My ONLINE BUSINESS tools (this took YEARS!)
howdy blog tribe legendary anchorman pete mcpherson here and in today's video i'm actually going to be walking you through my online business and blogging podcasting youtube website tool stack all the tools and resources that i use warning these aren't necessarily what i recommend for everybody i actually have another video for more beginner bloggers you can check out the link in the description below actually all the links to all these tools should be in the description below most of which will be my affiliate links these are not necessarily my recommendations these are what i use in fact i'm going to breeze through some of the more boring ones to get to some of the cool and interesting stuff you may not have used yet and i will go from there let's start with the website stuff because i'm just going to breeze through these again this is kind of the boring stuff for me because i don't actually blog no i don't even blog all that much i host my wordpress site on siteground that is my host of choice i've been with them for several years never had any issues really just see any need to switch so siteground it is my theme is a custom built theme using elementor in fact i use elementor for pretty much everything actually my home page the about page some of my like quote unquote mega posts are completely built out in elementor and i even have it styling my archive pages and my individual blog posts as well so i custom built all this stuff some other plugins i generally approve of i don't use lasso anymore for affiliate links i actually transitioned over to short dot io to redirect so i can type in link dot x slash bluehost to give me like nice and pretty short links up here i did a youtube video on this you can go check it out i use short pixel to compress my images i generally approve of them and recommend them i love that wp rocket is also my favorite caching plugin for site speed i don't really blog so i don't use any of these yoast things but i do have some url redirects and other stuff like that which is why they're still installed here i don't use yoast seo premium anymore either the only other real website builder tool thingy i use is leadpages i actually just went back to leadpages after not using them for several years so i could just quickly split test honestly was one of the big draws to me as well as quickly duplicating pages so far so good i don't like the design aspects quite as much as i do custom building everything but again that's just me i'm pretty happy tinkering around in elementor a lot of people aren't and so leadpages is actually just a really great thing i guess you could say to get things out there really really fast so i do use leadpages i run most of my opt-ins and sales pages on leadpages nothing really on the website but landing pages sales pages i use leadpages that was a lot of pages moving right along to my email marketing tools i used to i have a dual esp system in fact i did a youtube video on this as well i'll link to it below i use activecampaign for some of the more advanced stuff i generally have all of my opt-ins for lead magnets and stuff like that coming in through activecampaign because i have my funnels here this is where i do fancy pants subscriber tagging segmentation and i deliver my funnel emails and then i can check out the other youtube video but after people go through all of my funnels they get automatically transitioned into flowdesk which is now where i send my newsletters so roughly once a week i will send newsletters to people who are not in my funnels if you're in my funnels you don't get my normal weekly newsletter this is only sent out to people who've already gone through funnels in the past and so i use flowdesk for that been really happy with them so far and while we're on the subject of funnels i'll share some of my tools there i don't spend a lot of time in these i do continue to pay for them because they're implemented somewhere i use deadline funnels for evergreen countdown timers i don't have a ton of these but i do have an evergreen webinar and i also have a little tripwire offer i can actually just show that to you right now i just cleared my tracking when people land on this after they register for one of my freebies they will get a one-time offer for a one-hour blog post or whatnot you should actually be seeing the countdown timer right here i'm not exactly sure why it's showing but alas i do use deadline funnels for that one other tool i'll show you is jeru or garu i don't really know how you say it i don't use this a ton to like draw out and map out funnels but when i create a new one this is a handy simulation tool it's actually super fancy i've never used most of the features i've just used the basic simulation like you type in your expected conversion rates the price of your products and stuff like that and then after you do that you can hit simulate and it'll run some simulations you can put in your expected refunds amount your processing fees everything and it'll kind of run this monthly profit if you do this these conversion rates you should make x amount of money and then you can toy around with the conversion rates based on actual data and it can be helpful for just visualizing things and trying to budget for ad spend and stuff like that it was a one-time payment of like 30 or 60 bucks which is really the only reason i bought it i don't use it all that much but it's lifetime and why not and so i mostly use facebook ads manager i do have an ad espresso account if you've never used ad espresso i actually don't like the process of creating ads i actually just prefer