Online Business Tools of the Trade and Resources

I’m often asked to provide the resources I use in my daily online business.  Here’s a list of the tools I use on a regular basis.  Using these basic tools, I have actually reached over a million visits per year on my combined websites.  Where possible I’ve included many free alternatives:

Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links that provide me with a commission.  However, the tools listed below are tools that I actually use in my daily business, and I refuse to promote or recommend anything that I don’t know well and use regularly.

My Getting Started Video

• Starting an Online Business - My five part video series including detailed steps for creating a successful online business based on your passions.  This is an outstanding overview that provides a framework for getting started and moving from an idea to real action.  I’ve made this video very affordable now – if you sign up for a web hosting account starting at a few dollars a month (for your new business web site), you can get the video for free.

Web Hosting:

• Westhost Web Hosting – I’ve been with them since 2002, and don’t intend to move!  They provide outstanding service, a wide variety of plans and starter plans for $5-15/month.  They also have dedicated servers and virtual cloud hosting if your site really takes off.  If you need a web host, use this page to sign up and I will throw in my video on starting an online business for free.

Blogging/Site Software and Themes

• WordPress – Used by over 26 million bloggers, WordPress sets the standard (and is free!).  You can download thousands of themes to change its look and add new plugins to enhance functionality.
• The Thesis Theme for WordPress – I’ve converted to using the Thesis theme for my site – it is easy to maintain and offers great customization options.  It also does a great job with search engine optimization and loads fast.  Thesis is actually more than a theme – its essentially a framework for customizing your site.

Email List Management

• GetResponse – I manage a list of well over 2500 subscribers for my businesses here.  Email lists are critical to building a relationship with your customers which is the foundation for your business.  GetResponse helps me automate my subscription list, my newsletters and even some of my subscription products.

Keyword and Domain Research

• Market Samurai - Absolutely the best professional tool for researching keywords, estimating competition, and promoting my web sites.  I use this tool every day, and so do the other professional internet business people I know.  Highly recommended and worth the money!
• Google Free Keyword Tool - The free keyword tool by google provides only the first 100 results for a keyword.  However you can get 800 results if you sign up for a google adwords account.

Publishing Books – On Demand and E-Books

• CreateSpace - The on-demand publishing arm of Amazon.  Createspace offers distribution through the Amazon store, and can syndicate your book for worldwide distribution to bookstores, libraries, etc for a fee of $39.  I talked about my positive experience publishing through CreateSpace in episode 4 of the Online Business Zen podcast.
• Amazon DTP for Kindle – The digital text platform of Amazon is your portal to offering your ebook on the Amazon Kindle Reader.  Publishing to the kindle is not difficult at all if you have a completed book.  You can use the mobipocket tool below to convert your files for kindle use.
• Mobipocket Reader – A free tool from mobipocket that you can use to convert your Microsoft Word formatted book into Kindle and other e-reader formats.  Just drop your word file into the reader, then go to the “My ebooks” directory under your Documents directory in windows to find the PRC format file of your book you can upload to Amazon DTP.

Getting Paid

• E-Junkie – E-Junkie is an amazingly flexible service for automating your payment processing and delivering electronic products to customers.  You tie it to your paypal account and then can set up automatic emails that go to people when they order so they can download your products or get a registration password/key to your site.  It also allows affiliates to sell your products and you can set up discount codes for special customers/offers.
• Paypal - A good place to start – paypal lets you accept payments online and transfer your earnings to your bank account.  I don’t use paypal carts anymore, instead I use e-junkie to automate my payment processing, and it links back to my paypal account to deposit sales.

Tracking Progress

• Google Anaytics – Offers incredibly detailed statistics on your visitors (also its free!), how they are finding you, pageviews, page popularity and much more.  Requires that a code be put in each of your pages.  I use the “Ultimate Google Analytics” plugin in WordPress to add the tracking code to my site in one step.

Social Media

• TweetDeck – A great free tool for monitoring multiple Twitter accounts, including mentions, direct messages, searches, and friends.  This tool is fantastic for “making sense” out of the rapidly moving twitter stream – a must if you want to get the most from twitter.

Graphics Design/Logos

• 99 Designs – Post a job here for graphics work, and you will get a set of designs to choose from!  Only pay for the final design you actually choose.  This is great, especially if you don’t know exactly what you are looking for as you will have many options to choose from.

Screen Recording/Videos

• Camtasia Studio Version 7- This is the software I use for all of my on-screen recording including software tutorials, powerpoint and chalk-talks.  It is the best program for the PC as it allows for high quality recording as well as panning/zooming.  Mac users can also consider Screenflow.
• Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet- This is the pen tablet I use for doing chalk talks.  I simply load up a drawing program like Corel Photoshop or even Paint, then draw on the screen while recording in Camtasia.

Podcasting and Sound Editing

• Heil PR40- An amazing professional microphone that really cuts out the background noise much better than a condenser microphone.  It does require a mixer.
• Mackie Onyx 1620i FireWire Recording Mixer- A 16 channel mixer is really overkill, but I needed the extra channels to host skype chats for another podcast I run.  The firewire feature here is outstanding as it lets me record myself, my computer and each guest on separate tracks  directly to the computer for editing later.  If you want a less expensive firewire version you might want to consider the Mackie Onyx 1220i FireWire Recording Mixer or if you are on a budget you can get the non-firewire Behringer Xenyx 802 Mixer but you will need some way to record the output.
• Reaper - The program I use for sound editing.  I can also recommend Audacity if you are looking for a free option, or Adobe Audition 3 if you want to go with what the professionals use.
• Studio – Here’s a bit about my studio and how I build a machine to host multiple skype guests simultaneously with video for this business and some others I run.
• Libsyn – The company I use to host my podcast audio files.  The advantage of using Libsyn is that you only pay for uploaded file size – they handle the downloads even if your podcast becomes very popular and takes a lot of bandwidth.