Written on June 14th, 2008 at 05:06 am by Darren Rowse
5 Tools that I’m Happy to Pay for as a Blogger
There are so many free applications and services available for bloggers that many of us get into a mindset of being anti paying for anything. However sometimes you get what you pay for in life and as a blogger wanting to build your blogging into a business there are some things that can be well worthwhile paying for.
In this post I wanted to look at some of the tools that I do pay for:
Skype - Skype has become the backbone to my online communications. I use it as my primary instant messaging tool as well as to chat voice to voice with business partners and in networking. For the main it is free - however I pay for a couple of extras to make it even more useful.
The main thing I pay for with Skype is calls to landline phones and mobiles with SkypeOut. I regularly call overseas and the rates on Skype are considerably cheaper. I also pay for SkypePro which gives free calls to landlines within my country, free skype Voicemail and a discount on having an online number (something I also have). I spend around €20 a month on Skype.
Aweber - For a long time I used a free newsletter service to send out weekly newsletters to many thousands of subscribers. However I increasingly found that you DO get what you pay for. Emails were not being delivered in greater and greater numbers and I was finding the service quite unreliable. Since switching to Aweber I’ve felt a weight lifted from my shoulders.
It works - every time. Emails are delivered in much higher numbers and the tools that Aweber offer are leave anything else I’ve used for dead. This is one tool I should have paid for years ago. Pricing varies depending upon how many subscribers you have but starts at $19 a month.
ImageWell - this image editor (for Macs) is amazing. It is a light image editor that gives you the power to do a whole heap of image editing quickly yet professionally. It is how I edit most of the images that I use here on ProBlogger and allows the adding of text, cropping, adding borders, reshaping and in it’s latest version the ability to change contrast, brightness, saturation and sharpening.
Yes you can do all this in photoshop - but this is a much lighter and easier to use tool. It used to have a free version but recently it became a paid only tool - well worth the $19.95.
Picturesque - this tool is similar to ImageWell as it is another Mac image editing tool. In many respects it leaves ImageWell for dead as it’s got some great extra features (it allows you to make images 3D, add reflections etc - however the only thing that it doesn’t do is add text to images (something I need).
Still - I’ve paid for this one too and am using it more and more. It costs $34.95.
ecto - regular readers will know about this one already as I’ve been an ecto (for Mac) fan for quite some time. I’ve tried other Mac desktop editors and they are quite good but ecto ‘fits’ with my own posting rhythm so well. The only one that I’ve been playing with lately that I’ve found increasingly useful is Scribefire (a firefox add-on). However I tend to do a lot of offline writing so ecto works well for me. It costs $17.95.
Other Expenses
I’ve only picked out five tools that I pay for - but of course there are many other services and expenses that can come into blogging including hosting, domain names, paying writers, advertising, ISP costs, computer costs, blog design etc
With most of these you can find ways to do them for free - however sometimes the outlay can be worth it.
What blogging tools and services do you pay for?
75 Responses to “5 Tools that I’m Happy to Pay for as a Blogger”
Eric
June 14th, 2008 5:48 am
Only thing I’m paying for is hosting and a domain …
… so far. :)
Barbara Ling (aka Owlbert)
June 14th, 2008 5:54 am
Definitely count me in as another aWeber individual. I also paid for Adobe Acrobat Distiller and Download Guard for the deliverables of my products.
Being penny-wise and pound-foolish is never wise when doing work online, I’ve found.
Data points,
Barbara
Scott Hebert
June 14th, 2008 5:56 am
I can’t say enough good things about ImageWell. Highly recommended!
Richard
June 14th, 2008 5:56 am
A good accurate stats package with support and high uptime is a great option too. Tracking your data correctly is important so that you know how you are really growing your traffic.
Tom Hanna
June 14th, 2008 5:57 am
I notice that two of your 5 are image related. Do you think this would change substantially if you didn’t have the digital photography blog or at least the serious interest in digital photography? If so, are there two non-image related things that would have made the list?
Fitness Guy
June 14th, 2008 6:03 am
I use and pay for an autoresponder and hosting and have yet to find a good image program that is not big and expensive like Photoshop on my PC.
