Not only is this bad UX, you also may be hurting your page rank through poor internal linking and increasing your bounce rate.

So, let me show you how to quickly and easily fix broken links with the help of AI (Gemini, Grok, ChatGPT).

Here’s the workflow in a nutshell:

1. Run a scan with Dead Link Checker (or any of the tools listed below).
2. Copy the report and paste it into an AI tool with a prompt asking it to prioritize what to fix.
3. Work through the list starting with highest priority items.
4. Use the AI’s output to know exactly which pages to navigate to and which links to update or remove.

That’s it. Done.

What used to take hours of manual digging through a confusing report now takes a fraction of the time because you’re letting AI do the thinking while you’re doing the fixing.

Step 1: Find Your Broken Links with Dead Link Checker

The best free tool for this is Dead Link Checker (deadlinkchecker.com) in my opinion. There are a lot of options for this, I’ll list alternatives down below.

1. Go to the site and enter your full domain name.
2. Select “whole website” (not just a single page).
3. Enter the CAPTCHA and click Check.
4. Wait a few minutes for the scan to complete.

You’ll end up with a report showing which links are working and which are returning 404 errors. For example, a site might have 1,846 working links and 154 broken ones.

The problem?

You’re staring at a wall of data with no idea where to start. That’s where AI comes in.

Step 2: Copy the Report and Send It to AI

Once the scan is done:

1. Scroll through the full list of broken links on Dead Link Checker.
2. Right-click and copy all the data.
3. Open your AI tool of choice, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, or any other.
4. Paste the data into a new chat.

Use a prompt like this:

“I’m going to give you a bunch of data on the broken links on my site. Tell me which ones to focus on to update so I don’t waste my time.”

The key focus is to tell the AI what do 100% need to fix now and what can safely be ignored.

Step 3: Review Your AI-Generated Priority Report

The AI will analyze all those broken links and organize them into a prioritized action plan.

Here’s an example of what that output might look like:

Highest Priority — Fix These First

• Content 404s: Internal pages you’re linking to that no longer exist. If the content matters, recreate it. If it doesn’t, update or remove the link.
• Broken image sources: Great example, if you previously used Amazon Associates embedded images and that feature was removed, you’ll have a batch of broken image requests to clean up. These are often concentrated in a single blog post, so it’s more manageable than it looks.
• Embedded video 403s: Videos you’ve embedded on your site that aren’t set to allow embedding. Go to your YouTube channel settings and enable embedding for those videos.
• Affiliate and tool links: Outdated links to products or services you’ve recommended that no longer exist or have been moved to a different URL, update these to current URLs.

Medium Priority — Do These When You Have Time

Generic outbound links that are 404ing but aren’t critical. Worth fixing eventually, but not urgent.

Ignore These for Now

The AI will also flag links you can safely deprioritize, often tracking pixels, ad scripts, or external resources outside your control.

Step 4: Fix the Broken Links

Now that you know exactly what to fix and where, here’s how to actually do it.

For internal links (links on your own site):

1. Hover over the broken link in the Dead Link Checker report, the bottom of your browser will show you which page on your site contains that link.
2. Navigate to that page in your CMS (WordPress, Webflow, etc.).
3. Open the page editor and use Ctrl+F to search for the broken URL.
4. Update the link to a working URL, or remove it entirely if the destination no longer exists.

Quick example: If the report shows a link to twosigma.com is 404ing, and mousing over it reveals it lives on a specific post, navigate to that post, find the link, and either update it to a working URL or delete it.

For images:

Find the blog post or page that contains the broken image reference, remove the old embed, and replace it with a working image or remove it altogether.

7 Other Tools to Find Broken Links

Dead Link Checker is a great but it’s not the only game in town. Here are other options depending on your setup:

1. Google Search Console: Go to Indexing > Pages and look for the “Not Found” section. It’ll show you exactly which URLs Google has flagged as 404s.
2. Broken Link Check (brokenlinkcheck.com): Similar to Dead Link Checker. Paste the full report into AI and go from there.
3. Ahrefs Broken Link Checker: Free when logged out, but limited to a handful of results. Good for a quick spot-check.
4. Screaming Frog: Powerful, but the free version caps at 500 URLs. Paid version is unlimited and well worth it if you have a large site.
5. Broken Link Checker (WordPress plugin): Runs passively in the background on your WordPress site. Not as fast or hands-on as the other tools, but useful for ongoing monitoring.
6. Link Whisperer: A premium WordPress plugin focused on internal linking. It also flags broken links and orphan pages. At $8/month for the starter plan, it’s worth running for a month to do a full cleanup.
7. Check My Links (Chrome extension): A browser extension that scans any page you’re on for broken links. Great for checking individual pages on the fly.

Final Thoughts

Fixing 404, broken links is a small, quick win you can do in a hour. Run the report, hand if off to AI and get to work.

Your man,

-David

From the desk of David Utke

Subj: The Lean List-Builder: High-Value Starter Plans for Beginners

While I have a dedicated guide on the best overall email marketing options, I know not everyone is an experience email marketer, a lot of you are just starting out.

If that’s you, then having a feature rich free plan to get started and grow your list with is quite helpful, particularly if you don’t really have an audience yet.

So what are the best free email marketing plans available and what are their ideal use case?

Let’s get to it.

Overview of the best free plans:

Pros & Cons

1. beehiiv

Your own dedicated website and good deliverability.

Pros:

• One-click ad placements and easy premium subscription setups.
• Boost to monetize your list and grow your audience.
• Excellent deliverability.
• Useful automations.

Cons:

• A bit of a learning curve. Can be overwhelming for total beginners who just want to write.
• Boosts, the ad network and automations are locked behind the paywall.

2. Kit

Incredibly generous free plan, your own simple website.

Pros:

• Generous Free Tier: 10,000 subscribers for free is the best value for mid-sized creators.
• Creator Network: Makes it very easy to partner with other writers for mutual recommendations.
• Custom Domains: Unlike many competitors, you can use your own domain even on the free plan.

Cons:

• The email editor is intentionally simple; it’s hard to make “fancy” or image-heavy layouts.
• Once you cross the 10k free limit, or you want marketing automations the paid plans become pricey compared to competitors.

3. Sender

Not positioned for newsletters, more for email marketers but they make my list because their free plan is outstanding.

Pros:

• One of the few platforms that gives you advanced automation workflows on a free plan.
• High Deliverability: Known for having very high “inbox rates,” ensuring your emails don’t hit spam.
• Very intuitive drag-and-drop editor for excellent landing pages and email templates.

Cons:

• You have to keep the “Sent via Sender” badge at the bottom of all free emails.

4. Jetpack Newsletter

Turn your WordPress website into a newsletter website with this plugin.

Pros:

• Truly Unlimited: No caps on subscribers or sends, ever.
• You write in the WordPress editor you already know, no new dashboard to learn.
• SEO Benefits: Every email is automatically a blog post on your domain, boosting your site’s authority.

Cons:

• Basic Features: Lacks advanced “marketing” tools like A/B testing or complex growth loops.
• WordPress Only: You can’t use this as a standalone tool; you must have a WordPress site.

5. Substack

Pros:

• Built-in Audience: The “Recommendations” engine and Substack Notes can drive thousands of signups without you doing any marketing.
• No design or tech setup required; you just signup, customize your site to a small degree, write and hit send.

Cons:

• They take a 10% cut of your revenue forever. This is much more expensive than a flat fee as you grow.
• To unlock a custom domain costs a one time fee of $50.

6. Brevo

Email a massive list for cheap. If you’re wanting to send out a monthly newsletter you’ll LOVR Brevo.

Pros:

• You can have a huge list for cheap.
• Multi-Channel marketing: Great if you want to eventually add SMS or WhatsApp marketing to your newsletter.

Cons:

• The free plan limits you to 300 emails per day, fine if you’re just gettin gstarted.
• It’s built for traditional businesses, so it lacks creator-specific features like “Boosts” or “Tip Jars.”

7. MailerLite

Nice combination of low prices, dedicated website, landing pages and the ability to sell products.

Pros:

• Get your own dedicated website for your newsletter.
• Strong Landing Pages: Includes a great website builder and a landing page builder.
• Sell one product or coaching offer on the free plan.
• Can set a custom domain for sending purposes.
• Very affordable compared to a Kit paid plan.

Cons:

• They are known for having a manual and strict account approval process. But this is good thing as it protects the deliverability for all Mailer Lite users.
• The 500-subscriber limit is low compared to other plans, but fair given what Mailer Lite provides.
• Can not set a custom domain for your website and landing pages on the free plan.

TLDR?

If you are a “Creator” (blog, YouTube etc)

Go with Kit.

Having a 10,000-subscriber ceiling for free is simply unbeatable.

Honestly, most people will never come anywhere close to having a list of this size. Yes, you don’t get any automations but for growing a list and selling products, the free newsletter plan is very competitive.

The catch?

You will have to manually hit “send” every time you want to talk to your list because they gate the “Welcome Sequence” (automation) behind the paid tier. This should be fine if you’re doing the weekly newsletter thing.

But if you want marketing workflows, automations and access to their excellent tagging system then you’ll need a paid plan.

If you are starting a “Newsletter” (Content is the product):

Then beehiiv is your platform.

