Recommended Resources

I register the majority of my domains here. They’re cheap, easy to use, and provide free WhoIsGuard privacy protection. This keeps your confidential information safe, helps reduce spam, and protects you against identity theft.

They are very similar to NameCheap but offer almost every domain extension (i.e. .com, .org, .us, .co.uk, etc.) you could want. I registered my shortened domain name (ihab.it) with GoDaddy because NameCheap didn’t offer the extension I wanted.

All my websites begin life hosted on Bluehost. They’re affordable, offer fantastic 24/7 customer support, and are extremely easy to use with “1-click” automatic WordPress installation. I highly recommend using Bluehost for your first site.

You get a FREE domain as part of the package, too.

It’s a great alternative to BlueHost, especially if you plan to upgrade your hosting in the future and don’t want the hassle of changing providers.

Not only does SiteGround offer excellent cheap hosting, but its more advanced plans also score favourably among the top hosts.

With all the features they provide, such as SSD storage, the latest stable versions of PHP, HTTP/2 servers, free SSL certificates, and CDN, you really can’t go wrong with SiteGround. They also have some of the best support available.

If you have the budget, you won’t find a better WordPress host than Kinsta. Their architecture is powered by Google’s Cloud Platform which provides significant speed boosts, automatic scalability and protection via Google’s infrastructure.

Kinsta have partnered up with KeyCDN, a real-time HTTP/2 powered CDN, to speed up delivery of your assets (images, JS, CSS) around the globe.

Kinsta consistently delivers faultless top scores on WordPress hosting performance benchmark tests.

You only need to check out their features to understand why they offer some of the best website hosting. They provide expert support and if you buy their hosting, they’ll save you a headache and migrate your site for free.

Kinsta also boasts a hack fix guarantee. If your site is somehow compromised, they’ll fix it for free. How’s that for service?

If you’re looking for a LiteSpeed hosting provider, look no further than NameHero. They are a great alternative to both BlueHost and SiteGround. If you’re a beginner, but your budget can stretch a little further than the cost of BlueHost, I’d choose between SiteGround and NameHero.

There are many benefits to using a LiteSpeed server for your hosting, but their free LiteSpeed Cache (LS Cache) plugin is the most popular. This powerful and flexible server-level cache solution is built directly into LiteSpeed Web Servers.

I currently use a LiteSpeed server to host Internet Habits.

If you want affordable managed WordPress hosting, look no further than Lightning Base. As the name suggests, they provide lightning-fast hosting. They will set up caching and configure their CDN to ensure your website loads quickly for your visitors.

You get automatic backups on multiple levels to help protect your site against hardware failures and hacking. Security is also excellent, with regular security scans of your site plus server and webapp firewalls in place to prevent malicious code.

As for their support, they only work with WordPress, which allows them to provide a much more comprehensive service than most hosting companies.

Another company that knows how to do managed WordPress hosting correctly. Like Lightning Base, they provide blazing-fast performance and automatic backups.

You can set up a staging area to test things before launching changes on your live website. Plus, WPX Hosting offers malware scanning and removal services. WPX Hosting will remove the malware for free if your site is hacked.

Managed WordPress hosting at its finest.

Their features include Nginx, HTTP/2 SSL support, SSD storage, PHP7, MariaDB, and multi-caching for speed and performance. Plus, there are free site migrations, staging sites, free SSL certificates, and automated backups for convenience, testing, and peace of mind.

Cloudways posts consistent top-tier WordPress hosting performance benchmark results yearly, so their industry-leading platform is an excellent choice.

Cloudways allows you to choose from several cloud providers. Options include DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.

Cloudways also includes an affordable CDN add-on that you can easily enable in just a few clicks. You can then rest assured that your content will load fast for your visitors all around the globe.

If you want a hosting platform that offers reliable, secure and scalable managed WordPress hosting with first-class support, check out Cloudways.

The Genesis Framework powers all StudioPress themes. This robust framework is written with the latest coding standards and ensures your theme is secure, among other features. It also makes future development of your blog easier. StudioPress has a very strong user community and high-quality customer support. Their themes are popular among many pro bloggers. For these reasons, I chose a StudioPress theme for this blog. I highly recommend them.

I should add that if you can’t code, you’re likely better off choosing one of the following themes.

If you want a lightweight, responsive theme focused on performance, look no further than GeneratePress. It’s easily one of my favourite block-based freemium themes. It has everything you’d want from a theme and comes with access to their priority support forums if you get the premium version, which I strongly recommend.

GeneratePress has a great library of professionally designed website templates to help you get started. It also follows Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 standards to ensure no visitor is left out.

It’s the most mature of the available DIY themes for WordPress, and it’s for that reason I’ve listed it before most of my other recommendations.

I’ve recently used GeneratePress for another project, and I love it.

Blocksy is a lightweight, fast, fully responsive, Gutenberg-ready WordPress theme. It’s well-coded and was built and designed to work with the most popular WordPress page builders.