I am currently using Irfanview for viewing and resizing photos(free) and using just text files copied and pasted up to wordpress to compose and post blog posts. I have heard great things about Live Writer (Microsoft, also free) though I have not used it much yet.
Save, You Fool!
June 14th, 2008 6:03 am
Darren,
Which image service do you use to get high-quality stock images for your posts? I’ve been using Stock Exchange but find myself wanting larger, unique images vs. amateur photgraphy and smaller sizes. (Not sayin stock exchange isn’t good, but you leave wanting more…)
Tim Brownson
June 14th, 2008 6:04 am
What’s the deal with Skype?
I use Vonage and pay $25 per month and ALL my calls are free even back to the UK (unless its a cell phone and then it’s a nominal fee). I used to have Skype a couple of years ago but then it ran through my PC whereas Vonage is just like standard phone with all the flexibility that entails. Does Skype do that now?
Jeff - ScienceSays
June 14th, 2008 6:04 am
Ecto is indeed an awesome one - makes navigating Wordpress much, much easier, especially with Safari’s Wordpress difficulties.
FitMom
June 14th, 2008 6:09 am
As usual some really helpful information. Where have you been all my blogging life?
Thanks!
Justo Llecllish
June 14th, 2008 6:11 am
I use GoogleGroup to send out my monthly newsletter to my subscribers. And it is free, and powerfull.
Justo Llecllish
http://www.enterministry.com
Jason Bean
June 14th, 2008 6:19 am
Fitness Guy, you should try Paint.NET. It’s a great, free, powerful little image editor program that may give you what you’re looking for in an application. I also use IrfanView, SnagIt 9 and Fireworks all for Microsoft Windows.
Ramesh | The Geek Stuff
June 14th, 2008 6:24 am
I love Photoshop and I prefer to stick with one image editing tool.
I’ve been using the default wordpress in-built rich text editor to write my article and sometimes I find it difficult. ScibeFire looks very interesting. Thanks for the link.
Ramesh
The Geek Stuff
Lee
June 14th, 2008 6:28 am
I haven’t tried any of these, but Drawn.ca recently posted “10 Free Web-based Alternatives to Photoshop” here:
http://drawn.ca/2008/06/12/10-free-web-based-alternatives-to-photoshop/
Luke Harvey-Palmer
June 14th, 2008 6:45 am
Thanks Darren - nice useful stuff…although a little Mac biased! For me, I only use Adobe CS3 (which can cost a bomb!) and Zemanta which is free! All other tools are pretty much standard…although I do also have Skype Pro - I do not really use it all that much….but you have me rethinking that strategy!.
Mike
June 14th, 2008 7:00 am
I don’t use it anymore, but doesn’t scribefire let you work and save copies locally that you can post later when you connect to the internet? It seems like it used to allow that at least.
Michael Martin
June 14th, 2008 7:50 am
Would (e)books count as a tool? I’m happy to pay for a book that I will learn something useful from.
Apart from that, all of the tools I use are freebies (Bar Photoshop).
Kirk Warren
June 14th, 2008 7:59 am
==============================
I also pay for SkypePro which gives free calls to landlines within my country, free skype Voicemail and a discount on having an online number (something I also have).
===============================
Heh, if you pay for something, it’s definitely not “free”. I think you mean unlimited calls to landlines and access to Skype Voicemail. Free = free. Paying = not free. =p
Personally, I have Illustrator and Photoshop for my image editing. If I’m on my Linux box, I use Gimp.
Julian Simpson
June 14th, 2008 8:09 am
Apart from the usual domain and web hosting costs (I actually host on blogger but still keep a VDS server for email and ancillary hosting), the only thing I have paid for is TextMate (http://macromates.com/). It’s my swiss army knife of editors - I find it incredibly useful for editing things like code samples for my blog.
Neil Duckett
June 14th, 2008 8:17 am
@Fitness Guy - Try Gimp for a good free image editing tool
Sérgio Rebelo
June 14th, 2008 8:40 am
@Save, You Fool! I use Dreamstime for my photos. Great photos for free and if that is not enough you can buy premium from $1 to $3 each.
Besides the hosting, domains, advertising and stock photos, I bought WP templates, plugins and designing services.
Aaron from Webspear
June 14th, 2008 8:47 am
Skypeout is great. For $76 you get 1 year of unlimited calling to 34 countries.
