1. WordPress.org — Website Content Management System

WordPress is an independent, open source, secure, popular and well supported content management system. I use a self hosted WordPress installation to build my websites and manage the content on those websites. A self-hosted WordPress website is not the same thing as a WordPress.com website. Watch my video WordPress.com vs WordPress.org to understand the different. 

WordPress is free to use. You can download the latest version at WordPress.org, but you will need a website hosting plan to host your self-hosted WordPress website. For hosting recommendations continue reading this article.

2. Dreamhost — Domain Registration & WordPress Hosting 

Dreamhost is my go to service for domain registration and website hosting for my entry level WordPress sites. 

Their domain registration is affordable, secure and well supported, plus they offer domain privacy as a free add-on, which means that they will keep your personal details private when you register your domain with them and enable this feature. 

For website hosting, Dreamhost offers their popular WordPress Basic plan starting at only $2.59 per month which comes with a pre-installed self-hosted WordPress site. And if you need more power, then you can always upgrade to their DreamPress or WooCommerce Hosting plans which start at $10.00 per month.

With their impressive customer support and award winning control panel, you will not be disappointed by Dreamhost. I’ve been a happy customer since 2007.

Here is my Dreamhost review video to help you get started.

3. WPX Hosting — Premium Managed WordPress Hosting

For more advanced WordPress sites, my preferred managed WordPress hosting service is WPX Hosting. They specialise in managed WordPress hosting and their 24/7 live chat support is absolutely outstanding. 

WPX Hosting offers everything you need to give you peace of mind. All their plans include unlimited inbound site migrations, SSLs certificates, DDoS Protection, Malware Scanning & Removal, custom CDN and automatic backups. 

If I have any issues with my website, WPX Hosting chat support answers within seconds to assist me in getting my issue resolved. I highly recommend their services.

4. GeneratePress — Lightweight & Responsive WordPress Theme

GeneratePress is my preferred and recommend baseline WordPress theme that I use on most of my sites. It’s the perfect foundation for any new website. The themes is secure and stable, light weight (less than 30KB), secure, search engine optimised and accessibility ready. 

The base theme is free, but to unlock all the premium features, I recommend purchasing the GP Premium add-on for $49.95. At that price you can use it on unlimited amount of websites and you get a year of support and updates.

If you want your site to be secure and load fast, then it’s important to have a lightweight, secure and updated theme. I highly recommend using GeneratePress.

5. Thrive Themes — Drag & Drop Editor, Email Opt In & Sales Pages

If all you need is a simple and minimalist site, then GeneratePress alone can do the job, but if you’d like to add a visual drag and drop editor, some email opt in forms, and some ready to use page templates, then I highly recommend Thrive Themes.

Thrive Themes offers a selection of plugins that will add additional features to your WordPress site. I’ve had a Thrive Themes membership for multiple years now and it’s a small price to pay for all the functionality their plugins add to my websites.

My favourite and most frequently used Thrive plugins are Thrive Architect, Thrive Leads and Thrive Comments. Thrive Ultimatum is also useful for adding count down timers and Thrive Quiz builder lets you create and add quizzes to your sites. 

If you only need one or two plugins, then you can buy them as once off purchases, but if you’ll be using more than two plugins, then I recommend purchasing the reasonably prices Thrive membership.

6. ConvertKit — List Building & Email Marketing

One of your most valuable assets that you’ll be creating for your digital marketing efforts is your email list. Have a subscriber list that you own (your own house list) means that you have a direct line to your existing customers and prospects. With the rise of social media and online ads, email marketing is still one of the most effective methods of generating sales online, but if you don’t have your own email list, then you have nobody to email.

My preferred and recommended email marketing platform is ConvertKit. This platform is powerful, yet simple to use. Their clean user interface makes it easy to use their advanced features. ConvertKit lets you capture email addresses to build your own list of subscribers, you can tag and segment subscribers, you can setup sequences of emails that automatically send out to a specific group and you can even create powerful visual automations, which is great for creating sales and onboarding sequences.

And if you’re just getting started, then ConvertKit is perfect. They recently launched a forever free plan that includes unlimited landing pages, customisable CTAs, signup forms, 30+ premium landing page templates, unlimited traffic. customisable domain setup, a list of up to 1,000 subscribers, unlimited email broadcasts and subscriber tagging.

That’s more than you need to get started with email marketing and if you already have a list, then you can level up your email marketing with ConvertKit’s additional features like sequences and automatons. 

There are so many email marketing platforms out there to choose from, but my honest opinion is don’t waste your time with any of the others. Go with ConvertKit, get started today, keep it simple and stay focuses and growing your list and regularly sending out emails. 

7. Spotlightr (previously VooPlayer) — Video Hosting & Embedding

If you’ll be creating, publishing and embedding private videos, then VooPlayer is one of my favourite options. VooPlayer offers video hosting as well as a feature rich online video player that lets you create video chapter markers, opt in overlays, custom video thumbnails, amoung other features. 

You can also use the VooPlayer video player to embed videos that are hosted on either YouTube, Vimeo or Dropbox. The Dropbox option is a great solution if you don’t have an existing Dropbox account. VooPlayer is still a fairly new app, but has been around for a few years and the developers keep adding additional features. 

8. Vimeo — Video Hosting

If you’ll be creating, publishing and embedding a lot of videos and and you need to have the ability to embed your videos on a protected website, like a membership site or an online learning portal, then Vimeo as a premium video host would be your best option. 

Vimeo has been around since 2004 and is a solid and trusted solution in the online  video hosting space. They offer a free plan, but if you’ll need to embed protected videos and need a fair amount of hosting space, then you’ll want to opt for one of their Pro, Premium or Business Plans.

Some of my favourite Vimeo features include that you can replace an existing video with a new version of the same video, which will then automatically update wherever you’ve embedded that video, a custom video thumbnail creation feature that lets you easily pic a frame of your video to set as your featured video thumbnail and you can limit your videos to only be embeddable on specific domains. These are all must have features if online video is an integral part of your business.

9. YouTube — Video Hosting & Video Traffic

10. Zoom — Online Video & Audio Calls 

In an attempt to curb the recent coronavirus pandemic, the amount of people working remotely and working from home has increased drastically. With this change many new users have become familiar with the video communications app Zoom.

I’ve been using it for many years and it’s been my preferred app for online video calls, virtual client meetings, strategy calls and online mastermind group sessions. If you need to get onto a call with an individual or with your remote team, then Zoom is a great app to do just that.

My favourite Zoom features includes being able to share not only my screen, but a specific window on my screen. This lets me share exactly what I want the others to see and not necessarily my entire desktop. 

Zoom makes it simple to schedule new meetings and generate an invite link which you can share with other participants. To join the call the other participants simply need to click on the link, and assuming they have the Zoom client installed on their device, the app will launch and they will able to directly join the call. This often makes me feel like I’m in the matrix connecting digitally to a secret online meeting environment. If you think about it, it’s quite mind blowing how we can connect and communicate with apps like Zoom.

Zoom also integrates seamlessly with my calendar scheduling app, Book Like A Boss. When a customer or prospect uses my online calendar to book a call with me, then a Zoom meeting link is automatically generated via my Zoom account and included in the calendar invite which is added my calendar and the calendar of the individual who has booked the call. This feature is super convenient and saves me the effort and time of setting up the meeting and adding the link to the calendar invite manually. 

With Zoom, you can also record your meetings either locally on your machine or (with a premium account) in the cloud. And the simple controls let you start and stop the recording as you please. 

Zoom offers a free plan, which lets you have unlimited 1-on-1 calls, but group calls with 3 or more participants are limited to 45 minutes. If you need to have longer group calls and need the functionality of being able to record into the cloud, then a premium plan is well worth it.

On their Pro accounts you can also use Zoom Webinar to run your webinars using the same Zoom experience that you are used to from Zoom calls. If you’re looking for a great webinar solution, then make sure to check this out.

11. Skype — Online Video & Audio Calls 

12. Airtable — Planning, Collaboration & Online Forms

Founded in 2012, Airtable is a cloud based relational database app. It’s a super-charged hybrid between a spreadsheet and a database. 

Airtable is great for storing, organising, sorting, grouping, analysing, and sharing all types of data. The use cases of this app are only limited by your imagination and creativity.

You can create your own customer relationship management (CRM) database, you can use it as a project management app, you can create a visual database of anything your heart desires. I use it to tracking finances, recipes, wildlife in South Africa, my personal possessions, my clients, my content marketing schedule just to name a few.  

Once you get familiar with using this app, you will quickly realise how simple and intuitive the user interface is, how powerful the features are and how snappy the data processing is. 

In Airtable you start out by creating you Workspace which contains all your bases (i.e. databases). Each base is made up of tables (i.e. like a spreadsheet table). Then each table can have different views, which can be a grid view, a from view or a kanban view. 

A grid view looks like a table, which you can sort, filter and group. A form view is a form that you can customise and embed on a website, so that users can submit data into your Airtable. And a kanban view (looks a lot like Trello) and lets you create a pipeline, flow or process, which is ideal for creating different stages within in a project or different stages within a sales process.

Airtable also offers add-ons called “Blocks” which let you visualise your data using charts, graphs, maps, etc. You can also integrate with an SendGrid which lets you automate the sending of emails. You can also integrate Airtable with a wide selection of other commonly used web apps using Zapier.

