that market.
I like to use Google Trends which gives me an idea of whether an industry is becoming more popular online or if it’s declining. You get an overall look at search volume (which you can compare against other terms) and also see how many trusted news sources are talking about a subject.
I often find that similar phrases, even though they’re in the same niche, can have completely different results. One could be declining rapidly while another is gaining popularity. This is a great tool to use as it’s pointless trying to rank for a phrase that gets 5,000 searches per month if it’s going to be at 500 by the end of the year.
Software
You might think that someone who makes a good five-figure income online each month has a ridiculous computer setup. Well, I kind of do now, but I didn’t for the last year. In fact, I used a Sony Vaio laptop that had no hard drive (really), ran from a Xubuntu Live CD, and every time it booted up I would be presented with a brand new operating system.
I like to think of a Web browser as the only tool that I need, but if truth be told, there really is some software that makes my life a little easier.
Tweetdeck
If you’re using Twitter in any way to build your personal brand or business, then Tweetdeck will help keep you organised. I use 3 columns in the service which show me:
- @ replies from people talking to me or people mentioning my name
- Direct messages
- My private twitter list
I like to follow people back on Twitter who follow me, but when there are close to 2,000 people in your news stream, it’s hard to find the signal in the noise.
I created a Twitter list which currently has about 80 people in it, and I usually only monitor the tweets from these people. Not only does Tweetdeck keep things organised, but it also makes it very fast to message people and retweet good content.
Office for Mac
When I ordered my Macbook Pro about 5 months ago (my first Mac) I didn’t think I would like their Microsoft Word alternative, Pages. Instead I opted for Office for Mac which is pretty bad compared to Office on Windows, but it does the job.
Right now I only use Excel for random spreadsheets and Word to grammar and spell check my articles. I haven’t installed it on my new iMac which I’m using now, and think I’m going to opt for iWork 09 instead. I use Google Docs for 99% of my file handling online, but the internet in South Africa is very unreliable, so I like to have an offline solution as well.
FileZilla
One thing that really bugged me about Mac OS X (I love everything else) was the lack of good FTP programs available. I used Filezilla on my Vista PC in the UK and found it perfect for my needs. For some reason, I had a lot of issues with it a few months ago.
I have literally tried 10 different programs and have been disappointed with each, but returned to Filezilla last week and I think they have fixed all of the issues I had. It’s available for both Windows and Mac, and is the best software I’ve found for uploading and downloading files to my servers.
WriteRoom
I talked about Writeroom a lot in my post about minimalist internet marketing, so I won’t go into too much detail here. Quite simply, as I’m writing this, I see nothing but a huge area of black space and a lot of green text.
Writeroom takes over your screen – essentially eliminating any writing distractions – and just allows you to focus on the content. It does look quite geeky, but it’s also far easier on the eyes than black text on a bright white background.
Writeroom is for Mac, but there’s a Windows alternative called Darkroom.
Adobe Photoshop CS3
I’m sure most of you know about Photoshop. In simple terms, it’s the best graphic design software for my needs, even though it comes at a hefty price. I have tried alternatives like Gimp, which is free, but I definitely prefer Photoshop.
When I ran PluginID, many people would ask me which script I used to add the black bar and text to my images (which is a style that many people started to copy, for some reason). I didn’t use a script, but used Photoshop to put the graphics together.
I also used it to create all the graphics you see here on ViperChill (such as the eBook cover), apart from the logo and little white men.
Skype
Last, but not least, is Skype. I used to use programs like MSN Messenger, Gtalk and other chat software, but they’re really unnecessary for me. My personal Skype account has about 300 contacts which can be really distracting, so about 3 weeks ago I created a new account.
This new account literally only has 5 contacts so I can leave it open all day without being overloaded with messages. As I live in South Africa alone and don’t have any family here, it’s also very useful to call my family back home and have chats with them for free.
