I am a mac user – so let’s get that out of the way right off the top… however, most of these tools aren’t platform specific (and when they are, I’ll let you know). Note some of these are affiliate links tho the point isn’t to make money (tho of course it helps to feed my family), the point is to share what I believe will help you be better.
(latest update: 2018-08-12)
I receive tons of questions every single month asking what tools and resources I use in my business. As a result I have a list of resources that you can find in all of our products, and guides. This list will be updated as the industry evolves and new tools and products are marketed.
Rest assured that every single one of these resources I have used and I firmly endorse. It is also important for you to know that should you choose to purchase these products I might receive an affiliate commission. In that case, I definitely want to thank you for your support!
giveawayRocket case studies:
Running the best of contests seems easy, but just like I suspect your first several Facebook advertising campaigns didn’t work so well because you didn’t know the tricks of the trade, you’ll likely struggle on your first several contests. That’s why we’re here to help!
Contest / Giveaway Stuff
We should start with the best tools on the planet right? Building your email list is the #1 job you should be doing for your business. Trust me… I waited until I was about 4 years in and those who started at the same time I did but built their email list strategically absolutely crushed me in business.
I learned too late… don’t be a mitch!
<<related course>> “The Power of the List” — available for free on our giveawayRocket members home.
Upviral – the best contest tool in the universe with the best support as well. Of course, that’s ME! LOL
Every business should be working hard on building their email list. You hear a lot about people building themselves a huge list of page likes on FB or youtube followers, but relying on one platform for your entire business is risky. Just ask several who have suddenly lost their audience because of ‘an algorithm change’ — don’t be them. Build your email list! It is the ONLY asset you can rely on and keep to yourself.
Viral list building is of course just one method for building your list. It happens to be the one I’ve been developing my expertise in for the last 5 years. Over 50+ campaigns, both for my own business and for others, I’m averaging 3500 new leads over a 2 week campaign.
But of course, just like you suddenly don’t become a Facebook ad expert overnight, you’re not going to become a viral list building expert overnight. So why not hire me to shortcut your process?
Upviral get acquainted webinar – so maybe you don’t know much about upViral, well Wilco (the guy who developed upViral) has a great webinar to get you thinking about how you can use it. Watch the webinar and if you buy upViral via my affiliate link (which you just clicked to get to the webinar), then I’ll give you 1 hour of free hands on training.
If you need some help getting started with upViral, you have two choices:
BookMe– if you need help getting set up with upViral, buy upViral thru my affiliate link and I’ll give you 1 hour of training!
giveawayRocket Membership – the place to get everything you need
Vyper – another very good and popular contest tool – tho I still prefer upViral for most campaigns. Vyper has one of the best leaderboard (most points wins) types of contests on the market tho.
letSpinIO – a new player on the market. Does ‘wheel-of-fortune’ type of sidebar for your site to let the visitor ‘spin the wheel’
Earlyparrot – a bit different than your typical contest/giveaway tool, earlyParrot is designed purely for the ‘referral’ market. Suppose you have a website or even a product and you want to offer some incentives for getting your fans (assuming your people love what you’re doing) to share your product/site and get rewarded for bringing people to you. It is a win-win-win for you and your fans and for everyone who needs what you’re offering! I know the owner of the company and he’s a different thinker – someone who wants to do things differently and change the planet.
Web Stuff
HostDuplex – the best web hosting on the planet – astounding customer service! Several of my business friends are hosting with HostDuplex.
Dropbox – I think everyone knows about dropbox, but if you don’t, it is a great file storage service in the cloud where you can share and access files from all your devices.
PopupDomination – best WordPress popup subscription box – ok, well i’m not sure I totally believe that any more.
SumoMe – FREE WordPress plugin with several awesome tools like a free popup box
WebinarIgnition – tool I use to host and ‘sell’ webinars
Heat Map Tracker – Amazing tool for tracking your visitor’s eye movements and to visualize where on your site your visitors go (including screen recording of cursor movements and clicks).
Email Autoresponders
MailChimp – an email autoresponder that kicks butt! Simple to use graphic interface walks you thru the complicated stuff – free for first 2000 people on your list
Active Campaign – a bit more sophisticated than MailChimp, for more advanced users with bigger lists to manage. I’ve switched over in July 2018 because of the advanced segmentation and automation. The newsletter editor isn’t as good as Mailchimp’s but the automations are outstanding. I especially love the visual automation builder.