If you’re not familiar with Airtable, then I definitely recommend you give it a try, because if you’re anything like me, you might find some great use cases for this app within your workflow and business.

13. Asana — Project & Task Management

Asana is the project management app that I use and recommend. This cloud based web app offers all the features needed to effectively manage projects and tasks, especially if you are managing multiple team members.

Asana makes it simple to create a projects, parent tasks, sub tasks and then assign each task to a team member, as well as assign a due date for each task. Each task has a comments feature where team members can post updated and communicate with each other.  

Each team member can view a list of all their assigned tasks and sort them by due date to focus on tasks that need to be completed next. 

Each project can be viewed either as a list, board, timeline, calendar or progress report. It’s also possible to have a task show up on multiple projects, which can be very useful. 

One of my favourite features Asana is the timeline view, which lets me plan out projects and due dates weeks and months in advance so that the entire team can see what’s coming down the pipeline and what we’ll be focusing on next.

If you’re looking for a powerful and full featured project and task management app, then make sure to check out Asana. A free plan lets you use most features, but with a paid plan you can unlock all the features including the timeline.

14. Dropbox — File Sharing & Collaboration

Familiar to many, Dropbox is my trusted and recommend app for cloud file sharing and collaborating. Whatever project I’m working, I’ll create a production folder in Dropbox to store all project related files that other team members need to access.

Selective Sync is a Dropbox feature that lets you sync files into the cloud and then have them removed from your local machine. This is particularly useful if you need to save disk space on your local computer. 

Another great advantage with Dropbox is that many other apps integrate seamlessly. One example would be uploading videos from Dropbox to Vimeo. In Vimeo, you can simply click on upload and then upload files directly from Dropbox. Another example would be backing up WordPress sites into Dropbox using the All-in-One WP Migration plugin.

You can also setup automations using Zapier to upload files into Dropbox or to upload files from Dropbox to some other destination. Whether I use the Dropbox desktop client or the web client, the user experience is generally quick and efficient, assuming I have a fast internet connection, which is highly recommended when syncing larger files.

15. Dropbox Paper — Writing

One other (lesser known) feature that I love about Dropbox is their cloud writing application called Paper. It’s a simple web based word processing app that making writing simple and fun. The minimal formatting options keeps things simple, yet the basics are all included like embedding images, videos, check lists, tables, horizontal rules, and code. 

What I also absolutely love is you can copy a URL, highlight some text in Paper and hit paste, to make link the highlighted text out to that specific link. It’s a quick and simple way of adding a link to your document.

Once you’re done writing your document you can export it to PDF (.pdf), Microsoft Word (.docx) or Markdown (.md).

I recently switched over from Google Docs and now write all my document drafts in Paper and am absolutely loving it.

16. Canva — Graphic Design

In the past I’ve used various different apps for graphic design tasks including Photoshop and Pixelmator, but I’ve recently switched over to using the web app Canva, which is a cloud based graphic design platform that makes it simple to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content.

You can get started by using Canva’s free plan, which gives you access to a basic set of features and lets you create and export graphics. The free plan is ideal for individuals and small groups working on quick projects. This plan gives you access to 8,000+ free templates, 100+ design types (social media posts, presentations, letters, and more) and hundreds of thousands of free photos and graphics. 

To unlock Canva’s premium features, like creating your brand’s visual identity with logos, colours and fonts using a Brand Kit, you’ll need to update to the Pro ($9.95 per user per month) or Enterprise ($30 per user per month) plans.

By providing ready to use templates using the correct dimensions for specific use cases, Canva makes graphic design simple and efficient. The app also makes it simple to duplicate an existing design, makes changes to it and then export specific images from your collection either as png or jpg files. 

I’ve started using Canva to create my featured images for my blog posts and my YouTube videos, which has drastically simplified my workflow. If you’re looking for a simple and effective web app for graphic design, then make sure to give Canva a try.

17. Helpscout — Customer Support

When providing customer support to a small group of clients, it’s common to simply use email to receive and reply to support requests. If you however increase the number of customers that you serve and/or you increase the number of team members that are responsible for replying to support requests, then it’s highly beneficial to implement customer support system using help desk software. 

The app that I use and recommend for online customer support is Help Scout, which has been around since 2011 and has been refined into a reliable and affordable solution.

With Help Scout, you can have all your support emails get forwarded into a Help Scout mailbox, which creates a new ticket inside that inbox. Once a ticket has been generated, it can be tagged using custom tags, assigned to a specific team member and the status of that ticket can be updated as it gets processed.

Help Scout also lets you create a Doc Site, which is an online knowledge base containing support pages and articles. You can use these pages to list answers to frequently asked questions or you can document specific support processes that help customers resolve common issues. 

Another feature that Help Scout offers is called Beacons. A Beacon is a widget that you can add to specific pages of your website. This widget provides 3 simple to access features to your web site visitors. 1. You can let a user ask questions and have the widget display pre-written answers from your docs site (i.e. your Knowledge Base). 2. You can let a user fill in a form and submit a message via the Beacon. This message will be captured as a ticket inside of your Help Scout mailbox. And 3. Assuming one of your support agents is online, you can let a user initiate a live chat via the Beacon to get live support while they are on your website or sales page. 

All of these features are managed via your Help Scout dashboard and all your support agents (team members that are responsible for replying to support tickets) process tickets within a unified mailbox, which means that the entire support team can stay up to date with new tickets coming in, newly assigned tickets, and any notes that other team members have added to a specific ticket.

Help Scout even includes a feature that lets your customers rate the support interration and reports let you evaluate the overall performance of your customer support team.

If you’re ready to level up your customer support, then I highly recommend implementing Help Scout as your help desk solution.

18. Zapier — Integration & Automation

If you use multiple web apps and like the idea of automating basic recurring tasks, then Zapier is a great solution. Zapier lets you setup “workflows” or “recipes” called Zaps that can run automatically based on specific conditions.  

Zapier can also be very useful if a specific app or platform you use does not have a native integration with another app in your marketing stack. For example if a specific email marketing platforms doesn’t integrate with a specific shopping cart platform, then Zapier could be a way of integrating the two apps. 

You can use hundreds of apps to create Zaps within Zapier and for many of them you can create endless combinations of automations. Zaps span across all type of categories including project management, note taking, email, news & RSS, file management, eCommerce, notifications, customer support, backups, human resources, video, forms & surveys, social media, meeting management and real estate. When a zap is run, it counts as a task.

Zapier’s forever free plan lets you run 100 tasks per month, for $19.99 per month you can run up to 750 tasks per month, for $49 per month you can run up to 2000 tasks per month, for $299 per month you can run up to 50 000 tasks per month and for $599 per month can run up to 100 000 tasks per month. 

If possible it’s highly recommended to use apps that integrate without the need to use an app like Zapier. If you do however have recurring tasks that can be automated using an app like Zapier, then this solution can save you hours of time and leverage your productivity. 

19. Screenflow — Screencast Video Recording & Editing

20. Geru — Funnel Mapping & Planning

If planning and mapping out email and sales funnels is part of your digital marketing efforts, then you should definitely check out Geru. Geru is my preferred and recommended web app for mapping out and planning online funnels.

Geru is not an app that lets you create landing pages and email opt ins, but rather an app that you use to plan, map out and simulate the performance of a funnel that you are thinking of creating.

Geru offers a selection of pre-built templates that you can draw inspiration from or you can create a new funnel from a black page. The drag and drop interface lets you connect entry points (Organic Traffic, Paid Traffic, Email Traffic & Direct Traffic) to landing pages, opt in pages and sales pages. You can also add email sequences and retargeting campaigns into your map where needed.

One of the best features of Geru is the funnel simulation. While creating your funnel map you can define the prices of products that you offer, you can define the estimated amount of traffic that you’ll be sending into the entry points, and you can define the estimated conversation rates for each page, which includes opt in conversation rates, email click through rates and sales page purchase rates. After filling in all your estimates, you can simulate the funnel and it will give you an estimate of the revenue that will be generated. By using this feature you can experiment with different ideas and options to see how certain changes will affect the revenue outcome.

It’s highly recommended to map out and plan your funnel accurately before you get to work setting it up. Having a clear plan to follow will make the setup process quicker and simpler.

21. iDrive Cloud Backup — Backup Solution

iDrive is my tried, trusted and recommenced cloud backup solution. This app runs automated backups into the cloud and lets me backup the contents of my Mac, as well as the content of external hard drives. 

I use Dropbox for file sharing and collaboration, but Dropbox is not a true backup solution. iDrive on the other hand is a single solution that lets you protect all of your PCs, Macs, iPhones, iPads and Android devices and back them up into a single account!

Don’t underestimate the importance of backups. You hope to never need them, but when you do, then you’ll be glad you’ve got them. Protect yourself against data loss and ransomware, by backing up with iDrive.

22. Harvest — Invoicing & Time Tracking

Harvest is one of the web apps that I’ve been using the longest — I’ve been a paying customer since 2011 and have never looked at any other options. 

Harvest simplifies and streamlines the process of creating estimates, sending out invoices and getting clients to pay invoice on time. Harvest offers integrations with Stripe and PayPal, which makes it simple for clients to click a button and pay an invoice online. 

Another great feature that I regularly use, is the invoice reminder emails. If an invoice is showing up as overdue, Harvest makes it easy to send a reminder to your clients in a few simple clicks.