Online Tools
When the web becomes more advanced and HTML 5 comes into play, I think that a number of the things I use offline are going to have equal or even better online alternatives. Here are the things I use online to help me with my internet marketing lifestyle.
Delicious
Do you ever find a cool article or resource online and wish you had an easy way to save it? Is your browser bookmarks bar overloaded and hard to organise? If so, then Delicious may be for you. That is, if you’re not one of the 10 million + people using it already.
Owned by Yahoo, the site allows me to quickly save webpages I find and organise them using tags. I mostly use it for great blog posts I find so I can link to them later from ViperChill, but save quite a few other things there as well.
There are a number of alternatives, but Delicious was the first really big bookmarking site and the one I like the best.
Teux Deux
Another tool I mentioned in a post recently, Teux Deux, was introduced to me by Seth Godin. It is a very minimalist to-do-list tool that helps me keep my life in order. The home screen is literally just the days of the week, with a column for your task items that day.
Again, this is very basic so if you’re looking for something with a lot of features, this won’t be for you. The simplistic nature of this tool is why I like it so much.
Google Apps
Google disappoint me in a number of ways (like allowing Mahalo to rank with all of their crappy, computer generated pages because it makes them more money via Adsense) but I can’t deny their services make my life much, much easier.
Google Apps means that you can control a ‘company’ online and use various Google services under that brand. For example, I use Gmail for my email, but I login with an @viperchill.com address and have even replaced the Gmail logo with my own.
I can also add new users, and then share documents with them via Google Docs, or create a custom start-page that everyone can see. There are a number of other tools in there so you may find more that are relevant to your needs.
iDisk
This wont apply to most people, so I’ll keep things short. iDisk is a service from Me.com (owned by Apple) which makes it very easy for me to backup my important files online. I run a Mac application called Automater which automatically copies files from a certain folder onto my iDisk at 1pm everyday.
If you use Windows or just don’t want to use iDisk, then iDrive is a tool I would recommend. You can never have too many backups.
Google Reader
Google Reader is the most popular, free, online feed reader available and after trying a number of alternatives, is my clear favourite. Google reader basically allows you to subscribe to all of your favourite blogs in one place and see when they update their content without having to repeatedly return to their sites.
Around two years ago I had over 350 feeds in there as I was a total information junkie. Now there are less than 20 sites that I subscribe to, but it still makes finding new updates a lot easier. I know a number of people like to subscribe to blogs via email, but I find that just clutters up my inbox.
Rather than having to delete an email, simply scrolling past a new post in Google Reader will mark it as read.
Firefox
Although I’m considering a move to Google Chrome now that it is out of beta for Mac, Firefox is still my browser of choice. I have a very nice environment in place, and apart from the occasional time when I can’t seem to close tabs, I don’t have any problems with it.
I use a number of extensions for the browser which save me a lot of time, so I’m going to go through the list now.
Alexa Sparky
Alexa is an Amazon-owned service which gives you a guesstimation of how much traffic a website gets. You’ll find that the figures in the internet marketing niche are lower (lower means the site is getting more traffic) because it is mostly webmasters who have their toolbar installed.
In the status bar of my browser I can quickly see how popular a website is based on the graph and figures shown. I don’t rely on it for anything serious as it is not accurate, but you can clearly see whether a site gets a small amount of traffic or whether it’s popular.
ShowIP
I had to move a number of websites to a new server recently and anyone who has done this before knows it can be a real pain. When waiting for some domains to propagate, I couldn’t tell if they were on my old server or the new one.
To find out, I installed this extension which clearly shows the I.P. address for the server of the website that you are on. That way I knew when my sites had moved. You can also use this to check multiple sites that you think might be owned by the same people if you’re into spying on your competitors.
ColorZilla
I do little bits of graphic work now and then, besides images in blog posts, and Colorzilla saves me a lot of time. It’s simply a colour picker tool which allows you to click anywhere on a webpage and work out the Hexadecimal value for that colour.
