Archive for Essential Tools
Essential Tools of Affiliate Marketing Pro Evgenii “Geno” Prussakov
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Last fall I was invited to ShareASale’s exclusive Think Tank event in California. On the flight out I noticed that the gentleman sitting a few rows in front of us looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite figure out from where – until we were at the first social event at Think Tank that evening. The familiar face was Evgenii “Geno” Prussakov from AMNavigator and little did I know until we got talking, that he lives just a few minutes from us – small world!
Geno is the founder of AMNavigator.com. He is an affiliate marketing author, educator, and blogger. Geno authored the bestselling “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing“, and continues to share his experience-based affiliate program management and online marketing knowledge in his blog on a daily basis. He has been one of the three finalists for the Best Blogger award 2010 by Affiliate Summit, and holds multiple Best OPM of the Year awards by ABestWeb.com. Educated in linguistics, psychology and international relations (one of his degrees is from the Univesity of Cambridge), he has become one of the most popular names in affiliate marketing — for his mindset of a persistent student, and his character of a passionate practitioner.
I recently asked Geno what his essential tools for working online are and here they are, “in his own words:”
Google Alerts – Google Alerts is an excellent and free tool that delivers emails alerts on what’s being said about you, your business, your industry, etc online. It is easy-to-setup and fairly comprehensively customizable (can include news, blogs, video, etc). At the time, it doesn’t monitor Social Media for you. For ten free tools that do, read my Brick and Mortar Businesses Must Monitor Online Space blog post.
The Bat! – The Bat! is an email client created by Ritlabs SRL. I’ve been using it for the past 5 or 6 years, and just a few months ago I’ve found out that their main development office is located just a block away from my birthplace in Chisinau, Moldova. What a pleasant surprise! It’s a great little email client (with multiple useful plugins), and they keep improving it constantly.
Google Analytics – I know why they do it, but I am still amazed that it is being done – a web analytics tool as powerful as this offered free of charge. I use it for analysis of my websites’ performance for multiple times daily. For competitive intelligence, on the other hand, I use Quantcast.com, Compete.com, and Alexa.
WordPress – This one is also sweet as it can get – robust and free. I love WordPress, and recommend it to everyone who is considering blogging.
Macromedia Dreamweaver – Of course, it is now Adobe Dreamweaver CS4, but I use one of the pre-Adobe versions. Good, robust tool for creation of HTML pages – simple enough for non-coders to use effectively. I use it both for website editing, and newsletter creation.
Adobe PhotoShop – No day passes by without me using my PhotoShop. I’m a self-taught user of this program, but I cannot imagine my professional life without it. Blog posts without images are blend. So, I use it to create/edit pictures and graphs that liven up my blog content. I also use it to put together banners (the ImageReady editor that I have incorporated in my 2007 version is especially helpful here), editing professional and family photos, etc.
Total Commander – This is my file manager (also has a good FTP client embedded in it).
Mozilla Firefox – After trying every other one out there, this is my web browser of choice.
Twitter and Facebook – Every article I read, every post or article I write myself, and everything that I believe may be of benefit to my fellow affiliate marketers, I tweet or post on Facebook. As a result, Twitter is the #2 referrer of traffic to my blog, while Facebook – #4.
Skype – I have a landline number tied to Skype, and I make many of my national and international phone calls from it (very few companies can beat their rates). I also use it extensively as an instant messaging tool, file transfer tool, and to host phone conferences, and arrange video calls. I used to manage Skype’s affiliate program (back in 2007), but fell in love with it way before that. I still am.
Webster.com & Synonym.com – I write a lot, and consulting dictionaries is a part of my daily routine. These two websites help me a lot.
Google Translate – Launched just a few months ago, Google Translate quickly gained my respect. Being a professional linguist and translator myself, I am extremely suspicious of any machine translation of text. However, when it comes to translation of words, Google has once again put together an amazing tool. I highly recommend it for word (not text) translation.
Geno’s AMNavigator blog is absolutely packed with really valuable information for just about anyone working in the online world, but it is a MUST read if you are involved in affiliate marketing in anyway. The all-time readers’ favorites:
- Online Guide to Affiliate Marketing (How to Start and Run an Affiliate Program)
- 20 Differences Between Management & Leadership
- Affiliate Websites – Types and Examples
- Misrepresented Affiliate Marketing (YouTube video)
And don’t forget to check out his books as well :
- A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing (2007)
- Online Shopping Through Consumers’ Eyes (2008)
- Internet Marketing from the Real Experts (2010) – 5 articles of Geno’s in this book put together by Shawn Collins and Missy Ward
Don’t forget to stop back next week for more essential tools for success, featuring ultra-talented web designer Selene Bowlby of iDesign Studios. If you are interested in sharing your essential tools for business, drop me a line at cpolanosky [at] gmaildotcom.
Essential Tools of Legacy Learning’s Matt McWilliams
Posted by: | CommentsAfter three snowstorms in two weeks, my definition of “essential tools” took on new meaning, but now that the East Coast is digging out I am happy to be talking about software again and not snowplows!
This week’s Essential Tools edition features Matt McWilliams, the Affiliate Manager at Legacy Learning Systems in Nashville, Tennessee. Legacy’s ‘Learn and Master series’ has a mission of “Bringing Personal Dreams Within Reach,” making difficult skills, such as guitar, piano, drums, ballroom dancing, and more accessible through multimedia self-education courses. In 2010, Matt won the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards Affiliate Manager of the Year. He has also won awards from ABestWeb, the leading online affiliate community, for his affiliate management skills and advocacy of affiliate marketing.
