Affiliations
If I link to a service or product, it’s because I’ve found it to be worth buying or it helps illustrate a point in an article.
They’re not there to make me money; affiliate sales make up a tiny percentage of my income (but I do get a cut if someone buys something through my affiliate link, obviously).
If you don’t want me to get a small compensation for doing the research and recommending the best option, just use Google to find all available options, test them yourself, and make a decision based on that.
Here’s a list of the products/services I might mention (there are others, but I mention the affiliation separately with those):
Email List Providers
AWeber is the best choice for managing a relatively small list. It’s also a great choice if you’re not going to use advanced tracking, tagging, or targeting options that come with more advanced email systems.
Office AutoPilot is the system of choice for many businesses that use email as a primary marketing method. It has everything from integrated sales pages and up-sell funnels to website tracking (integrated to the email list) and custom URLs.
Send Pepper is the simplified version of Office AutoPilot. I haven’t used it, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. If you know you’re going to switch to Office AutoPilot later on, you might want to get started with Send Pepper.
Testing and Tracking
Visual Website Optimizer is the simplest testing system I’ve come across. You can set up even fairly complicated tests without knowing anything about coding. And if they’re not the cheapest, then at least they’re almost the cheapest option you can find. And they have a 30-day free trial.
Click Tale is an advanced tracking system. It allows you to see how exactly people use your site. You’ll even get recordings of your visitors browsing your site, so you’ll get to know what they do. They have a free version (that doesn’t expire).
WordPress Themes and Tools
StudioPress makes the popular Genesis framework and child themes for that framework. I’ve built my sites on Genesis because it’s really fast, it’s secure, and makes building custom themes comparatively easy. But, especially, if you’re not going to build your own theme, you should check out their child themes (they’re much better than average themes from a conversion point of view).
Premise is an easy-to-use landing page software that allows you to create landing pages completely independently of your main theme. I build most of my landing pages from the ground up (or using a custom template), but since that’s really not feasible for most people, Premise is a no-brainer.
Scribe is an SEO plug-in. I’m not too concerned with SEO right now, but I’ve still found it very useful. But if you’re trying to attract search engine traffic, you should definitely check it out.
Membership Site Systems
I haven’t built membership sites, so I won’t say much about these tools. But these are the main options there are, and regardless of which you choose, you’ll get all the functionality you could hope for.
Premise also makes it possible for you to add a membership site to your current site (or you can build a separate site if you want).
Video Tools
Easy Video Suite is a simple, yet very powerful tool that integrates with Amazon S3 hosting. It allows you to do pretty much anything you want to do with videos. You can require people to opt in to your email list in the middle of a video for example. And it’s free to use; there are no monthly payments etc.
Books and Audiobooks
Amazon is usually the best place to find books and why not other stuff too.
Audible is an Amazon-owned company that sells audiobooks. If you haven’t tried audiobooks, you can get a free one from them with a free trial.