These are the tools and sites I stand by. I use most of these every single day to make my life easier/better. Yes, this page does include some affiliate links but having an affiliate program doesn’t put a company on this page, that’s just gravy. I use and support every company here and stand behind my recommendations.

If you’re looking for my library, you know…books? Click here

Blog and Marketing Tools

WordPress.org

The blogging engine of choice as well as a great platform for tons of kinds of sites. Don’t take my word  for it though, check out their showcase page. WordPress is used to build everything from blogs to ecommerce to celebrity fan sites.

Thesis

It took some time to warm up to Thesis due to the cost (and honestly, the bandwagon). I tend to lean toward free things but once I saw the full power of Thesis, I was hooked. It’s more code-heavy than some of the other premium themes out there but for good reason; speed and control. You can get the Thesis theme here or contact me if you’d prefer a client license (a big cash savings but you don’t get access to the support forum).

MailChimp

I love great web design and that’s the first reason I chose MailChimp over its competitors. Call me silly but appearance matters in business. MailChimp has a great looking site and it’s just as easy to use as it is pretty. They have a good pricing structure too, you can’t beat free to start a newsletter and their export/import features work well if you have to eventually move to a higher priced newsletter management system. Check MailChimp out.

Freelancer Tools

Freshbooks

As a freelancer, one of the most painful things I do – in fact one of the few things I actually dislike about being a freelancer, is invoicing. I know, asking people to pay me money with a formal notice should be fun, but it’s not. I started using Freshbooks on a free account when I started side-hustling years and years ago. I’ve tried other invoicing software, just about everything out there, and nothing can compete with how easy and intuitive the Freshbooks system is to use. I gladly pay my monthly fees to keep my Freshbooks account because I know I would never get paid without it. You should sign up for a free account if you haven’t given them a look yet.

Dropbox

Being an Internet entrepreneur, one spends most of his or her life online so it’s probably a good idea to store your most important things up there too like goto documents, contracts, eBooks and of course funny short stories. Just kidding, but seriously, you never know when you’re going to need to pull something off your computer and if you don’t have it on you, Dropbox is the next best thing. You can reach your Dropbox from any device with an internet connection, share files directly from your Dropbox via email, a tweet or Facebook and all your devices with Dropbox loaded stay in perfect sync. Sign up, it is awesome. You get 2GB of cloud free with an account, plus earn free space by referring others!

Google Voice

This falls under freelancing and personal tools. I use it for my business and everyday life. If you aren’t familiar with Google Voice, it’s like a mix between a VOIP client (Skype) and a full switchboard. Google Voice doesn’t actually make calls however, without a real VOIP client…read about how I use it here. Google Voice allows you to pick your own phone number (or port your current number) and control every aspect of that number; block callers, create Do Not Disturb schedules, SMS from your web browser and ring all your physical phones when someone makes a call.

Learning and Education

Treehouse

I found Treehouse back when it was called ThinkVitamin and was a bit dated. I signed up for the platform, meant to be a place to learn via videos and tutorials, and enjoyed every minute. Then, Treehouse got a huge face lift  added a ton of new content, added gamification to their site and it is now one of the best places to learn technical topics. They even have general business topics thrown in the mix. If you’re interested in learning mobile development, web design, starting a business, you’ve got to check out what Treehouse has to offer.

Coming soon…

Hosting

splycedhosting varnish bluehost – discount hostgator – vps softlayer – cloud host, dedicated host, hybrid

Development Tools

notepad++ vim

Systems Administration

synergy putty filezilla team viewer

Productivity Tools

evernote scrivener focusbooster pandora rescuetime ommwriter

Misc Utilities

teracopy txmouse keepass avast/avira virtual clone drive 7zip cutepdf foxit imgburn ninite

Other Tools

Fiverr