23. Google Sheets — Planning & Projecting

Google Sheets is my preferred and recommend spreadsheet cloud solution. It’s simple to create a new document, plan, project and organize your data, collaborate and share your final creation with your team, client or the world. 

I use Google Sheets for a wide selection of projects including financial projecting and reporting, KPI tracking and project planning. 

If you have a Google account, then you have access to the suite of Google Apps including Google Sheets. 

24. Final Cut Pro — Video Editing on Mac

If video is a big part of your work and your on a Mac, then look no further than Final Cut Pro as a professional video editing application.

Way back I started editing videos on Microsoft Movie Maker, then I moved on to iMovie and then I switched to Screenflow (which I still use — see point 19 above).

I recently decided to download the Final Cut Pro Trial a give it a try. From struggling to edit 4K footage in Screenflow, my experience of editing 4K footage in Final Cut Pro was an absolute dream. I quickly learned the basic shortcuts and before I knew it, an edit that I had spent hours on in Screenflow was done and dusted in less than an hour in Final Cut Pro (FCP). Not to mention various other great features that come with FCP.

If you do a lot of video editing and you’re on a Mac, then I highly recommend checking out Final Cut Pro. I’ve been kicking myself for not having switched sooner. 

25. Book Like A Boss — Calendar Scheduling 

Scheduling meetings can be a time-consuming task if back and forth communication is required. If you regularly schedule meetings or calls with customers or prospects, then using a scheduling app is a great solution. 

Book Like A Boss (BLAB) is the scheduling app that I use and recommend. It lets you connect multiple calendars, set your availability and create unique appointments that you’d like to let users schedule with you via the app. 

Lets say you want to let prospects schedule a 45min discovery call either on Tuesday or Wednesday and you want to let active customers book 90min strategy sessions Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. No problem … BLAB lets you easily create different bookings where each booking will have its own unique link or you can embed each booking on a unique page on your website. 

One of my favourite BLAB features is the Zoom integration, which automatically schedules a Zoom call inside your Zoom account and adds the Zoom link into the calendar event that gets added into your calendar and the calendar of the person scheduling the call.  

BLAB has recently also expanded their functionality to include integrated payment for those wanting to sell and accept payment for appointments or consultations via their platform, as well as group bookings for those needing to schedule group calls with multiple meeting attendees. 

This is one of those apps that can safe you or your personal assistant hours of time and many back and forth emails. 

26. PayPal — Accepting Online Payments In All Major Currencies

PayPal has been around since 1998 and is almost as old as the Internet itself. PayPal is a tried and trusted online payment merchant that lets you send and receive funds securely online. In 2002 PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion, which made it the primary payment method for the eBay platform.

PayPal is still going strong and is still a frequently used payment option online. I’ve been using it for over 12 years and it’s a platform that has been instrumental in letting me make online purchase and receive payments online.

PayPal lets you accept payments in all major currencies and you can easily exchange funds from one currency to another within your PayPal account. Here is a videos tutorial showing how this is done. 

One major benefit of using PayPal is that it’s a known and trusted online payment merchant. Not everyone online uses PayPal, but by letting customers pay you using this option, will simplify the checkout process more many potential customers. 

You can easily integrate PayPal with numerous eCommerce solutions including WooCommerce. I’ve been using PayPal together with Harvestapp to let customers pay invoices, which generally works really well.

You can also embed PayPal buttons straight onto your website, which lets you accept payments. 

26. PayFast — Accepting Online Payments in South Africa

PayFast is similar to PayPal, but focused on the South African market. This platform lets you accept online payment and credit card payments. There is no setup fee or monthly fee, but instead you get charged a percentage of each transaction.

PayFast integrates with eCommerce solutions including WooCommerce and you can cash out fund to all major South African bank accounts.

27. Google Analytics — Track Website Traffic Metrics

In Summary

The world of digital marketing apps, services and platforms keeps changing at an accelerating pace, so it's important to stay on top of the best solutions to make up your digital marketing stack.

The vast majority of recommendations that I've mentioned on this page have been around for quite some time and are both reliable, effective, affordable and well maintained.

I will keep updating this post regularly as I find new and better solutions and as I create and publish more quick start video tutorials, so make sure to subscribe to my newsletter below to stay informed.

If you have any questions, leave a comment below and I'll do my best to help.

An online marketing funnel is an automated system, which when setup correctly once and managed, will operate 24/7 creating new leads and generating sales for your business.

1. What is a funnel?

The purchase funnel, or purchasing funnel, is a consumer focused marketing model which illustrates the theoretical customer journey towards the purchase of a product or service.

According to the original model, the stages of the funnel are: Awareness, Opinion, Consideration, Preference & Purchase. However not all funnel models use these exact stages and descriptions.

Each funnel is made up of different sections representing a unique stage of the userʼs journey.

The funnel becomes narrower as you move further along or down, as more and more individuals naturally loose interest and drop off.

2. Path To Purchase Customer Stages

When creating an online marketing funnel, we can define the potential customer stages as follows:

1. Visitor: Unaware of your brand, services or products
2. Reader: Interested and consuming your content
3. Email Subscriber: Has taken action to opt in and provide you with their email address
4. Customer: Someone who has purchased a product or service from you

Two additional stages that can be added are:

5. Repeat Customer: Someone who has purchased multiple products or services from you
6. Brand Ambassador: Someone actively recommending your brand, products and/or services

An email funnel would include stages 1 - 3 and a sales funnel would include stages 1 - 4.

For now we will ignore stages 5 and 6 to keep things simple.

3. Funnel Stages: Top, Middle, Bottom and Outer

Top of the funnel represents the stage where visitors are just getting introduced to your brand. Theyʼve just become aware of what you do and what you offer.

Middle of the funnel represents the stage where subscribers, that are aware of your brand and are on your list, are engaged with your content (emails, blog posts, videos, etc.) but have not made any purchases yet.

Bottom of the funnel represents the stage where your customer becomes a buyer by purchasing your product or service.

Outer funnel refers to anything outside of your funnel. Deciding if youʼve got a market/product fit or if your ideal customer avatar has been accurately defined are both outer funnel questions.

4. Marketing Funnel Terminology Explained

A lead magnet is something of value that is offered in exchange for the visitors email address. This asset is usually a digital item like a video or PDF, but can also be a free discovery call or a physical item.

A landing page or squeeze page is a page specifically designed to get a visitor to opt in (provide their email address) or buy a product.

A sales page is a page specifically designed to sell a product or service.

A email marketing service provider is online software as a service (SaaS) platform used to create your email list and send out email broadcasts and autoresponders.

An autoresponder is an email broadcast that is sent out automatically based on some other trigger or action.

Double opt in refers to a process where the email subscriber needs to take to actions to confirm their subscription to your email list.

Single opt in refers to a process where the subscriber needs to only take a single action to add themselves to your email list.

A tripwire offer is a low priced item offered to a subscriber right after theyʼve subscribed. The idea is to get the potential customer, while they are warm, to commit to a small purchase turning them from a subscriber into a customer. Itʼs easier to sell an additional product or service to an existing customer compared to aquiring a new customer.

A lead is an individual who has provided contact information, which signals a potential future sales opportunity.

A prospect is a qualified and interested individual who engaged in two-way interaction with you and thus demonstrated that they are preparing to make a purchase decision.

An up-sell is an an additional offer that is made to a user that has just committed to making a purchase. If for example a user has purchased a course, you can offer them an up-sell of purchasing the accompanying pack of templates.

5. Planning & Mapping Out Your Funnel

6. Creating A Simple Email Funnel

The simplest email funnel is made up of the following stages:

1. An opt in landing page offering the visitor a lead magnet in exchange for their email address.

2. The process of being added to your list, which happens in the back-end straight after the user has clicked the subscribe button. For this to work, your landing page needs to be integrated with your email service provider.

3. A thank you page which the user is directed to after theyʼve successfully been subscribed to your list.

4. Lead magnet delivery - the promised item of value can either be delivered on the thank you page or in a link inside an autoresponder email, which is triggered by the subscription process.

7. Creating A Simple Tripwire Sales Funnel

The above email funnel can easily be upgraded into a simple sales funnel by adding one additional step.

1. Tripwire Offer: On the thank you page you can offer the new subscriber a tripwire offer. This could be a discounted ebook, a $1 membership trial, a half price consulting call or any other low priced digital product.

2. Transaction Process: If the subscriber purchases, then the transaction needs to be facilitated by a merchant gateway. A service provider that lets you accept payment via credit cards, PayPal and/or Apple Pay.

3. Purchase Thank You Page: After purchasing the product, the buyer needs to be redirected to a thank you page.

4. Product or service delivery: After the purchase, the product or service needs to be delivered. This can be done on the thank you page or the buyer can be redirected to a page to create an account on your membership site.

8. Avoid Complex Funnels

As you can imagine itʼs easy to develop and add any number of additional steps to create highly complex funnels. Itʼs important to keep things simple and effective, especially if you are just getting started.

9. Step By Step Funnel Setup

Some of the other landing page tools and apps include LeadPages, ClickFunnels, UnBounce, etc. If you have an active account with any of these, then use whatever you have access to.

3. Landing Page & Email Provider Integration

This is a crucial step in order to make sure that you subscribers email address gets added to your list.

The exact details and complexity of this step depends on what tools and apps you are using.