Once I have this, I can then copy that into Photoshop and have colours match up perfectly. This just saves me from taking a screenshot and importing that into Photoshop in order to work out colour values.
I probably save about 30 seconds each time, but when you’re doing this multiple times per week, it quickly adds up.
Search Status
One of my favourite extensions, Search Status, was actually created here in Cape Town. At a party I actually met the guy who put it together. This tool enables you to do a lot of things, very quickly, such as:
- Finding out which links on a page are no-follow
- Instantly see the Google pagerank of any page you are on
- Seeing the age of a site
- Checking a page / sites backlinks in Google or Yahoo
- Checking a page / sites indexed pages in Google or Yahoo
If you’re buying sites, implementing SEO or testing markets, then this is a must have.
Informenter
A tool that I have mentioned here a few times is Informenter. When activated, it adds a little blue box to any form fields that you see online. In the settings panel you can configure which values you would like to appear when you click on that blue box.
For example, if I want to leave a lot of blog comments, it’s going to be a hassle to constantly type in my name, email, and URL. Instead, I can make 6 clicks of my mouse and have the 3 fields filled in.
On a similar note, if you buy a lot of things online, you could set it up to have quick access to your name, address, telephone number and that kind of thing.
Quix App
One of the biggest distractions for me online was my own browser bookmarks bar. I would constantly find myself clicking off to other websites, even when I didn’t need to and they weren’t relevant to what I was working on.
Created by Joost De Valk, Quix allows me to turn off my bookmarks bar and simply press CMD+1 (CTRL + 1 in Windows) and then type in a shortcut to access any website that I wish. It also has a lot of neat search features as well so to search Youtube I could just type yt search phrase and that would take me to Youtube with the search results displayed.
This is very easy to customise and because it runs off a text file on your server, you can have all of your favourite links on any computer, anywhere in the world.
Knowledge is Power
Besides around 20 blogs in my feed reader, I also follow a couple of sites both to attain new knowledge in this space and to hire cheap staff for services that I may need. There are only three main resources that I use, and here they are:
- Sphinn – If you’re familiar with Digg, then think of Sphinn as Digg for internet marketers. This is a community site where the content with the most votes gets pushed to the homepage. In an industry where there is a lot of awful content out there, it’s nice to have a place that highlights the really good stuff.
- Blackhat World – I’m sure revealing this will probably get me some negative feedback, but hey, I’m all about being honest. I don’t make money by manipulating websites, but know how to manipulate most of them. 15,000 views on Youtube in one day? No problem. 12,000 uniques from Twitter overnight with a brand new account? That’s my record. There was even a time where every post on the Technorati homepage linked to one of my own websites. Again, I don’t make money via this (and don’t recommend you do either) and just like testing the systems, but Blackhat World is a community of people really pushing the limits, which can give you a lot of insights about what is possible online.
- Digitalpoint – There are a lot of sites where you can hire freelancers online, but I prefer to just use the digitalpoint webmaster forums. You can pick up great logos for as little as $20, find talented copywriters for as little as $4 per article and stumble upon programmers cheaper than the price of a restaurant meal. I like to run contests for a number of different things (logos, website names, site designs) and then simply choose – and pay for – my favourite entry.
As a side-note, at the start of the year I wrote about how I use Netvibes for pretty much everything. I had a number of problems with the service – such as feeds constantly un-marking themselves as read – and my 5 emails to the Netvibes team may as well have gone ignored as I just received generic replies. If it works for you, then that’s great, but I’m happy with how I operate now.
I’m sure all of you knew about some of the items here, but I hope you all found something you can add to your own internet marketing toolbox.
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Hey Glen!
As usual, a totally cool and helpful post. I already use a lot of the things you mentioned, but there are still a few new ones that I am going to try out that seem like they could save time and make life easier.
Thanks man,
Just don’t tell anyone you got to read this a day early 😉
Damn good list man! I came across Matt’s story a few weeks ago, and I was very surprised to learn his story. I’m also glad that you don’t make money by teaching other people how to make money. Cheers
How did you find out about him, out of curiosity?
