Here are the platforms, services, equipment, and tools I use for everything from my website to social media marketing.*
Website Hosting
MomWebs - MomWebs is a small, home-based business, and you can feel the personal attention. The customer service is extremely responsive and fast.
WordPress Themes
Pressive by Thrive Suite - This is the theme that came close to my vision for my site, so I needed minimal customization. Thrive has many other conversion-optimized themes. It's no longer available, but as part of Thrive Suite, you can get Thrive Theme Builder instead. It will enable you to bring to life the vision you have for your website.
WordPress Plugins
All of the following WordPress plugins are available only as part of Thrive Suite. Why buy individual plugins when you can get all these and more in Thrive Suite? Plus, they're guaranteed to all play well together!
Thrive Content Builder - This plugin lets you create landing pages and opt-in forms, and format your posts and pages. I've tried several landing page plugins and this is the easiest, most intuitive of them.
Thrive Clever Widgets - This widget lets you display different widgets for each category on your site, which gives your site visitors a better experience. For example, on my blog, the advert for my blogging book shows up only on posts about blogging. Is that cool or what?
Thrive Ovation - I use this to collect and display client testimonials - in an elegant way. See it at work on my testimonials page. I even use it as my contact form 🙂
Thrive Quiz Builder - So much fun! Create quizzes for list building or social sharing - or both! I've use other quiz builders and while they also have robust features, most leave a watermark on your quizzes unless you pay for the most expensive plan. And Thrive Quiz Builder is the easiest to customize.
Thrive Headline Analyzer - Conduct A/B testing on post and page headlines, and automatically display the winning headline.
Thrive Suite includes so many tools that help you optimize my site for conversions. That's why it makes so much more sense than buying WP plugins a la carte. The folks at Thrive sure know what digital marketers need, and they churn out one awesome feature after another.
Email Marketing
Mailchimp - I switched to Mailchimp from Aweber as my email service provider. I enjoy the ease of use, lower cost, and robust features.
Thrive Leads - I did a lot of research before picking Thrive Leads to create exit popup forms and to display different forms for each category on my blog. Thrive Leads does so much more to build my list and give my website visitors a customized experience. Thrive Leads is included in Thrive Suite.
Amazon SES - This is Amazon's email delivery service, which I activated in conjunction with Thrive Leads' asset delivery feature. This article explains the rationale for using an email delivery service.
Video Marketing
Animatron -This is a really fun web-based platform for creating animation. I wish I had more time to play with it and learn the more advanced techniques. Someday!
Ecamm Live - What I use to broadcast live stream videos on Facebook. You can also use it for live streaming on YouTube and Periscope. This inexpensive app lets you share your screen, bring in guests for interviews, play a pre-recorded video, and add graphic and text overlays. (Mac only)
Rocketium - To easily create videos for social platforms, you can't go wrong with Rocketium.
Screenflow (Mac only) - I've been using Screenflow since 2008 to create screencast videos. Since then, it has become a robust video editor with green screen, animation, and many other capabilities.
Video Recording Equipment
Blue Yeti Microphone - Did you know? When it comes to videos, your sound quality is more important than image quality? So if you buy only one piece of equipment, buy a high-quality USB microphone like the Blue Yeti.
Logitech C920 - An inexpensive, 1080p camera that hooks up to your computer via USB port.
Neewer Ring Light - After doing a ton of research, I decided to purchase this Newer 18-inch diameter ring light to provide artificial lighting to my videos. It's more expensive than umbrella softbox lighting kits, but much easier to set up and put away--a big consideration for me.
Graphics
Stencil - Stencil is pretty much the only image editor I use nowadays. I use it to make blog feature images, social images, and graphic overlays for my videos. Here's how easy it is to create images for various social media from one design:
YouZign - Another web-based graphic design software with plenty of templates and images included. This is a paid tool.
WordSwag - I use this iOS app to make quote memes on my phone. I love how easily I can make different sizes of the same design (say one for Facebook and another for Twitter). I wish it had a desktop version, too.
Visme - This web-based design platform will make you look like a graphic designer. I use it to make infographics, social media covers, and slide presentations.
Social Media Marketing
Missinglettr - A web-based platform that grabs your new posts, magically creates social content from them, and schedules them to be posted on connected social accounts.
Hootsuite - A social scheduling platform that's also useful for monitoring specific terms, users, or hashtags. I like being able to date and time for each post.
Buffer - Another social scheduling tool. It's easy to use, but I like to mix up the times I post on my social accounts.
Others
Amazon S3 - This is Amazon's cloud storage, where I store PDFs, videos, and other assets I share online.
WebinarJam - I've been using this for years to deliver live and recorded webinars. It keeps getting better especially since the creators are savvy internet marketers led by Mike Filsame.
WebinarNinja - Another all-in-one webinar software that provides a ton of marketing tools to help you make sales with your webinars. The price includes not just live webinars but also evergreen (automated) and hybrid (pre-recorded + live) webinars.
Affiliate Disclaimer: Some of the links on this page are affiliate links. That means I'll earn a commission if you purchase the products through those links. While I only ever recommend products/services I myself use and believe in, you should always do your due diligence before purchasing any product.