It has a very intuitive drag-and-drop header and footer builder, various layouts, WooCommerce integration, and many other features that allow you to create nearly any design you can imagine.

The Blocksy developers are very responsive and quickly reply to questions and inquiries. They’re also extremely passionate and care about their work.

At the time of writing, I’d argue that this is currently the best free theme for WordPress. In fact, the free Blocksy theme will likely be more than enough for many WordPress users.

The StudioPress theme I’m currently using on InternetHabits is no longer being developed, so I’ll likely be changing my theme soon. Blocksy Pro is currently on my list for the theme I’ll switch to. Need I say more?

There’s not much I can say about Kadence that I haven’t already said about Blocksy. There are a lot of similarities between the two themes. They both have a free and pro version of their themes. Kadence has also released Kadence Blocks, which will help you build websites easily with their block builder, with no code required. Kadence Conversions will enable you to create pop-ups and banners, etc., though it isn’t free, so I’d only consider it if you plan to purchase the Full Bundle package from Kadence.

If you’re settled on choosing this type of theme, I’d take a look at the features and site templates that Blocksy and Kadence have to offer and choose your favourite theme of the two.

Another extremely popular theme that’s lightweight and built for performance. They offer a library full of pre-built website templates that you can import if you want to jump-start your blog design, including many created using the 2 of the Page Builders I recommend below.

Thrive Theme Builder comes with their conversion-focused theme, Shapeshift. It’s bundled with a light version of their page builder, Thrive Architect, so you’ll have a fantastic-looking blog in no time. It’ll allow you to build landing pages, sales pages, etc. Think LeadPages but at a lower cost.

Update: Thrive Themes has updated its business model, so you can now access Thrive’s plugins as part of Thrive Suite.

This involves paying an annual fee (unless you buy the lifetime access). Still, it gives you access to all their professional themes, including the extremely popular Divi, making it a fantastic bargain.

CloudFlare is one of, if not the largest CDN company in the world. Their free plan provides you with their CDN, caching and basic DDoS protection. You’ll have to upgrade to a paid account if you want access to their advanced features, including better front-end security for your website.

You could combine their free account to take advantage of the DDoS protection with one of the better CDNs listed below.

If you pick up hosting from my recommendation above, BlueHost, you can get CloudFlare for free as part of your hosting package.

A brilliant CDN that, unlike CloudFlare, focuses entirely on speeding up your content delivery. If you want to speed up your site, improve user experience and reduce your server load, I recommend checking out Bunny.net. Google has also stated that faster sites rank higher in search engines.

Bunny.net offers two pay-as-you-go plans with a $1 minimum usage each month. A blog with a good amount of traffic is usually in the 20-25GB bandwidth range. If you have this amount of traffic or less, it will cost you just $1 per month to get started with Bunny.net and have them supercharge your site from multiple servers, also known as points of presence (PoPs), worldwide.

iThemes Security Pro is a WordPress plugin that makes it easy to secure and protect your website. It will help prevent WordPress hacks, security breaches, malware, and more. Securi SiteCheck powers its WordPress malware scan feature. This uses a 10-point check to scan your site for known malware, blacklist status, website errors and out-of-date software.

Add an extra layer of protection to your site and keep the bad guys out.

If you want to keep your blog secure against cyber attacks, check out Securi. They’ll secure your website and prevent future break-ins. If your site becomes infected, they’ll clean and repair it. Securi will also send you alerts if their monitoring service finds anything you need to know. It’ll give you peace of mind.

Let’s face it, even with the best security, there’s still a chance your site could get hacked and infected with malware. That’s where Malcare comes in. It scans your website for malware using its servers to ensure no load is placed on your hosting server. That way, your website will always run at peak speeds. A less resource-intensive alternative to the popular WordFence plugin.

The premium version boasts a 1-click malware removal feature for instant automatic cleanup if your website is infected. It also has security and website management features such as login protection, website hardening and a robust Web Application Firewall (WAF).

The new kid on the block for website security. Not only will Astra keep your website secure via their 24×7 real-time firewall, but they also have an automatic malware scanner that will help to identify and remove every kind of malware without slowing down your website.

There’s also blacklist reputation monitoring, DDoS protection, bad bots protection and much more. A fantastic all-in-one solution for securing WordPress.

This WordPress plugin does exactly what its name suggests. It limits the number of times someone can attempt to log in to your WordPress admin panel. iThemes Security also has this feature.

It doesn’t get much simpler than this. Install and activate this free plugin to protect your site against malicious URL requests.

For small to medium-sized websites, I recommend BackupBuddy. This WordPress plugin is easy to use and allows you to save your backups to an off-site location, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 or their cloud storage ‘BackupBuddy Stash’. It also includes an easy-to-use restore function and a migration tool that allows you to move your entire site to another domain or host.

I currently use this plugin on my websites, which don’t have an automated backup performed by the website host. I am “grandfathered in”, thanks to a special lifetime offer from iThemes.