Cheers Oscar.
From a newsletter from Yaro I think. Matt was offering a free course.
Ah, so he is “making the rounds”.
Interesting, thanks.
Hi Glen,
As usual, very good post – Didn’t know about some of these tools.
Thanks,
Hakan
You’re welcome Hasan!
Hey Glen,
once more great job. Great story about Matt. Looks like a pretty awesome guy. Keep up the good work!
Cheers,
Sascha
Thanks Sascha,
I found it inspiring!
Wow,
What a long, helpful list. I kind of feel overwhelmed now, that’s Monday mornings for you. I think I read about Matt a few weeks ago, his story is inspiring.
Hey Moon,
Glad you found some value in the post.
I’ve used Google Keyword Tool and have Google Analytics. Like you, I find it a bit frustrating when I can’t see today’s traffic. Feedjit is very good for looking at what traffic you’re getting today (right now). Even though (like you already mentioned with the Alexa ranking system) it’s not that accurate, it gives you a general idea of how your post today is going because it’s always live.
I thought you would’ve mentioned Google Webmaster Tools. I signed up recently. It was very easy to place on my blog and I find it very helpful indeed. It does some of the work the Google Keyword Tool does, but obviously not in the same way.
Helpful post as always. You’ve got my tweet.
Hey Anne,
Always great to see you here (if I don’t tell you that enough)
Great tip, I can’t believe I missed that one, I use it a lot. I knew there would be things that I forget. Thanks for the heads up.
Nice. There is a treasure trove of information here. I’ll be sure to bookmark it and really dive into everything when I get a chance. Thank you for sharing!
Here are a couple of apps that I use:
Mint.com – Track all of my bank accounts and auto-categorize my spending
Dailyburn.com – Track your meals and exercise routines easily. Pretty cool.
e.ggtimer.com – Great way to keep a timer on your different tasks.
Thanks Colby,
I’ve been looking for a Mint.com UK alternative for a while but never really found anything as useful.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Great post Glen!
Got a few golden nuggets out of this post which I will be implementing.
Btw, If you’re switching to Chrome you might want to look up this SEO plugin:
http://blog.cartercole.com/2010/02/seo-site-tools-chrome-seo-extension.html
Try it out if you ever consider switching and tell me what you think
/Jonas
Hey Jonas,
Thanks!
I did use Chrome beta for a while but some things really bugged me. There are a few extensions I’ve mentioned in this post that don’t work for Chrome, and I find it hard to live without them. Once they’re ported, I’m sure I’ll make the switch.
Great post Glen…even though you let Diggy read it early. 😉 WriteRoom is exactly what I needed (even though I didn’t know it), so this came at a perfect time.
Haha. Diggy was sitting next to me on Sunday so I asked him to check out the article in-case there were any mistakes. It’s always nice to have someone else give a fresh view on your posts.
Glad you found something new that can help you
Wow, what a list! I’m bookmarking it for a more thorough review after this month, when I’ll be leaving my job and going 100% freelance (the countdown is ON). WriteRoom in particular looks interesting, especially for people like me, who click on one link and end up 30 sites away 15 minutes later.
That’s awesome Liz, congrats!
Haha, I can relate to that. That’s why I like it so much
very useful insights mate, thank you for sharing these!!
Informenter is cool – just used it now 😉
EverNote is also great as a possible richer replacement to delicious (can clip LOADS of stuff including raw text, websites, PDF and pictures (with OCR recognition). You might also wantto look at AutoHotKey (if you like Quix) as it is much more powerful (but needs you to do some scripting for config) I use it for all my repetitive blogging tasks (along with Textpad which also have a Full screen interface liek WriteRoom – but without the “aggressive black/green colours..)
Cheers for that list
Jez
Thanks Jez,
I’m pretty sure a study found that green on black is very easy on your eyes. Black on white is quite a sharp contrast.
