After a career as a professional musician and band leader in the Miami South Florida Area I decided to see if I could make some money with this new internet thing. After years of trial and error I started to get the hang of it and now I am completely financially independent because of my various online businesses. The goal of this blog is to chronicle my continued marketing experiences. I focus on real examples of what works and what does not work.
Google does not give us a recipe for getting our sites ranked. We have to use our own experiences to see what actually works rather than theory.
I hope you enjoy the blog. Please let us know what you think in the comments area. We appreciate your feedback.
I use multiple VPS servers host over 100 different websites. After trying many different web hosting companies I can very confidently recommend KnownHost. I have had servers with them for years and I never have any issues. The few times I have had to contact them their service has been responsive, polite and knowledgeable.
There are so good I even forgot they were hosting one of my websites. I forgot because I NEVER had an ISSUE! Here is a post I made on Web Hosting Talk where I talk about their service and some other hosts where I had less than positive experiences.
If you are looking for any type of web hosting and especially VPS servers check out KnowHost here. You will save yourself lots of headaches.
Windows VPS Servers
I recommend people get a remote Windows VPS server if they are going to operate our software from Coolmarketingsoftware.com
The company I recommend now is Databasemart. You can learn more about their Windows VPS packages here.
I recommend them because their prices are very reasonable and the servers work. Decent, responsive customer service as well.
Contabo– This web hosting company is based in Germany and has just fantastic prices. You need to be a little more of a do it yourself type person to work with Contabo. However, they do have support which does respond efficiently if there are any issues with the hardware.
If You Do Not Need A Lot of Hand Holding Contabo’s Unmanaged VPS Servers Prices Are Hard to Beat
Linux Servers VPS Servers With Contabo
If you do not need a lot of hand holding Contabo is almost impossible to beat for value and prices. And to be fair, the few times I have had to contact support they have responded perfectly.
Why use 3 web hosting companies? I never put all my eggs in one basket. Web Hosting companies get bought out, change policies, can change prices (All of which has happened to me) so it is best to spread out the risk. That being said I have had nothing but smooth sailing with Turnkey Internet.
I Spread My Websites Over 3 Server Companies Because I Never Put My Eggs All in One Basket
This is an American based company which offers both fully managed and un managed servers. You get a huge discount if you go with the unmanaged servers. I am using a unmanaged linux vps server.
Domain Registration
Quickregister.us- I use Quickregister.us to register domain names. This is my reseller page for Godaddy. I have set the prices to the lowest price allowed by Godaddy so it is a good place to get domain names.
Web Hosting Control Panel
I use exclusively WHM cpanel control panels. WHM cpanel is the most popular and easy to use web hosting control panel. If you are going to host your own website I would highly recommend choosing CPANEL even if it costs a little extra. This control panel will save you time and time is money.
Web Hosting Back Up Services
Digital Ocean, Backblaze and Amazon S3.
I Automatically Backup All My Websites and Databases Every Day to Multiple Backup Servers
If for some reason you lose your website everything can be backed up and re-uploaded exactly how it was using your back up files.
Amazon S3 Storage Services– I am paranoid. What if your back up goes down? I have back ups to my back ups. I also backup all my websites and databases to Amazon S3 storage services. This can be done automatically from your WHM control panel.
Sendy is a php script that you upload to your server. If you do not have the technical know how to do this you can hire somebody to do this for you with a service like Freelancer.com. If you want to do it yourself here is a tutorial on how to install Sendy.
Sendy uses Amazon SES to send out your emails. You need to sign up for an account with Amazon SES and confirm you domain with them. Here are some advantages of using a self-hosted autoresponder service.
You control your data. With autoresponder services that other people host you can lose your account at any time for any reason. This has happened to me a number of times. This can be very disruptive of your business.
Price. With Amazon SES you can send out 1 million emails for $100. With Aweber if I have 24,000+ subscribers is costs me $149. per month. Sendy software only costs $59. and it works flawlessly with Amazon SES.
Re-Verification of your emails. Emails have a shelf life. They need to be re-verified from time to time. I use a service called Deliverbility.com. When emails get old they can even be turned into spam traps. If you send emails to spam traps you can get your ip on black lists and this affects your email deliverability. So it is important to be able to upload your list from time to time to an email verification service to clean your lists.
Here is a video explaining why I switched from Aweber to Sendy. I still have an Aweber account but I do not rely on it solely. I have 4 licenses of Sendy on each of my domains.
WordPress Themes
Thrive Focus Premium WordPress Theme: I use Thrive Focus theme for this blog. I also use Thrive Architect to create my websites Classifiedsubmissions.com, and Coolmarketingsoftware.com. I have zero talent for graphic design. This amazing wordpress plugin and theme allows me to create professional looking websites that convert. I highly recommend Thrive Themes projects.
Video Services and Software
Screen Cast O Matic. They have a free version and a pro version. I use the pro version which only costs $4. per month! Compare that to the much more expensive Camtasia Studio. I have found no limitations with Screen Cast O Matic and I have been able to make excellent screen capture videos.
InVideo Ai- This is a fantastic software for making AI videos with stunning AI voiceovers quickly. Learn more here.
YouTube. Youtube is one of the best ways to promote your product or service. With all the video tools I mentioned above you should be able to create tons of great videos. I definitely recommend starting your own YouTube channel on your theme and keep uploading new videos all the time.
You can see my YouTube channel here. Please subscribe! YouTube videos shoot to the top of search engine rankings. Put your keywords in the titles of your videos to increase visibility.
One of the best features of Article Video Robot is that it automatically makes slide show presentations of your blog post or letter than you can upload to Slideshare.net and other slide show hosting sites. These sites get ranked very high in the search engines and get quite a bit of traffic.
FTP Software
FileZilla– After being disappointed in the more expensive Ipswitch paid software I found the Freeware FileZilla which actually works much better! Sometimes you do not get what you pay for. Now I use this free FTP software exclusively and it works just fine!
Programming Software
Ubot Studio. Ubot is software which allows you to program bots without knowing any coding language. Ubot Studio will let you program you own software without having to know code. I used this program to create all the software at Coolmarketingsoftware.com and several other programs.
Even though you do not need to know code there is quite a learning curve with this software. If you are not prepared to spend hours working through complex problems this is not for you.
But if you want a challenge and you want to program your own software this is a great place to start. Not for those who want a quick fix. More for those who really are curious, persistent and want to create their own software. Highly recommended.
The Free Ad Forum Pro Submitter. This software posts ads on autopilot to The Free Ad Forum which has just been exploding in traffic. The sites gets close to 1000 sign ups per day. You can post ads for free and there are also upgrade options allowing you more exposure for your ads.
Text Editor
Textpad. Textpad is the best text editor on the planet and it is free. It is a thousand times better than notepad. I use it constantly.
Amemberpro– This php software is an outstanding shopping cart and affiliate management software. This is what we use to power the billing and affiliate program for Classifiedsubmissions.com
Outsourcing Services
Freelancer.com– When I need a programmer I use Freelancer.com which is one of the largest outsourcing sites. Basically you post a project and programmers (or other web professionals) bid for your job.
The key to having a successful experience is to describe exactly what you want in advance. Take time to write out the instructions clearly before posting your job.
I have had many successful projects completed on Freelancer.com. Your payment is held in Escrow and not released until you are satisfied with the work. Both the worker and you can review each other so people are generally on their best behaviour.
Fiverr.com – Web workers propose their services for $5 (or more) on Fiverr.com. Video submissions, and graphic design and some services I regularly purchase from Fivverr.com
Please bookmark this page as I will be adding more services that I use. If you have valuable services that you use please feel free to share in the comments section.
