15 Internet Tools Every Blogger Should Use

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Here are 15 online tools that can help make blogging easier, more efficient and enjoyable. Some you may already have heard of, others might new to you, so make sure to check them out.

1. Feng-GUI – FengGUI is an attention heatmap tool designed to help you find weak and hot spots in your website design. This is a great way to find out where people look when they initially visit your site and will also help in improving the placement of ads and the overall design.

2. Addthis – Addthis is a small button that you can embed on a website/blog; it’s a great way for visitors to share your content through various websites like Facebook, Twitter and more. AddThis also allows you to track the performance of this button with a neat analytics page in your account.

3. downforeveryoneorjustme – downforeveryoneorjustme is a quick and easy way to tell if your website is up and functioning correctly or if its just a problem on your end. Simply input the address of your website and press enter or click ‘or just me.’

4. MailCounter – MailCounter is a cool badge that you can embed into your site to count emails. Similar to the popular “retweet counter,” once this badge is clicked the users email will automatically popup with a link with the page he/she was just looking at. The badge counts that click and shows a live number of how many times it has been used.

5. Cyclur – Cyclur is a widget that allows you to create customizable RSS feeds on your site. What is really cool is that Cyclur can combine multiple RSS feeds into one widget for easy display on a website. You can also customize the colors and size of the widget.

6. Teqpad – Teqpad is a great resource for detailed information about a website. It is fairly similar to Alexa, but with a more intuitive system, and nicer layout.

7. Bara’ Mail – Bara’ Mail is a tool that allows you to send email newsletters more efficiently. There are built-in reports that accurately measure how each campaign is doing. This website also has a beautiful, easy to use interface.

8. HootMonitor – HootMonitor is a useful application that will alert you if your site is down through multiple methods. You can choose SMS, Email or even a Direct Message on Twitter.

9. PoketyPoke – Currently in private beta, PoketyPoke is a useful for conference calls reminders. Setting it up is really easy and PoketyPoke is currently planning to add interesting features in the future.

10. hovClick – hovClick allows you to create, as their website put it, “an unblockable popup.” Pop-ups are a great technique for getting the attention of your viewers, but bear in mind they do tend to bother many users.

11. Digital Product Delivery (DPD) – DPD is a great and way to sell digital downloads on your website. There is no free version so if your interested you will have to shell out at least $5 for the application.

12. Writemonkey – Though their website is a bit odd, they offer a fantastic download that gives you a full screen distraction-free place to write. This is really great for those bloggers who have trouble concentrating on writing posts.

13. Convert Hub – Convert Hub is an excellent website that allows you  to convert any image file type to another that you specify. Great for avatars, thumbnails and plain old pictures. The website also has various other tools located on the top, like an image rotator and flipper.

14. Tagul – Tagul is a great site for making beautiful tag clouds – perfect for a blog! With several shapes and a few different fonts you can really customize how your tag cloud looks.

15. Wufoo – Wufoo allows you to easily create online forms for your site. The free version is fairly limited, but still offers the basic features. Once someone has completed a form you are notified and statistics are tacked on their website.

Please let me know what you think of these tools, and if you have any suggestions please email me at alex@ben-lang.com.