Here’s my favorite resources and tools used in Internet Marketing. I broke this down to the following categories:
Tools for research tools
Tools to engaging customer
Tools to marketing
Tools to graphic editing
Tools to infographic design
Tools to video marketing
Tools to podcasting
Tools to messenger (chatbot) marketing
Provider which build Funnels (usually all-in-one)
Hosting provider for your websites (not all-in-one)
Hosting for your training courses (typically including videos, downloads)
Hosting provider for webinar
Email Service Provider
Marketplace to sell your digital products
Marketplace to find affiliate products
Provider/Tools to build websites
Domain registrar
Open Source Helpdesk Ticketing System
Tools for productivity hacks
Tools to check your website performance
Tools to check your website security
Outsourcing
Recommended Direct Mail providers
Tools to secure your WordPress site
Tools for Quiz Setup
Recommended WordPress plugins to get started
Tools for Pinging Your Blog to index it fast
.
Tools for research tools
Similar Web is a great research tool for similar or competitor websites. It provide information such as where the visitors are coming from, the competitors, the social presences and much more. Coupled with Google Keyword Planner, you can find out the market size, competitors and keywords to use.
Quantcast is a web site that is based on viewing the statistics of other Web sites. Quantcast Corporations prime focus is to analyze the Internets Web sites in order to obtain accurate usage statistics by surfers from the USA. Like Alexa (which retires on 1 May 2022), Quantcast rates web pages by ranks.
Website Informer is a special service for web masters that gathers detailed information on websites – general information, statistics, main competitors, similar sites, IPs etc
BuzzSumo is a research and monitoring tool. The functionality is broken down into 4 areas; namely (1) Find content that is most shared on social media channels, (2) Find influencers related to particular topics, (3) Get alerts based on keywords, brand name, links, author name or domain and (4) Track competitors and do an analysis based on their content.
BrandBucket is a great paid website for you to research and identify the creative business names for your business. You can also check out the logos and domain names available.
Keywords Money Robot is the advanced version of the MR Keyword tool. This reveals money making long-tail keywords that you can use for blog, articles and videos.
AdBeat is great research tool when you can see the ads that your competitors are using. This is so that you are see how to improve for your own ads.
Keywordtool.io gives you the list of longtail keywords that people are actually typing in and searching for in Google and other search engines.
Google Keyword Planner (free) You can use this free tool to discover new keywords related to your business and see estimates of the searches they receive and the cost to target them.
Ahrefs Keyword Generator is one of the free tools offered by Ahrefs, which is a popular paid service. Enter any target keyword or phrase, and it will pull the top 100 keyword ideas from its database of over 8 billion keywords from more than 170 countries.
SEMRush has 50+ tools on SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC and social media marketing to help you attract and grow your audience online faster.
Answer The Public listens into autocomplete data from search engines like Google then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question people are asking around your keyword. It’s a goldmine of consumer insight you can use to create fresh, ultra-useful content, products and services. The kind your customers really want.
WuFoo is a cloud-based formbuilder tha makes it easy to crate registration forms, application forms, surveys, contact forms, payment forms and more.
SparkToro finds the websites your customers visit, social accounts they follow, hashtags they use, and more — so you can do marketing that works. It has a free option for up to 10 searches per month.
Google Trend give info on what the world is searching and what is trending. Can research on upcoming trends.
Ubersuggest gives a great summary of domain overview, analyse top SEO pages, keyword suggestions, content ideas, backlink data.
VidTao research & “spy” on competitor YouTube ads
Keyword Search is a great YouTube keywords research tool
Httpster will showcase the trending websites for the month. It gives an idea of what’s trending which can be used for my social media post and to create for my next project.
Warrior Forum is my go-to forum when I first started. This is where I look at what my potential clients wants or needs.
Tools to engaging customer
ManyChat automate two-way, interactive conversations in Instagram Direct Messages, Facebook Messenger, and SMS to grow your brand.
PushCrew engage your visitors and customers via browser notification list.
Voxer is a great voice communication tool for remote teams and your client. There is a free and paid version.