Dude! Loving the whole “not making money from teaching people how to make money” aspect.
I see you use a lot of the same apps I use. But I think I can add to the list:
WOOPRA- much, much better alternative to Get Clicky. it has a desktop application too. Google it, and check it out.
MARKET SAMURAI- Keyword Tool. Can’t believe this wasn’t mentioned.
I’ve used Woopra.
Not once has their “chat to visitor” feature ever worked.
As for Market Samurai, I have used it, but I don’t. I prefer keeping most competition checks manual for now.
Great article as always. I recommend you try Hootsuite – I found it cleaner and more responsive than Tweetdeck.
I would suggest give Clicktale a try. I’ve been using it for 2 months and it is neat to watch what your users do, I learned a lot.
Thanks for the list as usual it’s very complete.I’ll have to give some of them a try
Holy Crap this is some awesome stuff Glen! Thanks for so much meat!
Marcus,
Awesome to see you here again!
Thanks man, you’re very welcome.
Hi Glen – Yep, that’s an update we’ve been discussing.
For clarification, are you looking for the sorting functionality on the Analyze page, in the Daily Engagement Reports, both, or somewhere else?
Hi Melanie,
I always respect companies who take the time to engage. I’m referring to the analyze page.
[…] 28 Resources from My Internet Marketing Toolbox, ViperChill […]
Hi Glen – I found your list v informative and I have enjoyed all I’ve read from you in past – You seem to have a really good ethic re honesty, not ripping people off etc. I was really disappointed to see you advocate running and/or using design competitions to get work for cheap “and then simply choose – and pay for – my favourite entry.” There has been a lot said about ‘spec’ work and the plagiarism it encourages. An article I read today has some very good points on the subject – http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/index.php/copied-work-entered-into-99designs-logo-design-contest-again/ I hope you get the chance to read it – And the comments of Steve Douglas of The Logo Factory, in particular. He mentions that design agencies or even freelancers would be liable if they provided a logo that was a copy. If you run a competition – who is liable if the logo you choose is a violation of copyright? I would be interested in your take on this as a consumer. There is or should be, an awful lot of work go into a logo design. You mentioned being able to get a logo for $20 and copy for $4 an article. Wow – how short is the article? Is this work coming from people in countires with a low cost of living as opposed to most developed nations where $20 wouldn’t buy you very much at all.
Yes, the work is coming from people in countries that are a lot cheaper to live in.
I’ve helped many people get more work when their friends are losing jobs in “proper industries” because of their economy. If you don’t like the practice, simply don’t do it. Remember, these people are given a price first that I am willing to pay. The only enter if they want to win.
Hi Glen — just downloaded and loving the writeroom. Noticed the uber geeky program in one of your previous posts, but decided to give it a shot now — very cool. I like to use posterous as a semi-public book-marking tool, as it allows me to pull excerpts and write notes directly from the pages i’m on online (with the bookmarklet from my menu bar), and i can refer to them later for blog posts, with notes to refresh my memory… plus it can be set to auto-outpost to other social networks, including delicious.
– i’ve been subscribing to a handful of key blogs by email for a while, since my feed reader got completely out of hand, but i’m considering going back to expand my regular reading list again. I’d love to see a list of the blogs you subscribe to — i think that’d be a worthy contribution in the spirit of this site, and would certainly help me!
– May also spark some debate, as i’m sure plenty of people would take notice. Anyway, just a thought….
– Cheers!
Hey Satya,
It sounds like you have a cool set-up with Posterous.
As for my favourite blogs, I did write about them a while ago (although the list has changed a little) > http://www.pluginid.com/my-favourite-blogs/
Great list of resources! I immediately downloaded Get Clicky and I must admit that I’m a fan already. Real-time tracking is something I need in my line of work, and is exactly why I was hesitant to even start using Google Analytics which always served my stats too little, too late in the past.