Opal Tribble | Vegan Momma
June 14th, 2008 8:56 am
It’s nice to see a blogger write reviews about Mac related applications. I use a 17″ MacBook Pro.
The majority of the time when I see bloggers mention applications they are mainly for Windows PC.
I can understand it, its the computer they use so naturally that is what they are going to
recommend.
There are a lot of applications I use for my personal blogs along with the blogs I write
for. I’m a writer. I write mainly about Macs. I’ve included a few of my favorites below.
Mars Edit is my offline blog editor of choice. It’s developed by Red Sweater Software, the owner
Daniel Jalkut, is extremely friendly and helpful. I’ve contacted him a few times via email and
through the support forums. He’s always been responsive. It costs $29.95.
BBEdit is a high performance text editor application. It’s developed by Bare Bones Software. Although most of my offline blog editing is completed in MarsEdit occasionally I work with BBEdit. I also use it for programming. It costs $125.
Snapz Pro X created by Ambrosia software. It lets me record anything on my screen. I can save it as
a screenshot or Quicktime movie. I have a lot of options on how I want to deliver it, email or
I can put it up on the web. As technical writer this tool has been extremely effective when I’m
tutorials that include screenshots or how to videos. It costs $69.
1Password remembers all my passwords so I don’t have to. I let it create the passwords for the
variety of applications that I use. It costs $34.95.
Endicia for Mac is my at home post office. I can send packages from the comfort of my home. It cost
$15.95 for month. On one of my blogs I have contests naturally I use Endicia when shipping out the
prizes.
Scrivener is designed for writers. I’ve used it to create ebooks that I sell on one of my personal
websites. It goes beyond simple word processing and has a lot of features that I cannot live
without. It costs $39.95.
I use Picturesque also, it’s an extremely useful application.
All the applications I mentioned will let you try a free fully functional copy of the application
for free. I think they all let you try them out for 30 days.
You are correct, at times, you get what you pay for.
Kim
June 14th, 2008 9:02 am
I use MarsEdit. I just couldn’t get used to ecto and I had issues with their tagging (I think that’s been since resolved, but I already bought Marsedit).
I would, and probably will, pay for Skitch, whenever they move to a paid model.
Increasingly, I’ve been considering a project management tool like backpack, since I run more than one blog. It’s hard to keep track of everything I need to do, but I also need a place to put down ideas. I’ve tried paper, but I can’t stick to it.
InfiniteWebProfit
June 14th, 2008 9:07 am
I noticed that the image editing tools on list are for MAC. Do you have any great image editor tool to recommend for non MAC users?
I found Scribefire very very useful.
Stef Levolger
June 14th, 2008 9:17 am
The two things I pay for specifically for my blog are its domain and the hosting costs. These are definitely things I can’t imagine going without any more. Even though I started out with free alternatives this quickly changed, it’s definitely worth the money.
Next to that I do make use of image editing tools, mainly photoshop, but not specifically for blogging alone.
jhay
June 14th, 2008 9:49 am
So far, the only services that I really pay for as a blogger is my webhosting. Since I paid a year’s worth I practically spend nothing for my blogging needs.
I’d like to try out the software tools you mentioned but since they are Mac-only apps, I can’t. :P
Ben Helps
June 14th, 2008 9:50 am
@Tim: The Vonage site appears to only offer the service to the small USA, UK, and Canada part of the world.
@Ramesh: Ahh but do you pay for a legit copy of Photoshop? Given it’s cost, I wouldn’t (unless I was a graphic designer). Flamebait perhaps, but I find for quasi-professional use GIMP does evenything I need it to (yes I’ve used Photoshop and used to be quite competent at it).
@Neil: I agree, although it does have a bit of a learning curve to Photoshop die-hards.
Amen to Skype Pro Darren. I make a LOT of business calls within Australia each month, and I’d estimate I save at least $30-40 per month over using a landline handset or mobile to make the call.
Of course, about one in ten callees does gripe about the quality of the call. Tip - don’t run Bittorrent while trying to make your Skype calls.
Todd Andrews
June 14th, 2008 11:51 am
I make a real effort to go free on as many tools that I can. I finally caved on a couple, primarily tools for SEO.