Tools to marketing
Title & Headline Generator is free online tool which is effective to get tons of headlines and title ideas. But you will encounter a few titles not relevant to your keyword you can skip them and generate more ideas.
HARO (Help a Reporter Out) links reporters/bloggers with sources. Many major news organizations use it to solicit input on highly targeted topics. You can join HARO as a source, a reporter, or a sponsor. Once a query you make to HARO is accepted, it goes out to a large list of subscribers who’ve opted into the subject matter concerned. Using HARO to distill expert opinion on virtually any business related topic under the sun is a great way to move your content marketing to a higher level. If draft a great list of questions, and are able to reach a great group of people, the result can be a news-worthy, link-worthy article. If you can go the extra mile and systematically reach out to each of your respondents, your articles might just go viral, resulting in superior performance for you – or your client. Click here to see how this can help in your content marketing.
Buffer offers complete social media management solution covering publishing, analytics and engagement tools for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. You can try it out using the free option. You can check out the demo here.
Hootsuite is another social media management solution from a single dashboard. This has a free option to try out as well.
Planoly can assist in planning and scheduling your content for Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. It also analyze business profile data.
Be.Live makes multi live streaming easy with custom branding and smart comment assistant. It is cloud-based and you can run engaging and professional live streams directly in your browser to Facebook, Youtube, Linkedin, and 20+ more platforms via RTMP. You can try out the free option of 3 shows per month (with limited features).
LiveReacting help to stream pre-recorded as Facebook Live. This is great for those who wants to schedule and plan out presentation in advance. You can try out the free option.
OneStream.Live is another online tool that can help schedule recorded video streams to 40+ social media platforms. You can also try the free option.
StreamYard can help to do multistreaming to multiple platforms (eg. Linkedin, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Twitch etc). There is also a free options to try this service.
ROAS is a free online tool that tracks your ad spent on Facebook and Instagram. Really great tool to use.
Brand Featured is a paid services that get your website to have the “As Seen On NBC, FOX, CBS” & 100+ Sites rights. This will build up your authority status.
Tools to graphic editing
PicMonkey provide stunning templates for logs, banners, thumbnails and more for Facbook, Instagram, Youtube and more.
Make A GIF is a very useful online tool to convert YouTube video, Pictures, Facebook post, video, webcam to animated GIF. This can be used in your blog or email to drive up conversion and engagement.
WIX Logo Maker has a great online logo maker for your business based on the keywords that you entered
Tailor Brands helps to create your brand creatives such as logo. It has templates.
Socialsize make it easy to get image and video sizes for the biggest social media networks (Eg. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube etc) in the world without having to check through each of them separately. Using this together with Kamua makes it even more powerful.
Tools to infographic design
Infographics present data in a visually pleasing manner for engaging with your reader and helping in your sales messages. Below are the best tools which you can use to create your own infographics.
- Crello Infographic Maker is a perfect tool for infographic creation. It offers a massive library of professional templates and numerous editing tools. You can can design infographics of different types, including interactive ones.
.- Piktochart has one of the best tools to create interactive charts and maps. You can use animated charts using icons, text frames, themes and your own photos and videos.
.- Visme‘s infographic tools section lets you create interactive infographics using charts, widgets, shapes and icones.
.- infogram makes it easy to upload your data using different methods, including the ability to connect to a live data source. You can use over 35 chart templates to create stunning infographics.
.- Venngage can find hundreds of free and paid infographic templates.
.- Cacoo is a comprehensive diagram tool that allows you to create interactive flowcharts, UML diagrams, network diagrams and wireframes.
.- Kartograph is a great free tool to create illustrative and interactive maps.
.- Kinzaa has a handy wizard to help you create infographic resumes and interactive landing pages for websites.
.- Adioma is a smart infographics tool that automatically creates interactive infographics based on data provided.
.- Graphs.net is where artists upload their own infographics to let others use them for free.
.- Google Data Studio offers this handy data visualization tool to create engaging dashboards and reports using charts and graphs. It also offers users to extract data from other Google services such as Google AdSense.
.- Easel.ly has almost a million free stock images and infographic templates to help you create infographics for free.
.- Edraw is an infographic application for Windows and Mac that lets you create cool charts and maps.
