I've been using Convertkit, but I have enough subscribers that it is now costing my $50 a month. I heard about Send Fox at App Sumo. 

This is a new system but is part of App Sumo (not just something they are promoting). The price as I record this is $49 for lifetime access up to 5000 subscribers. You can upgrade for $50 to get another 5000 subscribers. At the $150 you are up to 15,000 subscribers and the branding for send fox is diminished. 

So I purchased the package. 

First Impressions

It is super easy to use, and you can make your own great-looking landing pages. You can make some pretty boring looking forms. The automation makes it easy to deliver lead magnets. They do integrate with Zapier, but I found it frustrating that as of now (10/2019) when using Zapier I can specify which email list to add the person to in Send Fox. 

Going In You Know...

I knew this was a newish company. I knew they didn't integrate with any plugins, etc at this point (they are working on that). They do (naturally) integrate with Sumo king (the pop-up tool, etc). 

Going Forward

Because I have had some nice forms on my website I'm not canceling my Convertkit yet. The minute they integrate with my tools I will ditch convertkit. Until then I just manually export and import into Send Fox and send all my emails from there. 

If you are brand new to email lists, this might be a perfect fit that will have you set for a very long time. 

MORE INFORMATION

For more information check out Send Fox

This is episode 365 of Weekly Web Tools

I keep seeing these widgets that show that "so and so just purchased this products X amount of time ago."

Provely.io is a new competitor and has an opening sales for as little as $8/month while their grand opening sale is going on.

https://useproof.com/ appears to have more features, but it's $29 a month and has a limit to the number of visitors

http/www.provely.io shows when people purchase, a few less features, and you can get it during their launch for $17/month ($8/month if you choose yearly). This also enables you to simulate purchases to get the ball rolling.

Social Warfare Plugin - The best tool for sharing things. I love that I can specify the tweet text and the image for Facebook, Pinterest, etc. This is once I don't wince when the subscription payment comes through

Convertkit - I like MailChimp, Aweber, but I switched to Convertkit last year, and I love the marketing tools that I can use and the ability to make my own landing/sales pages.

Siteground Web Hosting - 10 Years ago I would've sung the praises of Hostgator, and I thought Bluehost was OK. I do not recommend them at all, and I like Siteground. Their support is so much better. I also love Godaddy support, so I created coolerwebsites.com which is my GoDaddy reseller account

Divi Theme (Elegant Themes) - The most flexible WordPress theme I've used and still fairly easy to use (there is a bit of a learning curve, and you probably won't use all of its features). I DO NOT recommend Appendpipity themes. They were awesome, but from what I can tell, the lights are on but nobody is home. I am interested in checking out Thrive Themes, and Themify (very divi like)

Speaking of Websites and Wordpress Management, I LOVE ManageWP and recommend it to everyone who has a WordPress site.

Bonjoro Is a cool Video Email service that pays for itself every month I have someone share how cool it was that I sent them a personalized video

Kit.com is a great way to bundle Amazon products. I tried Fresh Store Builder and it was OK. My favorite is EasyAzon for Amazon Tools. ( I use this on bestpodcastinggear.com/shop )

Acuity Scheduling is the best tool for Scheduling Appointments. I love that it works with Freshbooks so I can have people book consulting time, get paid upfront and have an invoice in my billing system.

For Membership Websites, if you are using Wordpress I loved Digital Access Pass. If you want your membership site separate from Wordpress I love Thinkific.

In regards to project management, I love todosit.com

For automated Tweeting, I like Social Jukebox

If I was creating an Affiliate Program, I would use iDev Affiliate

For Chat on a website, I love https://www.tawk.to/

Nimble is my favorite contact management Tool

Optin Monster continues to reign as the king of Pop-Ups and Opt-ins

Freshdesk is a GREAT Support tool if you want a ticketing/FAQ all in one

My Typos were decreased by using The World's Best Grammar Checker  which is Grammarly

For Webinars I use Zoom.us

My favorite Affiliate Network (their new interface is AWESOME) is shareasale.com

The Last Episode of This Version of Weekly Web Tools

On July 28th, 2007 I started Weekly Web Tools as I was doing web design using Dreamweaver and I just started using Wordpress. I was my target audience. I was a person who wanted their websites to

Get more traffic

Convert When people arrive

Look Good doing it

Communicate better with our audience

I use to run into tools all the time, there were new things happening on a regular basis, and I could find great tools from companies (not marketers) and creating the podcast was pretty easy.

