Note: This page is always kept up to date with my latest, hottest recommendations. I want it to be a one-stop resource for priceless tools you can use to enhance your life, business, everything. You may want to bookmark it for future reference. And while many would sell their mom for an affiliate commission, my reputation is worth more than that.
I only recommend what I personally use, enjoy, and value highly for its price. Before I purchase anything, I research to a point of obsession. If I refer you somewhere, you can be damn sure it’s a 5 star product.
Online Business & Productivity
Web Hosting: InMotion Hosting
I spent about a year researching hosting providers until I finally moved to InMotion. I chose them for their insane speed, incredible uptime, and 24/7 live chat support. Here’s why you should move there too.
E-Mail Marketing Software: Mad Mimi
Just like with web hosting, I did a massive research when it was time for me to start dealing with email marketing auto-responders. I checked every little detail. Every company. AWeber, GetResponse, MailChimp, iContact, etc… but I ended up choosing… Mad Mimi.
I chose them for their incredible support and brilliant, intuitive user interface. It’s the only email newsletter software that is actually fun to use.
Oh, and they also do a great job actually delivering your mails to your list.
Social Sharing Buttons Plugin: Social Warfare
As you know, page load times are extremely important to me. They impact SEO, user experience and ultimately conversion rates. Therefore I ran speed tests on the three popular plugins I was considering: Genesis Simple Share, Monarch, and Social Warfare. The results?
Genesis Simple Share was the worst. I was surprised, to be honest. This plugin comes from StudioPress themselves! It was the slowest of them all (although by about 100-150ms only), but when I ran my site through Google PageSpeed, it lowered my performance grade from B to C, and from 82 to 70. It was mostly because of some “Minimize Request Size” issues that this plugin causes.
Monarch and Social Warfare performed equally well when it comes to actual load times. But Monarch lazy-loads some strange ajax files after loading the page, and that’s a few unnecessary seconds (2-3 on avg) when the alternative, Social Warfare, is as clean as it gets.
p.s – Social Warfare requests a total of 3 server requests, 10 less than Monarch, and 11 less than Genesis Simple Share. Whatever those Warfare Plugins guys are doing there, they’re doing it right.
Writing Software: Scrivener 3 for Mac
Scrivener is the only software I use for writing today. It is amazing. The greatest benefit is that you can write every chapter on its own section, and then re-arrange everything at the end.
When I finished writing Destination Poon, I was playing with the chapters order (for best impact on readers), and Scrivener made it easy and convenient. It’s also great for exporting your project into a final PDF or a Kindle file. This alone saves some good money.
Overall, it is the absolute best writing software I have ever used. No more Word, OpenOffice or Pages for me.