.- Mind the Graph offers scientific illustration tools for classes and projects including science related images, graphs and charts.
.- Creately is a diagram creation tool that has handy features to quickly create over 50 different types of diagrams.
.- Icograms is still in its beta stage, but it has some really advanced infographics creation tools. You can create diagrams, maps and charts using built-in templates, icons or your own images.
.- Icon Archive plays an important role in the creation of an infographic and this site has one of the biggest archives of icons. You can find both free and paid icons here.
.- Medialoot offers plethora of tools for designers that you can either download separately or access all with the monthly subscription.
.- TimelineJS is open-source and easy-to-use tool. It enables you to create interactive and aesthetically powerful timelines by using Google spreadsheet only.
.- Peecheey has a number of vector arts catering to different industries available for free download.
Tools to video marketing
Below are great alternatives to ContentSamurai which I love to use until when GoDaddy bought over and decide to stop it (quite a shame).
EasyVsl software that allows you to create hi converting videos in seconds and has text to speech technology.
Pictory has a free 7 days trial.
Veed.IO has a free plan that allows you to create videos up to 10 minutes in length. Click on the “Screen Recorder” at the lower panel to start the recording and editing. No signin required.
Invideo has a free plan and is the closest to the features to ContentSamurai that I can find on the market. You can use AI to add in voice or use your own voice as well. See this video on how to use this. There is a second video on this as well. This video show how to turn articles into video using this tool.
AIVo is another AI driven workflow that converts text to video using clips, images and music from Pixabay and Unsplash. It also has AI voiceover. It has a free plan.
Wellsaid uses AI and natural voices to create voiceover for all your digital content. You can use this for your podcast or video. It has a 1 week free trial.
Youtube Audio Library is great free audio library where you can find background music and sound effects for your video.
Kamua is a great tool that helped to resize/crop existing video to fit for different social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram.
StoryBlocks offers access to over a million royalty-free footage, template, music, and photo assets as well as an easy-to-use video editor and unlimited downloads. Try out their video editior and maker. You can see this video on how to start a YouTube channel using this tool and its library.
Loom allows to record video onto screen with a bubble view of yourself in the video. The free option allows a recording of up to 5 minutes. Great for short youtube style short presentations.
Lumen5 easily make videos for content marketing, thought leadership, and brand awareness in a snap. It has a free community plan.
Microsoft Powerpoint in O365 has a not widely known video recording, editing and cameo functions. You can check out the video here on this.
YIVE (previous Videofire.io) provide live streams of automation software that gives you a massive age in distributing your video content.
Kickasstuber.com give you a little more control over your YouTube thumbnail design and YouTube channel graphics.
Rev.com is service that will help you transcript your video or calls. There is an automated and manual version.
Transcripty is another reliable service that will help to transcript interviews, podcasts, lectures and more! Thereafter can use Fiverr to edit it to make it as conversational and easy to read as possible.
Temi.com is another service that will help you transcript your video or calls either automated or manual voice.
Simon Says is an AI service that do transcription, text-based video editing.
The following Chrome extensions helps in YouTube Keyword and Traffic Generating Tools::
– VidIQ
– VidSpy Alpha
– Keyword Anywhere
Artgrid has unlimited high quality stock video footage that you can use in your presentation or product.
Humatars help by providing REAL humans and REAL Voices using a new technology to create stunning videos.
Synthesia is another online tool that use AI to simulate a REAL human and REAL voice to create stunning videos.
Capcut is a free all-in-one video editor
YouTube Studio (classic version only) is another free video editor
Tools to podcasting
Libsyn provide hosting service for your podcast
Audiogram turns your podcast (audio) into engaging social video using its library of visually striking, attention grabbing templates at your finger tips, so you can create studio quality video without a designer. It also does automatic transcription. You can try out the free trial (up to 2 videos per month).
You can refer to this post for comparison across the various Podcast Hosting Platform.
Tools to messenger (chatbot) marketing
Opesta instantly increases open rates, click throughs, and conversions by providing EVERYTHING you need to generate leads, market, and sell using the Facebook Messenger. An review of this product can be found here.