the ads manager even if it might be a little bit more complicated i'm used to it but i do love the reporting features of ad espresso like actually seeing which creative is working is really powerful and i find that much easier to do with adespresso than the normal ads manager moving right along to my monetization stack so podia is where i host most of my courses and videos and products even digital products or whatever thrive cart is where people actually pay me and i use zapier not really a monetization tool per se but it's my integration tool of choice that connects those two so thrivecart is a checkout software for those of you don't know like cindell pay hip sam cart all that journal stuff i paid 600 for it one time years ago i don't pay a monthly fee and it just works so why would i switch if you pay me money for anything it is generally using thrive card i'll have my sales pages built in elementor on my site or on leadpages and then i'll either embed a checkout from thrivecart or i'll just have a button that goes to the thriveguard checkout page podia is of course my go-to for everything online courses as you can see i have entirely too many products and courses and yada yada i got a lot on here this just works i love everything about podium i have a whole playlist on podia tutorials and my review people check that out it's been over a year since i published it but nothing's changed there and again zapier i use this tool for a bunch of different things but mostly integrating thrive cart podia and then pushing people to the funnels ie active campaign and stuff like that there's thrive cart you can see i got all my products on here as well as a ton of other stuff if you pay money for something it's generally through a thrive cart product fully recommend them i enjoy and everything is connected right here in zapier this is just an example everything starts generally with a thrive cart purchase or what or if it's a free opt-in like leadpages and then puts through to various different stuff including podia and you know i generally create tasks for myself in todoist which we'll talk about in a second when it comes to social media i don't do a whole lot of social media these days in fact i just got through with a 30-day binge completely stopped all social media including all my business my blog posts like posting whatever i use smarter queue when i actually do things for social media only because i've been on with them for a while why would i switch it works really well and i can recycle evergreen content there i generally approve of later.com i've used them for instagram as well as some other social channels but other than that i don't actually do any social posting right now and so i don't actually use that much now i use canva for my graphics most of the time especially for stuff that requires mock-ups i generally love their elements and templates just like throwing in mock-ups and different shapes and frames i find it pretty simple like once you kind of find your way around canva it took me a while to come around but i generally enjoy it for more nitpicky stuff i use sketch on mac only i believe i use this for my youtube thumbnails just because i like to get a little bit more creative or whatnot and this is also more of a design tool like for creating logos more nitpicky stuff than canvas so i use this for all my logos and colors and you can see i'm getting my fancy pants gradient bmf logos and one-hour blog post stuff set up in here and while we are talking about content the only tool i really use that's not specific to youtuber podcasting would be one hour blog post so i use one hour blog post not just for blogging because i don't blog but for generally every piece of content that i produce i will use one hour blog post to just quickly outline and get clear on the concept even if i'm not actually writing the post and let's actually just skip ahead to dropbox so i do use dropbox i just started in january of 2021 using dropbox i don't know why it took me so many years to come around i'm generally enjoying it and in fact i love dropbox paper this is literally the notes i used one hour blog post to come up with this here's my outline for this video but dropbox paper i've actually found really really fun and cool more so than google docs i still use google docs a lot but they have a nice like presentation mode that'll like whip up you're doing a webinar or something you could literally just take your notes and then you just kind of like walk through stuff it's pretty cool dropbox paper i like dropbox storing all my videos here for youtube my youtube editor and that sort of stuff too podcasting i'm actually gonna do a separate video probably in a week or two on my podcasting workflow like start to finish but for now i can just share with my i'm sorry the tools with you so recording if i'm recording with a guest or whatever a remote interview i generally use riverside.fm or zoom audio quality not so hot on zoom of course but i've tried squad cast and zen caster and i'm pretty happy with riverside.fm for right now again i'm just trying it out but it works i will then go into descript and logic pro i generally start with the script and i will record intros and outros if i need to or if i'm doing a solo show i'll generally just record straight into the script and then do my editing like moving clips around filler words and silences and you know putting stuff together i use descript and i also sometimes do this for video you can edit video with the script as well i have tutorials i've done youtube videos about done youtube videos about daggum near everything hashtag like hashtag comment