The tools I’ve shared here are definitely not THE key to a successful online business. You can do without them.

With their help however, you will save yourself lots of time and effort!

And time is something you need in order to craft quality content, engage with your audience and monetize your online presence.

Without further ado, below are the tools that are helping me improve my productivity as a marketer and power this blog to the fullest:

Disclosure: There are affiliate links included. By choosing to buy from those links, you support my work and help me keep this blog up and running. You lose nothing.

Domain and Hosting

BlueHost

BlueHost is where I am hosting Reviewz ‘N’ Tips. I’ve been a user for almost half a year now and to date haven’t got any problems, except a one-hour long scheduled maintenance. Add to that the fact that you get a great customer service and you have a pretty reliable hosting provider. Since Bluehost offers shared hosting only, I wouldn’t recommend it for sites, getting more than 100,000 monthly visitors. If your traffic is below that number however, Bluehost is a great web hosting solution! A great advantage is that you get a one-click WordPress installation – very useful for everyone who hasn’t had much contact with the WordPress system.

Design and Functionality

Genesis Framework

I didn’t know why people praised premium themes so much until I got my hands on the Genesis Framework. The Genesis Framework offers very clean, search engine optimized code that you won’t find on any free theme out there. With a wide variety of child themes available and plugins, designed specifically for Genesis, you get a solid level of customization. If you have any problems or requests, the support team will help you in a matter of hours. Oh and did I mention the themes are mobile-responsive?

Social Media

Tweet Adder

Tweet Adder is a great piece of software that can help you discover relevant Twitter followers. With its advanced filtering options, Tweet Adder lets you find just the people, who’d be interested in your business. Over time the tool has given me a huge helping hand in getting targeted Twitter followers and is responsible for a good percentage of the over 64,000 followers that I currently have. If you are serious about using Twitter as a marketing tool, you should consider checking out Tweet Adder.

If you’d like to get more detailed information and  screenshots of the tool’s interface, make sure to check out my Tweet Adder review!

Twitter Dummy Guide

Just jumped into Twitter and don’t know where to start from? Twitter Dummy Guide is just the eBook you need. Written from a guy who has over 100,000 Twitter followers and who is on Twitter for years, the book offers highly useful advice, strategies and different techniques to help you get your message heard. The book shares different tools that you can use to manage and expand your Twitter presence and is a great read for those, wondering why they aren’t getting as much Twitter traffic as they’d like to.

SEO and Keyword Research

Market Samurai

Getting search engine traffic is part of the story. If the traffic isn’t targeted, you will end up with very high bounce rates and people spending only seconds on your blog. In order to turn things around you need keyword research. And Market Samurai can give you a huge helping hand when it comes to finding keywords that have low competition, thousands of searches and that can actually help you make money.

Check out my Market Samurai review for more information on the variety of features that the software offers.

SEO Plugin by Yoast

Once you’ve uncovered a great keyword with the help of Market Samurai, the next task is to optimize your article to actually rank for that specific keyword. This great WordPress plugin will help you do just that. WordPresss SEO by Yoast is totally free and just the thing you need if you don’t have a clue about how on-site SEO works but still want to benefit from some search engine traffic.

Blogging 101

31 Days to Build a Better Blog

“Give me 31 Days and I’ll Give You a Dramatically Better Blog… Guaranteed” – that’s the motto for this useful eBook and it definitely doesn’t come far from the truth. 31 Days to Build a Better Blog takes you step-by-step through everything you need to know about blogging and creating a blog that attracts attention and makes money. The eBook uses an interesting format - each new advice is presented in the form of a task that you need to complete along with instructions and further details to really help you get the hang of things.

Blog Post Promotion: The Ultimate Guide

Many bloggers believe that publishing an article is the final step. It turns out this is entirely false. In order to really make the most out of your blog posts, you need to promote them. Blog Post Promotion: The Ultimate Guide teaches you just the techniques to help you do that effectively! The book contains advanced traffic-generation strategies and step-by-step instructions to get you going right away.

List Building

MailChimp

MailChimp is a free service that helps you collect the emails of your readers, with their agreement of course and allows you to send out email campaigns to promote your content and products. Namely the latter is how email marketing can prove beneficial for bloggers. As they say money is in the list. Although lots of bloggers seem to prefer the paid alternative Aweber, I believe MailChimp is great for bloggers who are just starting. If you have less than 2,000 subscribers you don’t have to pay a penny. And let’s not fool ourselves – 2,000 is a big number!

Final Words

It’s all your choice whether you will follow the links I’ve placed. Even if you don’t decide to help me make a buck out of the products I mentioned, keep in mind I always try to present useful marketing, blogging and social media advice that you are welcome to follow!