I had to automate some of the process of acquiring links. That was just too tedious.
Winning Startups
June 14th, 2008 11:54 am
I get some images from stock photo site 123rf.com, and pay stumbleupon for some ads, and a google adwords campaign, of which three people have clicked my ads so far.
Panzer
June 14th, 2008 11:59 am
Besides web-hosting charges and domain name registrations, I pay for flickr because it helps me organise my photos and provides a repository in case my home computer gets wiped out.
I have also recently subscribed for mobile broadband service that allows me to access internet anywhere within Singapore if I am away from office/home.
Ben Moreno
June 14th, 2008 12:03 pm
Thanks! I will consider using these tools in the future.
scott
June 14th, 2008 12:24 pm
What I’m looking forward to trying out is scribefire, after reading the article. Since I’m a windows user most of those things don’t really help me out. I do use skype, but not very frequently.
Mike Davenport
June 14th, 2008 12:39 pm
For brainstorming I use two tools. One is Curio. The other is Conceptdraw Mindmap 5. Both are similar, but have some subtle differences, and both work very well on a Mac.
I use them to begin the writing process, and then can take the filled outline into a word processor.
You can take a free test drive of both (60 days for Curio and 30 for Conceptdraw.
GettyCash
June 14th, 2008 12:44 pm
I never tried ImageWell, but I heard they offer nice services.
Rahsheen Porter
June 14th, 2008 1:20 pm
Zemanta has potential, but it’s just not there yet. it’s young, though.
I would have to say that Live Writer surprised me. I am always surprised when MS makes a product that’s actually useful and doesn’t suck my resources. The plugins make it even more useful.
The Gimp has been handling all my graphics needs for some years now. I’m not good enough with graphics to actually pay for something like that.
I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned magicJack. It’s free for 30 days and it’s like $40 a year. Not sure about it’s international capabilities, though.
Jarrod - WarriorDevelopment
June 14th, 2008 1:25 pm
I pay for my notepad that I always carry to got down ideas. Probably my most valuable item :)
And then there is hosting costs.
SEI Design Group
June 14th, 2008 1:47 pm
@Todd - how did you automate?
I use Photoshop CS3, hosting, SEOmoz pro, Aweber, statcounter
For free - Skitch, Filezilla,
Want to try editor that works offline - anxious to hear any other comments.
Thanks for the post, Darren.
Bruce
June 14th, 2008 2:10 pm
The only thing I pay for now is hosting and domains, but Skype and Aweber seem interesting…
Timothy Carter
June 14th, 2008 3:06 pm
I like to use MagicJack. Pay a flat fee with a phone number I can take anywhere in the world and plug my phone into the USB and hooked to a highspeed internet and crystal clear phone service. Saves me a TON of money on long distance bills for talking to my customers or prospects interested in our whole food based business.
Rahul Bansal
June 14th, 2008 3:11 pm
Hi Darren,
I also use ecto on mac. Its the only software I purchased in my life. ;-)
But I seriously think its miles way from Windows Live Writer (WLW) by Microsoft. This may look freaky but I installed Parallels on mac, then Windows XP via Bootcamp & Parallels just to use Windows Live Writer on mac.
I don’t think Microsoft will ever port WLW on mac… :-(
Yep ecto is best on mac, but they are too slow & bad at adding required minimum features. ex. their WYSIWYG editor is worst I have ever seen. Gmails composer is better that that… :-)
Anyway nice list… I use skitch very much.. :-)
broalex
June 14th, 2008 3:57 pm
Skype is really cheap when talking about communicating. I only pay for some photo stock images for now , but as I am a contributor on several photo stocks I just use some of my credits earned to purchase these images. Otherwise some great service Darren listed here , and a very great post.
B Clarke
June 14th, 2008 4:01 pm
I’ve been thinking about paying for an RSS feed syndicater. (I’m not even sure if that’s the correct term.) I would like to publish headlines from a network of blogs to one of my sites, but I’ve only found FeedTwister online, and they update my feed about once a day.
Any suggestions?
