Over the past eight years, I’ve amassed quite a collection of software, spreadsheets, bookmarks, and subscriptions to all sorts of tools and services that I find useful. What you’ll find here is a list of the ones I hold in high regard.

Productivity & Time Saving

Zapier – Amazingly useful tool that connects two apps or services to let them “talk” to each other and automate certain tasks. You can think of it in terms of “If this happens, then do this”. For example, you could:

• Add a new line to a Google Doc showing order details from Woocommerce
• Send an SMS message to a customer when their order status changes
• Automatically share new blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, or other social network

Themeforest & Other Envato Sites – I can’t say enough good things about Themeforest or the other sites in their network, including CodeCanyon and GraphicRiver. I spend a lot of time on these sites, collecting resources that would otherwise take me many hours to create. You can find incredible site templates, highly useful code snippets, and beautiful graphics to use for your projects.

Keyword Research

Market Samurai – Still one of my favorites when it comes to keyword research. Their tool is cheap and very effective at discovering and analyzing keywords.

Adwords Keyword Planner – The keyword tool inside Adwords has been around for a long time, and most other keyword research tools tap into their API to pull figures that show monthly search volume and relative competition.

Ubersuggest – This handy tool takes whatever keyword you throw at it, and generates a list of auto-complete suggestions from Google. Use this to build large keyword groups, and then expand them in the Keyword Planner.

Email Marketing

Aweber – If I could go backward, I’d probably use these guys as my main email provider. They have a better delivery rate than Mailchimp, nicer opt-in forms, and much better support.

Mailchimp – I’ve used quite a few email marketing tools, and I like Mailchimp the best. Their interface is super easy to use, and they include some of the best pre-made templates that you can use for any industry or occasion. You can signup for a free account, and the monthly plan pricing is very reasonable.

Conversion Optimization

CrazyEgg was brought to life by Neil Patel, and is THE tool to use if you want to track how users interact with your site. It shows you heat maps, scroll maps, click patterns, and other visual cues to the behaviors your visitors take on your website. The insight you can get is invaluable.

Kissmetrics is like Google Analytics with extra layers of behavioral data and a simplified delivery that makes it easier to understand their journey through your website, and into the conversion funnels.

SEO

Brightlocal – These guys have one of the best platforms to optimize your local search marketing. Their powerful local marketing tools are suitable for small businesses or large enterprises. Keep track of your local search rankings, and use their Google+ Local Wizard to fine tune your local business listing. Try the 1 Month Free Trial and see for yourself.