Sales Tools
ClickFunnels – outstanding tool for creating sales “funnels” (a series of sales and lead gathering pages). Much better than leadpages.net if you ask me – may be a bit more expensive tho. Also includes membership pages and you can even create video courseware (i may quick using KajabiNext and use clickfunnels exclusively and cut my costs in 1/2). They even have said they’re adding email autoresponder service soon!
Training Course Sales
Kajabi – a lot of people swear by Kajabi. Big names, little names, all kinds of people. Clean simple interface. I’d be happy to sell it to you… but I have become a bigger fan of Everlesson.
Everlesson– One thing that makes EverLesson stand out is the gamification – something most other tools have to tack on. I initially wasn’t interested in it because I thought it was silly. But i’m convinced that if you can get people interested, they’re happier completing training if they have goals and are competing against each other.
Especially true now that you can have EverFunnel built in. This adds capabilities to wrap your training around some sales pages and webinars to help sell the training you’re offering. Affiliate tools are also built in which just even adds to the enjoyment. Trying to add all these features into other tools makes them clunky and a pain.
Productivity tools
Focus@will – listen to music at work but still get distracted by the music? Focus@will is all instrumental and allows me to not think about the tunes much but still get motivated and bouncy. One of my favorites here is the café beta… simply a long recording of lots of people in a restaurant/café setting. You can’t hear distinct voices so you don’t get distracted by conversation but it is oddly something that lets me focus on work.
Brain.fm – I’ve never found a better sleep inducing tool. You need a nap? Brain.fm can put me to sleep in 1-2 minutes and i’m soundly rested when I wake. There are features for concentration and meditation which are good as well. Also there’s a smartphone app and of course full night sleep modules. Best sleep ever.
Work tools
Hubstaff – tracking time for staff – great tool – also hooks up to Asana so your team can charge against the individual tasks in asana. Perfect.
Asana – project management. Free for teams under 15! I have tried Trello (which is also free) but I cannot seem to grasp and effectively use the card methodology.
Xero – accounting for the simple minded (like me). My father was an accountant. It didn’t get passed on to me. Accounting with debits and credits doesn’t make sense to me. I use their invoicing and have connected to paypal so my vendors pay me thru paypal but I invoice thru Xero and then the reconcile process links everything up and I know how much money I have!
Simpleology – web based personal task management. I like it because they make you go thru training repetitively to ingrain the methodology. They also make you think about long and medium term goals while your setting your daily task list. Nobody else does that. There are plenty of “todo” list services but none make you think about what the hell you’re writing down like simpleology.
Mac Software
Keyboard Maestro – Super keyboard tool – record entire sequences of things you do repetitively and execute them with one keystroke.
Fluid – create a mac app for any web based site (I use it for hubstaff dashboard, Facebook, asana, etc)
see my demo video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2bnedbZvyA
Typinator – amazingly easy keyboard shortcuts for the mac. I use it about 6000 times a day. For example, type an entire paragraph with “xyz.” Another example… an email address… how many times do I type “[email protected]”? Zero! HA trick question… I type “pma” and typinator replaces that with [email protected]. SIMPLE!
1password – the best password vault on the planet. Ok, I can’t say for 100% sure because I’ve only tried the top 3-4, but there’s nothing like having all of your passwords available to you no matter what device you’re using.
Shopping and stuff
B&H Photo/Video – photo and video gear – my favorite online store
AMAZON – i list it here because I’m an affiliate and you can get anything via this link and it helps support my family 🙂
MonoPrice – Cheap Cables for all your electronics
Acorns – get your personal finances in shape. One of the many lessons I remember my father teaching me was to pay myself first. When I worked for a big company, he pushed me hard to join the savings plan. So glad I did.
But Acorns is about saving pennies and growing them over long periods. Remember when your father or mother had a coin jar for the vacation fund? Whenever they came home with coins, they went in the jar.
That’s Acorns – but this is for all the extra pennies from every online or credit card transaction. Roundups they’re called. You can even add regular savings. I’m putting about $120-150 per month in Acorns. $1500 per year maybe of ‘extra’ cash. Think what you could do with that!