My Toolbox

This is a look inside everything that allows me to continue building and maintaining my online empire. Well, maybe it’s not quite an empire just yet, but a guy can dream.

Everything listed below is a product or service I currently use or have used in the past. Some of the links below may be affiliate links meaning if you end up buying the product or service after clicking the link I will get a small commission from it. The commission comes at no additional cost to you. 

I only recommend products and services which I have experience with and have found to be a helpful or critical part of my work and play.

Hosting

In order to have a website, you first need somewhere to host it. For me, I only trust one web hosting provider for all my web properties and that’s Cloudways.

Now, Cloudways may be a bit overkill for those just getting started, and in that case, I recommend either Bluehost or HostGator. They’re two of the longest standing, and most trusted hosting companies around. 

If you’re really just looking for the lowest-cost solution to get you up and running, then Hostgator is the way to go. You can even use my discount code at checkout to get 60% off! Use code DUSTINSIXTY at Hostgator.

WordPress Theme

There are tons of themes out there, and most of them are garbage. Bloated, clunky, and not optimized to do what really matters. So, when it comes to designing sites, there is only one WordPress theme framework that I use and recommend: Genesis Theme.

WordPress Plugins

Once you have a website built, now you need to make sure you have a number of things in place to meet your goals. For me, those goals are traffic and conversions. And there are a handful of plugins that help me accomplish this.

Social Warfare

In order to boost my traffic from social media I make it dead simple for my readers to share my content in the most optimized way possible. To do this I use Social Warfare.

Full disclosure: I also happen to be one of the co-founders.

Optin Monster

When someone visits my site, my ultimate goal is to get them on my email list. To help me do that I use Optin Monster.

Ninja Forms

Every website needs to have forms. Contact forms, opt-in forms, surveys, and the like. For this, I use Ninja Forms.

WP Rocket

You want your website to load fast. If it doesn’t visitors will leave, and it could also hurt your SEO. That’s why I use WP Rocket. Easy to install, and effective results out of the box.

Email Marketing

Your email list is probably the most valuable asset you can build as a blogger. After trying out many different email marketing systems, I’ve found that ConvertKit is the easiest to use and most powerful.

Other Noteworthy Tools

The above tools are definitely the most crucial in my day-to-day. Below is the laundry list of other tools, apps, and items that help me do what I do.

Physical Items

These are things that are physical tools that I use regularly that I couldn’t do my job without.

• MacBook Pro 2014
• Bluetooth Apple Keyboard and Magic Mouse
• iPhone X
• Field Notes
• Glif
• Next Level Apparel for Red V-Neck t-shirts.

Desktop Apps

These are the apps that I use on either my iMac or MacBook Pro.

• Adobe Creative Cloud (primarily Photoshop, Illustrator, and XD)
• Typora for writing blog posts in beautiful Markdown format.
• Evernote for idea capture and development.
• Coda for FTP.
• Atom for all coding.
• Spotify for audio stimulation.
• Chrome for web browsing.
• Slack for team communications
• Toggl for Pomodoro and time tracking.
• Todoist for to-do lists and project management.
• Notion for editorial planning, wikis, and documentation.

And in case you missed my post about the Best Mobile Apps to Create Visual Content, it also contains some great mobile apps that I use.

Web Apps

These are apps that I use on the web to accomplish various tasks.

• Google Apps for Work (Email, Google Drive, Google Analytics, etc.)
• Bit.ly with my own custom short URL for all link shortening.
• Rebrandly (currently testing this as a Bitly alternative)
• Agorapulse for social media management.
• BuzzSumo for content trends, analysis, and social listening.
• LastPass because, like everyone, I have too many places to log in.
• Feedly for RSS reading.
• Brand24 for deep social listening.
• Loom for super simple screen recording.

Other WordPress Plugins

• CoSchedule – for taking my content editorial calendar to the next level.
• Akismet
• Broken Link Checker
• Redirection
• Yoast SEO

And that’s it for now. I’ll do my best to keep updating this page and making it better.

If you have any suggestions, comments or questions about my current tools (or have a tool you recommend) I’d love to hear from you! Drop me a line on Twitter!