A page of resources I personally use and refer to my blog readers. Please bookmark this page for your reference because as I experiment and learn about new tools, I update them here.
Disclosure: Please note that the tools and products that I recommend are based on my experience. Some of these resources are free but some aren’t. If you purchase products through links from this page, they earn me a commission at no extra cost to you. I am recommending these products because they are helpful to me and I trust these companies and not because of the commissions I may earn.
If you are a freelancer, you can use these sites for getting freelancing jobs.
Upwork: Upwork (previously oDesk and Elance) is possibly one of the largest marketplaces. Clients can hire experts for any field of expertise and freelancers can find good projects in any niche expertise of their choice. Note as Upwork is big means it can have a lot more competition for freelancers as well.
PeoplePerHour – PeoplePerHour or PPH have adopted best of both Upwork and Fiverr. Clients can share what they need and freelancer can bid for those as well as allow Freelancers to list what they can offer for an hour known as hourlies that clients can buy.
Check out the top freelancing sites here.
WordPress: The best blogging platform. Open source, free and easily customizable with lots of plugins. All of my blogs use WordPress and I offer Free WordPress Installation Service as well.
Genesis Theme for WordPress: I used to love the Thesis theme for WordPress but slowly development for Thesis theme changed direction and I did not like it. Genesis was a pretty clear leader then and is the best framework for a WordPress blog. It is so easy to use that I slowly but surely moved all my blogs to the Genesis framework. If you are keen to know why I moved from Thesis to Genesis theme?
Check out WordPress SEO Checklist and Earn a Living Blogging In India
Xenforo – My first choice for the forum was vBulletin but not anymore and you can read why. Use Xenforo instead. It is designed and developed by the vBulletin 3.x developers and is really an awesome product out of the box. All my forums are moved over from vBulletin to xenForo already.
Check out: How to Make Forum Popular and How to REALLY Make Money From Forums.
SiteGround: BizTips is hosted with SiteGround. It is one of the recommended hosts for WordPress by WordPress. Very scalable and is perfect for sites that expect a lot of growth in traffic. (If you wish to host your site with SiteGround, you can check my step by step guide.)
LiquidWeb: Fully Managed WordPress Hosting. If you want WordPress hosting and WordPress Experts to manage your WordPress, LiquidWeb’s managed hosting service should be your choice.
GSuite by Google: Gmail doesn’t need any introduction. We can use Gmail for any domain using G Suite. The email address @yourdomain.com looks professional but I am not sure if I can live without the Gmail interface for my email. So I use and recommend GSuite by Google.
Amazon Cloudfront – For each of my site, I am using Amazon’s CloudFront as CDN. It speeds up the site for users. It is a must-use service for any website or blog. Read CloudFront as CDN
Cloudflare: Cloudflare passes all the traffic that will typically hit your server to go through the filter process of Cloudflare, and only the validated traffic will route to the host. Read Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Cloudflare.
Payoneer: Payoneer fees are much lower than PayPal and forex rates are much better. Your Indian bank account can be linked in Payoneer and the money received gets deposited into your bank account. Read My Payoneer Review.
Paypal.com: Paypal is just ok for selling your own products, but you’ll anyway need an account with PayPal to accept payments from ad networks, clients, advertisers. Here is the Step By Step Guide to Create and Verify Your Indian PayPal Account
Wise: Wise (Formerly known as TransferWise) is one of my favourite and preferred method of getting paid and it is because it has very low or no fees, very good forex rate, and processing very fast.
Check out Ways To Receive Payments in India.
WordTracker Free Keywords Tool: I don’t use WordTracker because I have Market Samurai but if you are looking to get started with Keyword Research for SEO, WordTracker’s Free Keywords Tool is the right place to get started.
Adwords Keyword Tool: Google Adwords Keyword Tool can help you decide what keywords to use for your Adwords campaigns but never use Adwords tools for SEO. See why here.
Aweber: I use AWeber on my Investment Analysis blog and you can read my review for AWeber.
Moosend: an excellent email autoresponder service along with tons of other features enabled even for the free account up to 1k subscribers. Read my Moosend Review.
Google Adsense: You can make money by placing relevant ads on your website that are generated from advertisers using Google Adwords. You can place Google Adsense Ads on any site that is within the Adsense’s Terms of service but if you don’t have an account with them you can apply for a new account only for sites that are online for at least 6 months old.
BuySellAds: BuySellAds is an online marketplace that makes it really simple to find advertising opportunities on related websites. You can read about my BuySellAds Review for publishers.
Shopify: Shopify helps you build your eCommerce website in minutes without the need of any web designer or developer. You can start selling online on social media or in-person.
Check out the step by step guide to:
WooCommerce: WooCommerce is an eCommerce plugin for WordPress. So one can either add a store in WordPress or convert the whole of WordPress into an eCommerce site. The plugin is free, like WordPress. WooCommerce with WordPress is a powerful combination to set up and run an online eCommerce store. Checkout WooCommerce SEO Guide.
Google Analytics: Google’s free website tracking and analytical tool. A must-have for any type of website.
Namecheap: I have tried many domain registrars but has settled with Namecheap.
Milanote: As a blogger, I like to take notes as well as pass it along to my team. With Milanote I can scribble whatever I want from my phone and it is done. It helps me save a lot of time. Moreover, once I am online on computer, I can organize the tasks visually from the notes from my phone.
Skype: Skype helps you make free calls to other Skype users as well as cheap international calling. When working for clients, Skype helps me talk with them endlessly without worrying too much about the distance or where they are situated and help me focus on understanding their requirements in a much better way.
Google Drive: Google drive helps me create documents on the go and I can share them with my team and collaborate with them in real-time. Google Drive also provides an
Dropbox: I hardly email any large files and prefer to place them in Dropbox and share the folder with the user and he can just get the content to his local drive when synched. I also use Dropbox to backup my camera uploads from my iPhone as well as any other important documents that I want to backup. All I have to do is save the document in the Dropbox folder on my drive.
Canva Logo Maker: Create your brand identity the quick and easy way with its intuitive, easy-to-use drag-and-drop design platform that’s online and free to use. Canva is must tool even for creating images for your blog posts.