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Recommended List Management Providers:

• Aweber

• Drip 

• ActiveCampaign 

• Mailerlite

Recommended List Building Tools: 

• LeadPages
• Clickfunnels

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a blogger, author, life coach or business coach (just to name a few), you must have an email list. Building a list of people who are interested in what you have to say and what you have to offer is an essential part of being successful online.

To build this list, offer a “bribe” (a free report, checklist, video tutorial, etc.) in exchange for them giving you their email address. As you continue to build this list, it’s important that you stay in contact with them on a regular basis by sending them relevant content and offers.

In order to manage this list and email them, you will need to have an email management software provider. Here are a few things your email marketing software provider should offer:

• Option to have multiple lists.

• Option to send messages immediately (often known as a broadcast message).  

• Option to set up autoresponders (messages that will automatically be sent at certain times after someone signs up. Example – 1st message would go immediately after they sign up, 2nd one could go a week later, 3rd one a week after that, and so on)  

Here are just a few recommended tools:

• Acuity
• Avaza
• Dropbox
• Evernote 
• LastPass (stores all your passwords) 
  
• Focus booster (app) 
  
• TimeStamp (time tracker) 
  
• Toggl (time tracker)

Time is valuable whether we put a dollar amount on it or not. We each only have 24 hours in a day – less than that if you take away the hours spent sleeping. All that to say that time management is essential to having less stress and prioritizing the top task(s) each day.

When it comes to time management, there are all sorts of different tools and apps that can be used.

Here are some recommended tools:

• PromoRepublic
• Hootsuite
• Tailwind (must have for Pinterest!)
• PostPlanner 
  
• Meet Edgar 
  
• Social Pilot
  

While it isn't recommended that all your social media efforts be automated, there are some things that can be. For example, if you have a Facebook Group for your community and do daily post threads there isn't anything wrong with loading those up and having a tool like Hootsuite, for example, automatically publishes those each day.

Remember, you need to be present on social media in order to cultivate the relationships with your audience - that's not something that can be automated! 

Payment Gateways

• Stripe

• PayPal

• Square

Recommended Resources:

• Chargebee – nothing to install, it’s hosted on their servers. This comes without a hefty price tag and allows you to do subscriptions to easily collect recurring payments.

• Gumroad – again, there’s nothing to install because it’s all hosted on their server. You don’t pay any out of pocket expenses to list your products – you don’t pay until you make a sale(s).

• Amember – Powerful and full-featured membership/subscription software for your website. You pay a one-time fee to purchase the software. It gets installed on your own hosting and then you pay a yearly fee for upgrades & support. 

When it comes to accepting payments or managing clients and affiliates, it can be as simple as using PayPal with Amember or much more complex like using Ontraport or Clickfunnels. 

As with most things, there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ answer. It’s about finding what works for you and the needs of your business.