A Suresh Kumar
June 14th, 2008 4:53 pm
I am using SKype for communication with other bloggers including Gtalk. I am using all free services to my blog. May be i will shift to commercial tool later stage of my blog life.
millionface.com
June 14th, 2008 5:04 pm
Your posts are always great, I like them. Every post has something new to offer; but I’m wondering what’s going on with your alexa ?
Matthew Sweet
June 14th, 2008 10:33 pm
I’m totally loving Blogo right now, I’m an ecto user myself, but Blogo’s image resizing and upload is slick and editing existing posts with the slide out panel is awesome. It also keeps drafts greyed at the top of the list!
It also crops thumbnails too, which is handy if you want to isolate a particular area of interest in the image for people to click to the larger version.
Ooh! and it has a full screen mode… ah la writeroom.
https://www.drinkbrainjuice.com/blogo
MJ Ray
June 14th, 2008 11:00 pm
I’d ditch Skype and buy a SIP or IAX service on the open market. It works about as well, in my experience, and you can call customers of most other SIP services providers for free too (unlike Skype, where you’re stuck in a walled garden). Skype looks like the VoIP equivalent of 1990s’ AOL - would you use 1990s AOL in today’s world?
Tinh
June 14th, 2008 11:10 pm
I just like only Skype as it help me connected to my family while travelling and paid once only. Thanks
Tran
June 14th, 2008 11:13 pm
Thanks for a great list, I am sure that I have paid for Skype nearly $100.
Tuan
June 14th, 2008 11:20 pm
Great, but Skype is the best option for me among them.
Michael
June 14th, 2008 11:42 pm
One tool that (as a blogger) I’m more then willing to pay for is Transmit, possibly the best FTP client for the Mac ever.
Ben Helps
June 15th, 2008 12:49 am
@MJ Ray: Do the SIP options you’re suggesting allow me to call the majority of my suppliers and clients who are lucky if they know what email is (ie on a landline)?
Muscle Post
June 15th, 2008 12:57 am
Right now it’s just the domain and hosting for me. And of course the Problogger book!
Jay Ramirez
June 15th, 2008 1:04 am
Here are a couple that we pay for as a company that help us collaborate:
Basecamp: We use this as our internal milestone tracker and file store as well as our client extranet. And to think for years I used MS Project.
Harvest: We use Harvest to track our time. Comes with a cool widget and iPhone support
Lighthouse: We use Lighthouse as our bug tracking tool while testing development items
Vera Lang
June 15th, 2008 1:12 am
Use Photoshop to rightsize, and tone our illustrative images and we use aWeber for sign-up.
Both pricey, and both professional-grade tools. Saves time and captures opportunities over the long haul.
MJ Ray
June 15th, 2008 1:19 am
@Ben Helps: Yes, there are SIP-to-landline services offering similar things to SkypeOut. I own my telco, so my landline is usually cheaper and I don’t use SIP-to-landline much, but I do have accounts with two of the providers listed on http://www.voipinfo.org/wiki/view/VOIP+Service+Providers that I sometimes use. (Page currently looks spammed by IPage Telecom, so don’t go with them, please.)
Hope that helps!
Sangesh
June 15th, 2008 1:25 am
Gee man… I think I’ve fallen behind regarding technologies. I just had idea about skype only. But regarding image editing I always rely on photoshop. It’s the best in business.
Syed Balkhi
June 15th, 2008 1:47 am
thanks for the suggestion on the email service. I am going to sign up with it when I am ready to put out my news letter. Right now I am working on a new design for my blog.
Scott Fox, Author of Internet Riches
June 15th, 2008 2:11 am
How about Feedburner or Feedblitz? These free tools allow your RSS feed to be sent to be people automatically as email.
The #1 mistake I see web site owners (of any type, including bloggers) make is not using email to communicate with their customers. These free tools automate your publishing so you can touch your customers more often but without any more work.
As we talk about all the time on my E-Commerce Success blog (http://www.ScottFoxBlog.com), there is a much larger audience outside of the blogosphere than in it…
Why not give as many avenues as possible to people who want to hear what you have to say?
Scott Fox
Jeff
June 15th, 2008 2:17 am
I find SkypeOut totally UNRELIABLE for business calls since the calls are dropped too often. There’s nothing worse on a business call with a potential client than to have the person on the other end suddenly not hearing you, shouting “Are you there? Are you there?” With Skype you run the risk of appearing unprofessional.
