There are some things we just can’t live without. The list below are those things that we oh-so-love.**

Email marketing

**Affiliate partnership

iContact allows businesses, non-profit organizations, and associations to easily create, send, and track email newsletters, surveys, blogs, autoresponders, and RSS feeds. We love it because it’s easy to use, affordable, has great deliverability, is reliable, and provides good stats.
AWESOME OFFER: They have a free trial and a free account option that allows up to 100 subscribers.

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Shopping carts

1Shoppingcart (1SC) is THE best shopping cart around, in my opinion. We love it because: it does it all – email marketing, affiliate management, AND it’s a great cart.

TIP for my entrepreneur friends: if you have an account with 1SC, it eliminates the need for additional email marketing solutions. You can do everything from here.

[hr] Domains and Hosting

**Affiliate partnership

Bluehost is THE best place to host your website. We love it because: you get unlimited emails and storage; once you pay for hosting, you can host as many domains as you own for no additional charge; and they have THE best customer service – responsive, human, and 24/7. Can’t really beat that. AWESOME OFFER: Hosting is only $4.95 a month as of this write-up when you pay for a year!

[hr] Membership Forums

Need a membership forum? Consider Moodle. Open Source. Free. What’s not to love?

** Affiliate Partnership

Wishlist Member is a comprehensive membership site that integrates with your WordPress website. Create membership levels, control view content, flexible membership options – this does mostly everything!

[hr] Our Favorite WordPress templates

If you’re in need of a Website, the wordpress platform is our favorite for reasons much greater than we can list here. If you want to start with a template, these are the places we recommend (PS: optimize press is for landing pages, not really entire websites):

[hr] Calendars / appointment scheduling

Automation = Happiness. That’s my mantra, and Timetrade is what helps that happen for me. What we love about Timetrade is the ease of use AND that fact that it make calendar syncing and appointment automation easy peasy. Serious awesomeness right here.

[hr] Contracts and signed document handling

 Are you still asking clients to print, sign, and FAX back your documents? That’s SO 1980 (and annoying… who has a fax, anyway?) This makes document signing a snap – it’s all electronic, and perfectly legal and binding. Not only is it EASY, but it SAVES TREES. It’s like… how can you not?

[hr] Time Keeping

Ever wonder where the time goes? Wonder no more. OfficeTime makes time tracking (and invoicing) as easy as can be. It’s THE most feature-full time keeping program we’ve seen for tracking your personal or business tasks. Forget to start the timer? No problem – enter it in when you remember! Forget to stop the timer? No problem – it reminds you! Screw up on a project and need to travel back in time? Sorry… they are still working on the time travel feature. But still – it has everything else you could possibly need.

[hr] Online surveys

If you need any kind of form set up on your website (For my coaches think – strategy session applications), this is the way you want to go. No doubt. Don’t think twice. The free version of this account has AMAZING capabilities. Autoresponders, redirects (that’s a thank you page), etc. This program is also incredibly easy to use. Love it. Love it. Love it.

[hr] Bridge lines & Conferencing

We love Free Conference because it’s free, and it has great quality recordings. ‘Nuff said.

**Affiliate partnership

Why talk to customers one at a time when you can reach dozens, hundreds, even thousands in one shot? Telseminars can (and should) be integrated into every company’s sales flows. Instant Teleseminar has designed their tool to fit into the way your prospects think. They’ve figured out how to help you get your prospects to take the next logical step, from the pre-event salesflow all the way through to the action you’re trying to get them to take…whether that’s opting into your list, buying their first product from you, or buying that big-ticket item. Check out their AWESOME OFFER: 21-day, $1 no-risk trial!

Why just TALK to people, when you can SEE them? Anymeeting.com is a 100% free Web Conferencing service for all your online meeting needs. Use it to hold webinars, online training, sales demos or whatever you like ! It’s absolutely free! You can have up to 6 people face-to-face, and many more can listen on the phone. Sessions can be recorded and played back. This is ideal for anyone doing group programs that requires face-to-face interaction (ie: teaching public speaking, EFT, etc.)

[hr] Team Collaboration / Tools

**Affiliate partnership

Central Desktop is the system that we use to manage our own team and clients. It’s robust and wonderful, and the staff…well, they are hilarious. I’m pretty much a sucker for any company with a personality.

And where oh where would we be without dropbox? If you need a place to share and store files – this is it. We love it because we can access it through our regular file system. Easy!

[hr] Stock Photos

Need a photo of a little girl with a magnifying glass standing by a mountain stream? Or need to legally obtain stock photo images for a powerpoint presentation or website (NOTE: just because you find an image on Google and know how to download it, doesn’t mean you can use it). If so, this is my FAV resource for stock photos. They are very well priced, and have great contributors.

[hr] Bookkeeping  / Accounting

I use THE best bookkeeping company out there. Seriously – they have it all – responsive, smart, funny as hell, AND they can add and … bookkeep stuff.

Bookkeeping? H-A-T-E it. Bookkeepers? L-O-V-E them. Tell ’em I sent you so Candy will send me another Starbucks card. 🙂

**Please note that I do have an affiliate partnership with many of the companies I recommend, as indicated. This means that if you buy something from them, I earn money. Also note that I only recommend products that I personally use, have used, or am intimately familiar with.