My Tools & Resources | 2020 IT Leader

I thought it would be helpful to include a Resources page gathering all the tools, products and resources I use regularly and thought could be beneficial to you.
If you think I should use other tools or better ones, share in the comments below!

Disclaimer: Please note that some of these links are affiliate links. This means that if you purchase the product after clicking on my link, I could receive a commission from the company that provides the product. It doesn’t cost you any extra to purchase this way, and the money that I receive goes towards running this website. On this page I will only recommend products and services that I have experience with, and that I believe in. See Disclosure for more information.

Enjoy!

Blogging

WordPress: The #1 Blog Publishing Platform. Free and easily customizable with extensive support and 3rd party plugins.
My Favourite WordPress Plugins: to power your blog to success, use these Best WordPress plugins. Some are free, some are not.
Genesis Framework : Quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress. Whether you’re a novice or advanced developer, Genesis provides you with the secure and search-engine-optimized foundation that takes WordPress to places you never thought it could go.
Genesis Minimum Theme: This is the WordPress theme that this blogs runs on. It gives out-of-box search engine optimization, faster page load times, maximum readability to engage and hold reader’s attention, and point-and-click design and font controls.
Premise: Create Better Pages, Write Better Copy, Get Better Results. See what Premise Can Do!

Hosting

Network Solutions: Most of my sites are hosted on Network Solutions. Easy to use, 1-click automatic WordPress installation, and excellent customer service. Highly recommended whether you’re a beginner or a heavy-traffic website!
Network Solutions: All my domain names are purchased through domain NetworkSolutions.com. They are easy to use and good value.
PingDom: Don’t trust 100% your Hosting provider: check on their SLAs with this free tool to help you monitor their performance.
DropBox: Now, it’s not just about website hosting. I also host files here rather than on my computer! Signup here and we both get additional free space!

Product Distribution & Shopping Carts

E-Junkie: The shopping cart I use to sell my eBooks and e-materials. It’s compatible with Paypal Standard, Paypal Pro, Google Checkout, Authorize.net, TrialPay, Clickbank & 2CheckOut. A great tool for small business owners and Affiliate program for your products
Clickbank: One of the most popular digital products retailer with a fantastic affiliate program for your products.
Paypal.com: Paypal can also be used for selling your own products through them, but you’ll need an account to configure with and accept payments from the above shopping carts.

Keyword Research

SEO Scribe: SEO Made Simple: while you write a post on WordPress, it helps you choose great keywords, preserve reader engagement and build quality links for increased targeted traffic! (free month trial, from 17USD/month after that)
Market Samurai: The number one tool for keyword research available, hands down.
WordTracker Free Keywords Tool: Spits out a number for the popularity of a keyword of your choice. Search volume numbers can be compared to find the perfect niche, or to choose keywords for your blog posts.
Google Adwords Tool: A tool to help you decide what keywords to use for your Adwords campaigns. You can also check to see the popularity of certain keywords and the competition for ads for those keywords as well.
Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool: Another fantastic keyword research tool, with even more information and numbers to compare and select the perfect keywords.
Seo Keyword Ranking: An excellent tool to keep track of the keywords you’re working on. Excellent interface and really easy to use.

Email Subscriptions & Marketing

Aweber: The internet’s most powerful email opt-in service and email marketing/broadcasting tool. This is simply the best solution, about 19USD/month
Mailchimp.com: Simply a great business and a great service (for free up to 500 subscribers), Easy Email Newsletters with great customisation and fun to use!

Advertising

Google Adsense: Make money by placing relevant ads on your website that are generated from advertisers using Google Adwords. This is free to use, but you have to register for an account.
Google Adwords: If you want to begin advertising on Google, you can select keywords and locations and you pay each time someone clicks on your advertisement.
MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate:This is a great plugin for managing all your affiliate links, tidy it up to look like a ‘normal’ URL, instead of a long link with lots of different numbers and letters. Most importantly after all your linking works is done, if an affiliate link changes, rather than having to edit each post manually to update the link, you do it once in the MaxBlogPress dashboard and it updates every link on your blog.

Social Media Tools

Social Oomph: is a great tool to help you manage Twitter followers.
TweetAdder: is a program that helps you search for Twitter followers. Free up to 250 followers.
Qwitter: Free, sends you a weekly summary of who has unfollowed you on Twitter and help you identify what events may have caused them to unfollow
Bufferapp.com: makes your life easier with a smarter way to schedule the great content you find
HootSuite: a social media dashboard, the best to manage your various social networks, schedule updates and filter content for focused reading.

Contacts Management Tools

WriteThat.Name: is a great little app for Gmail Contacts, your own 24*7 Personal Assistant who will automatically create and update your Gmail contacts based on information in your emails received. A must have for $3/month, 1st month free, with a useful referral program to reduce your own costs!

Testing Results

Google Analytics: Google’s free website tracking and analytical tool. A must have for anyone with any type of website.
Clicky: Clicky is just like Google Analytics, except it’s easier to use, and you can view how many people are on your site (and what they are doing) in real time! Your first site is free.
Google Optimizer: This is another free tool from google where you can test different webpages of the same content, only changing one or two things, so you can see which one works/converts best. It’s basically a website optimizer testing tool.

Productivity

E-Lance: one of the best source of virtual assistants
Evernote: I use it to gather all sorts of notes, receipts, writing, meeting minutes,etc. To make the most from it, learn about it quickly: get Evernote Essentials e-book by Brett Kelly.