They give you a custom website and the ability to scale to 2,500 subscribers with zero sending limits.

The catch?

It’s built for writing an email newsletter, think something like the Milk Road, a crypto newsletter that comes out once a week. If you want to set up complex “if this, then that” triggers for marketing funnels, then this platform is not for you.

Overall though the free plan with Beehiiv is enough to get you going understanding the platform and actually growing a profitable newsletter.

If you need “Automations” for free

Easy, sign up to Sender.

They are the only ones currently giving you 2,500 subscribers and the ability to create automated workflows (like an “Abandoned Cart” or “Welcome Series”) without a credit card.

The catch?

The interface is a bit more basic than the others, and their deliverability requires you to be very strict with your list quality. But Sender in my opinion has now dethroned Mailer Lite as the free plan king.

Marketing workflows/autoresponder automations are typically something only available to paid users with most email marketing providers.

If you have a massive list that you don’t email frequently

Brevo is your choice.

You can store 100,000+ contact list on their free plan.

The catch?

The free plan has a 300-per-day limit.

Brevo is still a good option because if you have a tiny list of up to 300 people, you can email them everyday.

Brevo however is what I like to call the “low frequency, high volume” king.

They charge a monthly subscription, but their focus is on emails sent and not list size like other platforms. That means you for a low price you can email a huge list once a month.

Have a WordPress site and want a free option?

Then it’s Jetpack to the rescue.

You can have unlimited subscribers and unlimited email sends. When you write a blog post you can also choose to email your list, publish to your blog or do both.

You can also offer paid subscriptions too. Last, if you upgrade to a paid plan then the transaction fee drops from 10% to 3%.

The catch?

No automations, not even a simple onboarding sequence when someone subscribes. All emails have WordPress branding as well.

Prefer a “done for you” writers first platform?

The sign up to Substack.

You get your own website, good deliverability, the ability to offer paid subscriptions and community of writers.

The catch?

Substack branding and no way to remove that, setting a custom domain for your site costs a one time fee of $50, 10% transaction fee on your paid subscription revenue and no automations.

What about Mail Chimp?

Oh how times have changed.

Mail Chimp used to be the most generous free plan at one time, but they have since scaled it back to only 250 subscribers and 500 email sends a month with support for only the first 30 dayas.

This is more of a “free trial” plan and not really a proper free plan to grow your list.

Wrap-up

Alright everyone, that’s it for my breakdown on the best free plans for email marketing. Make sure to bookmark and share this with someone it can help.

Till next time,

-David.

*P.S. – I personally use Kit for my email marketing.

Well you’re you’re going to need an email newsletter platform for that. An email newsletter is something you send out typically once a week and position the emails as the reason for signing up.

Join 175K+ readers of The Saturday Solopreneur for tips, strategies, and resources to monetize your expertise. – Justin Welsh “The Saturday Solopreneur” newsletter.

No lead magnet, no sales funnel, just a predictable, helpful, once a week email.

Branded email newsletter

Instead of doing the typical email marketing approach where you offer a lead magnet to get people to subscribe to your list and then send new subscribers down a marketing funnel for some product or service; a branded email newsletter is all about high impact value via a predicatable email.

Come up with a brand

The first step before doing anything else is to come up with a brand name that makes people want to subscribe because they understand the value they’re going to get.

• Clark Kegley writes the “Refusing to Settle” personal development newsletter.
• James Clear has his famous 1-2-3 habits newsletter.
• Mark Manson sends out the “Breakthrough.”
• Justin Welsch as previously mentioned publishes the “Saturday Solopreneur” newsletter.

High converting tagline

This is the why, WHY should people subscribe. You need to elegantly convert people though giving them a compelling reason.

“5 minutes that might change your life” is what Mark Manson uses. This grabs your attention and does not seem intimidating as 5 minutes is short and easy to digest.

“Join 175k people” is outstanding social proof that Justin uses.

Lead magnet?

While not required, you can incorporate a lead magnet into your copy to make it more compelling. James Clear offers a free chapter of his book and Clark has “10 questions” cheat sheet. But the primary selling point is to join the newsletter.

Top Newsletter Platforms for 2026

Ghost.org – My top choice for newsletters

I love and use the Ghost.org platform over at my expat travel blog.

It combines pro blogging, broadcast email marketing with paid subscriptions into a beautifully designed platform that can actually rank and get organic search traffic and traffic from AI.

You can get started with Ghost using a free trial and then it will set you back just $15 a month for 1000 email subscribers that you can email as many times as you like.

With Ghost, the way it works is that you compose blog posts and then you can choose to either:

• Email your subscribers.
• Email and post the email as a blog post to your website.
• Post to your website only.

Helpful editor cards (blocks)

Blocks in Ghost are called cards. You have a wide range of cards to help create dynamic content that makes your emails and blog posts more beautiful and high converting.

One of my favorite cards is the “email content” block. This allows you to have hidden content only readable in an email client. This gives another compelling reason for people to subscribe and stay subscribed.

You also get product boxes to help you promote both your own products as well as affiliate offers.

Paid subscriptions

Paid subscriptions are built into the Ghost platform so there is no technical setup. Simply create a Stripe account and link it to your Ghost.org website. You can also offer trial offers and coupon codes to convert subscribers.

Beautiful, professional branded design

Finally, Ghost comes with a wide range of beautiful, high converting, professional looking themes that you can use. This is in stark contrast to other platforms that have more of a cookie-cutter, templated design.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Rank organically and get traffic from both search engines and AI.
• Setup basic on-boarding automations with a “thank you” email.
• Card editor blocks for dynamic content.
• Beautifully designed, minimalistic emails your audience will love.
• NO transaction fees on paid subscriptions!
• A true combination of blogging, email marketing and paid subscriptions.

Cons:

• Only a free trial is available, no free plan.
• Paid subscriptions are under the “publisher” plan.
• No advanced automations, just a simple welcome sequence is available.

Ghost

Ghost is a hosted blogging platform with strong focus on paid subscriptions, blogging and email marketing.

You get access to a bunch of well designed themes, a superior content creation experience, and the ability to offer a direct response email newsletter, tips & donation and paid subscriptions without any tech setup.

I use this platform for my personal development/travel/expat blog found at edgeofdavid.com

Start Your FREE Trial

➪ Checkout my free Ghost website tutorial.

Beehiiv – Email newsletter with growth and monetization built in

One of my more popular tutorials on my YouTube channel is breaking down how to build and launch a newsletter website using Beehiiv.

Beehiiv was made popular by the smashing success of both the Milk Road Newsletter and Morning Brew. It’s a platform that allows you create your website for free and have up to 2500 subscribers. You can email those subscribers as many times as you like.

You get a complete website with a homepage and your emails are displayed as blog posts (though they can be hidden if you like). The design is overall a bit cookie cutter, but behind the scenes Beehiiv has a lot going on.

The Ad Network:

They have a native marketplace where you can see sponsors and apply to include them in your monthly send with one click. You get paid based on opens or clicks.

Yes you can run your own sponsorships with any email newsletter platform, but the Beehiiv ad network makes monetizing your list very easy at the click of a button. No going back and forth with advertisers.

Automations:

While automations are not available on the free plan, they open up to you once you become a paying subscriber and is one of the most compelling reasons to upgrade your account.

Take advantage of powerful “if/then” engine that handles everything from multi-step welcome sequences to behavioral triggers, ensuring your list stays engaged and monetized between your monthly sends.

The Referral Program:

Similar to the famous Morning Brew milestone system. You can offer rewards (like free access to paid tiers) to readers who refer their friends and audience, all tracked automatically.

Recommendation Network:

When someone signs up for your newsletter, you can show them a popup of 2–3 other newsletters you recommend. If they sign up for those, the other creators might do the same for you, creating a “growth loop.”

Boosts:

You can actually get paid (usually $1–$3 per subscriber) just for recommending other newsletters to your new signups. If your subscribers convert and subscribe to other newsletters you get paid.

Boosts can be used in combination with the recommendation network.

Pros and cons:

Pros:

• Create a complete website for your newsletter.
• Easy monetization options with the ad network and boosts.
• Useful automations to leverage.
• Free plan to get started with.

Cons:

• Templated design, Beehiiv sites all kind of look the same.
• Automations are behind a paywall. Worth upgrading to unlock.
• Can not set a custom domain until you’re on a paid plan.
• Poor on-page SEO, your content is not going to rank organically.
• A bit of a learning curve overall.

BEEHIIV

Build a beautiful, high converting newsletter website today with Beehiiv.

Free plan to get you started, Scale plan unlocks all the features you need to grow and monetize your audience.

CLICK HERE FOR BEEHIIV

➪ See my in-depth Beehiiv review here.

➪ My breakdown of Beehiiv vs Ghost.

Kit – Generous free plan for growth

Kit has become one of the best all-a-round email marketing platforms and makes my list because they have a dedicated FREE newsletter plan.

That’s right, totally free up to 10k subscribers. No limits on email sends too, which make it a compelling offer. On top of that you do get a dedicated website with Kit that includes an offer section (so people can sign-up) and your email archive.

Though not as beautifully designed as Ghost, and no your Kit site is not going to rank, you get it included for free.