Why am I always so late to the party?
Hahahaha!
Guess I’ll have to up my commenting game. LOL
Dig the post dude. Interesting stuff! I’m defintely
gonna check out Wordtracker free, Google Trends,
Alexa Sparky, search status (although I think Seobook
toolbar does this) and Informenter.
Did you give Cyberduck a try? I use that to FTP on Mac.
Although it might be too basic for you. Works for me.
Mint.com!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When that is available in South Africa
or Thailand I’m all over it. That is the webs best app right
now no doubt.
PS: My competitors are playing hardball dude!!! LOL
These guts are nuking 100’s of links at a time to to kick
me back down. And here I am competing manually. Gahd!
I may have to start over. This shit’s intense.
As I said great post and keep ’em coming. Woohoo!
Haha
This is link building! (Said in a Sparta voice)
Seriously though, it’s not a war. Just make a better site than those guys
Thanks bro!
Great stuff, Glen. I had similar problems with Netvibes, and have gone back to Google Reader for my feeds. There are several items here I have not checked out yet, and plan to do so in the coming weeks.
Interesting to see I’m not alone.
A shame that a heavily invested company would not fix one of their most important features.
Nice post Glen,
I installed as well the ColorPicker as the DarkRoom feature… it all works great!
Does it cost you $50 a year to use Google Apps?
Nope. If you look closely you’ll find a link to their ‘standard’ version (which is free).
They’ve tried to hide it well.
Thanks again, I’m installing Informenter and Alexasparky. Notice that my details pop up automatically on your site so I don’t have to enter them again because I’m a repeat offended. I mean commenter…
Netvibes still ok for my crude purpoose but to do list looking a bit long:)
Glen,
You can check the stats for today on Analytics. Just click the dates, select today and today. I was annoyed at first when I thought you couldn’t, but I started snooping around. Hope this helps. Love your site.
Hi Chris,
Yep, I use that sometimes, but it’s still not real-time, there are a few hours delayed in reporting.
Thanks for the suggestion though, and comments!
Great lists. I already am using many of the things here but there are a few cool ones that are new to me so I’ll be checking them out.
hey, thanks for the link! I love the personal development/business crossover. Recently have enjoyed Danielle LaPorte’s white hot truth, and Seth’s blog is often surprisingly interesting — he seems to be moving more into the esoteric realms of marketing these days with the Linchpin thing…. any other suggestions or personal faves would be welcome — cheers
I wonder if you ever tried emacs , It’s a nifty editor with various complex keyboars shortcuts to work with. But once you are comfortable with it, There’s no editor to match it.
wooow! thanks for this huge and useful list
Hi Glen,
I love some of the applications listed here. Particularly the informenter plugin. It works wonder and take off the repetitive work when commenting. Great list!
Cheers,
Vincent
nice tools thanks for the value btw what tools/hires do u use to respond to so many comments bc i bet you get a BUNCH of comments. Nano blogging?
Great list! It is really helping me a lot. I am using these kind of from last year but these one is amazing.
Good breakdown – I like it.
You mentioned FTP tools for OSX, I have been OSX only for a couple of years now. For grapchical (i.e. not using the terminal windows) FTP stuff I use Cyberduck. It’s nice to drive a very flexible.
FWIW. This is a non paid endorsement.
Have you tried Transmit for FTP on the Mac? I’ve tried tons of programs too, including Filezilla and Cyberduck, but Transmit is the only one I’ve used that doesn’t crash on me when I’m uploading more than 50+ files.
For backup on my Mac I use Backblaze. It runs in the background all day and backs up your files as you add or update them and It’s only $5 a month.
I’m also on Blackhat World and think keeping up with everything in our industry is essential to being a successful internet marketer even if it is “unethical.” I don’t practice blackhat, but I’m knowledgeable about it. Blackhats are a very clever group of people you can learn a lot from.
Very nice post!
First reading of the day… probably the best of the day 😀
Heh, awesome!