ConvertKit is a wonderfully powerful and cost effective tag-based email marketing service that has been built from the ground up for bloggers.

They offer a similar service to the alternatives listed below but with an easier learning curve. If you’re not comfortable coding, then ConvertKit may be a better match for you.

When building your email list, you can tag your subscribers based on their actions and interests. This allows you to send highly targeted emails specific to their individual needs. Targeted emails lead to better open rates and thus improved engagement with your subscribers.

Once you have subscribers, ConvertKit have an easy to use email editor with access to custom email templates which you can use to send unlimited emails.

Thanks to their user-friendly interface, setting up automations is extremely easy.

ConvertKit allows you to set up powerful automations via their visual automations editor. In addition to this, they provide tried and tested pre-built automation templates that allow you to have your autoresponder up and running in no time.

In other words, if you’re looking to get up and running quickly and easily, ConvertKit is a great choice.

Other notable features include: good integrations with 3rd-party apps, broadcast resend, forms, landing pages, and A/B testing on automation emails.

ConvertKit’s live chat and email support is second to none. Plus, they have an extremely active community in their Facebook group. Lots of happy users all helping each other out.

If you think ConvertKit would be a good match for you, head over to their website and sign up for an account. I highly recommend them.

They offer a Free Plan or a free trial of their paid plans. They also have a 30-day refund policy so if you decide they’re not for you, simply let them know within 30 days of signing up and it won’t cost you a penny.

If you’re on a tighter budget, MailerLite may be the email marketing solution for you.

At the time of writing, they offer a similar feature set to ConvertKit. They, too, have a free plan for up to 1,000 subscribers, but quite a few key features are missing, and you’re limited to 12,000 emails per month, so I’d consider that before you decide. However, their free plan includes email automation, which is a massive plus!

MailerLite provides 24/7 live chat and email support for their paid plans and 24/7 email support for their free plan, so should you run into any problems, you’ll always have help on hand.

If you’re looking to introduce email marketing into your business whilst on a budget, look no further than MailerLite.

ActiveCampaign is another tag-based email marketing system that is arguably the most powerful in terms of automation.

As I mentioned in the hosting section of this page, I see the internet marketing community recommends Liquid Web more than any other host. Well, ActiceCampaign gets that crown in the email marketing space.

They have great integration with 3rd-party apps, a lovely workflow visual editor, and A/B testing on automation & broadcast emails.

One of my favourite features is their automation marketplace. It allows you to share and install other users automations. This is extremely powerful and can save you a lot of time.

ActiveCampaign offers great support via email and live chat. They don’t have a Facebook group but choose to host their community via a forum on their website.

This software platform will take your opt-in form creation and lead generation to another level. ConvertBox is the new kid on the block, and it’s hands-down the easiest to use.

As with the alternative solutions, you can choose from multiple styles of opt-in forms to deliver high-converting messages. You can also use lead segmentation, deep integration with your email marketing software, and the ability to show your message to the right visitor at the right time. You can even target specific visitors with personalised messages using powerful behaviour-targeting rules.

Plus, if you take your marketing seriously, you can split-test your opt-in forms and track everything in real time with their detailed analytics.

The flexibility of what you can do with this platform is outstanding. In fact, there are too many features to list here. I highly recommend you check out ConvertBox.

This social sharing WordPress plugin is a newcomer compared to the likes of Social Warfare, but it’s packed with a lot of functionality. There are social sharing buttons for over 30 of the most popular social networks that you can place in multiple places on your blog, style customization, share counts, social meta tags, click-to-tweet, advanced statistics and several handy add-ons.

Compared to a lot of its competition, it’s very easy to set up. Plus, Social Snap was carefully built with performance and security in mind, so it won’t slow down your website.

You know the social media share buttons at the top and bottom and hovering at the side of blog posts? That’s what this WordPress plugin does. You can also create in-post shareable quotes for X (formerly Twitter) via the click-to-tweet function. It supports all the popular social networks, and you can customise the look of the buttons to match your website branding. It’s also built with performance in mind, so it won’t slow down your site.

This awesome plugin makes it easy to create opt-in forms with its simple drag-and-drop editor. You can create pop-up lightboxes, “sticky” ribbons, opt-in forms, 2-step opt-in forms, and slide-ins all within the same plugin. It also has excellent segmentation and built-in split testing to help boost your conversions further. I’m happy I found this little gem. Highly recommended!

You can get access to Thrive Leads as part of Thrive Suite.

With features similar to those of Thrive Leads, Optin Monster is one of the best lead-generation software available on your website. With the ability to create beautiful opt-in forms in minutes, you’ll be well on your way to growing your email list in no time.

Face it, people love to take a quiz. They’re much more fun than a survey, making you curious to find out your results. Interact is a tool for creating online quizzes. You can use it to segment your audience based on how they answer a question or dependent on their results.

Interact can also be used to personalize your website and, most importantly, to grow your email list/capture leads. It integrates with most major email marketing and marketing automation systems.