The 10k Free Limit

This is Kit’s “headline” feature for 2026. It is currently the most generous free tier on the market, allowing you to host up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited email sends at zero monthly cost.

The Creator Network

This is Kit’s version of a growth loop. It allows you to partner with other writers to recommend each other’s newsletters. According to Kit, creators using this network grow 2x faster than those who don’t.

Essential Automation

While the free plan is limited to one visual automation and one sequence, it’s perfect for a monthly newsletter. You can set up a single, high-quality “Welcome” series that introduces new readers to your best work automatically.

Creator Profile

Instead of needing a full website, Kit gives you a “link-in-bio” style landing page that acts as your newsletter’s home.

It automatically archives your past monthly sends into a clean, searchable blogroll. So even if you don’t have a website yet, you can build one with Kit and set a custom domain too.

I suggest Namecheap for everything domain name related.

Digital Product Ready

Even on the free plan, you can sell digital products (like a PDF guide or a paid newsletter tier) directly through Kit.

They handle the delivery and payments, taking a small 3.5% + $0.30 transaction fee. The landing pages for your products are a bit mediocre, so if you do want to use Kit to deliver your products, I suggest building a landing page with a different platform.

Carrd.co is one of my favorite cost effective landing page platforms.

So what’s the catch?

No advanced email marketing automations or funnels. To email your list you need to manually do so each and every time. If you’re looking to create complicated sales funnels you can do so via a paid plan.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Kit has become the gold standard for email marketing for creators.
• Landing page website that you can customize as well as set a domain name.
• Great deliverability.
• Sell digital downloads.
• Totally free to start, up to 10k subscribers.

Cons:

• No marketing funnels or automations on the free plan.
• Your “Kit creator profile” is not going to rank organically for search engines.
• Not ideal for selling online courses or anything with video content.

Kit

My preferred email service provider of choice. Advanced funnels, clean user interface, great looking landing pages and an incredibly helpful tagging feature.

Grow your email list today. Email is how you turn a blog or YouTube channel into a business.

Start Your Free Trial

Substack – The simple, done for you choice

Substack is the “low friction” option.

It’s perfect for writers who want to focus 100% on content and let the platform handle the growth via its built-in network.

You get your own dedicated website that you can customize to a small degree, offer paid subscriptions options, have a chat function built in and create “members only” content.

The Network Effect

This is Substack’s unique selling point. Features like Recommendations and Substack Notes (their X-like feed) mean your newsletter is shown to readers of similar publications. For many writers, 40% or more of their new signups come directly from the Substack network rather than their own marketing.

Simple, Straight Forward Monetization

There are no monthly fees to use the platform. Instead, Substack takes a flat 10% cut of your paid subscription revenue. If you don’t charge your readers, the platform is entirely free with unlimited subscribers and sends.

Custom Domain

You can set your own custom domain name for branding purposes instead of using a Substack subdomain (publication.substack.com).

However, Substack does charges a one-time $50 fee to link a custom domain, but once you pay this feature is unlocked. You also obviously need to purchase your own domain as well (again, I suggest Namecheap.com).

Community Features:

Substack is built for interaction. It has the best native Comments and Discussion Threads in the industry, making it feel more like a community hub than a one-way email.

Minimalist Editor:

The writing experience is intentionally restricted. You can’t change much about the layout or fonts, which ensures your newsletter looks great and remains readable on every device without you having to “design” anything.

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Dedicated website with your own custom domain.
• Built in recommendation network for growth.
• Paid subscriptions built in without the techy setup.
• Actually useful community features to engage with your audience.

Cons:

• Templated design, all Substack sites look the same.
• $50 paywall to unlock the custom domain feature.
• Your content will not rank in search or AI.
• 10% transaction fee (fair enough given everything else).

Buttondown.com – The Indie Publisher Choice

Buttondown is the “minimalist choice” for indie publishing. It’s designed for writers who want a clean, fast experience without the heavy marketing bloat found in bigger platforms.

Buttondown’s biggest selling point is that it uses a clean Markdown interface (with a simple “What You See Is What You Get” option) so you can write quickly and efficiently without fighting a clunky visual builder.

By default, Buttondown is GDPR-compliant and doesn’t track your subscribers unless you explicitly turn it on. This is a huge “pro” for a tech-savvy audience that values data privacy. You can also set up paid subscriptions through Stripe.

Unlike Substack, Buttondown takes a 0% cut of your revenue. You only pay the standard Stripe processing fees.

Affordable Pricing:

While Buttondown has a free tier for your first 100 subscribers, the Basic plan ($9/mo) is where it shines. This is one of the most affordable ways to send your newsletter from a custom domain and remove all platform branding.

You can also scale your newsletter and the cost is still much less than competitors. I also like how they have select “add-ons” that you can choose to pay for or not.

Like “white labeling” which removes all branding if you’re under 5000 subscribers.

Automations

Buttondown allows you to build automated welcome sequences and “drip” campaigns. You can trigger specific emails to go out based on when a user signs up or when they are assigned a specific “tag,” making it perfect for onboarding new readers into your monthly cycle.

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Free for the first 100 subscribers to get you going.
• Designed for those who want to write in markdown.
• No transaction fees on paid subscriptions.
• Useful email marketing automations built in.
• Excellent support.

Cons:

• Learning curve, Buttondown.com does not have the most polished of dashboards like other platforms.
• No discovery system built in like Beehiiv or Substack.
• The free plan at 100 subscribers is a tight cap.
• No templates for the emails you send out.

Jetpack – The Totally Free WordPress Option

Jetpack allows you to have unlimited subscribers and unlimited email sends.

Jetpack is a WordPress plugin so you’ll need to be using a self hosted installation of WordPress.

I have complete guides on how to create a WordPress website as well as how to start a blog that will get you going if you you’re new to WordPress.

With Jetpack installed, all you have to do is enable the newsletter feature at the click of a button.

Once Jetpack is turned on, you can click a button to enable a “subscribe to your website” block at the end of every post automatically as well as enable a pop-up to trigger as readers scroll through your content.

The catch?

First, you need to be using a self hosted installation of WordPress.

Emails are blog posts too

Next, the emails are blog posts you publish on your site. They have WordPress branding and can’t be customized in any way to match your brand.

You don’t get any sort of automations or autoresponders. No “welcome series” of emails, no lead magnet to entice people to sign up.

Can choose to email or not

The ability to choose to email or not email is an option with Jetpack.

When you hit publish, you can email subscribers only, paid subscribers or everyone. If you revert a post to draft and then “republish” it, you’ll be able to email the update again.

This is one reason why I like publishing with Ghost, if I don’t want to email my list but I created a keyword target post that I want to publish on my site, I can do exactly that. Just publish it on my site without email my audience.

Limited form design

The forms that Jetpack puts on your website are painfully basic looking and the copy can’t even be customized easily.

But you could work-a-round this using AI to customize a form for your website.

Offer Paid Subscriptions

One very unique offering from Jetpack is the ability to content lock your site and newsletter.

That means people can become a paying subscriber and get access to “members only” content on your site and via the newsletter.

For paid newsletters

You can set up paid subscription tiers, gate content behind paywalls, and process payments via Stripe. This enables recurring paid subscriptions for exclusive newsletter content, one-time offerings, or gated posts.

Transaction fees

Transaction fees (on top of Stripe’s fees) depend on your Jetpack plan:

• The Free plan is 10% fee on revenue from paid subscriptions.
• For the Growth plan it becomes 2% fee (recommended for better monetization).
• Complete plan: Also at 2%. Only get this plan if you’re using their suite of tools.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Unlimited email subscribers, unlimited email sends.
• Can setup paid subscriptions, even with a free Jetpack plan.
• Since your emails are blog posts, with good SEO you can rank in search and get recommended by AI.
• Creating a website with WordPress is easy, now you can turn it into a newsletter if you like.

Cons:

• Limited customization of the emails your audience receives. Heavy on the WordPress branding overall.
• Jetpack forms are quite basic, but you can fix this using generative AI to code you up something better.
• No automations or workflows with Jetpack. Just hit publish and your audience gets emailed.
• More of a blog post notification service, but you can position it as a newsletter.

Executive Summary

Email newsletters are a unique way to reach your audience. Email is still that private, personal space online which is why when you grow a list, it’s so, so valuable.

Direct contact to people who want to hear from you.

So if this was TLDR, here is the breakdown:

• Ghost: The pro blogging (get organic search traffic) and email marketing platform for professional with paid subscriptions and 0% transaction fees.
• Beehiiv: Built-in ad network, referral systems, and a marketplace designed to help you scale and monetize.
• Kit: Offering a massive 10,000-subscriber free tier a a powerful network for creators to grow via recommendations and the ability to sell digital downloads.
• Substack: The done for you options that prioritizes simplicity and discovery, giving you instant access to a massive network in exchange for a 10% cut of your revenue you make
• Buttondown: For more tech-savvy writers who want a fast, markdown-based experience and privacy-first analytics at an affordable price.
• Jetpack: WordPress plugin that lets you send unlimited emails to unlimited subscribers in the form of blog posts completely for free.

Any questions or comments then drop me a message via the contact page.