If you are setting up your landing page using your email providerʼs built in functionality, then this step wonʼt be a problem, however if you’d like to host your landing page on your website, then you need to make sure your page integrates with your website. Most apps generally have built in integrations that are (fairly) simple to setup, but if you’re just getting started then I don’t recommend this option. I’d just stick with ConvertKit.

4. Setting Up A Thank You Page

After adding your new subscriber to your list they somehow need to be shown a confirmation or thank you message. Again depending on what tools youʼre using, there are different ways of doing this. You can redirect your subscriber to a new thank you page URL or you can simply display a message on the existing page.

5. Lead Magnet Delivery

One step not to forget is giving your new subscriber what youʼve promised them - your lead magnet. Depending on what tools you are using this can be done in various ways. You can add a download link or embed your video on your thank you page, which gives them immediate access. Or you can send them a link to the lead magnet in the first email they receive, which can be setup as an auto responder confirmation email.

10. Progress Over Perfection

When setting up your funnel make sure to focus on progress over perfection. Get something that works online as soon as possible and then make improvements over time.

11. Watch Over My Shoulder

Interested in a step by step course about how to create online marketing funnels for your business? Leave a comment below and let me know what type of business you're in.

12. Get Implementation Help

While adhering to strict lockdown regulations in South Africa, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the one thing I’ve gotten really good at is online shopping.

Over the past few months I’ve made over 50+ online purchases and have shopped from 10+ E-commerce providers including Amazon.com, eBay.com, Takealot.com, Sixity60 (Checkers), Market City, Raru.co.za, Loot.co.za, UberEats, Aramex Global Shopper, Verimark, and Butlers.co.za.  

While making online purchases from all these different online retailers, I’ve learnt first hand from my own experiences what creates a happy and satisfied online shopper and what leaves them feeling frustrated and disgruntled. 

I’ve come up with the following list of tips that will result in happy online shoppers.

1. Make It Easy For Buyers To Find Your Product

When potential customers search for a product that they are interested in purchasing, Google will (if they are available) show shopping ads right at the top of the page.

I was recently searching Google for the Star Wars: X-Wing 2nd Edition Core Set in Cape Town, when the following shopping ads showed up:

I can immediately see that there are at least 3 retailers selling the product that I am looking for (takealot.com, loot.co.za and bidorbuy), with takealot.com offering the lowest price at R789.

It’s never been easier finding a retailer selling a product I’m searching for in my geographic location and it’s never been easier comparing prices of the top retailers. If I want to see even more options, then I can click on the » link to show a full page of shopping search results.

If your products are not showing up in Google Shopping Ads, then you are loosing out on search traffic and you are probably leaving money on the table. 

2. Communicate Clearly & Timely

Some online retailers do a great job at communicating with customers, while others fail dismally. Whether you use in-app notifications, SMS messages, emails, phone calls or a combination, make sure to keep the customer informed. 

A few months ago I ordered a new vacuum cleaner from Verimark.co.za. After filling in all my details incl. credit card details on the checkout page, I clicked to place my order. The next page I saw was an error page. The funds had been debited from my credit card, but I had nothing to confirm my order. No order conformation page, no order confirmation email … just an error page.

This experience left me annoyed and frustrated. I had to send a follow up email to find out if my order had gone through and to get an idea of what the estimated delivery date was. After being told that delivery would be 1 to 2 weeks, I promptly cancelled my order and requested a refund.

With other retailers, like Raru.co.za, Takealot.com, UberEats, etc., communication has been a lot better. After making an online purchase, I get an order confirmation page, as well as an order confirmation email. I can also log into my account and view all my existing and past orders. If an order has not gone through, then I will be notified, so I can retry or cancel. 

3. Deliver What the Customer Purchased

This seems obvious, but with a recent frustrating experience, I felt like I had to state the obvious. I recently ordered a Sony PS4 Dualshock PlayStation Controller from Takealot.com. Before making my purchase, I reviewed the product page carefully to make 100% sure that this was the product I wanted. When I received my purchase a few days later, I was shocked to find a cheaper generic “Doubleshock Controller” in the box. This was definitely not what I had purchased.

After requesting an exchange, I was told that the supplier no longer was offering the product I had purchased and that I therefore needed to accept a refund. To cut a long story short, I eventually got a credit after returning this generic product, but it took many messages back and forth via email and Twitter, which wasted a lot of my time.

4. Resolve Problems with Superior Customer Support

First of all make sure to have clear and adequate customer support channels that customers can easily access in order to get help with their orders. A support@yourdomain.com is usually standard, but you can also use online forms, live chat, Twitter DMs or a phone number. 

They key is to make it easy for customers to contact your support team and acknowledge the receipt of their message. The first thing a customer wants is to be heard and understood. The next thing they want is for you to resolve the issue as soon as possible. The quicker you can resolve the issue, the happier the customer will end up being.

For email support using a support ticketing platform like Help Scout, can be extremely useful, especially if you have multiple team members that are responsible for answering support tickets. 

5. Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep

Don’t make the mistake of listing a product as in stock of it’s actually sold out and try avoid offering a product at price X, if the actual price is in fact Y. 

I recently made a purchase on Takealot.com and got an email 3 days later informing me that the product was actually out of stock and could no longer be sourced from the supplier. Or that time I ordered the Sony PS4 Dualshock Controller and was sent a cheaper generic controller instead.

6. Make It As Easy As Possible For Customers To Purchase

Butlers Pizza in Cape Town make use of live chat to let customers order on their website. You fill in a simple form asking you for your name, phone number, delivery address, which branch you’re ordering from and what you’d like to order and a friendly Butler confirms your order within a few minutes. 

Butlers also lets you pay via SnapScan, which makes contactless delivery easy and simple during the COVID pandemic. 

Because I’ve saved my usual order and delivery address as a text template that I can copy and paste into the order form, I can place an order within 30 seconds. No need to pick up the phone, dial, speak, etc. … in a few simple steps my order had been placed and confirmed. And within 30 - 40min hot pizzas are delivered to my door. 

If I’m ready to enjoy a relaxed pizza dinner at home or if I’m in a pinch and need a quick meal, then there is an obvious reason why I’m a repeat Butlers customer … great tasting pizzas, super quick and simple to order, as well as fast and friendly service. It’s a winning formula!

7. Same Day or Next Day Delivery = Happy Customers

If other online shoppers are anything like me, then they cannot wait to get the delivery of their purchase. Amazon has been raising the bar significantly on their delivery options by offering Two-Day, One-Day, Same-Day Delivery, as well as delivery within a few hours. Generally speaking, the quicker you can get a purchase into the hands of the buyer, the happier the buyer will be.

When ordering groceries from Market City or Sixity60 (Checkers) in Cape Town, I’ve been impressed by their same day delivery. When ordering pizzas from Butlers, my order usually arrives within 30min.

Takealot.com generally offers 1 to 3 Day Delivery, depending on whether the item I’ve ordered is in stock in Cape Town or if it needs to be sourced from Joburg or from a 3rd party supplier.  

If a purchase is not urgently needed, then delivery time is less important, but most online shoppers are keen to get their purchase as soon as possible.

8. The Importance of Reviews

The one thing I place a lot of attention on when doing research before making an online purchase is looking at customer reviews. Stores like Takealot.com show the product rating on a product page, based on the ratings and reviews from other customers. If a product has a 4-5 star rating and has 20+ reviews, then I can generally safely assume that it’s a quality product worth buying. 

9. Perfect Your Online Checkout Process

A common issue with online shopping is cart abandonment. This is when a buyer is ready to make a purchase, they add the product into their shopping cart, but for some reason decide to not complete their purchase. There could me multiple reasons that could lead to this undesirable outcome. Perhaps your checkout process is too complicated, too long or too time consuming. Perhaps for some reason the purchase did not go through leaving the customer frustrated. 

A while back I made a purchase on Digicape.co.za and after entering my credit card details and clicking the purchase button, the page just would not reload. I was not sure what the problem was and was getting close to giving up and canceling my order. I then realised that I had to make selection using a dropdown menu item, which was not very clear to me. This was a great example of how a small technical hurdle can cause a buyer to cancel their purchase. 

10. Create A Simple, Efficient & Enjoyable Digital Experience

One of my favourite parts of online shopping is saving items to my wish list. I often research products and find them on my favourite online stores. I then add them to my wish list to hopefully purchase them at some stage. 

I recently added a bunch of X-Wing Expansion packs to my Wishlist on Raru.co.za, as I was looking forward to ordering them over the next few months. One Monday morning I got a long list of emails from Raru informing me that these products had all been discounted by 30%. About 15min later, I had purchased all 10 items at the discounted price and had a smile on my face for the rest of the day. 

Giving your users the opportunity to save items to their wish list makes it easy for them to order them in future and it lets you easily send them discount notifications. This exact same experience has also happened to me with items on my Takealot.com wish list. 

Besides letting customers keep track of products on their wish lists, they might also from time to time have the need to return a product. Making it as simple as possible for customers to log a return request will result in a positive experience and give the customer peace of mind.

I’ve needed to return a few products to Takealot.com and with their simple online process, it’s been an absolute breeze.

11. Offer A Quality Product That’s in Demand

You don’t need to sell iPhones, toilet paper or hand sanitizer to be successful. If you sell a quality product for a reasonable price that is in demand and people can find it online, then you’re in business.

Butlers.co.za makes it easy for me to order pizzas online and they deliver a tasty meal in under 40min to my door. Takealot offers a wide range of products and provides a great online shopping experience. For me they have quickly become the Amazon in South Africa. 