If you need additional ways to interact with your audience, check out Involve.me below.

If you need to create interactive content for your website, such as quizzes, surveys, calculators, and forms, Involve.me could be the platform you need.

It’s a great tool for gathering feedback from your audience, and if used correctly, it can be used to grow your number of email subscribers rapidly. Involve.me can even be used to create payment forms, landing pages and sales funnels.

This is the best tool available for easily creating high-quality mobile responsive landing pages. With a vast selection of templates proven to convert your viewers into subscribers (or buyers), you can create opt-in, sales, webinars, and thank-you pages within minutes. If you want to customise these templates or build a page from scratch, you can via their drag-and-drop visual page editor. LeadPages has an excellent built-in split testing feature and works with WordPress and non-WordPress sites.

They also have a list-building feature called LeadBoxes that allows you to create pop-ups, 2-step opt-in forms, and exit pops.

A key goal of a landing page is to collect email addresses so LeadPages integrates with all major email marketing providers and other marketing and sales applications.

ClickFunnels is similar to LeadPages in terms of building landing pages. It provides a large selection of templates, a drag-and-drop page editor, and list-building features. It also integrates with all major marketing and sales applications.

Where ClickFunnels shines is its ability to link all of your marketing pages together to form smart sales funnels. With a few clicks of your mouse, you can create various sales funnels, including opt-in funnels, sales funnels, webinar funnels, membership sites, and more!

For those of you who want a cheaper alternative to LeadPages, I recommend OptimizePress. Although it’s not as easy to use as LeadPages, it’s a lot more flexible, so you’ll be able to create pretty much any kind of page you need. Please note that, unlike LeadPages, OptimizePress only works with WordPress websites.

Another cost-efficient choice is Thrive Architect. The team at Thrive Themes provide you with dozens of conversion-optimised landing page templates. With the drag-and-drop page builder, you can edit these and build pages from scratch. I’ve used this WordPress plugin to build entire websites. You can get access to it as part of Thrive Suite.

Thrive Architect will work on any WordPress theme. It’s not limited to Thrive themes.

On the subject of page builders, Beaver Builder is a great plugin that makes modifying existing themes easy with their drag-and-drop builder.

Let’s say you have a theme but can’t get your homepage (or any other post or page) to look how you’d like it to. Activate Beaver Builder and edit away. No coding required!

Their front-end editor allows you to see what you’re doing and gives you total control over the layout of your pages. It’s as easy as dragging and dropping.

The Beaver Builder page builder can be used with any theme. In fact, Beaver Builder also has an optional framework theme. It’s great if you’re looking for a highly customisable, well-supported theme.

When I say well-supported, I mean it. Their support is fantastic. They really do go above and beyond.

I couldn’t mention Beaver Builder without also mentioning Elementor. They’re both great WordPress page builder plugins. You’d have to compare both to see which best suits your requirements.

Elementor is another page builder with drag-and-drop functionality that becomes even more powerful if you purchase the Pro version. It unlocks the page builder’s full potential and allows you to design and build high-quality websites without editing complicated code.

This includes the ability to design headers and footers, which means you can really control the look of every single part of your website.

As you’d expect, it works seamlessly with almost any WordPress theme.

The less spam you have to deal with on your blog, the better. Akismet will help you in the fight against comment spam.

Increase the performance of your WordPress site by eliminating render-blocking JavaScript in above-the-fold content. I cover this in more detail in my How To Speed Up WordPress Optimization Guide.

This is another plugin that will help improve your WordPress site’s performance. It can concatenate scripts and styles and minify and compress them. For a more detailed explanation, check out my WordPress Optimization Guide.

If you want to run a forum on your WordPress site, then I recommend this plugin. You can also add several other features to your forum using the additional bbPress plugins.

If you want an easy way to promote your content on X (formerly Twitter), look at Better Click To Tweet. This allows you to create a message you’d like others to share using a custom link. When that link is clicked, the visitor will automatically have your message added to their Twitter status box. Then, they simply click to tweet the message to their followers.

If you choose to use the Bunny.net Content Delivery Network mentioned above (jump to that section), this plugin will help you easily integrate it into WordPress.

This is an easy-to-use WordPress cache plugin that will improve the performance of your website. It works well with many other WordPress performance plugins.

Want an easy-to-use membership site on your WordPress blog? Look no further than WishList Member. This WordPress plugin has features that include unlimited membership levels, subscription length control, shopping cart integration, pay-per-post, drip-fed content, member management, and much, much more! WishList Member is ideal for your first membership site.

MemberPress hasn’t been around as long as Wishlist Member but offers many similar features and integrations. At the time of writing, MemberPress is the cheaper option. I recommend comparing the features and choosing the one better suited to your requirements.

This easy-to-use WordPress membership plugin is a more robust solution than the previous two options. It’s the most powerful membership plugin I’ve seen, offering a much higher level of functionality than its competition.