Thanks for being here,

-David

From sending out a simple weekly or monthly newsletter to your followers, to building out advanced full featured user journeys to convert subscribers into buyers, in this detailed software review I’m going to break down your best options for different and specific use cases.

Essential email marketing features to look for:

1. Deliverability of your emails

You want your emails hitting the inbox, not the spam folder or the promotions tab in Gmail. Deliverability of your emails comes down to a few things. Images, what words you use in your copy (“make money online” is a sure fire way to land in the promotions tab or spam folder!) and your overall domain reputation.

2. Email autoresponder

An autoresponder, often called a “workflow” on many platforms is simply automated emails someone gets when they sign up to your list or trigger an action.

3. Email marketing funnel

With email marketing you can create an email funnel for your list. A funnel is a series of emails someone gets with the end goal to convert them to buy. More advanced software provides detailed funnel construction, if/or functions and user behavior.

4. List separation

List separation means you can create different funnels for different types of content. Maybe you have subscribers signing up on a video where you talk about how to start a YouTube channel and another video where you talk about personal finance for solo creators.

5. Affiliate Marketing Friendly

Affiliate marketing is promoting products and services for a commission. It’s one of the most effective ways to monetize your email list yet a few email service providers frown on affiliate marketing. Instead, some providers want you to only promote your website, videos and offers where the email is providing value.

Convert Kit – Best for content marketers (bloggers, Youtubers etc)

Convert Kit was made for bloggers and YouTubers who engage in affiliate marketing and who also sell their own digital products like courses and ebooks. They are my top choice for both YouTubers and bloggers because they have the right mix of deliverability and features content marketers need.

Specifically, Convert Kit is designed for you to create a product funnel. They have a unique built in tagging system so you can separate your list into various segments and behaviors. Those who bought, those who did not, those who opened the email those who did not.

Sales funnels

You can also create different funnels with one account with ease. For example, I could set up a free “how to start a blog” email course and put opt-in forms on relevant pages here. I could also create an “affiliate marketing for beginners” course and put different opt-in forms on different pages and posts.

Those are two similar audiences so broadly speaking, they would both be interested in my content but I could create a higher value offer for both groups. It’s this funnel centric nature that makes Convert Kit so popular.

Products

Kit allows you to create simple sales pages and your host digital products on their platform like checklist, cheat sheets, ebooks and so forth. So if you’re looking for a simple way to have both an email list and sell low ticket items Kit is not a bad choice for that.

Newsletter

Finally, Kit is an excellent choice if you want to start a simple weekly email newsletter website. With high converting templates and solid deliverability, Kit makes it incredibly easy to send out a quality newsletter.

Their “newsletter” tier allows for 10,000 subscribers for free. No limits on email sends. Sure, you don’t get automations but if you want to grow a newsletter to 10k subscribers then Kit allows you to do so completely for free.

Pros and Cons

Pros: 

• Designed for bloggers and YouTubers who have their own products to sell and want to make next level money.
• Helpful tagging system to allow you to create automatic sales funnels that convert.
• Affiliate marketing friendly and very easy to implement and use on a YouTube channel.
• Comes with high converting landing pages if you don’t yet have a website.
• Great if you want to launch a weekly newsletter as well.

Cons: 

• List centric, it’s not ideal for multiple websites. If you have two wildly different audiences you’ll need two Convert Kit accounts.
• Expensive for small lists, their price points are reasonable once you have a few thousand subscribers.
• Not ideal for seasonal audiences. If want to send the same content at the same time every year automatically you can’t do that with Convert Kit.

Active Campaign – The powerful professional choice

If email marketing is the life blood of your business, if it’s what’s driving your sales more than anything else then you need to seriously look at moving over to Active Campaign (sorry don’t mean to be too hyperbolic, but that’s why you’re here because you trust me).

Active Campaign email marketing software is a very robust solution for professional content marketers and small businesses. The system features many different templates and optimization tools that allow you to segment and track your audiences behavior easily.

You can send highly personalized emails based on customer preferences and behavior as well as manage all phases of the user experience from the welcome email to the funnel process. Active Campaign also lets you send emails that based on local time, SMS messages as well the ability to cycle subscribers through the same email series.

True “Pro-Level” Features

This is the email marketing tool for those who want to create a self-running revenue engine that connects their website, email, and sales pipeline.

Behavioral Site Tracking

This is its “secret sauce.” You can trigger an email based on exactly what a subscriber does on your WordPress site.

Predictive Sending (AI)

It doesn’t just send at a “scheduled time.” It analyzes when each individual person on your list typically opens their mail and holds the message until that exact window.

The CRM Integration

It has a built-in sales pipeline. You can move “Deals” through stages (e.g., Lead → Review Sent → Follow-up → Closed) and have the email marketing adapt automatically based on the deal stage.

Split Automations

Most tools let you A/B test a subject line. ActiveCampaign lets you A/B test an entire workflow. You can send 50% of your leads down “Path A” and 50% down “Path B” to see which sequence generates more revenue.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Can have multiple lists for different YouTube channels and websites with one account.
• Can loop subscribers through your email sequence. Essential if you have a seasonal topic.
• Excellent deliverability and advanced backend analytics.
• Superior automations based on user behavior. Create complex, advanced funnels.
• Extreme customizations through their visual automations builder.

Cons:

• Active Campaign is powerful and expensive.
• It’s advanced and has a lot of pro level features most YouTubers won’t use.
• Steep Learning Curve: Because it does so much, it can be overwhelming for a total beginner. You will likely need to spend a week in “ActiveCampaign University” (their training portal) to full understand what their platform is capable of.

Sender – Best free plan with automations

A free plan with automations? Yep. Sender is now the free plan king if you’re looking for email marketing and not just a weekly newsletter.

Incredibly generous free plan

Their free plan allows you to store up to 2,500 subscribers and send 15,000 emails per month. This is roughly five times the capacity of Mailer Lite’s free plan (they used to be the best free plan), giving a new business much more “runway” to grow before needing to pay for a subscription.

Unlike many other “budget” tools that lock their best features behind a paywall, Sender includes unlimited automation workflows, 24/7 live support, and access to their full library of 1,600+ responsive templates on the free plan.

Pro features for free?!

You can easily set up automated Welcome Sequences, Abandoned Cart reminders, and Re-engagement flows using a visual builder. It also acts as a basic CRM, allowing you to segment your audience based on their behavior (like what links they click) or custom tags.

It even includes transactional email capabilities (API/SMTP), meaning you can use it to send system-critical messages like order receipts and password resets alongside your marketing newsletters.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• The best free-to-paid value ratio. 24/7 human support for all users; high deliverability infrastructure; includes SMS and push notification options.

Cons:

• The free plan also includes a “Sent with Sender” logo in the footer. A fair compromise given everything else.

Brevo – Low frequency, high volume

Most platforms, as your list grows, your monthly bill goes up, even if you don’t email them. Brevo flips this on it’s head. You pay a low cost subscription fee and get an allowance of emails to send out each month.

100,000 emails for only $60 a month – What?!

That’s right, you can store up to 100,000 on the “starter” plan and pay only $60 or so to email your entire list. Brevo is the best choice for the ‘Low-Frequency, High-Volume’ email marketer.

If you have a huge list but you only send a monthly update or a few big launch sequences a year, why pay a subscription every month? Use Brevo to store a massive list that you intend on contacting once or twice a month.

Starter vs standard plan

Go with STARTER if:

• You are just starting out and don’t care about a “Sent with Brevo” logo in the footer.
• You only need to send simple, manual newsletters once a week, once a month etc.
• You don’t need complicated automations

Go with STANDARD if:

• You want a professional brand. (Cheapest way to remove the logo).
• You want to use the “Behavioral Tracking” we talked about (sending emails based on what they click on your site).
• You want to A/B test your subject lines to increase your revenue-per-email.
• You need a Landing Page to collect emails before your main site is ready.

The Starter plan is for those who just want to email a big list periodically.

The Standard plan is for those who want more traditional email marketing features with Brevo workflows (their terminology for automations) along with AI send time optimizations.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Can build a massive contact list, even on the free plan. Yes, you can only send out 300 emails a month but if you want you can build a list of 100K+ if you like.
• Brevo is incredibly cost effective if you’re looking to send out a periodic email. $60 to email 100K contacts is ridiculous and would cost you $1000+ a month or more on other platforms.
• They also have traditional email marketing automations and built in AI send time optimizations.

Cons:

• While the starter plan is very cost effective, you do need to upgrade to the standard plan to remove all Brevo branding.

Beehiiv – The newsletter platform

I have a very popular Beehiiv tutorial you can checkout. I’ve used Beehiiv extensively and it’s a powerful email newsletter platform focused on growth and monetization.

The platform’s core strength lies in its native growth loops, specifically the recommendation network and Boosts. When a new reader joins your list, Beehiiv can immediately show them a “Top 4” list of other newsletters you recommend, and those creators can return the favor, often leading to a viral growth effect that is hard to replicate on traditional ESPs.

Boosting with Beehiiv

For those with a budget, the Boosts marketplace allows you to pay for new, verified subscribers on a CPA (cost-per-acquisition) basis, or conversely, earn money by recommending other newsletters to your own growing audience.