Provider which build Funnels (usually all-in-one)
Below are the list of top robust all-in-one tools that build an effective marketing funnel:
This website has documented 10 best Clickfunnel alternatives can be considered as well.
Hosting provider for your websites (not all-in-one)
Below are list of hosting providers that I recommend.
Hosting for your training courses (typically including videos, downloads)
These hosting provider usually has a content management system in-place so that you can focus on your course material. They will also host your videos and downloads. Do compare the transaction fees. For comparison across the various options, you can also refer to this post and this video comparison.
Teachable has a free plan with limited features which you use to start off first.
Thinkific is another great course hosting service that has a free plan that you use to start out.
Kajabi is all-in-one business platform
LearnWorlds is another alternative to Thinkific.
Udemy operates on a revenue sharing model. So this is another course hosting provider that you can explore.
Skool provide a community platform which also host the courses
Payhip is similar to Thinkific and they have a free plan which recover via transaction fees. Can get more detail from here.
Coursera is suitable for more business and enterprise courses
Hosting provider for webinar
Brand and host your webinars on this platform:
Email Marketing Service Provider
Building up your list is important and below are proven email marketing service provider:
Marketplace to sell your digital products
Below are the more established marketplace where you can sell your digital products.
Marketplace to find affiliate products
Below are the more established marketplace where you can find products to promote as an affiliate.
Provider/Tools to build websites
Minisite911 create awesome websites that convert.
Carrd build one-page sites for pretty much anything totally free.
WhatRuns is a free browser extension that helps you identify technologies used on any website at the click of a button.
Hunter’s Chrome extension lets you immediately find the email addresses behind the websites you’re browsing
Domain registrar
Below are list of domain registrar that I recommend.
Open Source Helpdesk Ticketing System
These are the top 3 helpdesk ticket systems. The free version has quite a comprehensive list of features.
Tools for productivity hacks
NiftyImages is an online tool which you use to personalized your email with countdown timer and a lot more. This is used by many major brands.
My blogpost on Online Productivity Tools you can use to work from home. Even the free version of these tools are features-rich enough for your use.
Linkclump gives you the ability to drag a selection box around links using your mouse to quickly open as new tabs, open in new window, save as bookmarks, or copy to clipboard. Similar to Snap Links or Multi Links for Firefox
MeetEdgar is an online tool that can you schedule posting of social media postings.
Asana is a great online project management tool which you can use to manage your virtual team.
miro provide online whiteboard and visual mindmapping. Great for managing discussion with teams remotely.
MindMeister is an online mind mapping application that allows its users to visualize, share and present their thoughts via the cloud. There is a paid and free version as well.
Pink Sheet Process is a great online tool to capture your brainstorm ideas.
Dropmark – smart way for teams and individuals to collect, organize, and discuss anything on the web.
Todoist organize todo list and work
Template.NET has lots of ready-made templates from logos, flyers, proposals, posters, contracts, plans to facebook post etc. It has a great of excellent free templates available.
Pencil Spaces is great alternative to Zoom and it has other additional features as well.
Untools is collection of thinking tools and frameworks to help you solve problems, make decisions and understand systems.
Tools to check your website performance
Pingdom Website Speed Test from different parts of the world.
GTmetrix is one of the best page speed tools.
WebPageTest is one of the more reliable and trusted website speed testing tools.
SEO Site Checkup is a great tool that lets you address page speed at the same time you’re looking into other search engine optimization factors. It covers (1) SEO, (2) Speed, (3) Server & Security, (4) Mobile Usability and (5) Advanced SEO.
Dotcol-tools.com Website Speed Test tool is an excellent choice if you are primarily concerned with analyzing how different users in different geographic regions experience your website.
UpTrends is a good, well-designed page speed testing tool. It doesn’t provide a lot of features not available elsewhere, but it can be a good client-facing option.
Reverse IP Lookup allows you to see what websites are hosted on the same server as you. To see if your host is overloaded.
Ahref backlink checker lets you check how many links going back to your website. Its backlink index is updated with fresh data every 15 minutes.
Tools to check your website security
SUCURI is the most popular free website malware and security scanner. You can do a quick test for Malware, Website blacklisting, Injected SPAM and Defacements.