The downside is that MemberMouse has a monthly fee, unlike the WishList Member and MemberPress, which only require a one-time payment (unless you want updates and support for more than your first year).

However, I’d like to point out that if you run a successful paid membership site, the cost of your membership software should be covered each month anyway.

If you plan to offer a course within your membership site, you’ll want to check out WP Courseware. This plugin is a WordPress Learning Management System (LMS). It’s easy to use with a simple drag-and-drop editor, integrates with the three membership site solutions mentioned above, and has a boatload of features!

You can create unlimited courses, modules, and lessons, allow your members to track their progress, deliver completion certificates, create surveys and quizzes, etc., etc.

Teachable is a Learning Management System that takes the worry out of the design and technology aspects of an online course platform. It is easy to use. There’s no need to experiment with WordPress plugins to set up your course for your customers.

Simply create your course, upload your content, and you’ll be ready to go. Now, you can concentrate on marketing and selling your course. Teachable has built-in features to help you do just that. This platform is made for entrepreneurs.

Thinkific is a well-rounded platform that is a great alternative to Teachable. If you want more learning features and a way to engage deeply with your students, Thinkific will likely be your better option.

They offer more flexibility when designing the look of your school and have a fantastic support team. They also provide easy-to-follow instructions to help you set up a professional-looking online course quickly. Highly recommended.

A cheaper alternative is worth considering if you want a simple, easy-to-use platform with outstanding customer support.

This tool allows you to create professional lead magnets quickly. You can create eBooks, checklists, resource guides, workbooks, and more in PDF format. Plenty of templates help you get started, as well as an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.

If you’re stuck for lead magnet ideas, use Beacon to automatically convert your blog posts into a PDF and offer it to your audience for free in exchange for their email. It’s simple, and it works surprisingly well.

This tool is a huge time-saver!

This is an alternative to Beacon.

Designrr can quickly convert your blog posts, podcasts, and videos into a custom eBook (PDF) with just a few clicks. It allows you to export as PDF, Kindle, iBook (epub), and HTML formats and even has a video transcription feature.

It makes repurposing content to generate leads easy and cost-effective.

This is the software I use to write all the content for my websites: sales letters, video scripts, books, emails, and blog posts, including this page.

I can’t describe how much I love this tool. It’s an absolute joy to use.

It appears pretty minimal but has so much functionality. You can use it to keep track of research, which you can view whilst continuing to write, eliminating the need to flick between applications. Maybe I’m easily pleased, but the typewriter scrolling function is one of my favourite features. This lets you fixate your eyes on the line of text you’re working on as it is automatically centred vertically on the screen. No more moving your eyes down until you reach the bottom of the screen for it to jump back up again (like in Microsoft Word).

It has massively improved my writing process, and I’m not even using it to its fullest capabilities yet.

One of my favourite purchases.

Joseph Michael has created a fantastic course teaching the ins and outs of Scrivener. It’s listed in the Courses section below.

A browser extension that checks your spelling and grammar for you. It helps me out a lot more than I like to admit. It’s also available for Windows and Microsoft Office.

I use ProWritingAid to analyse everything I write. It checks spelling and grammar. It has a built-in word explorer and contextual thesaurus to help you find the perfect word. It’ll advise you on overused words, sentence length, writing style, etc. It integrates with Windows, Mac OS, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs and even has a Google Chrome extension.

It also integrates with Scrivener, the software I use to write all my content. Scrivener provides a distraction-free writing platform, and ProWritingAid improves my writing. It’s the perfect combo!

This application is a handy tool for identifying problem sentences. Hemingway App analyses your writing and provides you with a readability score. If your score is too high, your readers may find your writing difficult to read. Not only does it analyse your writing, but it also provides recommendations on how you can improve the readability.

A true time saver. Missinglettr monitors your blog for new posts. Each time you publish a new post, it automatically creates several social media updates that are scheduled to promote your blog post for an entire year. They come pre-filled with images, quotes, hashtags and more. All you have to do is review the suggestions, make any changes you feel are necessary and click approve. Missinglettr will drip-feed the content to your social media accounts over the next year, leaving you to concentrate on the more essential tasks.

This tool allows you to manage all your social media accounts in one place. It has built-in analytics, a URL shortener, scheduling, and support for numerous networks.

The great news is that the free version is more than enough to get started. If you use multiple social media platforms, Hootsuite is definitely worth a look.

If you want to engage with all your followers across multiple social media platforms, consider ContentStudio. ContentStudio allows you to schedule social media updates to a predetermined schedule. For example, instead of sending numerous tweets within the 10 minutes you’re on X (formerly Twitter), you can automatically spread these out throughout the day, preventing your followers from being overwhelmed and engaging with those in different time zones.

With this handy tool, you can regularly promote every new blog post and re-promote your most valuable/popular posts to all your social media accounts. It comes with an easy-to-use editorial calendar to simplify the planning and sharing of your blog posts.

CoSchedule not only integrates with social networks but also integrates with Buffer. Can you see the automation possibilities here?