Built in ad network

Monetization on Beehiiv is aggressive and built-in, featuring a native Ad Network that connects you with sponsors once you reach a certain scale. Unlike Substack, which takes a 10% cut of your earnings, beehiiv maintains a 0% platform fee on paid subscriptions, meaning you keep all your revenue aside from standard Stripe processing fees.

While you can run your own sponsorships like Justin Welsh does, it’s a bit time consuming and manual. Having to go back and forth with potential advertisers, negotiate a price point, have a timeline of when what ad is going to be published when.

With Beehiiv, it’s a simple, easy to use network that’s built in. You get a notification that a company want’s to run a display ad in your email and you simply approve or deny it.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Strong monetization options and growth tools built in.
• Excellent deliverability.
• Can customize your Beehiiv website.
• Basic (but useful) automations. Create a re-engagement campaign, onboarding series or setup a done for you 6 month email sequence.

Cons:

• The automations are basic and nowhere near as advanced as say a Kit or Active Campaign.
• Cooke cutter website design. Like Substack, all Beehiiv sites have a distinct look to them.

Klaviyo – The “Industry Standard” for e-commerce.

Klaviyo is the gold standard if you’re running a profitable e-commerce website. It is incredibly powerful, but also complex and expensive. For a beginner, Klaviyo is like being handed the keys to a Ferrari when you’ve only just learned to drive; it’s fast and impressive, but it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed.

The “Shopify Specialist”

Klaviyo’s biggest claim to fame is its “creepy good” integration with Shopify. It doesn’t just see your customers; it tracks every move they make. It knows exactly when a customer looks at a specific blue shirt, adds it to their cart, and then leaves.

Because of this, its “Abandoned Cart” and “Browse Abandonment” flows are the most effective in the business, often paying for the software’s high cost through recovered sales alone.

Advanced Intelligence & Data

Klaviyo (like most companies) has leaned heavily into AI and Predictive Analytics. It can actually predict a customer’s “Next Purchase Date” or their “Churn Risk” (the likelihood they’ll never buy again) based on years of data patterns.

It also combines Email and SMS into one single timeline, so you can see exactly how a customer interacts with your brand across every channel without having to jump between different apps.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

• It offers the deepest data tracking available and the most robust library of pre-built “Flows” (automations) that are proven to generate revenue. If you are on Shopify, the setup takes literally two minutes.
• Free plan to get started, thought he pricing scales quickly once you outgrow the free plan.

Cons:

• The pricing is aggressive. It charges based on “Active Profiles,” and your bill can jump from $20 to $150+ very quickly as your list grows. Additionally, the interface is dense with technical jargon and data points that can be exhausting to learn for a first-time email marketer.

Flodesk – The “Aesthetics First” option

While tools like Klaviyo focus on data and Brevo focuses on cost-efficiency, Flodesk is built for creators where the look of the email is the most important part of the brand.

It is the best choice for designers, photographers, or lifestyle influencers who want their emails to look like high-end digital magazines without touching a single line of CSS.

Flodesk’s main differentiator is its proprietary layout engine. Unlike standard editors that can be clunky, Flodesk allows you to overlap images, use custom fonts that actually show up in the inbox, and create pixel-perfect spacing.

It is essentially “Canva for Email,” making it almost impossible to send a basic looking email.

Workflows that work

For a beginner, the power of Flodesk workflows lies in “Link Actions” and “Behavioral Conditions.” You can set up a system where, if a subscriber clicks a specific link in your email (like a “Video Review” link), Flodesk automatically tags them or moves them into a new “Hot Lead” workflow without you lifting a finger.

It also handles the “logic of time” exceptionally well, letting you schedule delays down to the specific minute, day of the week, or even a specific time of day, ensuring your “Welcome Sequence” always hits their inbox exactly when they are most likely to be active.

Basic but useful ecommerce features

Flodesk does have a native Abandoned Cart and Post-Purchase workflows. If you connect your shop (Shopify, WooCommerce, or even Flodesk’s own “Checkouts”), you can trigger automated nudges the moment someone leaves an item in their cart or send a specific guide or upsell immediately after they buy.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• You can design and schedule a professional-grade email in 20 minutes.
• Simply beautiful emails that can match your brand.

Cons:

• Flodesk lacks advanced features. This platform still offers basic automation logic, limited A/B testing, and fewer third-party integrations than competitors like Kit or MailerLite.

Executive Summary for the BEST Email Marketing tools/software:

TLDR? Well here is my executive summary of the best email marketing software options (for specific use cases too)

1. Convert Kit – Perfect for solo creators and small teams looking to sell digital products of their own or as an affiliate.
2. Active Campaign – Full featured email marketing provider that really has no limits.
3. Sender – A very generous free plan to help you begin email marketing.
4. Brevo -The cost effective choice. Excellent for sending out a monthly newsletter.
5. Beehiiv – A newsletter platform focused on growth and monetization.
6. Klayvio – The gold standard for ecommerce sites, particularly Shopify.
7. FloDesk – Beautiful emails, the digital magazine option.

Any questions? Drop me an email. Till next time.

Your man,

-David

Scalenut is two things in one: an AI search visibility tracker and an AI-powered content writing tool. These two halves serve different purposes, and honestly, how useful Scalenut is for you depends entirely on which problem you’re trying to solve.

On the AI visibility side

Scalenut is a simple, low-cost tool to track how your brand shows up across AI search engines. It covers Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Claude.

The dashboards are clear and easy to read. You can see if your brand is mentioned, what prompts you appear for, who your competitors are, and which websites AI engines are pulling from as sources.

On the content writing side

Scalenut streamlines the bulk blog post writing process, saving time and increasing productivity.

With a process-oriented, step-by-step approach to creating content, you can maintain quality control over the output and editing.

It’s particularly strong for long-form informational content and rounding out your site’s topical authority.

Understanding Scalenut: A High-Level Overview

✓ Best for:

• Small to mid-sized businesses.
• Teams wanting simple, affordable AI visibility monitoring.
• Brands needing competitor benchmarking without overwhelm.
• Bloggers, copywriters, and content creators producing long-form content at scale.

✗ Not ideal for:

• Large enterprises needing thousands of prompts tracked (costs scale up fast).
• Teams requiring deep, actionable guidance beyond raw data.
• Businesses needing comprehensive sentiment tracking beyond Reddit.
• Competitive content that requires a strong demonstration of E-E-A-T without human editing.

Part 1: AI Visibility

When you log in for the first time, Scalenut asks for your business domain. It then generates a brief AI-powered description of your business based on your website content. You can and should review and edit this description, because it significantly impacts how Scalenut runs prompts on your behalf.

Once set up, Scalenut’s GEO Watchtower runs brand- and topic-specific prompts across the four major AI engines and logs whether and how your brand is mentioned.

You can choose how often the data updates: daily, weekly, or monthly.

Does the Data Actually Hold Up?

Here’s what Scalenut writes on their help center: they scan AI-generated responses across models every day and deliver daily updates. In practice, my experience was that the process ran monthly rather than daily — and when I asked customer service, they confirmed it could be set to daily or weekly.

Does the monthly cadence make Scalenut inadequate? Not at all. You still get a meaningful overview. But fluctuations over 30 days can be significant, and you may experience some lag in decision-making. If real-time monitoring is critical for you, factor that in.

That said, when the data does refresh, it is accurate — Scalenut runs actual prompts rather than estimating or guessing. AI search traffic is measured, not modelled, once you connect Cloudflare. It shows the exact AI answers it checked and who they cited.

AI Traffic Attribution (Traffic Monitor)

Scalenut’s AI Traffic Monitor displays both the top AI sources of traffic and your most visited pages. It works by integrating with Cloudflare on the server side, identifying AI crawlers visiting your pages (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, BingBot, Googlebot, etc.) and separating human visits from bot hits.

It works well, but the Cloudflare setup is mandatory, which is a friction point worth knowing about upfront.

Brand Sentiment Tracking

Scalenut tracks brand sentiment via its Social UpReach module but it’s focused exclusively on Reddit. You won’t get a chart with curves and trend lines. Instead, you’ll see real conversations happening about your brand on Reddit, which you can filter by positive, neutral, or negative.

Reddit monitoring does have genuine value, since Reddit is frequently referenced in AI search results and influences AI-generated answers. But if you’re expecting a comprehensive sentiment tracker built on hundreds of AI prompts across multiple platforms, that’s not what Scalenut offers.

Competitor Analysis and Source Domains

One of the more useful features is the Source Domains view.

GEO Watchtower extracts the domains cited inside AI answers and aggregates them with counts, categories, and an impact signal. This shows you which websites are shaping AI answers in your niche and where to focus content to increase your own citations.

Here’s how to actually use it:

1. Click on leading competitors
2. See the specific pages helping them gain AI search visibility
3. Create your own content targeting those same gaps

It’s not a fully automated action plan, but it’s the closest Scalenut gets to actionable guidance.

What I’d Improve

The main thing missing is a clear action list.

Writesonic, for comparison, has an “Action Center” that gives you specific issues and explains how to fix them. Scalenut gives you data but leaves the interpretation and the execution entirely up to you.

Adding even a basic action plan would make a meaningful difference in how quickly businesses see results.

Part 2: Content Writing With Scalenut Article Writer

Scalenut’s AI-powered article writing platform offers three powerful tools to streamline your content creation process.