Cory Goodwin
June 15th, 2008 2:38 am
Quote: I’ve only picked out five tools that I pay for - but of course there are many other services … paying writers …
Do you have any tips or articles on how to find, judge, evaluate, and negotiate wiht freelance writers?
Bryn
June 15th, 2008 3:47 am
Only one of those tools I’ve used is Skype which was when it first came out but I haven’t used it since, maybe I’ll check it out again and get back into it.
Larry D
June 15th, 2008 4:05 am
What about feedblitz or feedburner for email delivery?
Wizardgold
June 15th, 2008 5:05 am
I think the best tools for blogging has to include the Web Browser FLOCK
Why pay for for a program like Ecto or MarsEdit to post to your blogs when there is a tool that works the same built into Flock.
I know I am highly delighted with the tool. Once I have the various blogs set up all I have to do is write the post and choose which one I want to post to.
Just love it.
The next tool I would have is for those of us bloggers that are podcasters also. Well it is more of a service than a tool. But it is inexpensive and is a super insurance in terms of knowing that you will never get caught by a massive bandwidth bill. This could happen if all of a sudden your podcast gets popular and thousands turn up to download your latest podcast.
Make Money Talks
June 15th, 2008 5:27 am
Most money i spend on wireless access, mostly i use free app.
Ben Helps
June 15th, 2008 10:54 am
@WizardGold: I’d suggest a little caution in using Flock, based on my own experience.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great browser and I used to use it, until I tried Firefox 3. FF3 is just so much quicker and less crash prone than Flock. Given they’re built from the same base, I may switch back to Flock once it starts using the FF3 code base, but until then, I’m happy to do without a browser that crashes multiple times per day and takes up to 400MB memory.
So far even under duress (a dozen or so tabs including Flash and Java heavy pages) FF3 only occasionally crashes (once every few days), renders pages heaps quicker and never seems to use more than about 100MB RAM, no matter how much you push it.
Just my 2c.
Toxane
June 15th, 2008 11:26 am
I’ with Eric. Hosting and domain…also…so far.
;-)
Joi
June 15th, 2008 3:15 pm
Photoshop is poetry.
I’m also more than thrilled that I… scratch that…. more than thrilled that my husband paid for the Thesis theme (http://diythemes.com/thesis/). The designer, Chris Pearson, is, in my opinion, the absolute best. His SEO knowledge, his attention to detail, his style, his perfectionism, and his professionalism set him apart - and, frankly, must make it difficult to be humble.
He honestly cares about the people who purchase his theme and works a lot harder than he has to - answering questions, giving tutorials, coming up with new additions, etc.
My self help blog is my “baby,” I’ve only changed the theme 3 times since having it, and each time they have been Chirs Pearson themes. It’s a matter of trust.
Bonus Points? He has a kicky sense of humor that makes me giggle.
Elizabeth Potts Weinstein
June 15th, 2008 11:21 pm
Thanks for the ImageWell recommendation - it was exactly what I needed.
~ Elizabeth
Andos
June 16th, 2008 12:14 am
lol, I’m just a newbie. I only need a webhosting + cheap domain :)
dokrothomas
June 16th, 2008 6:35 am
Mac?
…
you mean the golden arches??
ROTFL…..
Chris (Amateur Traveler)
June 16th, 2008 12:55 pm
I uses Skype constantly for all my interviews.
I would add CallRecorder (on Mac) to record Skype calls with one track for me and another for my guest.
I also have switched to Skitch from ImageWell as I like some things it does better and it is free.
I use ecto, but I am not convinced someone won’t make something better this year as I am not completely satisfied with it. Sometimes I find it gets a bit glitchy.
SEO Genius
June 17th, 2008 5:17 pm
I have been contemplating buying Aweber for a while now, and you have almost pushed me in to buying it, might go and have a look at some pricing :)
I just pay for my domain at the moment,
Windows Vista Help
June 17th, 2008 10:01 pm
Great article, but Skype is the best option for me.
Arul
June 20th, 2008 8:38 pm
I did not know about the tools for blogging until i logged into problogger site. I am getting informations regarding blogs through this site. Its been interesting to know new things..
awesome…..
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