If you like the sound of the social media management tools mentioned above but have a smaller budget, SocialPilot could be just what you’re looking for.

Edgar is similar to the scheduling tools mentioned above but with one added feature that stands out to me. It catalogues your updates into a limitless library you build over time. This library is sorted into your chosen categories, and the updates are published on a schedule you create. This means that instead of constantly scheduling new updates, once Edgar has published every update in a category, it simply pulls more from your library. You will never run out of messages in your queue, helping to free up your valuable time and giving your new followers a chance to see previously missed content.

An extremely powerful app that makes social media management much easier. All your social media messages will be in one place, with the option to tag messages to better filter and deal with your inbox. As you’d expect, you can schedule, queue, and publish messages on most major social networks. There are in-depth analytics to help you monitor and improve your social performance. Plus, if you work as part of a team, several features will save you and your team a lot of time.

Do you want to capture screenshots or record short videos? SnagIt makes it easy! From the creators of Camtasia…

I use this screen recording and video editing software to produce my screen capture videos. You can record directly from your computer screen or import video from a camera or other source. This software has so much functionality. I highly recommend it.

Camtasia is available for both Mac and Windows.

This is an alternative to Camtasia for Mac users. I haven’t used it myself, as I use Camtasia, but many friends who use Macs say they prefer it.

This is my main video editing software. It’s only available on Mac. There’s not a lot else I have to say. I love this program.

For those of you who are Windows users, this is the video editing software I recommend.

You’ll need PowerPoint if you want to create videos or video sales letters that help keep your visitors’ attention for longer. Create a slideshow and then run through it while recording your screen with the likes of Camtasia or ScreenFlow, mentioned above. Finally, add your audio and finishing touches and render the file as an MP4.

If you’re using a Mac, Keynote is Apple’s alternative to PowerPoint.

A free, open-source audio recording and editing software available for both Windows and Mac.

The industry standard when it comes to audio recording and editing software. It’s extremely powerful.

Mike and Izabela Russell get my highest recommendation if you want a professional audio recording such as a jingle, intro, promo, etc.

Royalty-free music and audio tracks. There’s a huge selection!

This WordPress plugin will allow you to embed your podcast on your blog. It uses a simple interface and provides a nice, clear audio player for your listeners.

This is the best podcast player I’ve come across so far. It has everything you need for an audio player. You can thank Pat Flynn for that. He built it for his own use but decided to share it because he’s that kinda guy. Fusebox is for you if you want a great-looking podcast player that’ll encourage more sharing and traffic.

Media hosting for your podcasts. It doesn’t get much better than this, and Libsyn is reasonably priced.

This is the platform I currently use. It offers so many solutions including Live Webinars, On-Demand Webinars, Automated Webinars, Evergreen Webinars and more.

I know many people who swear by this platform. It’s very easy to use and great for hosting collaborative webinars.

A well-established platform with an excellent reliability track record. However, it lacks marketing features, so that’s worth considering.

This platform hosts the webinars I attend most frequently. It is excellent for marketing, sales, and community-focused webinars.

This is a brilliant shopping cart for selling your products online. It provides professionally designed cart templates to help boost sales. There are 1-click upsells, 1-click bump offers, coupons, A/B testing, a funnel builder and an affiliate centre. The list goes on and on. ThriveCart integrates with all the major email marketing platforms, page builders, membership apps, and, of course, PayPal and Stripe. It even takes care of tax and customer receipts. A shopping cart and so much more! Highly recommended.

If you’ve written an e-book or produced a digital product you’d like to sell online, this shopping cart could be for you. E-Junkie is cheap, reliable and relatively simple to use. It supports checkouts using PayPal, Authorize.net, TrialPay, 2Checkout and ClickBank. It has an affiliate program to help boost sales and works like a charm.

If you want to sell your products and recruit affiliates, you should probably start with Clickbank. They make starting easy, and their affiliate tracking and payment systems are excellent.

Although JVZoo is newer to the market than Clickbank, it is another popular digital products retailer with a great affiliate program. It is very popular with the Internet marketing crowd.

I’m pretty sure that everyone has heard of PayPal. They’re an established and trusted online payment processor that has developed one of the easiest and most convenient ways to pay online. For a simple way to accept payments on your website, look no further than PayPal.

An alternative to PayPal with a less complicated fee system. If you want to accept payments from around the world, including recurring billing, I recommend Stripe’s simple interface.

This is an alternative to ThriveCart. It has very similar features. I recommend you check them out and select the option most suited to your needs (e.g., integrations with other marketing tools) and budget.

Google’s very own keyword tool. It’s free and will allow you to learn what your potential customers are searching for.

A great alternative to the Google Keyword Planner. It uses Google Autocomplete to generate hundreds of relevant long-tail keywords and is free.

The new kid on the block. If you’re new to keyword research and want a low-budget tool to help you identify the best long-tail keywords to target, KWFinder is for you.