With the Article Writer, you can effortlessly create optimized articles in just 5-10 minutes using the ai writer, saving you time and effort.

You start by entering your target keyword. Scalenut then gathers information from the top 10, 20, or 30 currently ranking articles — I use top 30 for competitive terms and top 10 for less popular keywords.

From there, the article creation follows a clear step-by-step process:

1. Context and Tone of Voice — Give a short description of your topic to help the AI frame the article. You can set tone of voice manually, base it on the style of a specific article, or let Scalenut pick what it thinks fits best.

2. Title Generation — Scalenut generates a variety of AI-suggested titles alongside the currently top-ranked titles in the SERP, which helps give you inspiration for your own H1.

3. Outline Building — Scalenut creates an article outline you can edit freely. Add H2s and H3s, drag and drop sections, delete what doesn’t fit. You can also use the AI to generate an FAQ section or suggest additional headings to consider.

4. Writing Points — Each outline section gets expanded into more detailed “writing points” — a breakdown of the ideas that will go into each heading. You also get SERP statistics that give you high-level information to cross-check your outline for accuracy.

5. First Draft — Scalenut generates a full long-form rough draft. You can reorder sections, regenerate individual paragraphs, and then export to the Content Optimizer for final editing.

The output is competent and genuinely saves time. That said, the AI content still needs human editing — particularly for anything that requires a real demonstration of experience, expertise, or original perspective. For competitive content where E-E-A-T matters, treat Scalenut’s output as a solid rough draft, not a finished article.

Enter your keyword

You start by simply entering the keyword you want to create an article for, then Scalenut will get to work by forming an outline. When you enter your keyword, you can select the AI to gather information on the top 10, 20, or 30 currently ranking articles.

I am having it gather information on the “top 30” to be best for competitive terms and the “top 10” for less popular keywords.

Article configuration – Context and tone of voice

Next Scalenut will configure your article in an easy to follow, step by step process:

• Context and tone of voice.
• Title
• Outline
• Writing Points
• First draft

For the context section you can give a short description of your topic to help the AI come up with a great article. You can also set the tone of voice manually, based on writing style of a specific article or have Scalenut pick a tone of voice it thinks is best.

Pithy, optimized titles for your H1 tags

Next you’ll move over to the title screen where Scalenut will generate a variety of AI titles as well as show you the currently top ranked titles to help give you inspiration for your own title.

Outline of your article

Next, Scalenut will create an outline of the article you’re developing. Here can add in additional H2 heading and H3 headings. Drag and drop sections or delete sections all together. You can also use the AI to develop an FAQ and to come up with additional headings to consider adding into your blog post.

When you’re read to move on, Scalenut will develop each outline into a more detailed “writing point.”

Writing points

The writing points are simply a more detailed breakdown into the ideas that will go into each H2 and H3 tag that was in your outline. You also get to view “SERP statistics” that give you high level information on the topic so you can check your outline for accuracy.

Once you’re satisfited with the layout and the writing points, it’s time to have Scalenut generate all this content into a long form article.

First draft

Finally, you’ll have a rough draft, long form article. From here you can move H2 and H3 heading sections around at the click of a button. You can also have the AI regenerate any paragraph at the click of a button.

Once done, you can export the article to the editor which is called the “content optimizer tool” in Scalenut.

Content Optimizer tool

The Content Optimizer tool allows you to optimize any blog post for better performance with in the search engine result pages (SERP), helping your content rank higher on Google.

Once you have a draft, whether generated by Scalenut or brought in from elsewhere, the Content Optimizer helps you improve its on-page SEO. It gives you an overall optimization score and makes suggestions under several tabs:

• Optimize — Your score, a “fix it” button that places key terms automatically, plus manual suggestions to work through.
• Brief — Your article outline, image count recommendations, ideal article length, and heading count targets.
• Research — Keywords that should be used, their importance level, how many times they currently appear in your article, top competing articles, related questions, and a competition overview.
• AI Templates — Pre-built prompts to generate specific content types quickly: intro paragraphs, sentence rewrites, YouTube video scripts, and more. Useful for filling gaps in your article.

I’ll be honest — for pure on-page SEO optimization, I find other tools to be stronger. But as part of a content creation workflow, the optimizer does a solid job of keeping you on track.

Keyword Planner

The Keyword Planner lets you input a keyword and receive a set of topical clusters to explore. This is useful for broad keyword research and building out your site’s topical authority.

A topical cluster, for context, is an SEO approach where you build content around a main keyword plus a collection of supporting articles, covering the topic comprehensively so search engines recognize your site as an authority.

Scalenut does a good job of mapping these clusters. The limitation is that it’s less useful for finding underserved keywords with specific search intent; it’s more of a topic-mapping tool than a gap-finding one.

You can also take any keyword from your research directly into the Article Writer and have Scalenut generate an article based on the primary and related keywords, which then gets exported to the Content Optimizer.

Scalenut Chrome Extension

Scalenut also has a free Chrome extension worth mentioning. It uses AI prompts to write and rephrase paragraphs and simplify sentence structure. It’s most useful for social media content and quick sentence rewrites. If long-form content is the goal, the full platform is a better fit.

How Much Does Scalenut Cost?

For AI Search Visibility (GEO Watchtower):

Pricing is based on three factors: number of prompts, number of AI engines tracked, and refresh frequency (daily or weekly).

I asked for a specific quote: 150 prompts, 3 AI engines (AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity), weekly refresh. The answer came back quickly: around $78 per month.

For context, Writesonic and Semrush both run around $249/month. At $78, Scalenut is significantly more accessible, especially for small to mid-sized businesses that don’t need thousands of prompts.

If you’re a large corporation tracking thousands of prompts across multiple engines daily, the price will scale up quickly. But for companies with annual revenues in the €0–20M range, 150 prompts should give a clear AI visibility picture at a genuinely fair price.

For Content Writing:

Scalenut offers three tiers:

• Growth — 30 AI-generated articles + 30 content optimizations per month
• Pro — Same as Growth, with higher limits
• Custom — Designed for agencies and large publishers

For most users, Growth is the sweet spot. You can churn out 30 article rough drafts, turn keyword clusters into blog posts, and optimize existing content on your site — all in one plan.

Final Words

So overall I like how Scalenut has evolved from bulk content writer into a combination of content marketing and optimization for generative AI.

if you’re creating content specifically to improve your AI search visibility, having both tools in the same platform is a genuine advantage.

At the price point Scalenut operates at, and also the free trial it’s hard to argue against giving it a try.

Scalenut

Create mass produced blog posts that are optimized for on-page SEO using AI.

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Landing page builders exist because professionals who run an online business want and need high converting landing pages that are professionally designed and include advanced features like analytics, being able to A/B test different designs and the ability to offer one time offer pages after the user subscribes.

Landing page builders also offer their own dedicated hosting, the ability to setup multiple pages on one domain or to be used on a subdomain of your current primary domain. The hosting aspect is important because if you’re running paid ads, you typically want to drive traffic to a landing page and not your websites homepage.

What to look for in a landing page builder

As someone who runs paid ads on YouTube and Facebook as well as creating offers on all the websites I’ve built and run, here are the specific features I find essential (and thus worth the extra cost) in a website builder:

High quality, modern templates

Having a lot of templates is not always a good thing, what is more important is having modern, high converting templates that you can use and customize to your liking with ease.

Easy to customize

The best landing page builders have some sort of easy to use, drag and drop editor. It’s also helpful if you have the ability to add in your own custom CSS as well as access to the HTML.

Various CTA designs

A call to action or CTA for short is the specific thing you want the end user to do. Be it to get someone to call you, book a free consultation, subscribe to your email list and get a lead magnet or even buy your product right there and then.

Not every business has the same CTA needs so you will need a landing page builder that has a bunch of templates, marketing features and designs with various CTA in mind.

Tripwire page – also known as a one time offer page (OTO)

A one time offer page, or OTO page as it’s known is a page where you direct the visitor after they convert on your landing page. On this page is where you provide a one time offer for a paid product. Usually and exclusive product not available anywhere else, or an existing product or course at a massive discount.

Landing page builders built for smart business owners and marketers come with this feature built in and well integrated because it’s that important. Particularly if you’re running paid ads as you can recover your ad spend with a great tripwire offer.

Analytics and A/B testing

You need to know your conversion rate in order to make informed decisions compare the conversion rate of different designs to find the most optimal landing page. This data is done n the form of analytics and A/B testing.

Can handle a lot of traffic

Yes, nothing worse that your landing page not loading after sending paid traffic to it.

The 7 Best Landing Page Builders for Online Marketing

With that out of the way, here are my top landing page builders for marketers. I’ll cover the pros and cons and the best use case for each option.

• LeadPages
• Convert Kit
• Active Campaign
• Thrive Architect
• Carrd
• Optimize Press
• Click Funnels

Leadpages – The best for landing page builder for sales and conversion

Leadpages offers some of the most comprehensive and easy-to-use landing page-building tools. With over 150 templates covering everything from free giveaways, consultations, checkout pages, or getting visitors on your email list, you can easily customize your pages to meet any design or marketing need.