hashtag subscribe hashtag watch my videos hashtag algorithm anyway so the script i generally get my editing done i'll remove words from there move stuff around and then export into one of two things sometimes i will go into logic pro if i want to tweak a little bit add in a little bit of you know compressor maybe some eq maybe add some gain if it needs it or whatever if the audio is clean enough after the script i generally just don't even do that i will generally go straight to aphonic alphonic also done a video about you can go check that out it's what i used in my post-production to get it leveled make it sound a little bit better i also recommend this one by the way i don't pay for this anymore it was only two dollars a month though fix my levels it's kind of like alphonic cleans up audio levels audio maybe not quite as powerful or customizable but i did use that i still recommend it as well so descripts sometimes in a logic pro i use auphonic generally to clean it up and then it's into buzz prop i still i still approve of red circle i've used podbean i approve of podbean too but i moved over to buzz proud maybe six nine months ago and i'm like why wasn't i on this to begin with there's some there's fancy features like it works you can embed players and actually customize it make it look good in multiple episodes in one player and everything just works everything's just easier on buzz pro i don't know how they do that but everything is just smooth the uploading scheduling writing this out this looks better than on red circle for sure more options here more fancy features i just yeah i like buzz pro i pay him 18 a month i'm happy to do that youtube let's chat youtube so my youtube workflow is a little bit of a mess right now for real most of the time if i'm sitting at this desk i'm using ecamm which you can see right there it's weird but you can see ecamm on my computer right here i use that to record it's easy to share my screen to switch back and forth if i'm not sitting at this desk only doing talking head no screen share i will generally be sitting across the room in my office and just using my camera to record right now my my camera sony a6400 is plugged into my computer through cam link 4k into ecam live that's my main youtube setup but sometimes i'll just literally record using the camera and my better mics over there at my other desk as far as editing i signed up for vid chops which is an editing service it's kind of like an editing agency if you will for youtube videos it's very cheap and affordable all my editors are in the philippines and i use them for a first pass sort of thing as in i generally never publish what they send back this is my portal by the way and here's a bunch of my recent videos but i generally just do some final edits they'll do the first pass and then i will bring it into either final cut pro or davinci resolve so i love final cut pro because i've used it for years i don't have to pay for it it's fairly easy but i do enjoy some of the more fancier features from davinci resolve which i'm not actually going to open and show you right now just because it's a computer hog for my poor macbook pro but their audio and their color correction and color grading and stuff like that and quite frankly their editing is actually just as easy once you get used to it it takes a while to take a lot longer to get used to it than it does imovie or final cut pro but i use them to kind of clean up the youtube videos and publish now the only other youtube tool that i use almost every single week would be morning fame this is my analytics and keyword research tool for youtube it is invite only i'm pretty sure i have a link um everybody who's on the program should have an affiliate link but i use this for analytics i'll come in here it does a really good job at breaking down which videos are working what you need to work on i don't spend a ton of time in here i should probably spend more time instead of these do these more like these research your next video uh the keyword research tool is just really good i mean it's really good i use tubebuddy on occasion and i generally recommend them because you can get started for free morningfame starts at um i don't i actually don't know what to say i pick 12 a month for it i think there's actually a cheaper plan but i'm not sure their their keyword research is just bar none like it's so fantastic you start typing on how to start a youtube channel how to start a business and it'll give you grades based on your channel information your subscriber counts and it's just really good you can see other videos they give you like a gateway video that you might be able to rank above i'm going to rank number one if i do how to start a business yeah i don't think so that's weird but tubebuddy i also use and recommend on occasion as well and now we are into the final category various so here are a bunch of random tools i didn't really categorize all that much of course there's the good old-fashioned google drive so i'm on g suite for my email and for extra storage and i'm in here every single day like i do a lot of google docs a lot of my products are in here like one hour blog post all those templates and i do a bunch of notes i have ad copy and my some trackers that i don't use enough and a bunch of other stuff on google drive yadda yadda air table i use primarily for this one i'll just show you this one right here of course i got my pizza tracker too for those that don't know i'm tracking every single slice of pizza that i eat in 2021 and where it came from and what toppings were on it and how many slices i ate but anyways this is my