This is probably my favourite keyword research tool. In my opinion, this software takes things to the next level. Enter any website URL, and it will display data for both organic and paid advertising. This allows you to determine what keywords your competition ranks for and how they get their traffic.

Want a tool for dissecting your competitor’s strategies? SEMrush is for you!

Another excellent SEO tool. You could say it’s a cheaper alternative to SEMrush. These tools are very similar, so I suggest you assess both as they each have their advantages. Then, choose your favourite based on your requirements.

This tool exposes “your competitors’ most profitable keywords and ads for paid and organic search”. Once you know everywhere your competition has appeared on Google and every keyword they’ve used in ads, you can use this info to drive more traffic to your website. It is a very effective tool in the right hands.

Use this tool to analyse the best-performing content for any topic or competitor. You’ll be able to identify the most shared links and the key influencers that shared them for any topic. You can produce more of this yourself if you know what gets the most attention. Simple!

Having an analytics tool for your website is essential. It’s included in my tutorial on how to start a self-hosted WordPress blog for a reason…it should be installed from day 1. Google Analytics will allow you to track who visits your website, how long they stay, their location, what website they came from, how they interact with your content, page views, bounce rate, and a host of other metrics. This is priceless information that can help you to identify opportunities to grow your traffic further. And best of all, there’s no cost. It’s free!

Clicky is a simpler alternative to Google Analytics, which operates in real time. There’s a monthly cost if you need to monitor more than one website or if you want additional features.

I use this tool every day. The easiest way to describe it is that it’s a web-based filing cabinet. If you want to make notes, store research, and then come back and find it easily, within seconds, you’ll want to get an Evernote account. It’s free to sign up with a limited monthly data allowance, and it synchronises over multiple devices: PC, Mac, Apple / Android tablets and smartphones. It also has a browser extension that allows you to save content directly to your account when surfing the net. It’s so convenient and a massive time saver. I absolutely love it!

Are you constantly coming up with new ideas or tasks you need to complete that involve multiple steps? Do you struggle to note these down in a format that’s easy to refer back to? Workflowy may become your new best friend. This tool helps you to organise your thoughts in a very coherent way. It’s like a mind map but in a bullet-point list form. It’s very useful indeed.

Back up your files safely to the “cloud” to access them from any Internet-enabled device. Thanks to its real-time synchronisation, anything you add to Dropbox will automatically show up on all your devices. It’s also a super simple and reliable way to share files with friends, family, or virtual assistants. This software gives me peace of mind. It offers a free plan, too!

This is my favourite replacement for Google Reader. It is perfect for keeping track of your favourite blogs and other sites in your niche via RSS.

If I don’t have time to read an article or blog post, I save it to Pocket so I can return and read it later. Pocket allows you to read articles within the app, so you don’t have to return to the original website. It also has a handy sharing feature linked with Buffer and the major social networks.

It’s the best project management software I’ve encountered so far. It lets you see everything in one place and updates in real-time, so you’re always up to date with the latest project developments.

This is a robust project and task management tool. Many people prefer it to Trello. You can communicate with your team through individual tasks, which saves you time when searching emails and other messages. Check it out and see if it can help you.

Elance and oDesk have joined forces to represent one of the world’s leading online workplaces. If you want to hire someone to complete a piece of work, big or small, this is a great place to look. You’ll find talented developers, designers, programmers, writers, administrators, etc. Whatever you need, you’ll likely find it here.

An alternative to Upwork.

Fiverr’s jobs are known as gigs. All advertised gigs will cost you just 5 dollars, hence the name. It sounds cheap, doesn’t it? Well…it is. The freelancers on Fiverr make their money via the gig extras, which you can add to your order at your discretion. All sorts of services are offered here, including some unique and quite amusing gigs. You’ll see what I mean…

This is a design website that runs in a contest format. Based on your design requirements, graphic designers will submit their work to your contest. You can then provide feedback to help them and the other designers shape their ideas to your needs. Once the contest time ends, you choose your favourite logo as the winner. The designer is paid, and you receive your logo.

A community of developers and designers you can hire for audio, video, WordPress customisation, design and programming.

Another marketplace where you can hire designers and developers. Crew have vetted their freelancers. 99% of their projects have been completed on time, on budget and issue-free.

Do you need a professionally designed PowerPoint or Keynote presentation? Look no further than 24slides.

Well, this is more of a tutorial than a course (and it’s free!), but if you’d like to learn how to set up your blogging platform, I recommend you check out this guide. I worked hard to remove any guesswork and make sure it’s as easy as possible to follow along.

I see far too many people making mistakes in affiliate marketing, so I wrote this quick reference guide to help you avoid common mistakes and teach you how to increase your income by recommending products and services that matter to your audience.

If you want to make more money online, check out this guide. It’s free!

If you’re new to Internet Marketing, you’ve probably heard the expression, “The money is in the list.”

Building an email list is one of the most important things you can do for your online business. And, all other things being equal, the bigger your list, the more money you will make.