Leadpages’ drag-and-drop builder makes adding various elements, such as forms, images, videos, and more, easy without knowing how to code. But if you know how to code, then even better, as you can add custom CSS and HTML with the HTML widget.

Marketing features that make them the best

With Leadpages, you can create unlimited landing page versions to A/B test different elements and see what performs best with your target audience. You’ll have access to powerful analytics that will help you optimize your pages and campaigns for maximum success, and you can set up “thank you” pages with a tripwire offer.

Additionally, Leadpages integrates with hundreds of the most popular marketing tools so you can easily track the performance of each page and the success of your campaigns. Furthermore, Leadpages’ mobile optimization capabilities allow you to ensure that your pages look good and work properly on any device.

Finally, you get unlimited traffic to your lead pages (accommodating if you’re going to be driving a lot of traffic), the ability to set everything up on custom domains of your choosing or a subdomain, and AI credits to help you create copy.

Leadpages is my top recommendation

Beginners often get confused as to why would anyone pay money to build a webpage when you can just create a website with WordPress. But with adavanced A/B testing, design, analytics, unlimited traffic, Lead Page is simply a useful tool for your email marketing efforts where everything is done correctly and you can focus on driving traffic, conversion, sales and optimizing your copy.

I use Leadpages for all my email opt-in pages and any page where I’m driving paid traffic to because it know it’s going to be reliable, high converting and I can test and improve my copy.

Pros:

• A huge range on landing pages to test and edit.
• Conversion focused.
• Unlimited traffic and tripwire offers built in.

Cons:

• The price. You can build landing pages with WordPress if you’re starting out, but once you begin earning money from your paid ads and email marketing efforts, you’ll love Leadpages.

Convert Kit – Email marketing and landing pages in one

Convert Kit is my top recommendation for anyone looking for email marketing software. You get access to their powerful tagging feature, complicated email funnel marketing features, excellent deliverability, and quality landing page templates you can use for your marketing. Instead of paying an extra fee for Lead Pages, you can use Convert Kit for both your email marketing

ConvertKit’s segmentation and tagging features makes sure your emails land in the right inboxes, your subscribers get the most optimal user experience which helps increase engagement, conversion of sales and fosters a more personal connection between you and your audience.

Landing page templates built in

ConvertKit also extends its feature set beyond email marketing by offering custom landing page creation. This function allows creators to develop attractive, mobile-responsive landing pages without any need for coding skills. With a variety of pre-designed templates to choose from, these landing pages can be customized to match your brand’s aesthetics and are built for specific purposes:

Lead magnet – Give away a free ebook, cheet sheet, masterclass, coupond code, whatever. A lead magnet is helps you grow your list by offering something of value to your audience.

Coming soon – Get people to subscribe to a product or idea you’re developing and when upon launch, you can email people who wanted to be notified.

Profile – This allows users to tell you what content and ideas they want and need.

Course sign up – Want to offer a free (or paid) course to get your audience to sign up? Convert Kit has templates for that.

Thank you pages – Convert Kit offers quality “thank you pages” that you can direct the subscriber to after they opt-in. On these pages you can offer a tripwire product or just set the context for what happens next after they subscribe.

Convert Kit is the right mix for both beginners and pros

The landing pages Convert Kit provides seamlessly integrate with their email marketing tools, enabling you to capture visitor information and grow your subscriber list directly from the page. This combination of features ensures a cohesive experience for your audience, from landing page visits to email engagement, to product sales.

Pros

• Excellent and advanced email marketing features to drive more sales.
• Quality landing page templates built in.
• Can add a tripwire product after the user subscribes to your list.
• Reliable deliverability.

Cons:

• List focused. Convert Kit is great for one audience and one website. If you want multiple lists for different websites you’ll need separate Convert Kit accounts.

Active Campaign -Email automation and CRM

Active Campaign is the most powerful email marketing software I’ve used. It allows you to set up a forever email funnel that constantly repeats (great for seasonable businesses), multiple lists for different websites in one account, and granularly control over what email is sent out and when. You also get access to forms, chatbots, popups, integration of everything, and analytics.

It’s more expensive than Convert Kit and honestly much more overwhelming, which is why it’s my #2 option because Convert Kit does pretty much everything you need if you’re a YouTuber or have an information website, and all you want to do is collect emails and create advanced marketing funnels.

Active Campaign landing pages

Like Convert Kit, you get a bunch of landing page templates you can use that are pre-designed for a wide array of uses—free courses, coming soon pages, and consultations. Unlike Convert Kit, you also get helpful “recipes,” as they are called, that are prebuilt email funnels you can leverage.

Active Campaign’s landing page templates have been expertly designed to appeal visually while effectively guiding your audience toward your desired action. They are also customizable to your unique brand and goals with their visual builder; these templates are aesthetically pleasing and feature intuitive navigation, responsive design, and integrations with the ActiveCampaign platform.

This ensures you can effectively track interactions, automate follow-ups, and drive conversions by knowing what works and making iterations as needed based on performance data.

Automation email recipes

Finally, email recipes provide a powerful tool for businesses to craft compelling email campaigns quickly and efficiently. These pre-designed layouts and content suggestions are guidelines for creating emails that effectively engage your audience and drive conversions.

Landing pages are critical, but once you get people to sign up, you need a marketing funnel built out. With automation recipes from Active Campaign, you can get started quickly.

Pros:

• No limits to the email marketing features. One of the most feature rich, advanced software options I’ve used.
• Landing page templates and an easy to use drag and drop builder.
• Analytics and integration with forms, chatbots as well as popups.

Cons:

• Expensive and confusing for complete beginners.

Thrive Architect – All-in-one WordPress marketing suite

Thrive Architect is a page-building plugin from Thrive Themes. Honestly, I’m not sure why Thrive Themes is not more popular because they provide a suite of low-cost, valuable tools for those who want to build their website and blog into an actual business.

Multiple high-converting themes to design your website with, Thrive Architect to custom build your homepage, landing pages, thank you pages, and one-time-offer pages. They even made Thrive Cart, a one-time fee shopping cart on par with Samcart.

Suppose you’re a WordPress user and want to keep everything within your WordPress website. In that case, I highly recommend Thrive Architect as your page builder and consider getting a license for Thrive Suite as it contains all their products at one low price (except for Thrive Cart).

Thrive Architect is an intuitive, easy-to-use front-end, drag-and-drop page builder designed to deliver a seamless user experience. This resourceful tool is ideal for professionals aiming for high customization in their web designs without delving into complex coding. It offers a comprehensive collection of elements and templates, enabling the creation of stylish and responsive landing pages. With Thrive Architect, you can bring your most ambitious design ideas to life.

Landing pages

Thrive Architect allows you to create stunning, high-converting landing pages effortlessly. The landing pages built with this tool are visually appealing and fully optimized for engagement and conversion. Thanks to its extensive library of pre-built templates, you can quickly launch a landing page for any purpose – a product launch, a webinar registration, or a lead generation campaign.

Each template is fully customizable, enabling you to brand your pages according to your style. More importantly, Thrive Architect’s mobile responsive landing pages ensure your content looks flawless on any device. With intuitive controls for A/B testing and analytics integration, you can easily measure and optimize your landing page’s performance.

Pros:

• A great selection of templates for landing pages, one time offer pages, thank you pages, webinars, product launch pages and more.
• Customize both your website and landing pages with Thrive Architect.
• Full control over the entire user experience.
• Thrive Suite is a simple, yearly subscription that unlocks all plugins and themes.

Cons:

• As it’s WordPress hosted on your own hosting account, you do need to be aware of your web hosts up-time as well as how much traffic you can drive to your pages.

Carrd – One page websites

I made a few tutorials using Carrd when I stumbled upon them in 2019. They’re a one-page website builder, as in literally one page. Not two, not three pages, one page. That’s their angle and unique selling point when compared to the competition.

One-page websites are an excellent choice for various designs: landing pages, forms, simple portfolio showcase websites, and even personal “about me” style websites. I love how simple Carrd is for creating compelling, elegant landing pages.

They come with a range of templates you can use, or you can custom-build your landing page with their easy-to-use builder, and their price point is quite affordable at only $9-49 a year (not per month). On top of that, with their “pro” plan, you can set a custom domain name for all your landing pages, too.

Finally, if you want a free option, Carrd is a solid choice because many of their templates can be used for free. But on their free plan, you can’t set a custom domain, nor can you use their premium templates. Please note they are strictly a one-page website builder. If you want to collect emails, sell a product, or contain information, you must integrate 3rd party software.

Pros:

• Free plan or a super low cost pro plan.
• A great selection of templates to choose from.
• Excellent landing page options and the ability to custom design to your own liking.

Cons:

• You need the “pro plus” plan to setup redirects. So when a user subscribes, you can direct them to a thank you page built on Carrd.
• Tripwire product pages and one time offer pages are not designed so you’ll need to build these pages yourself.

Optimize Press – High converting marketing pages for WordPress

Optimize Press is Click Funnels for WordPress. If you want those classic, internet marketing-style sales pages with big text, yellow highlighter, and large “but now” buttons, you’ll love Optimize Press.

It’s a WordPress plugin and software suite that allows you to create landing pages, sales pages, marketing funnels, checkout, and payment pages and design your online course.

All within WordPress.

