Tools I Recommend

Welcome to my world :)

“You can make money online” - they said.
“You can work from home” - they said.
“It’ll be quick and easy. All you have to do is setup a funnel” - they said.
“Just buy this tool and all your financial worries will be in the past” - they said …

But if being a digital marketer since 2016 has taught me something, it’s that the “right tools” aren’t right most of the time.

The world of digital marketing is filled with tools that are more often than not … just garbage.

And I’ve also learnt that it’s very important to choose the right tools for your business. Cause, relying upon cheap, crappy tools to build your business will eventually come back to bite you.

It’ll lose you time and money.

And it’s not like switching to a different tool is easy.

It’s usually a time consuming, messy, complicated process that can cause many headaches and usually, some data loss as well.

But with so many tools out there, making the right choice can be difficult, time consuming and just so frustratingly confusing.

So for many years now, I’ve been trying & testing many different tools – some great, some that need improvement and some that are just pure baseless hype.

And over the years I’ve compiled a list of, what I think, are the best digital marketing tools for content creators. And I’m gonna share that list with you.

First, before you start generating leads and sending newsletters, you need good hosting.

Because nobody likes a slow loading website.

Now I’ve tried shared hosting and I’ve tried VPS (virtual private server) hosting as well. For a few months I even paid $100/month for cloud hosting.

And still my site was slow. And that sucks …

This went on for a few years and I was beginning to think that there’s no way I can get fast hosting that didn’t burn a hole in my pocket.

I thought to myself that it’s just a case of "You get what you pay for".

Unless I spend big bucks on hosting, I’ll never have a fast loading website.

But then Amazon AWS introduced Lightsail, which supposedly made it easy to host Wordpress on AWS. So I tried it.

I stuck with AWS for a few months and found that my site loaded really fast and my bills were low.

That’s great, but because I’m a marketer and not a server geek, I still found AWS extremely difficult to manage.

I had to read lots of long and complex support articles to do simple things. It became so time consuming that I couldn’t focus on my main task: running my business.

Finally, I was done. I needed to switch, again …

And then I stumbled upon Cloudways hosting.

I had heard the name before but I ignored it. I believed that it too was also gonna be difficult to use and a waste of my time.

But I was wrong …

Once I tried it, I found out that the whole reason Cloudways exists in the first place, is it to make high end hosting easy for people who aren’t server geeks.

I used it for a week and then something happened. I fell in love with my hosting.

See here’s the thing: I’ve always thought that hosting is the worst part about running an online business. It’s that thing that I’ve always hated.

So yeah, I never thought I could like any hosting company.

Before I end this post, I just wanna quickly mention some of my other favourite tools:

For sending marketing emails I use ActiveCampaign. I’ve been using it since 2016 and absolutely love it. You can start your 14 day free trial without providing any payment info.

If for some reason you don’t want to use ActiveCampaign, I recommend you try GetResponse. It’s almost as good as ActiveCampaign, but not quite as good.

To build my Wordpress site, create landing pages, sales pages, generate leads, create quizzes and much more, I use Thrive Suite. I’ve been using it since 2016 and loving it. If you also use Wordpress, you cannot miss Thrive Suite.

If you’re not using Wordpress, check out Convertflow. If offers many of the same features but works on non Wordpress sites too. Convertflow's on site retargeting feature is very useful for converting your most loyal subscribers into paying customers, quickly.

For mapping out my funnels, I use Funnelytics. It really helps me understand how to structure my funnels so they make sense and also produce better results.

With Funnelytics you can map unlimited funnels and get a bird's eye view of how your funnels are performing.

And the best part, funnel mapping is free. It doesn't cost a penny. So you can get started now.

And if you're still not convinced, there are 10 more reasons why I use and recommend Funnelytics.

For SEO, I use Ahrefs. It’s a bit pricy and has a bit of learning curve but it’s well worth. Simply because visitors who come from search are the most likely to convert.

For editing images, I use Photopea. Think of it as Photoshop for free … almost.

Well, that’s the list for now. I’ll update it as soon as I find the time.

If you have any questions, contact me.

Cheers :)