Some specific products, like books or board games, I’ve only been able to find on either Raru.co.za or Loot.co.za. This has made me a loyal customer of both these online stores. 

Market City and Sixity60 (Checkers) have made it simple and convenient for me to purchase groceries in Cape Town and have them delivered to my door. 

For products that I have not been able to purchase from South African online stores, I’ve managed to purchase from Amazon.com. And recently while buying vintage board games, I could only find what I was looking for on eBay.com. 

UberEats lets me quickly order food from local restaurants that gets delivered to my door and Aramex Global Shopper gives me access to 24 shipping addresses in all major cities, so I can make purchasers from online stores around the globe and have them forwarded to Cape Town.

Each of these brands offers something unique and have made my life better in this new digitally connected world. 

In Summary

1. Make It Easy For Buyers To Find Your Product
2. Communicate Clearly & Timely
3. Deliver What the Customer Purchased
4. Resolve Problems with Superior Customer Support
5. Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep
6. Make It As Easy As Possible For Customers To Purchase
7. Same Day or Next Day Delivery = Happy Customers
8. The Importance of Reviews
9. Perfect Your Online Checkout Process
10. Create A Simple, Efficient & Enjoyable Digital Experience
11. Offer A Quality Product That’s in Demand

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it. If you have any feedback or questions feel free to leave a comment below. I'll do my best to get back to you.

Is working from home good?

Being able to work from home can be one of the best things ever, but it does not come without challenges. Being disciplined, sticking to a work schedule and setting healthy boundaries between your work and personal life can be a huge challenge. 

If you can get those 3 things right, then working from home can be one of the most liberating benefits you’ll ever experience. No need to sit in traffic, spend hours commuting to and from the office and if your work is flexible and you’re disciplined, then you can schedule your work in such a way to blend work and personal responsibilities in a way that will maximise your freedom and enjoyment. 

If however you struggle with those 3 factors, then working from home, might end up being more of a curse than a blessing. 

How can I make money & what jobs are best for working from home?

What equipment do I need to work from home?

This really depends on the work you’ll be doing, but assuming you’ll be working in a position that you’ll be fulfilling online using a computer, I’d recommend the following:

1. A reliable desktop or laptop computer that has enough processing power, memory and storage for you to complete your work. If you’re a video editor for example, then you’ll need a more powerful computer compared to if you’ll be doing admin, writing, emailing or content management. 

2. A reliable, fast and always on internet connection — depending on your specific tasks you will either need a very fast and always on connection or you might be able to get away with only accessing the internet to upload or submit your work. If you’ll be editing, downloading, uploading and consuming a lot of media files like videos and audio, as well as doing video calls, then you’ll definitely want an always on fibre or LTE connection with unlimited data. 

How can I help my employees work from home?

How can I work remotely from home?

What are the disadvantages and challenges of working from home?

There are definitely disadvantages and challenges when it comes to working from home. One of the biggest challenges is remaining disciplined, staying productive and creating healthy boundaries between your work and personal life. 

Also working from home can be very isolating. Without noticing it, it’s easy to spend a vast majority of your time at home, as there is no reason or need to go to work. Also working in isolation at home, can cause loneliness and a feeling of disconnect, as you don’t have an office to go to where you can interact and socialise with work colleagues. 

It is therefore important to remain disciplined, productive and have a structured routine that you stick to. It’s also recommended to regularly get out of the house, even if it means working from some other location whether that’s a out of home office, a co-working space or a cafe.

Is working from home bad for your career?

It all depends what you are working on and how effectively you are using your time. If in your head you are “working from home” but in actual fact you are wasting your time watching Netflix, sleeping late and playing Playstation, then yes, that would not be a good use of your time and in the long run would not help your career.

If however you are building a business, marketing your business, growing your client base and increasing your skills, experience and income in an area that you specialise in, then working from home could be a great way for you to focus on and create what you desire in life, work and business.

What are the advantages of working from home?

I’ve worked from home my entire life and have become aware of the advantages and disadvantages. For me the advantages are that there is less distraction at home and I can focus on my work. I can control the environment within my home, so I can create an environment in which I can thrive. 

If I have the flexibility with the projects I’m working on (which I’ve always had), then I can manage my own schedule and work around my energy levels and mindset. 

If I feel sick, then I can take it easy and rest. If I’m feeling great, then I can get up very early and start working before the sun comes up. Or if I need to, I can work late into the night to complete a project to then perhaps take the next day off. If I’m feeling tired throughout the day, I can take a 30min power nap. And if I’m feeling stuck in my head, I can take a walk or go for a scooter ride to clear my head. 

If you have flexible work and you are disciplined enough to be productive, then you can enjoy amazing freedom by working from home. I’ve also taken that freedom onto the road and have worked from wherever I’ve relocated to in the world, including Cape Town, Chiang Mai, California, Hanoi, Bali & Berlin.

Is it better to work from home or in an office?

This really depends on you as an individual, what work you do and what your home environment is like. If you share a home with multiple other people and you don’t have a private room to use as your home office, then there will most likely be a lot of distractions at home that you need to try avoid in order to get your work done. 

If you live alone or in a large enough home where you have a “home office”, then it will be much easier to focus and remain disciplined and productive. 

Is working from home less productive?

Working from home can be a lot less productive if you don’t create an ideal work environment for yourself and if you struggle with being disciplined and focused. Depending on whether you live alone or with others, there will be different levels of distractions that you’ll need to avoid to remain productive.

If possible I’d strongly recommend using a spare room as a home office where you can close the door and separate your work from your personal life within your home. 

If you do not have a spare room to use as a home office, then it’s important to find a partially secluded corner or area in a room to allocate as your work space. It’s also useful to setup some rules that everyone in your home should respect to minimise distractions and interruptions. 

In Conclusion

Zoom — Audio/Video Calls, Online Meetings & Communication

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom has become an app that most people know about. Zoom is an online app used for online video calls and meetings and might become the backbone of virtual face-to-face communication within your business. 

Zoom can be used for 1-on-1 meetings, group meetings and even for webinars. Using the apps settings you can disable video and mute audio, you can share a specific screen or window with your meeting participants and you can record a meeting into the cloud or onto your local hard drive.

Meetings can be scheduled in advance and participants can join by clicking a unique meeting link or typing in a unique meeting ID. You can also protect an online call by using a password that participants need to enter in order to join a call. 

Zoom offers free and paid accounts. A free plan lets you have unlimited 1-on-1 calls with no limitation on features. For calls with 3 participants or more, you will be limited to 45min. 

Paying to upgrade your Zoom account gives you access to additional features like unlimited group calls, recording your calls into the cloud and hosting webinars.

Skype — Audio/Video Calls, Online Meetings & Communication

Similar to Zoom, Skype is the original teleconferencing cloud app that was purchased by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5 Billion. Skype offers very similar features to Zoom and if you prefer Skype, then Skype can supplement or completely replace the need for Zoom. 

Skype can also be used for 1-on-1 meetings and group meetings, but does not offer webinar functionality. Skype also lets you share your screen, but you can only share your entire screen, not just a specific window. Skype does let you record your call in the cloud. With a free Skype plan you can have unlimited 1-on-1 and group calls with no feature limitations.  

If needed, Skype also lets you create a virtual local phone number that redirects telephone calls to your Skype account. This can be very useful if you want to give customers the opportunity to reach you by phoning a local landline. And if you need to make frequent international phone calls, Skype makes this affordable by letting you purchase Skype credits. With Skype credits you can phone international land lines and mobile phones from your Skype app.

World Time Buddy — Scheduling Across Different Time Zones

This is a very useful little web app that lets you identify an overlapping period of time depending on the availability of team members or clients in different time zones. 

Assuming James is in Cape Town, Ann is in Bangkok, Jake is in New York and Julie is in Berlin, this app will easily and quickly let you create a visual of when the best time overlap would be for all 4 of you to jump on a call together. See screenshot example below.

The free plan lets you overlap 4 timezones. If you need to add more, then you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. World Time Buddy is also available as iOS and Android mobile apps.

Slack — Online Text, Audio & Video Communication

Slack has been around since 2009 and has become synonymous with online team communication and collaboration. In order to eliminate back and forth emailing, Slack lets you keep all team communication in one single app. Slack can be used via a desktop app, a web app or mobile app. 

You can create different channels within your team’s Slack account and grouping conversations within threads is a great way to keep your channels and conversations organised. You can tag people in messages, so that your message shows up in their latest threads feed and you can integrate Slack with many other apps including Zapier, Asana, Dropbox and Google Apps.

You can start with a free account, but depending on how many team members you have and how many messages your team will be sending, you may need to upgrade to a premium account.

A feature that was not always part of Slack, but that has in the mean time been added is in-app audio and video calls. Using this feature in Slack users can host calls right within the app, which can at times be very useful.

Slack also makes it simple to share files within threads. This is great for sharing all types of media files, assuming they are not too large. For larger files I prefer hosting them on Dropbox and sharing a Dropbox link.

If you drowning in back and forth emails between team members, then give Slack a try. It will quite possibly revolutionise your online team communication.

GMail (as part of Google’s GSuite) — Email Mailboxes

This one might be obvious, but I’ll include it anyway. Email is a tried and trusted format for online communication mostly when dealing with customers, prospects and possibly team members.  I’ve personally found that the more email I can eliminate, the more time I save and the more effectively I work, however there is definitely a place for email. 