Hi Dude,
Nice tools list at one place. Few of them are new so I’ll be checking them out.
Nice post!
Thank you for your job!
I would disagree with you on DigitalPoint. It’s the place with tons of indian traffic. Yes, the prices are quite low, but how can an indian write a good article for you if he’s not a native English speaker?
What do you think of the ViperChill logo? I purchased that on Digitalpoint.
I have found lots of good writers there. They don’t necessarily have to be Indian.
This is such a great post Glen!
I had to come back to it today because I couldn’t remember the link to teux deux. Such a sexy way to plan things out.
You prefer google reader over netvibes? I was a little confused there due to the older netvibes post.
Hey Scott,
Yeah, I spoke about that at the end of the post:
I hope that clears things up
Great list – thank you.
I usually use elance to outsource my work but i will give digitalpoint a try now.
Thank you!
[…] software I use to write, is Writeroom. I’ve covered it recently in this post and this one, so I’m not going to go into too much detail here. In one sentence, Writeroom is […]
Cool – I always love reading these lists – especially when you end up finding something new.
I’ve got to ask where you got the “little white men” graphics for your site?
Cheers
Hey Simon,
Thanks. I use istockphoto.com
Hi Glen,
One remarkable event in my life – finding your website, and experiencing your honest spirit. Your knowledge is a revelation in my state of developing my website. Although it is quite demotivating seeing your success in comparison to the piddly figures of my 18 months old website. However, there is a growth and your rich suggestions I can follow now. (Have built my site with Site Sells SBI)
Another important point: On my website I suggest visitors to think of meta time management. That means by choosing the right tools to reach a specific outcome you can save a tremendous lot of time. I will link to this page so my visitors may enjoy the same and save time by following your suggestions.
Many thanks!
Ronald
Very useful article! I’m currently trying out the informenter, I love it!
Sweet list of resources. I am going to check out Get Clicky
lots of great tools and resources.am going to do a lot of checking out,..thanks
Thanks Glen for you article. I’m maybe using 6 or 7 of the ressources you’re talking about, I’m going to test tweetdeck.
You said at the last of your article that you have some problems with netvibes, It’s the same thing for me the rss reader is not powerful. And the to-do widget also.
At the begining of the artcile you’ve talked about Matt Wadsworth. Actually I’ve heard of him in an interview by michael dunlop from incomediary. If you want to listen to it this is the link http://www.incomediary.com/matt-wadsworth-interview-blind-internet-marketer-doing-7-figures/
Thanks again for the great list !
Anass Farah
I was always told to avoid Digital Point while working at my last place. I was told it was full of con/spam artists that would bring your site down…. hmmm 😛
Brill cheers! Just launched my new site so will put a lot of this to use. T
I read this and wrote down the things I could and might use. I couldn’t use google analytics because wordpress says no to that. But a lot of great stuff glenn. I linked over to you on my lifestyle blog in a post about SEO. Really enjoy your stuff, I feel like I’m getting closer to an audience every time I read your blog.
Hey Glen
Nice to hear someone else is here in the Western Cape… 😉
damn dude ur a bad ass
This is very informative and so useful for internet marketing or seo. I used google analytic to know how many traffics in my site. Thank you for sharing this post, Keep it up.
Wow, what an awesome blog, Glen… well done!
Thanks for the list of tools… I’m using some of them already, but some of the others sound really interesting…. green on black sounds particularly useful and HAS to be easier on the eyes…definitely one to try.
Keep posting, Dude
Karen
Don’t know if this was mentioned at all in previous comments, but Google Analytics only doesn’t show the current date by default; if I choose the current day from the dropdown it’s accurate to within about an hour for me…unless I’m doing it wrong.
Thanks for the comprehensive list. I’ve just installed show IP, and this is handy :)There are a lot of others tools you mentioned in your post which I never hear before. I’ll start to test them out.
Sick resources here! Thank you so much.