Blogging Tools I love! You Should Too!

Why shouldn’t you benefit from my three year plus learning experience penning Green Talk?  It is a business just like everything else.  Don’t get me wrong, I love writing articles at Green Talk, but in order to get my message out to the masses, I have had a very sharp learning curve.

When you write a blog, you have to become a master of social media, search engine optimization, and affiliate marketing unless you are blogging for joy and money is not an object.  Just to give you an idea, I spend hours trying to write my posts, work on the code, screw up the codes, spend hours trying to fix the code, taking pictures, uploading pictures, screw up pictures, and then doing it all over every day.  Blogging is hard work.  But surprisingly, I love it.  Where else could I meet such fascinating people?

The reason I created this page is why shouldn’t you benefit from what I found to work?  Now, I do get some money as an affiliate but you will definitely thank me over and over from these programs.

Subscription and Email Newsletter:

Aweber:  How many of you are using a free subscription service for your newsletter or are unhappy with the service or forms of your current subscription provider?  Well, I was one of those with a free subscription provider.  The service was great but was limiting.  After three and half years, I only had 200 email subscribers but 700 RSS feed subscribers.  My subscription form was lame and I wasn’t asking people to subscribe in a way that was compelling.

So, after Darren of Problogger and John Chow (2 really big online marketing guru) recommended Aweber, I took the leap and never turned back.  I love all the professional templates that Aweber offers as well as their tutorials and blog posts.   I especially love the lightbox that pops up to ask people to subscribe.

How am I doing?  In five months, I have tripled my email subscriber list.  I even lost a few subscribers when I switched over so I started below the 200 subscriber mark.

What about their service?  Their service is outstanding. I have called them a few times about questions that I have and they have been very patient with me.

Price?  It will cost you $19 a month for up to 500 subscribers.  You can pay for the year and get a discount.  After you reach 500 subscribers, the prices go up but not too much.  I have never been happier when I received an email from Aweber that I owed more money since I exceeded the 500 subscriber count.  I know.  Kind of sick but it means you all love Green Talk.  (Who couldn’t resist?)

So, take a test drive of Aweber for free? What have you got to lose.  Um, making money from your site? .

I have 2 bad boys to help me with SEO:  Scribe and Market Samurai.  I feel I need both since they serve different purposes:

Scribe Makes SEO Easy!

I hate anything to do with SEO or search engine optimization.  Keywords, density, and tags. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.   But unfortunately, Google and its cousins (Bing, Yahoo, etc.) use keywords when you put in your search to provide the end user with the most relevant articles.

When Brian of Copywritter offered Scribe that makes SEO easy, I jumped aboard.  Basically, it helps me with my titles, makes sure I have the appropriate numbers of hyperlinks, keyword density in the posts, the right tags, and other benefits.  See here for a video demonstration of what this could do for you.

Does it work?  I have seen a jump in my numbers.  Unfortuneately, I have not converted the whole site.  There are 500 plus articles on Green Talk, and sadly maybe 100 posts have been converted (sniff, sniff.)  So help me out!  Click on the Scribe button to help me pay for a virtual assistant to convert the rest of my posts!

Prices varies depending on the amount of evaluations you would like per month.  For 15 evaluations per month and 35 keyword searches, you will pay $17 a month.  (Which means 15 posts a month.)

Market Samurai:

Why both Scribe and Market Samurai? Scribe helps me make sure my articles are SEO ready.  It really isn’t as simple as you may think.  Although Scribe provides you with keywords based on the amount of searches, it is not as indepth as Market Samurai.  Basically this program helps you get to page 1 of Google rather than page 3 since you picked a keyword where the big boys have all the market share such as Amazon or another big online retailor.

The program offers terrific videos to walk you through the process and helps you to chose keywords in which you have a good chance to rank on page 1 of Google.   Watch some of the videos and tell me this program isn’t worth its weight in gold.  Again, Darren from Problogger recommended this program.

Priced at $149, this program is well worth it.

Video and Flash

Animoto:  This site is the best thing next to slice bread. I am serious!

Here is the low down. I will let you on a little secret I found.  I have realized in my three years that you can’t learn everything.  So instead of trying to do everything and spend endless hours screwing up, I decided to take another approach.  Pay for what I like and spend time perfecting what I do best.  Spread the green gospel.

Now what does this have to do with Animoto?  I really, really, really wanted a flash introduction for my video and a introduction onto the site. Adobe Flash is free for 30 days.  I just did not have time to learn how to use the program and I could never do what Animoto can do.  You upload your picture and videos and you receive this amazing video.  Check out some of their videos.  My first video took me 7 minutes to make only because I agonized over which pictures to put in.  Time is money, people and if you want a professional looking video for your website, Animoto is the way to go.  They offer different plans to suit your budget.

Check out my video . Click here and see what all the fuss is about.

Analtyics:

Clicky:  I use their program for free because I believe it gives me much better information than Google Analytics.  However, if you want a full blown out version which give you lots of detail, go for their premium version.

Woopra:  I use them as well. I love it because it gives you real time analytics so you see when your visitors are online and what they are reading.

Facebook Fan Page

Green Talk has a Facebook Fan Page.  However, there is nothing snazzy about it.  I installed the FBHTML page on it, but unless you are a coder, the most you can do is enter some skimpy information on it.  Custom Fan pages provide template that are easy, pezzy to enter your information.  Upload banners, change colors of your template, and you are in business.  I have installed one which has my Aweber sign-up since we all know that having the biggest email list in the world always wins.  Prices at $37 for 2 basic templates or $67 for all of the templates.  Tell me where you can find a coder for that price?

Disclaimer:  I am an affiliate of the above except Clicky or Woopra. I do make a some money from them but I would not promote them if I did use them myself and believed in the products.