Having a reliable email service provider is key in making sure that your mailboxes function as intended. I generally use and recommend using GMail, which is part of Google’s GSuite. For $5 per user per month, you can access all Google’s premium business tools including GMail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Admin Security and Administration Controls and 24/7 Support. GSuite’s GMail also lets you setup your email addresses using your own domain. 

Using Google’s free GMail can be fine if you’re just getting started or if you need a non-business or personal email address, however if you’re setting up mailboxes for a business, then I highly recommend paying for Google’s GSuite package, mostly because you can setup your emails @yourdomain.com and you have the Admin Security and Administration Controls, which you can use to manage all your team members accounts.

Google Docs, Sheets & Slides (as part of Google’s GSuite)

Like GMail, Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides can be used as part of a free Google account, but they are also part of the Google’s GSuite app collection. 

Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides are great for planning and collaborating on written documents, spreadsheets, and slide decks in real time. It’s easy to create a new Google Doc, Google Sheet or Google Slides deck and share it either with your entire organisation or with individual team members or anyone else (assuming they have a Google account).

Google Docs let you use a feature called “Suggested Edits”. While in this mode, you can edit the document and it automatically adds in the suggested changes without in fact editing the document. This makes it very simple for another team member to review and approve or disapprove the suggested changes.

Another feature that is very useful is the commenting feature in Google Docs. If and when needed you can highlight a section of the document and add a comment for someone else on your team. This is a great way of communicating and discussing a document right within the document. 

One other great use case for Google Docs, Google Sheets or Google Slides is creating a view only template that other team members or anyone else you share the link with can access and easily duplicate, which lets them make their own copy to use. When someone makes a copy of a Google Doc, Google Sheet or Google Slide deck then that new Doc, Sheet or Slide deck is saved to their own Google Drive.

Google Drive is the virtual storage unit that holds all your Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides.

​Google Calendar (as part of Google’s GSuite) — Event Scheduling

Google Calendar is one of many options when it comes to digital calendars, but it’s my preferred option, as it integrates well with most calendar apps including the Apple Calendar apps on my Mac and iPhone, as well as a calendar app I use called Fantastical. 

Google Calendar lets you create various different calendars and the best feature is the ability to send and receive event invites, which participants can easily RSVP to. 

I personally use Google Calendar with my native calendar app on my Macbook. For that to work it’s important to configure Google Calendar within Account settings on the Macbook. Once that has been setup correctly, then the calendar will remain in sync, assuming you have a reliable internet connection.

To schedule a new event, I create the new event in my calendar app on my Mac and I can easily add other participants in the “Add Invitees” field. The thing to keep in mind when adding invitees, is to add the email address the other participants use with their Google Calendar (assuming they are using Google Calendar). If they don’t use Google Calendar, then this feature does not work. 

Assuming my invitees are also using Google Calendar, I can send out invites to them automatically by adding their email addresses to the event in my calendar. The invitees will then see the event show up in their calendars and they will also get a notification email. From within their calendar they can then RSVP by selecting either “Attending”, “Not Attending” or “Maybe Attending”. This status will then show up within my calendar, which is a great way for me to see who will be attending and who can’t make it.

Dropbox — Cloud File Storage, Sharing & Collaboration

Dropbox has been around since 2007 and is without a doubt my favourite cloud storage app when it comes to sharing and collaborating on media files. Email files back and forth or using free media sharing platforms can work, but usually ends up becoming frustrating and does not end up being the best long term solution for a remote team.

You can setup Dropbox with sync to your local machine, you can share folders and files with other team members and by using a feature called selective sync, lets you select the folders that you don’t want to sync to your local device, which is crucial when working larger files and helps with not filling up the storage on your desktop or laptop.

Another great feature is that you can create a publicly accessible link if you’d like to let anybody with the specific link download a specific file in your Dropbox. This is useful, because the user accessing the file via this option does not need to have a Dropbox account.

1Password — Secure Password Management

1Password claims to be “The world’s most-loved password manager” and I strongly agree with that claim. I certainly love this app and highly recommend it to anybody that wants to safely manage all their passwords and sensitive information in one secure digital vault.

The way this app works is that you save all your passwords and sensitive information in the 1Password app and you use one single master password to access your 1Password app. This means you only need to remember a single password, which protects all your other passwords. It is of course paramount that you use a strong master password and that you keep that safely in your head.

I’ve been using 1Password since 2011 and have never tried any other password managers, because this app is without a doubt the best option. They combine great app design with the utmost attention to keeping your sensitive information secure. 

1Password has apps for MacOS, Windows, iOS, iPad OS, Android & even Apple’s WatchOS. And on top of that they offer browser extensions that let you easily and securely automatically populate your username and passwords into login forms to speed up the login process without compromising your security. I use the 1Password browser extension every single day and it has saved me thousands of hours. 

1Password offers a free trial for all their accounts. When paid annually their paid plans starts at just $2.99 per month for an individual, $4.99 per month for a family, $3.99 per month per user for a remote team and $7.99 per month per user for their more advanced business team plan. This is a small price to pay to get access to all 1Password apps, as well as secure cloud syncing and backups. 

Having all my passwords in 1Password gives me peace of mind knowing that my sensitive information is encrypted and safely backed up.

I highly recommend using 1Password to safely save, manage and backup your passwords. Give it a try and trust me, you won’t regret this.

Help Scout — Online Customer Support Help Desk

If providing customer support via email and live chat is part of your business, then Help Scout is a great help desk platform to use by yourself or as a team. 

Help Scout lets you manage and respond to all your support emails from one centralised virtual help desk. You can configure your support email address to forward all emails into your Help Scout Mailbox from which you or any of your team members can respond to them.

Managing and replying to all your support emails from a centralised system can be advantageous in many ways. In Help Scout you can mark support tickets as active or closed, you can tag them with custom tags, leave internal notes and assign them to specific team members. It’s ideal for keeping everything organised and having multiple team members answering support tickets.  

Help Scout also lets you create saved replies within your mailbox, which is a great way of creating template email replies which get used over and over again. With a click of a button you can search and find the saved reply you’d like to use and have it automatically populate into your response to the customer.    

Another great feature that Help Scout offers is the option of creating a Knowledge Base site, which they call a Docs site. On this separate site you can easily create, categorise, manage and publicly share answers to frequently asked questions or create support articles that you can reference to whenever you reply to a support ticket.

Asana — Project & Task Management 

Whether you need to keep track of projects and tasks for yourself or for an entire team, Asana is a great solution. Asana is a full featured online project and task management application. 

In Asana you can create projects, break those projects down into sections and then add tasks and sub tasks. You can then add a due date to each task and assign it to a specific team member within the app. If needed, you can also use Asana for internal communication when discussing projects and tasks. 

Each project can be viewed as a list, as a Kanban board, a timeline or calendar. Each view has it’s own benefits. I especially enjoy using the timeline to plan out projects and their corresponding milestones. 

When managing multiple team members in Asana, each team member has their own task list showing them a list of all tasks that have been assigned to them. This list can be sorted by due date and you can choose to show all tasks, completed tasks or incomplete tasks. When a task or sub-task has been completed, then it can be marked as completed. When tasks run over their due date, then that due date shows up in red. 

Asana includes many other features like adding file attachments to tasks and projects, an advanced search feature to list only tasks based on specific search criteria and using reports to better understand how your team is performing. 

Asana is great for planning, managing and completing projects on time in a easy to use online app.

Airtable — Online Databases, Forms & Data Management

Airtable is a relational cloud based database app. It’s like a spreadsheet with super powers. 

In Airtable you can create tables made up any selection of customisable fields. Some of the many field types that you can select from include single text, long text, single select, multiple select, number, date, checkbox, file attachment, URL, currency, percentage, or duration.

You can also create formula fields that let you create a customised formula to display whatever you need. This could be a calculation, a string of text or an if statement.  

Within a table you can then create different views of your data. Each view can be setup differently and any given table can have as many views as you need. In one view you could for example filter down and only display records that have a specific value or selection in a specified field or you could filter down and only display records that have a value that is greater than 100 in a specific numeric field. The options are endless for how you can capture, manage and view your data within this app. 

Airtable also lets you create a customised forms that let users submit data directly into your database. If for example you are accepting applications, you could embed an Airtable form on your site and have users submit their application straight into your database. From there you can create a Kanban view and using the status field, you can drag records from one application stage to the next, and then you can create a gallery view showing your short list of applicants.

You can use Airtable for internal systems like a custom CRM system, manage a sales process, capture and process orders or setup a content publishing calendar. Using this app, you can create whatever you need if there is not an existing solution out there or if you don’t want to invest in more expensive premium software.

This easy to use and powerful cloud based application is a great solution for online databases.

In Conclusion

Whether you’re working on a new blog post, sales page, email sequence, online course or video series, the creative process generally starts with writing down your ideas and turning those ideas into a rough draft. You then take your draft and refine it down into a final version.

In this post I’d like to list and explain the 5 apps that I use in my writing workflow that has helped me develop a daily writing habit. My desired outcome for implementing this new habit is to publish a new blog post and a new YouTube video every week, that provides value to those looking for inspiration and advice on how to create a simple and repeatable process for creating valuable content. 

Before I get trapped in a “meta-vortex” as I write a blog post about writing, let me get on with explaining my workflow. 