Fast forward 10 years later and instead of companies, tools are being launched by marketers who often would release a tool for a small period of time, and either pull the tool, go out of business, offer no support, raise their price, and in the end it was hard to find solid tools that I could recommend to you and be able to sleep at night.

My last episode was the straw that broke the camel's back. I found what appeared to be a cool tool, only to find to "Companies" who appeared to have stolen the code from each other, and one didn't work (its has since been fixed). So I spent the better part of two hours trying to figure out if I liked the tool.

To put it into a single question, after 10 years, I think I've found all the tools that I like, and I don't see a lot of creativity to make new tools that grab my attention.

I always thought I would get more input from the audience on what tools they used, and I did from certain people, but all in all, it was a very, very low percentage.

I don't plan on releasing any new episodes for the rest of 2017 unless something crosses my path. I plan on rebranding the podcast to be called "Small Business Tools" and it will be moved to a "when I have something to say" schedule. I'm also shutting down the Patreon account. I could switch to a patron account, where I am paid when I put out an episode but I've decided just to close it down.

Josh Rivers from CreativeStudio.academy

Ileane Smith from www.ileanesmith.com

Scott Johnson from Computer Tutor Podcast

I found proof software, which is a script that puts a notification at the bottom of your screen showing you that someone signed up for your product and how long ago.

The idea is "Everybody's doing it" so there is a fear of missing out tactic. The weird thing is their plans start at $29/month, and if you go through your 1000 unique visitors they automatically upgrade you to the next plan that is $79/month (you do get notified that you're over quota, and I'm not sure if you can shut off the service completely). See https://useproof.com/pricing

Fomo is a product that looks exactly the same except they don't charge on the unique visitors, but how many times the notification is shown (which to me sounded like a better deal). Except there is an issue, you can't order it (at least not no 9/28/17) See https://www.usefomo.com/pricing

There is a weird discussion on the history of these programs at https://www.producthunt.com/posts/notif

Keep the lights on here at weekly web tools by going to www.weeklywebtools.com/support and become a supporter to receive additional tools

I found a great plugin for $29 that is a super powerful ad rotation system, but it also will help you design the artwork. So you have all the things you need in one place. 

You can sell ads based on

Pay per click

Pay per view

Pay per time

Group ads into a group and put them anywhere on your site

Trigger when a where an ad shows up. 

FREE STUFF

This month at If you go to Themeforest.net 

you will see in the middle of the page they give away a free Wordpress theme, free music, free Adobe templates, free 3d art and more. No shenanigans. They give away one free item a month

I came across a couple of companies that if you're constantly looking for royalty free items without breaking the bank, you might want to check out.

Graphicstock was not a concert in the 70's for graphic artists. It's a website with 380,00 images that you can get access to for $99 a year (kind of). You can download as many images as you want and those are yours forever. There are photos, illustrations, and vectors. You can sign up for a 7 Day free trial and take as many images as you want to. Check it out at graphicstock.com

With this site, you have access to 115,00 studio quality HD Clips. There are great looking stock videos, motion backgrounds and After Effects Templates. The price of membership is $149/year. Their website is videoblocks.com Here again, they offer a 7-day trial.

AudioBlocks

I love this site. Their sounds sound great. There isn't any cheesy music that was created on a Casio keyboard 9 years ago. They have music, sound effects, and loops. The interesting thing is most places will put some sort of beep or branding when you listen to their samples, and they don't. Their price is $99/year for unlimited downloads of any of their 100,000 tracks. Here again, they offer a free 7-day trial to download as many as you want that you can keep. See audioblocks.com

Envato Elements

This is an impressive amount of photos, graphics, icons, and templates for $29/month Check it out at https://elements.envato.com/

Discourse: For Those Who Want a Cool Group Without Using Facebook.

Discourse is a from-scratch reboot, an attempt to reimagine what a modern Internet discussion platform should be today, in a world of ubiquitous smartphones, tablets, Facebook, and Twitter. If you wanted to create a community and didn't want to use a Facebook group, this would be something would want to look at. Don't get shocked when you see the $100/month price tag. That is if you choose to have them host it for you. It's open source, and you can use the software for free - you just have to install it. 

https://www.discourse.org/

Support the Show

Become a Patron! see www.weeklywebtools.com/support

Stencil 

is a cool website that focuses on making social image FAST. They have an extension for Chrome and Firefox. Once you add the extension to your browser, you can highlight a quote on any website. Click on the Stencil icon extension on the top right of your screen to add to the Stencil canvas to create an image. The quote pops into the canvas!

They are integrated with buffer, so you can schedule an image (again the focus on fast, and convenient).