Website Vulnerability Scanner discovers common web application vulnerabilities and server configuration issues.
SSL Server Test by Qualys is essential to scan your website for SSL/TLS misconfiguration and vulnerabilities. It provides an in-depth analysis of your https:// URL including expiry day, overall rating, cipher, SSL/TLS version, handshake simulation, protocol details, BEAST, and much more.
UpGuard Web Scan is an external risk assessment tool that uses the publicly available information to grade. Good to get a quick security posture of your website.
SiteGuarding helps you to scan your domain for malware, website blacklisting, injected spam, defacement, and much more. The scanner is compatible with WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, osCommerce, Bulletin, and another platform. SiteGuarding also helps you to remove malware from your website, so if you are site is affected by viruses, they will be useful.
Web Cookies Scanner is a free all-in-one security tool suitable for scanning web applications. It is capable of searching vulnerabilities and privacy issues on HTTP cookies, Flash applets, HTML5 localStorage, and sessionStorage, Supercookies, and Evercookies. The tool also offers a free URL malware scanner and an HTTP, HTML, and SSL/TLS vulnerability scanner.
Tinfoil security first audits your website against top 10 OWASP vulnerabilities and then other known security holes. You get an actionable report and an option to re-scan once you are done with necessary fixes.
ScanMyServer provides one of the most comprehensive reports of varieties of security test like SQL Injection, Cross Site Scripting, PHP Code Injection, Source Disclosure, HTTP Header Injection, Blind SQL Injection and much more.
Geekflare black-list check if the website is on Google backlist
Outsourcing
Fiverr marketplace is great for finding affordable talent for your custom videos, design, installation etc.
Upwork offers a great Talent Pool Of Quality Professionals & Agencies. Many Hire Within 1 Day.
Freelance is place to find & hire top freelancers, web developers & designers inexpensively. World’s largest marketplace of 50m.
OnlineJobs.ph is a Philippines marketplace where you can search for virtual help to support your business. Basic cultural traits, advanced education, and proficient English make Filipinos the ideal virtual workers.
Konker is a digital services marketplace that focuses exclusively on gigs related to internet marketing. When picking out a good service, the first thing to look for are reviews.
CPA on Fire are a group of professionals who service on-line entrepreneurs with their financial reporting needs. We dominate our corner of the world – accounting, bookkeeping, business strategy, payroll and taxes.
Recommended Direct Mail providers
Below are the tested providers who do direct mail within US.
Tools to secure your WordPress site
GotMLS: automatically scans for malware on your website, and it also automatically patches files in WordPress that can be vulnerable to attack. If suspicious code is found, GotMTLS can clean affected files automatically.
Wordfence: live traffic and hack reports, automatic threat detection, and a firewall that updates its security rules on the fly. This plugin also adds two-factor authentication, and scans for the Heartbleed vulnerability. I used this on my websites and it is a good defense.
Tools for Quiz Setup
Interact Quiz Maker is a tool for creating online quizzes that generate leads, segment your audience, and drive traffic to your website. There is a free (limited functions) version as well.
Bucket.io is another great tool for creating quizzes. This is created by Ryan Levesque who wrote the best sellers, ASK and Choose.
Recommended WordPress plugins to get started
Yoast SEO
Hello Bar
WP Zero Bounce
Thirsty Affiliate
Google Analytics
Tools for Pinging Your Blog to index it fast
You can use 2-3 tools to ping the same URL of your blog or website. Don’t ping a single URL with 10 ping tools or 10 times with the same ping tool. I recommend to ping a URL only once with a single ping tool and use up to 3 or 4 ping tools.
Pingoat is a service I have used a lot.
Pingomatic is another well-known site. This service is usually in WordPress by default to automatically ping your posts.
Feedshark is another great ping site. You can ping your blog or website pages and RSS feeds, but also your Podcast URLs.
Pingler offers a free version and a paid version that has much more options.
Twingly has a ping service at ping.twingly.com.
Pingmyurl social ping.
Ping.in is a blog ping service that pings or notifies Weblog Services such as Blog Search Engines and blog directories that your blog has been updated