1. Notes for iPhone & Mac

First on my list is an app that comes natively installed on all iPhones and syncs across your Apple devices using your free iCloud account, assuming you’re an Apple user. If you don’t use an iPhone, then I’m sure your phone has a similar note taking or writing app that you can use instead.

For me my Notes app on my iPhone is the perfect app for easily and quickly capturing ideas and writing when I’m not at my desk in front of my MacBook. I might be in bed, on the balcony or in the car somewhere, if an idea worth capturing comes to mind then I use notes to capture my thoughts.

Whatever I write in my Notes app then automatically syncs across to my notes app on my MacBook. So when I get to my desk it’s easy to continue from where I left off and it’s simple to copy my ideas from the Notes app on my MacBook to a document in Dropbox Paper, which leads me to the next app in my workflow.

2. Paper from Dropbox

Over the years I’ve used many different word processing apps including Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, Google Docs, Day One and Textwrangler to mention a few. 

In 2015, Dropbox launched a new major feature called Paper. Similar to Google Docs, Paper is a cloud based word processing app. The only difference is that paper is a simple, beautiful and minimalist writing app that is built right into your Dropbox account.  

After trying it for a while, then switching back to other options, I recently decided to go all in on Dropbox Paper as my main cloud based writing app. I still use Google Docs and Pages when needed, but for all my personal and professional writing, I rely solely on Dropbox Paper.

The simple user experience and the minimal formatting options keep distractions to a minimum and let me focus on my writing. I recently started a 500 words per day writing challenge and writing in Paper has helped me create this new daily writing habit.

Paper also offers mobile apps for iOS & Android. The mobile app is worth downloading if you want the option of viewing and editing your Paper Docs from your mobile device. On occasion I use the Paper app on my iPhone, which generally works really well.

After creating a new Paper Doc, I immediately copy the link and paste it into my content production plan in Airtable, which leads me to the next app in my writing workflow.

3. Airtable for Tracking Progress

Airtable is a cloud-based relational database app that looks and feels similar to a spreadsheet with super powers. You could of course simply use a spreadsheet to track your content creation progress, but I personally love using Airtable.

With Airtable I can customise the table (in Airtable it’s called a base) to include fields/columns for Title, Content Type, Status, Paper Doc URL, Word Count, Featured Image Attachment, Scheduled Publishing Date, Published URL, etc.

And then I can group my records by ‘Status’ and sort them by ‘Scheduled Publishing Date’. As I work on articles, I can easily update the status from ‘Idea’ to ‘Draft in Paper’ to ‘Ready to Edit’ to ‘Published’.

I can also create a seperate view in Airtable that shows me my content calendar grouped my ‘Month’ and sorted by ‘Scheduled Publishing Date’, so I can see which items have been published and which items I need to work on next to meet my deadlines.

Besides tracking my content creation process in Airtable, I also track the amount of words I write every day in a shared Google Sheet which takes me to my next app in my workflow.

4. Google Sheet for Tracking KPIs

Together with my accountability and mastermind partner, I use a shared Google Sheet to track our daily key performance indicators (KPIs), of which one for me is capturing the amount of words I’ve written every day - with my goal being 500 words per day.

From being part of various masterminds and online challenges, I’ve realised that a simple shared Google Sheet is a great way of tracking daily progress for a group of 2 or more. Using a spreadsheet like this creates a healthy dose of competition, accountability and gamification.

To create a Google sheet like this, you simply list out the dates in the first column. I grey out the weekends, so the list is naturally divided into weeks. In the next columns you enter your daily goal. For me this goal currently is set to writing 500 words per day and publishing a new blog post and video every Tuesday.

This Google Sheet is a powerful one pager that lets me track my progress and keeps me accountable to hit my daily KPIs. Make sure to bookmark your Google Sheet for quick access.

The last step of my workflow is not directly linked to writing and is therefore optional. This step does however help me stay motivated and accountable.

5. WhatsApp for Messaging My Accountability Partner

Being part of a mastermind group or having an accountability partner is not essential, but it can be a great way of being supported and supporting others in an effort to develop a new habit or reach specific goals. 

I have an accountability partner from my mastermind group that I communicate with via WhatsApp. We don’t necessarily message each other daily, but we share wins and challenges if and when appropriate. It’s a great way of staying in touch and holding one another accountable, which is why I recommend this and have included it as part of this workflow.

In Conclusion

Like many other skills, writing is like a muscle … the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. Creating a simple and repeatable workflow for writing has helped me strip away any complexities and excuses and has helped me write more in less time. 

If you’re just getting started, then start by writing just a few paragraphs every day. Make it so simple that it’s impossible to fail. Once you’re ready to level up, you can challenge yourself to writing 500 words per day and then eventually 1000 words per day.

By writing at least 500 words per day, I’ve managed to write a total of 16 516 words over the past 36 days. And I know for a fact that my simple workflow has made it fun and effective..

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it. If you have any feedback or questions feel free to leave a comment below. I'll do my best to get back to you.

In this article the term tool can also refer to an app, a product, a course or a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform.

Using the right tool for the task is an essential part of creating a desired outcome. And having the right tool makes all the difference from wanting to achieve an outcome and actually making it a reality.

The tool itself will not achieve the desired outcome alone. The combination of the best tools and the know-how and skill of using those tools will result in achieving your desired outcome.

This applies to everything in life. A great example would be golf. You can spend thousands of dollars buying the best golf clubs money can buy, but without mastering your technique (i.e. your swing) and knowing how to best use these golf clubs, you won't become a better or pro golfer.

For centuries marketers have advertised products by linking them to a desired outcome, which tends to work really well ... this could be a desired emotion, behaviour, lifestyle or feeling. 

For example the commercial for the Apple Watch Series 2 (see video below) includes footage of swimming, surfing and other appealing outdoor activities. The ad showcases a desired lifestyle that many want to experience, however the Apple Watch itself will not help you swim or surf more often, it merely offers features like tracking your strokes, playing music or displaying the time.

Key Takeaways

In this post I’d like to explain the different types of traffic sources as well as provide ideas for increasing your traffic from each of these sources.

1. Direct Traffic

Direct traffic includes a visit of a user that types your website URL directly into their browser or clicks through to your website from a bookmark that they’ve added to their browser.

Direct traffic would account for someone seeing your website URL on a business card, a poster or flyer or hearing about it by word of mouth and then typing it into their browser. 

In Google Analytics, direct traffic has a medium of “none”.

2. Email Traffic

Email traffic includes a visit when a user clicks through to your website from a link in an email that you or someone else has sent out. 

If you have an email list that you regularly email and in your emails you link back to your website, then this will lead to an increase in email traffic.

In Google Analytics, email traffic has a medium of “email”.

3. Organic Search Traffic

Organic search traffic includes traffic that is directed to your site from organic search results on a search engines’ search results page. 

If, for example, a user searches for something on Google.com and then clicks through to an organic search result, then this would count as organic search traffic.

In Google Analytics, organic search traffic has a medium of “organic”.

4. Referral Traffic

Referral traffic includes traffic that is directed to your site from some other site. These other sites include social media networks and all other websites online, excluding search engines.

In Google Analytics, referral traffic has a medium of “referral”.

4.1 Referral Traffic — Social Media

When we talk about referral traffic from social media websites, we are referring to traffic from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube & Pinterest, excluding any traffic generated by ads running on these networks. Traffic generated from ads on social media would fall under paid media traffic.

4.2 Referral Traffic — Other Websites

When we talk about referral traffic from other websites, then these could be any other websites online other than social media websites. 

So for example if a news site mentions your business or brand in a news article and links out to your website, then any traffic that comes to your site via that link will be referral traffic from that specific site.

Or if you run a local tourist attraction and a destination specific travel blog mentions your brand or business in one of their blog posts and links out to your site, then any traffic that comes to your site via that link will be referral traffic from that specific site.

5. Paid Traffic — PPC/Paid Search

Paid media traffic includes traffic from paid advertising on platforms including Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. Anybody with an advertising budget can start running ads on these platforms and can pay to drive traffic to their desired landing pages, which can be a specific offer, a specific piece of content or a simple contact form. 

In Google Analytics, paid media or paid search traffic has a medium of “cpc”, which stands for cost per click.

The 5 sources of website traffic are direct traffic, email traffic, organic search traffic, referral traffic and paid traffic. 

You can strategically invest time and money into increasing each of these traffic sources.

1. Direct traffic requires word of mouth and a strong physical brand presence. 

2. Email traffic requires you to grow your own email list and to frequently email your list promoting new content and/or offers. 

3. Organic search traffic requires your content to rank well in search engines and in order for that happen you’ll need to invest in content marketing (i.e. regularly publish new and valuable content).

4. Referral traffic will require a strong online brand presence, which can be developed through content marketing (publishing valuable content that other websites link to) or through strategic link building and guest posting.

5. Paid traffic will require an advertising budget, advertising account management and ad creative in form of images, videos and text. You will also need to have a landing page to link to from your ad. You can place ads on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads, LinkedIn Ads or on various other networks. If you can develop a profitable advertising strategy, then paid media is the best way to scale your business online. But if you don’t have product-market fit or your advertising strategy is not generating a profit, then it’s a quick way to burn money.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please click the heart below this paragraph. If you have any feedback or questions feel free to leave a comment below and I'll do my best to get back to you.

To grow your business, you need to know your numbers! 

