15 Internet Tools Every Blogger Should Use

BY Alex Ainsberg Mar. 05, 2010 37 Comments

This is a guest post by Alex Ainsberg. If you're interested in getting yourself in front of the readers of EpicLaunch, check out the guest posting guidelines here.

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.

Online Business
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37 Responses to “15 Internet Tools Every Blogger Should Use”

  1. Tom | Build That List Reply Mar. 04, 2010 at 6:35 pm

    What a great list of resources. The ‘DownForEveryoneButMe’ tool is gold!
    Tom | Build That List´s last blog post: The 4 Reasons People Unsubscribe Mailing Lists My ComLuv Profile

  2. Suresh Khanal | blogging Reply Mar. 04, 2010 at 7:00 pm

    Must thank for this list of great tools. Right tools makes work easier and effective. I’m in learning step and these sort of posts are great to improve.

    Stumbled your post, voted in BlogEngage. I’ll certainly digg and retweet too!
    Suresh Khanal | blogging´s last blog post: First Aid for Broken Links in WordPress Blog My ComLuv Profile

  3. Fiona Reply Mar. 04, 2010 at 7:01 pm

    I’m going to have to check out Feng-GUI, I just redesigned my site, so that is going to be very useful to see if I have to switch things around. Thanks for the list!

  4. Patrick Toerner Reply Mar. 05, 2010 at 12:14 am

    This is a great post! Some of these I have never heard of. HootMonitor for example, that is a great thing to have, text messages sent to you when your site is down. I’m going to have to look into some of these more in depth.

    Thanks Alex, great post.
    Patrick Toerner´s last blog post: Top 10 Must Have WordPress Plugins My ComLuv Profile

  5. Ramkumar Reply Mar. 05, 2010 at 1:18 am

    Hi I would love to introduce any application. Its called Feed Counter, It can return the number of RSS subscribers, the number of people who read from RSS etc on a particular day or over a period of time and export it to CSV format.

    You may find the software here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/feed-counter/
    Ramkumar´s last blog post: Review GrooveShark – Free Online Songs | Radio My ComLuv Profile

  6. Aminul Islam Sajib Reply Mar. 05, 2010 at 4:13 am

    Amazing. All those tools are brand new to me. I mean, I never heard of any of those before.

    Going to check Teqpad and Bara’Mail right now.
    Aminul Islam Sajib´s last blog post: Do You Need A Google Wave Invitation? My ComLuv Profile

  7. Dennis Edell Reply Mar. 05, 2010 at 8:34 am

    The first should be good for me too as I’m designing my site live. ;)
    Dennis Edell´s last blog post: DEDC Updates – What the (Near) Future Holds for You and I! My ComLuv Profile

  8. Roland Reply Mar. 05, 2010 at 3:33 pm

    Hey Ben,
    Great tips for these apps.its great that you are passing on your experience.
    Roalnd
    Roland´s last blog post: Why Commenting is Good My ComLuv Profile

  9. Clinton Skakun Reply Mar. 05, 2010 at 3:39 pm

    HeatMap looks cool! I’m going to use that. That’s one of the coolest web tools I’ve ever seen lol!:)
    Clinton Skakun´s last blog post: Please subscribe to my new PodCast My ComLuv Profile

  10. Phillip Dews Reply Mar. 05, 2010 at 10:46 pm

    Great List Alex. I love the very Top one will be using that myself! I am surprised you have not mentioned any Twitter tools on here though. I love my tweet branding tool much better than tweetdeck! Thanks for the list anyway dude!

    -Phillip
    Phillip Dews´s last blog post: Google! A Brief History My ComLuv Profile

  11. Agent Deepak Reply Mar. 06, 2010 at 12:13 am

    Great tools. I need to try out the first one Feng-GUI to see how my design is. Thanks.
    Agent Deepak´s last blog post: Interview with James Richmond – The InfoPreneur My ComLuv Profile

  12. Shirley Reply Mar. 06, 2010 at 3:39 am

    Wow, very great tools, Alex. I find the concept behind the downforeveryoneorjustme site very interesting :) .
    Shirley´s last blog post: WP-SpamFree Plugin – Block Comment Spam On Your WordPress Blog My ComLuv Profile

  13. Fazreen Reply Mar. 06, 2010 at 7:25 pm

    I use wufoo. It’s a great form. But I feel like want to try out tagul

  14. JR Reply Mar. 07, 2010 at 9:28 pm

    Wow Alex, a lot of goodies here, thank you very much, will check several of them out.
    JR ´s last blog post: Make Money Online for Free: How-To Build Money Sites Quickly With WordPress My ComLuv Profile

  15. Philam Reply Mar. 08, 2010 at 5:28 pm

    I’ve been reading bunch of blogs since January and I learned a lot from them. This one above is another great post, thank you alex for posting this tools that each blogger could use.

    Ben Lang, thanks for allowing me to post comments here. I am sure I will be visiting here often.

    Thank you again.
    Phil

  16. Shasheen Reply Mar. 16, 2010 at 8:13 am

    Hey alex… great post. How can I get that share bar that you have on the top of this post on my blogger blog?

    Thanks!

    Shasheen

  17. Ed Reply Mar. 26, 2010 at 3:08 pm

    oh my gosh. look at the long list of glory. i need to start using these tools. awesome
    Ed´s last blog post: Automated Googling My ComLuv Profile

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