Matt’s essential tools include:
HootSuite – Matt likes HootSuite because it’s really easy to manage his Twitter accounts and shorten URLs. One thing HootSuite allows him to do is schedule tweets on delay if he knows they are time-sensitive and he won’t be near a computer. Plus, many of the others like Tweetdeck and always seem to crash his system where HootSuite seems more stable.
Google Docs – Matt has a Virtual Assistant in India who is constantly collaborating with on things. It’s great to have an online tool to share documents through rather than do the whole email back and forth thing. He was reluctant to use Google Docs until this year, but now hardly uses anything else.
ABestWeb – What can I say? ABW is like his affiliate family. There is a support forum and Matt loves interacting with affiliates, learning and occasionally actually helping others, too. He also appreciates the affiliate managers forum where he can ask honest questions and get honest feedback from other great affiliate managers.
iTunes – Really, how could anyone ever make it through the day without music! Plus Matt uses iTunes to catch up on all the great affiliate podcasts like Affiliate Thing, Geek Dads Weekly, Both Sides of the Tracks, and others, just to name a few.
Meebo – Matt uses Meebo to manage all of his Instant Messaging clients. He has 5 for business use and 2 for personal use and is constantly chatting with Legacy’s affiliates, other affiliate managers, his virtual assistant and his wife throughout the day.
CamStudio – CamStudio is a free screen recording software that is not great, but it’s free and does the job. Matt uses CamStudio to do tutorials featuring screen captures. It records the video into either AVI or FLV. The quality is decent but again, it’s free!
PDF995 – PDF995 is another free app that Matt uses to easily convert Word documents into PDF files. It is super easy to use. (More PDF basics and resources)
Windows Movie Maker – Matt claims he is not exactly a video guy but he does all of Legacy Learning’s affiliate videos and he doesn’t know how to use anything else. One of his goals is to learn something a little more advanced and be cool like everyone else. When he needs something more advanced, he just asks Legacy’s production team. They are a video company after all.
One of the reasons Matt is a super star affiliate manager is that he genuinely cares and gives Legacy’s affiliates the tools they need to succeed. Even if you are not an affiliate marketer, check out the Legacy Learning Affiliate blog for more great resources and articles to help you succeed in business online.
Don’t forget to stop back next week for more essential tools for success, featuring Evgenii “Geno” Prussakov, founder of AM Navigator, Affiliate Marketing Author, Educator, and Blogger. If you are interested in sharing your essential tools for business, drop me a line at cpolanosky [at] gmaildotcom.
Essential Tools of Deb Ng from Freelance Writing Jobs
Posted by: | CommentsI don’t know about you, but I am really starting to look forward to Fridays even more these days! One reason is that the line up of web pros I get to feature in the Essential Tools series just keeps getting better and better!! This week we check in with Deb Ng, a social media consultant, professional blogger and owner of the number one online community for freelance writers, Freelance Writing Jobs. If you are looking for writers or a writing gig, her site is the best place to start.
According to Deb, she is technically challenged. Anything that makes her life easier, and that she can use without breaking her blog network is an essential tool, however, she can narrow it down to a few can’t live without apps and programs.
WordPress – As a blogger for hire Deb has worked with every platform imaginable; Blogger, Drupal, Moveable Type, and a few others. WordPress is quite simply the best. It’s customizable, has plugins for all occasions and is as user-friendly as they come. While she has had occasions where she hasn’t been able to implement a particular design or community feature on one of the other platforms, this has never happened with WordPress. If it hasn’t been done, it’s only a matter of time.
Google Calendar – Deb uses many of Google’s free tools like Gmail, Google Analytics, and Google Docs. She has been using Google Calendar as an editorial calendar for a year now and it hasn’t let her down yet. Because it’s web-based, she can access the calendar from anywhere and receive updates via email every morning. If you don’t take already take advantage of some of the free goodies from Google, may I recommend you do so?
Performancing Metrics and Google Analytics – A killer combination for any stats junkie, PMetrics and Google Analytics are the ultimate analytical tag team. PMetrics allows accurate real time analysis. In fact, you can see what any one user is doing at any particular time on your site. Using this platform, either by itself or with some backup from Google Analytics (which allows Deb to analyze her advertising stats and a few other details that PMetrics doesn’t cover) has resulted in an increase in traffic and revenue. The fee for pMetrics is $10 a month and it’s worth every penny.
Seesmic – As a Twitter junkie, Seesmic allows Deb to maximize her experience. She has columns set up to display Tweets from her friends, her own Tweets, @replys, direct messages and several search terms and hashtags that she finds useful for her blogging. Moreover, it allows her to post to Facebook and see what her Facebook friends are up to as well.
Skype – Skype enables Deb to keep in contact with my family, friends, clients, collaborators and the people who blog or handle technical stuff for my blog network. She rarely uses the calling feature, but always takes advantage of Instant Messaging. Unlike certain other Instant Messaging services that will remain nameless, Skype has never crashed her machine.
And, Deb has a Droid!! (I just got one, too – and I am so in love – but that is a post for another day)
Deb’s husband gave her the Droid Eris for Christmas so she can travel and leave the laptop at home now and then. Her Droid is an essential tool in itself because it allows her to stay in touch via Gmail, Text, Skype and more. Deb’s essential tools for the Droid are:
- WordPress to Go – While you can’t use it for heavy blogging because its hard to write a lot with two thumbs and a tiny keyboard, it’s terrific for adding simple bits of content.
- Seesmic for Droid – Totally rocks Deb’s Droid/Twitter experience. She doesn’t have as many tabs set up as her laptop version of Seesmic, but it still allows her to see everything at a glance.
Visit Deb and her community for freelance writers now and stop back next week for more essential tools for success, featuring Matt McWilliams, Affiliate Manager at Legacy Learning Systems. If you are interested in sharing your essential tools for business, drop me a line at cpolanosky [at] gmaildotcom.
