I would never recommend anything that I don’t use myself. This means that you’ll find some affiliate links here, which means that in exchange for sharing information about these resources and showing you the light, I may get a kickback for the referral. Helping me help you. 🙂
FREE TOOLS
The following resources are free. They may have paid upgrades, but if they’re listed in this section, I will likely use the free version alone.
Image Creation – Canva
This is one of my favourite tools. I used to make ugly images, but now I don’t. All of the images on this blog were made with Canva.
Note Taking / Organization
Documentation & Resources – Notion.so
The notion is an incredible new platform that aims to change how we approach word processing. I’ve found it to be perfect for speccing out designs and other documentation, since it allows you to seamlessly input graphics, gifs, videos, links, and pretty much anything you could want to do. After that, the page you create can be accessed from mobile or desktop browsers by anyone you allow, either completely public or by specific email addresses.
Project Management – TickTick
Automated Contracts & Invoices –
Productivity – Rescue Time
RescueTime is a time tracking app that scratches my ‘relentless productivity itch’ by quietly running in the background of your computer and phone to generate reports on how you use your time.
Email Marketing – MailChimp
Their free plan gets you up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails. Once you’ve got 2,000 subscribers, any of the upgrades should be able to pay for themselves.
Keyword Research – KeywordTool.io
Stick a keyword in here and get a ton of related suggestions. Really awesome for building out content strategies or PPC keywords.
Screen Recording – Loom
A lightweight and barebones screen recorder. Does exactly what it needs to, and nothing more.
PAID RESOURCES
Email Marketing – Active Campaign
This is my #1 go-to email marketing service. Super easy to use, and if you’re not using email automation, you are leaving money on the table.
Onpage Marketing Tools – Microsoft Clarity
See at a glance which areas on your page drive the most engagement and how far your visitors scroll with Clarity instant heatmaps.
CRM – Salesflare
The best CRM by far. I’ve tried a lot of them. Simple to use, syncs multiple email accounts and calendars. The ultimate way to keep on top of multiple projects and pipelines with automated reminders plus a host of other great features.
Domains & Hosting – Godaddy
This is my go-to company for domains and hosting. I purchase all of my domains from Godaddy, because I’ve found they have the best prices. The hosting is also very reasonably priced. However the #1 reason I stick with Godaddy is their incredible support. If you have any questions or issues with your domain, hosting, or emails, they have a very fast live chat that will quickly help solve your problem, and can even do the fix on their end most of the time.
WordPress Hosting – Godaddy
At $5/mo you get fast and secure WordPress hosting with SSL included which lets you do secure transactions and more. They have great support as well who will help you get your website and domain set up properly.
SERP & SEO Tracking – Serpbook
Plans start at $9/mo to allow you to track up to 50 keywords and their positions for 50 domains. This is my favorite keyword tracker, with WhatsMySerp as a viable (but less hands-free) free alternative.
WORDPRESS ESSENTIALS
Everything in this section is available for free and covers your bases for a powerful and flexible WordPress site.
Flexible WordPress Theme: WP Astra
Page Builder: Elementor Page Builder – Works with Astra. It’s very slick. I never thought I’d be using a page builder, but the above combo is just too good.
Classic Editor: Classic Editor – This is a must. The new gutenburg editor sucks, and doesn’t get along well with Elementor anyways.
SSL: Really Simple SSL. Sometimes your SSL can act up. This plugin just magically makes it work.
SEO: Yoast
Contact Forms: Contact Form 7 + Flamingo (Captures Messages on-site)
Google Analytics Dashboard: GDWAP – Inserts a simple google analytics widget into your dashboard and gives you quick and simple access to change GA settings. Nice and convenient. I normally wouldn’t use a plugin for this, but it’s actually quite nice.
Security: Wordfence Security. This is a really great security plugin. Prevents attacks, scans for files, and everything you need, all for free. I’ve recovered hacked sites with this, and every site I’ve already had it installed on has never had an issue. It can interfere with some of your plugins, such as WP Manger, so you will need to whitelist them inside of the plugin. You’ll see it in there.
Alternative Website Stats: Slimstat – Built in stats, no google analytics needed. Only use this if you’re not using GA.
Ecommerce: Woocommerce
WP Site Manager: Manage WP. This is a really cool website manager that is a must if you’re managing multiple websites. I use this to maintain all of my personal sites, and client sites. I can log into them all from one dashboard, manage plugin updates, spam comments, etc. Super nice tool that I wish I started using years ago.
301 Redirects: Redirection. This plugin makes it easy to make 301 redirects, which you can do a lot of cool stuff with, like hiding affiliate links, creating affiliate tracking, and more. The sky’s the limit.
Image Size Restrictor: IMsanity. This plugin keeps your image sizes from beign uploaded too large. It comes with a default set of nice max dimensions that should work for most sites. That way you don’t have some 4000×4000 photo taking 4s to load.
Image Compressor: EWWW Image Optimizer. This plugin actually compresses images. You may need to fiddle with the settings a bit. I really recommend compressing images yourself on your computer using something like ImageOptim, but this is a good solution for doing it on your website.
TRUSTED PEOPLE TO LEARN FROM
These are my favourite people to follow and continue learning from, in no particular order. You could spend years trying to get through these golden archives.
- Paul Mort – https://www.paulmort.uk/
- Neville Medhora – https://nevblog.com/
- Noah Kagan – https://noahkagan.com/
- Derek Sivers – https://sive.rs/
7 OF MY FAVORITE BOOKS
These are some of my favourite books on the shelf. They all fit the “Wow, I only wish I had read this earlier!” criteria.
- 4 Hour Workweek
- Tools of Titans
- Tribe of Mentors
- Ultimate Sales Machine
- Now not How
- Million Dollar Weekend
- Influence