At times it’s easy to focus on vanity metrics. These are those numbers that look impressive and appealing, but don’t directly contribute to the revenue, profit, growth and efficiency of your business.

In this short list I will share with you 8 key metrics to focus on and I’ll compare them to similar metrics that are less important.

1. Profit vs Revenue

Revenue is the more appealing figure to quote when discussing the financial performance of your business. The truth is that there are companies that generate massive amounts of revenue, but they fail to make a profit. 

2. Paying Customers vs Likes or Followers

The most quoted vanity metric in online marketing is likes, followers and fans. These figures paint a picture of how well your brand is performing online, but they don’t directly generate income. Paying customers, on the other hand, generate the revenue and profit. 

3. Engaged Subscribers vs Subscribers

When it comes to email marketing, having a smaller engaged list of subscribers is more valuable than having a massive list of disengaged (or cold) subscribers. More engaged subscribers will open your emails, click your links and buy your products and services. 

4. Opt Ins/Leads vs Traffic

Traffic is the lifeblood of online marketing success. We all need traffic to our web properties in order to get our message in front of our target audience, however what’s more interesting is the opt in rate. In other words, the total number and percentage of users that opt into your list (sign up for a free lead magnet or add themselves to your notification list) and become a lead. 

5. Champion Customers vs Ordinary Customers

As mentioned above, it’s crucial to focus on the total number of paying customers your business serves. You can however take this one step further and focus on those extraordinary customers that:

1. Rave about and recommend your business to family and friends — i.e. Brand Ambassadors
2. Make up a large portion of your revenue — i.e. High Value Customers
3. Send you high value referrals — i.e. Affiliate Partners or Strategic Partners

6. Recurring Purchases vs Once-Off Purchases

While focusing on attracting new customers, don’t neglect and underestimate the potential value of your existing customers. Instead of focusing on once-off deals, shift your attention to creating more value that you can sell as a recurring purchase or an additional purchase. 

On average it costs less to sell more to an existing customer than to acquire a new customer. And recurring purchases, like subscriptions, increase your monthly recurring revenue (MRR), which is more predictable and lead to more business growth. 

7. Engagement vs Views

When it comes to online content the most appealing metric is usually subscribers and views. What’s more interesting is looking at user engagement. How many viewers or readers are taking the next step and engaging with your content — for example leaving a comment or asking a question?

8. Testimonials vs Compliments

It’s easy for friends, family members and even customers to compliment your business. What’s far more interesting is focusing on individual customer success stories, case studies and testimonials.  

Bonus Metric: Customer Lifetime Value

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV, CLTV, LCV or LTV) is a prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer. 

CLV = (Ave. Monthly Revenue per Customer * Gross Margin per Customer) ÷ Monthly Churn Rate
For example: ($100 average monthly spend * 25% margin) ÷ 5% monthly customer churn = $500 CLV

In Summary

1. Track your revenue and profit and maximise your profit margin.
2. Focus on sales to increase paying customers.
3. Track and increase your email engagement, as engaged customers are customers that purchase.
4. Track and increase your opt ins to get more leads into your marketing funnel.
5. Convert more ordinary customers into loyal champion customers and brand ambassadors.
6. If possible, increase recurring revenue by offering a subscription or payment plan.
7. Increase your user engagement to learn more about your audience.
8. Capture testimonials, success stories and case studies and use them in your marketing material.
9. Track and increase customer lifetime value.

In this post I’ll be sharing 15 of my best recommendations. These are tips, tricks, best practices and strategies that you can apply to your email marketing using ConvertKit. So let’s get started.

1. Remember that your subscribers are people just like you and me

Whether you send them down a funnel of opt ins and thank you pages, with up sells or whether you send them a broadcast email. Always remember that you are speaking with a person with dreams, hopes and challenges. Write to them accordingly.

2. Respect Your Subscribers

Always remember that by reading any one of your emails your subscriber is taking time to pay attention to what you have to say. Respect that commitment and share value — help them solve their challenge. Also always give them an option to opt out of your sequence or unsubscribe from your list.

3. Make Use of the Resend to Un-Opens Feature

ConvertKit has a very powerful feature which is really easy to use. The “Resend To Un-Opens” function, let’s you resend an email broadcast to those subscribers that have not opened your email. When using this, I strongly recommend making some slight changes to the subject and the body of the email. Avoid sending out the exact same email.

4. Track Your Numbers

ConvertKit provides a bunch of metrics that we can use to better understand how our emails are performing. 

Track these numbers. They will give you the insight to understand what’s working and what isn’t working. What’s resonating with your subscribers and what they don’t care much about.

5. Get To Know Your Subscribers Using Tags

Every time we send our subscribers an email we have an opportunity to learn something about them and tag them accordingly. But the thing is, we need to build this into our emails.

Whenever you include a link in an email, make sure to tag the user if they click this link. Don’t overdo this, but tags are there to add additional information about each one of your subscribers. 

Make use of tags to better understand each subscriber.

6. Use A Descriptive Tag Naming Scheme

When setting up your tags in your account use some naming convention that makes sense and document the process so you can share it with your team or with whoever needs to understand it.

You might use LM: Descriptive Name, Purchased: Name of Product, AS: Name of Sequence, etc. 

Just keep it standard and keep a record of these names in your own internal documentation.

7. Use Trigger Links To Save Time & Avoid Errors

When including a link in an email you can either set this up in the email or you can create a trigger link as a Rule under Automations. If you’ll be using this same exact link and associated tag in multiple emails, then set this up as a Trigger Link under Rules. 

It will save you time in applying this inside of emails and you’ll avoid making mistakes. Also if the link changes, you’ll be able to change it in one location and it will automatically update in all emails where you’ve made use of that specific trigger link. 

8. Use Sequences & Automations

What makes ConvertKit so powerful is sequences and automations. 

In ConvertKit you can setup sequences and automations that will run based on events and triggers. This might be a simple onboarding sequence that you send to subscribers after they’ve signed up or it may be a more complex automation of a purchase funnel.

9. Broadcasts vs Sequences

Broadcasts are time specific and sequences are event specific. If you need to send an email at a specific time, send it or schedule it as a broadcast. 

If the email needs to be sent out after a specific event has happened (for example an opt in, or a purchase), then set it up as a sequence.

I often see people get confused with these two. Understand them and use them accordingly.

10. Exclude Subscribers From Irrelevant Emails

Make sure to exclude subscribers from broadcasts and sequences that are irrelevant to them. The best example is sending a buyer the remaining emails that are inside a sales sequence. As soon as someone becomes a buyer, they should no longer receive emails promoting the product they’ve purchased. 

You do this by always tagging a subscriber when they make a purchase. This will depend on what system you are using. I’ve used this with SendOwl and WishList Member and it will work with all the other eCommerce integrations that ConvertKit offers.

Assuming you tag buyers with a purchase tag. Then when setting up a Sequence, you can add that tag to the Exclusions field. That means that any subscriber that is tagged with that tag, won’t receive future emails in that sequence.

It’s simple enough, but unless it’s setup and configured, buyers might still be getting sales emails, which is what you want to avoid.

11. Automations Are Powerful 

I’ve setup an email course in ConvertKit for a client that takes into account engagement. When a subscriber opts in for the email course, they immediately receive lesson 1, but what happens next depends on their engagement. 

A: if the user clicks the link in the lesson 1, then they will receive the next lesson 24 hrs later.
B: if the user does not click the link, then they will only receive the next lesson 72 hrs later.

The idea is to reward a user for engagement by sending them the next lesson sooner.

12. Make Use of ConvertKit Integrations

I’ve used ConvertKit with many other apps including Thrive Leads, SendOwl, WishList Member, and Gravity Forms to just name a few. There are loads of integrations and what you will want to integrate with, will depend on your specific setup. 

Just keep in mind that the functionality of ConvertKit can be expanded tremendously using integrations.

13. Cleaning Your List

Our main aim is obviosuly to build a list, but we want a quality list. A quality list has a high level of engagement, so high open rates and click rates. We don’t want subscribers that have gone cold on us. So, there is a simple way of deleting these subscribers to increase the quality of your list.

ConvertKit has a page explaining this process, which is fairly straightforward.

1. Select all your cold subscribers
2. Tag all your cold subscribers with something like “Cold Subscribers”
3. Create an automation rule — link to a page that says “Thank You, You’re Still On The List”, and when a subscriber clicks that link, the “Cold Subscribers” tag is removed.
4. Send A Breakup Email
5. Re-Send The Email using the “Send to Un-Opens” function
6. Wait 7 - 14 days
7. Delete everyone that’s still tagged as a “Cold Subscriber” — these are the people that did not click the link in the email to remain on your list.​
   

14. Use Segments To Group Subscribers

Make sure to use the segments feature to group subscribers. This can be very useful when it comes to including or excluding subscribers from future email broadcasts or sequences. 

Using Segments is a great way of better organizing your subscribers into groups or buckets and it will definitely save you time and avoid any errors.

15. Important Things To Remember & Consider…

… when setting up sequences and automations.

Keep those in mind when planning and developing your sequences and automations inside of ConvertKit, because I know from my experience that it can get complicated and confusing.

Bonus Tip

Keep it simple and build things up over time and enjoy the power and simplicity that ConvertKit offers you. Wishing you all the best for using ConvertKit to manage your email marketing. 

I am always working on improving and expanding my content so that it provides the most value. Let me know if you found this useful and if you have any other questions — I’m happy to answer.