If you’re interested in starting an email list for your business or growing an existing one, I have a free email course that teaches you how to do just that.

You may have seen further up this page that I highly recommend Scrivener as a writing program. It’s an excellent program out of the box, but to use it to its full potential and understand why I love it so much, you’ll need to use all its features.

Learn Scrivener Fast is the course that will teach you how to unlock all Scrivener’s functionality. Joseph Michael has put together a fantastic course.

Hint: If you buy this course, note how well it’s put together. This will help you if you want to create your own course.

If you’re interested in creating a course to sell online, I recommend Course Builder’s Laboratory by Danny Iny. This program will provide you with all the systems, support and coaching you need to fill your course with happy, paying, successful students. Danny walks you step-by-step through the entire process, from launching your first pilot course to developing and marketing your full-scale course.

If you plan to launch any product online, this program provides a proven, detailed step-by-step process. Jeff Walker has developed the course. He’s one of my favourite entrepreneurs in the online space. If you don’t follow him, I suggest you get connected if only to enjoy his positive vibe. Product Launch Formula is pricey, but it’s an investment that should cover its cost.

If you’re interested in video as part of your marketing or fancy yourself as a YouTube vlogger, I highly recommend that you check out the courses created by Caleb. He has guides on selecting equipment based on your budget, shooting videos and video production for YouTube.

Plus, there are in-depth tutorials on using Final Cut Pro X and Adobe Premiere Pro (the 2 video editing suites I recommend).

To make things even better, a few of these courses are free. What better way to get started with video?

Here, you will find a list of the business books sitting on my bookshelf (and Kindle). There’s also a section dedicated to the favourite books of influencers and entrepreneurs.

I like to make the most of my time, so if I’m on the move, driving, cooking, etc., I’ll listen to an audiobook. Audible makes this easy. You can simply install the app onto your smartphone or compatible audio device. Plus, Amazon is the world’s largest bookstore, so you’ll never be limited by choice. Give it a try. Sign up for a free trial.

If you don’t have time to consume an entire audiobook and would prefer a summary, Blinkist is your ideal solution. They find the best non-fiction books in categories such as Personal Development, Productivity, Marketing & Sales, Money & Investment, and more. These books are then summarised into 15-minute audio and text.

There are over 5,000 bestsellers for you to choose from at the time of writing. A time-saver that allows you (and your team) to learn in a fun and engaging way.

Give them a try via their free trial.

Russell Brunson and his team have created an underground playbook to help your company grow online. It’s been developed after running thousands of tests and perfecting what works online. You can access all the processes, funnels and scripts they use to scale companies online. This book truly is a shortcut. The best part…it’s free!

This book will teach you how to convert your visitors into customers. It’s a practical playbook that will help you find your voice, stand out in your niche, and create a mass movement of people who will gladly pay for your advice. If you want to grow your business, this book is certainly worth reading. Just like DotCom Secrets, it’s free!

Are you experiencing trouble attracting your dream customers? If the answer is yes, or you’d like even more customers, read this book. Just like DotCom Secrets and Expert Secrets, it’s written by Russell Brunson, and yep, there’s a theme developing here… it’s free!

Simplify the accounting side of your business. Try QuickBooks to easily manage your accounts online, leaving you feeling in control and able to focus on future growth.

Personalized, online legal solutions and legal documents created by leading experts for small businesses and families at a fraction of the cost of an ordinary local solicitor.

Disclaimer: This is not legal advice. I am merely introducing you to a tool for generating legal pages. If you need specific legal advice, please consult with a professional who specialises in your subject matter and jurisdiction.

A simple way to get started with the legal pages required on your website is with the WP LegalPages WordPress Plugin.

This plugin allows you to generate customised legal pages from several lawyer-verified, ready-to-use legal templates. Just be aware these will likely need to be tailored to the specific needs of your website.

Although templates are the cheaper and faster method for protecting your website and business, hiring a legal professional is the safest way to move forward. I know this isn’t the most cost-effective method, especially if you’re just getting started with your blog. A professional can help write legal documentation customised to the specific needs of your business.

My antivirus of choice that keeps my computers, and therefore, my income, safe. I’ve been loyal to Bitdefender for quite a few years now. Unlike most antivirus software, Bitdefender doesn’t drastically slow down computer performance. It also provides outstanding protection and reports very few false warnings.

I use the Total Security Multi-Device package. It’s available for Mac OS, Windows and Android.

As mentioned further up this page, I use Dropbox to back up my key documents to the “cloud”, so I can access them from all my devices. Well, I use BackBlaze to back up everything else securely. It provides me with unlimited online backup. Unlimited files. Unlimited file size. Unlimited speed. It will even back up all your attached external drives. Its restore function is excellent, too. You can restore multiple versions of your files up to 30 days old, accessed via download. There’s an option to have an external drive containing your files shipped to you, too.

It’s a set-and-forget solution that will work as long as there’s an Internet connection.