After reading a piece from Ryan Spoon, a former colleague of mine, on Techmeme, about 15 websites/ services he would actually pay for, I was thinking about his list of free webservices he would consider paying for. There are a couple I’d consider paying for as well, especially the Google Analytics in real time!
However, there is a list of webservices I already am paying for, which you might consider;
- MyBlogLog; Only $3 per month, or $25 a year per website. MyBlogLog gives me real time information about the referrals to my website, what readers are interested in, and what they click on. The premium subscription allows you to pull reports into CSV, where you can filter pretty easy. MyBlogLog also allows me to connect with my readers in a more community kind of way, and follow the communities I belong to. I think the service is highly underutilized in the Internet world.
- Amazon Prime; Unfortunately I had to pay for my subscription to Amazon Prime, not like Ryan who got it for free. $75 per year!
- SEOmoz.org premium; The premium content you get access too at SEOmoz.org is worth checking out. Tools for Internet marketing, discussion boards, Job boards focused on SEO and Youmoz; where you can publish your own articles. The best articles are republished on the open blog, which can bring you a lot of extra exposure. At $49.95/month; $250 for 6 months or 399 for a full year, it is quite expensive.
- Compete credits; At around $2 per credit, it’s quite expensive. But Compete also has 2 for 1 days, where they double the credits you get for the money you pay. As a Dutchman, I like this! With these credits you can run all kinds of general search analytics reports or take a deep dive on your own or somebody else’s site.
- StumblUpon; I paid for a sponsored account on StumbleUpon. I love StumbleUpon, and I’m using the site on a daily basis. With a sponsored account you can start your own Interest groups and turn off sponsored stumbles. The fee is just $20 per year, so it is worth it to consider sponsoring this great discovery tool.
- Flickr Pro account; I use Flickr for all my photo’s online. Flickr Pro gives you so much more flexibility in your account, especially the much bigger upload storage per month. Other advantages of a Flickr Pro account: Unlimited sets and collections, Access to your original files; Stats on your account; Ad-free browsing & sharing and Video uploads. With $24.95 per year, I think it is a steal.
- Skype Out; I’m a heavy user of Skype. With my family and friends living in The Netherlands, we skype almost everyday. Usually we do a lot of Skype to Skype calls, but they are not always behind the computer when we would like to call. We are saving a ton of long-distance phone call minutes this way, as we pay just local rates with Skype-Out!
- SnagIt; take snapshots of websites
- Camtasia Studio; Make movies from your photo collection, or your power points. It allows you to become a publisher of rich & unique content.
- Link Assistant;
- Ecto for Windows; really good software if you are blogging on a regular basis
- Getclicky; Real time analytics will give you new insights into who is coming to your websites
- Macro Express; Making your own Short key’s can drive up productivity so much.
- SEOBook; The comprehensive guide to SEO by Aaron Wall, with free updates!
- Webmasterworld subscription; A year subscription of the private forum of Webmasterworld will cost $149.
All in all, quite an amount now that I added these all up.
Am I missing some great services that I should consider start using? Please let me know in the comments!
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