content planner this is where all the magic happens pretty much right here i've talked about this before in other videos but any content idea i have i put in here and then i immediately rank based on search viability is that a bird brand how on brand is it how unique is this piece of content how motivated am i to do it and then i get an average right here or actually just sums it up it just sums it up i could do an average and then i categorize it and i have notes right here i also have my different platforms but i do have blog podcasts some shorts i could do as well as like youtube live ideas i'll put everything on here i would generally categorize it and the stuff at the top is generally what i work on first what i'm most motivated to do and how the most potential for growing the business or whatnot reaching more people etc so that's how i do it i also keep a product inventory these are all my products and they're like broken out by funnel category podcasting blogging products and then my marketing and sales stuff other than that i use gifts a lot giphy of course and then compress or die i actually love compressor die i use this to compress and resize gifs so that those fit better in blog posts or emails or whatnot i really love them there's another one webp is generally just what i end up typing in we need to convert a webp to a gif or webp to jpeg or png or whatever that is i use easygift.com
that's my favorite for this i usually have the url by the way so if i were to get like shaq over here i would grab this url open up in a new tab i will right click and open up the image in a new tab so it doesn't have the giphy branding and stuff on there as you can see right here and this is not a gif i can't just download this i have to get the webp i'll come over here i'll type in the url i will upload it and then it'll spit back a gift version actually you've got to click convert to gif you could resize it you could compress it from here as well although i generally use compressor die for that sort of stuff and here is the gif version now this tool that you're seeing right here is called joint it allows me just to grab files to drag and drop later like if i wanted to close up all this stuff i still have this gif over here that i could post into an email or whatever and i could just grab it from over here and drag it anywhere i want you can also delete it there we go i use let's see dropbox descript todoist that's what i was going to get to this is my to-do list of choice i don't use trello i don't use airtable for this sort of project management stuff because i don't really have a big team i'll use vid chops and i'll use freelancers and stuff but i don't have like a team of like seven people that i need to manage it's mostly just me so i use todoist i do have a bunch of projects and funnels i don't actually use these a whole lot i generally just using the today tab and putting it in here as they come along i do use slack for online impact it's my private membership community sales hashtag opens up in october 2021 this is generally where we hang out and share stuff and we have our mastermind groups connected in here and a bunch of other stuff as well so use slack for that and just to uh end up this video right here i'll show you some of my mac apps so i use alfred that's this search bar sort of thing right here i will search my computer for any different apps or files i'll also you can also just do addition i use this a lot instead of like a calculator i use self control which i'll open through alfred to block my social media sites and you can you know add time you can edit your block list or whatever self control it's really great there's freedom.to if you're not on a mac or if you want to pay for something you could use freedom keyboard maestro i have a bunch of macros and this is how i do like text expansion if i'm just typing out my email address for example i will i never type out any email addresses because i find annoying or my urls i have them all hotkeyed you can use textexpander for this but that's paid i like keyboard maestro because it was literally 30 lifetime you can also use stuff like atext you can also use stuff like auto hotkey if you're on windows for example so hdd is my url dddd is my email address oh all my colors for my brand pink x blue x green x red x this is my dark color that i use for a bunch of my designs i got all my colors hotkeyed in there i also have my youtube descriptions dot ytx you can see this in all of my youtube videos i start from here and then i of course i add an intro i add jump links i will pick and choose which videos i want to kind of promote they're generally related to whatever video you're watching right now as you can see below i also do my podcast show notes in the exact same way i'll do pcx and there's my podcast show notes that i put in my podcast description i'll do the show notes url and add the actual intro but that's how i do all that fancy stuff i also use clean my mac again if you're on mac i think this is a must you need to be cleaning up your computer deleting old files keeping things running nice and smooth clean my mac is like 30 bucks a year or something like that recurring i love it it's generally you just scan and then you do it and you can also use some of their other tools to search for old huge files that are taking up space and yadda yadda and that my friends is about it so hashtag youtube again like comment subscribe etc etc i would love it if you go browse my channel find some other useful videos you might like and other than that thank you for being here blog tribe and we'll see you next time adios
2021-06-25 16:57