You can create up to 10 images for free per month. The first paid plan is only $9 a month and for that, you can create  50 images per month from over 1 million images, 200K icons, 575 templates, and you can upload your own fonts. You can even create logos and watermarks. The Unlimited plan is only $18/month

If you decide to go with the pro account ($9/month) and you're If you're at all unhappy with your PRO account within 7 days of upgrading, they will give you a full refund. I'm assuming that is the same for their unlimited plan as well. 

Take it for a test drive at https://podclick.me/stencil

Pushbullet 

This is a cool tool software/app. That allows you to share text, links, images super fast. Check it out at www.pushbullet.com

I spoke about Bomb Bomb in a previous episode and recently found Loom. As the Bomb Bomb account, I use is $50/month, I wanted to see what I got for $0 with LoomBoth Bomb Bomb and Loom:

Integrate with Gmail Can be sent via a link (as you end up on a page) Both integrate with other apps (but Bomb Bomb integrates more).

Bomb Bomb Can:

Do a video autoresponder

Segment different recipients and send email

You can customize the page that people are taken to watch the video.

Can track if someone has not only opened your email, but you are notified when they click the video

Loom Can:

The page has a place where you can not only watch a video, but there is a chat box and a text box if you want to put links that you mention in the video. This might be good for teams.

Conclusion:

In the end, Bomb Bomb has more polish. They appear to have more features as if they've had a few years head start (they did). If you have it in the budget and would like a video autoresponder, check them out. If you just want video email and don't care that the first frame of your video is awful (and want to kick the tires on the idea) then check out Loom.

In both cases, I've found video email gets great results.

Weekly Web Tools Supporters had access to a behind the scenes video of Loom. See www.weeklywebtools.com/support

Wordfence is a plugin that helps stop people from hacking your site. Today I read you all the different things that it blocks.

I was looking for a tool to make a directory of websites. To make a long story short, they are very hard to find. Almost all directories are created to help you find some address so it can be a local business directory or real estate, etc. I wanted something to list websites at Podcasting Resources.com 

Then I remembered I had purchased a theme a while ago from PremumPress called "Responsive Directory Theme" which I don't feel is available anymore. They too have niched their directories into coupons, dating sites, instead of a once size fits all. I will say the tutorials to get up to speed, and the ability to somewhat customize the look is good. If you're looking to make a directory listing that is not zip code related, good luck. The PremiumPress Themes are $80. 

There is one thing that makes it easy to find something you're looking for and that is to buy a product, and whatever you are looking for will jump out of the woodwork. This was the case with Web Directory 2.0. It is an all in one directory script, and for me, I like the looks of it as you can turn off the ability to submit a listing (as I just want my listings) you can charge (but I'm not ) for listing. The only thing that would be nice is a place to have advertisements, but I can always add an advertisement rotation plugin for that. The plugin is $34.

This Aparg Smart Add is sweet, you can create video ads, pop-up ads, adds that you can put in sidebars, you can have images, code, etc. The plugin is only $30, and if you are a person that is selling ads, you can limit their view and have them expire. It looks super flexible. It doesn't facilitate the sale of ads, but controls the view of the ads. For me, I'm not selling ads on my site, I would more than likely put affiliate products.

Facebook Messenger WordPress Plugin

Based on Facebook Messenger, this plugin runs like an instant messaging system. After setup, which is normally less than 2 mins, the blue badge of Facebook Messenger and the button Message Us on Facebook will appear on your pages.

Your customers find it convenient to ask about your products or services.

This plugin is sure to help your business with time and cost saving, yet obtain a prompt reply to visitors.

And what else, from those received messages, you will be able to build a rich customer base for online marketing and remarketing later on.

Here is a quick video

CLICK HERE for More Information. In the month of May 2017, you can download it for free

Special thanks to Scott Johnson who produces the Computer Tutor podcast where he gives weekly computer tips at www.computertutorflorida.com if you ever need some work done on your computer, Scott can often fix your computer remotely. 

If you found all the options of Evernote a little overwhelming, when all you want to do it sync some notes in the cloud, then you might want to check out Simple Note.  Another bonus of Simple Note is you can share a list, post some instructions, or publish your thoughts with other Simple Note users (like your family)

Scott is using it for simple things like a grocery list that is shared with his family, as well as notes that come up during the day. 

One key point about Simple Note: backups, syncing, sharing — it's all completely free

Thanks to everyone who helps pay for the podcast hosting, web hosting, email list, and all the other things that I use to create the podcast. 

Go to www.weeklywebtools.com/support