Landing pages with Optimize Press

As I’m covering the best landing page options, I find Optimize Press excellent for creating sales and landing pages. With 100+ templates to edit and adjust that are conversion optimized and easy to adjust to your branding. You can easily change fonts, sizes, colors, text, and video.

Optimize Press also easily integrates with your email marketing service because it’s built on WordPress. Also, the pages are fast-loading and well-designed for speed, unlike other page builders.

Speed is essential because if you’re driving traffic to your landing page from YouTube, a blog, or paid ads, you need that landing page to load quickly to provide a good user experience. Otherwise, a slow-loading page won’t instill trust, and the user may bounce.

Tripwire pages and marketing funnels

Finally, Optimize Press has entire marketing funnels with the required pages, allowing you to set up your marketing efforts fast while not fighting the software to get you to do what it wants. With Optimize Press, it comes with application, lead magnet, branded newsletter and waitlist funnels. You can also craft your own funnel and page sequence on your own.

From creating a landing page with a video and a button or an email opt-in form, you can easily use a lead magnet to get people to subscribe and then direct them to a high-quality one-time offer page or thank you page.

Pros:

• Excellent marketing features and pages built specifically for design, conversion and sales.
• It’s an easy to use WordPress plugin.
• Customize the design of any template.
• Get access to Optimize Press University, a premium WordPress training course.
• Can sell digital downloads and courses.

Cons:

• They have three tiers: Builder, Suite and Suite Pro. Suite Pro is really the only option as you get 5 licenses and access to everything. Suite is decent, but you’re limited to only one site license. The builder plan is not worth the price.
• You’ll need to pay for video hosting if you want to create video courses.

Click Funnels -Classic internet marketing that works

I’ll be straight with you: I was not a big fan of Click Funnels, but I now like the direction they are heading with their service, and this list would not be complete if I didn’t recommend them because they are an excellent option for the right person.

Compared to your other options, they are a bit pricy if you’re starting and way overpriced if all you need are landing pages (and other high-quality marketing pages with analytics – Get Lead Pages if that’s you). However, they have excellent, high-converting sales pages; you can create and host your video courses with them.

If you intend to create courses and low-priced products and host them all on Click Funnels, then the price point is worth it. In addition, Click Funnels is becoming a Kajabi competitor because they want to be your go-to source for all your services.

Click Funnel features:

Here is what you get when you get a Click Funnels account:

• Create a website and blog for content marketing.
• Sell courses and other digital products.
• Engage in email marketing; there is no need for a 3rd party anymore.
• Get access to high-quality, high-converting templates.
• Build a membership website.
• Analytics and A/B testing.

If you intend to use all their features, then the price point is entirely worth building your business on, as you can create high-quality landing pages and sales pages to convert traffic into subscribers and buyers.

Click Funnels landing pages

ClickFunnels is designed with user-friendliness, allowing you to effortlessly create landing pages without any coding knowledge. Drag and drop elements, then quickly edit them with a simple click. If you are proficient in coding, you can dive into the code editor to customize further or add personalized features.

Easily create compelling call to actions. Whether you’re directing organic or paid traffic, you can guide your audience to a designated destination that motivates them to take a specific action, all without the usual distractions of a conventional website.

This allows you to generate leads quickly. By converting more visitors into leads, you can accelerate the process of turning them into paying customers through opt-in pages, enticing lead magnets, event registrations, and more.

Finally, with Click Funnels you can supercharge your sales by being able to offer subscription options, one-time offers, upsells, order bumps, and an array of high-converting, simplified variations of landing pages professionals need.

Pros:

• Excellent landing page templates that are easy to customize without coding.
• Setup one time offers, thank you pages and upsells easily with Click Funnels.
• A full suite of marketing tools: Build a website, blog, online store and leverage internet marketing principles to their fullest.
• Email marketing now included.

Cons:

• If you’re not going to use all of Click Funnel’s features, then they are quite expensive if all you’re looking for is to create quality landing pages for your marketing efforts.

Best landing page builders conclusion

That’s it for my guide on the best landing page builders for marketers, selling and conversion. I’ve used all these platforms and it really comes down to what you need and are tying to do. In general, I strongly suggest Lead Pages if all you need are quality landing, sales and one time offer pages.

What I do is design my marketing pages with Lead Pages and then host my content over at my Teachable course website. Others suggest Same Cart. Regardless, you now have a wide range landing page builders to help you grow your email list, sell more products and be helpful to your audience.

Sometimes this is in the form of sponsored content, other times it’s simply due to an affiliate relationship where a company is happy to give you access to a service for free in exchange for your content marketing.

In this guide, I’m going to break down what you need to know as a complete beginner with 0 subscribers on how to get products for free to review products and tap into a companies budget for influencer marketing (and yes companies budget resources for this).

No short-cuts

I want to emphasis first and foremost that there are no short-cuts. Companies don’t provide products and services for free without a calculated return on investment. That means you need to deliver actual results so don’t think that this is some way to be lazy and get free products without giving anything in return.

Last, you don’t need that big of a YouTube channel. You can get started with less than 1000 subscribers and get free stuff, but typically you’ll need to have a few thousands subscribers before companies reach out to you.

Step 1: Create review content and pay your dues

To start getting products and services for free to review on your YouTube channel you need to actually create good videos where you use and review products and services first.

Yes, sometimes this means you need to break open the wallet and spend your own money. But again, you have to pay your dues and prove yourself first.

No company is going to provide you with a free product to review or give access to a service for free without knowing the potential results you can deliver. Too many simply want to skip over this because of a sense of entitlement and expect to be given things but it does not work like that.

Prove yourself first

When I first started making tutorials for my YouTube channel I had to pay for various software services upfront in order to make different tutorials. Overtime, those video did well, my subscriber count grew and companies just started giving me free hosting accounts to make long form tutorials with.

Have a portfolio of content

You need to have a portfolio of videos first reviewing products and services and an actual track record of delivering results and driving sales. Companies are trusting you with their brand and reputation, no one can trust you if you’re an unknown so get busy making content.

That can be a helpful in-depth blog post or a great YouTube channel where an aspect is you breaking down the pros and the cons of specific products.

Last, don’t forget you need to deliver results. If a company gives you a product for free it’s because your review content will help generate more revenue than the cost of giving you the product as well as managing an influencer program in the first place.

Consider hiding your YouTube subscriber count if you’re under a few thousand

Within your YouTube creator studio account, simply navigate to your channel settings. Here you can toggle on or off “display the number of people subscribed to my channel.”

This is ideal if you have a smaller channel under 1000 subscribers. Most YouTubers have small channels and companies don’t particularly care about how many subscribers you have. They care about the long term results you can get.

With that said, it is in your interest to hide your subscriber count if you’re wanting to get products for free to review as you may appear untrustworthy with a tiny channel.

There is no need to hide your subscriber count once you’re over a few thousand subscribers.

Step 2: Reach out to companies for product review opportunities

When you have a small channel, you’ll first need to reach out to companies in order to get review products or services. When you have a larger, more established audience then companies will reach out to you.

First, take a step back and look at other YouTube channel in your niche and consider what content, products and services are they promoting. What kind of products or services make sense for your channel?

Companies budget for what they call “influencer marketing” and giving away products and services is part of that. That’s why you see camera review channels all reviewing the same new vlogging camera all at once.

Pay attention to advertisements and sponsors

When on YouTube, pay attention to what other channels in your niche are promoting. While you don’t want to be a copycat and promote the same exact product, it can give you an idea of what category of product may make sense for your vlog.

Also take note of any “this video is sponsored by” type introductions. Companies again have a budget for influencer marketing and if they are paying to sponsor a video, they could very well be open to letting you create some type of review content.

Search for companies giving products away for review

Notice other vloggers promoting a specific product category in a unique way? How can you promote the same or relevant product on your channel? Keep a list of these different companies and begin the process of email outreach.

Know the margins

A margin is how much profit a company can make by giving you a product or service for free. As such, it’s usually an easier for a company to give you a free account to a service you would normally need to pay for than to give you an expensive product.

My point here is to simply be aware of how much a product costs and the margins on it. Don’t ask for expensive products and waste everyone’s time if you can’t deliver.

Email outreach

Email outreach (or contacting companies via social media) is how you’re going to get in touch with companies. Look for any type of “press” or “affiliates” page on their website and reach out to them. At worst you may just need to send an email via the good old contact page.

But for email outreach to work you need to be aggressive and contact multiple companies. Not just one. Last, focus on the value you can provide. It’s not about you, it’s about how you can get results and drive sales for them.

Add a PO Box to your about page on YouTube or website

As your channel grows, your about page and contact email will grow in importance. Once you have a collection of review videos and a few thousand subscribers it’s time to add a PO Box so companies can send you products to review:

Please be as detailed as possible as to the expectations of any products send to you. Will you send products back that you review or do you expect to keep them? Would you prefer a company to first reach out to you by email before sending anything over?

Do you leave it to your discretion as to what products to review, even if a company sends it to you for free? Be upfront, detailed and honest.

Create a Professional Email

While you can use a Gmail account, it is a good idea to setup a professional email. Something like “hello@yourwebsite.com.”

To get started you’ll need to get a domain name at Namecheap, then I suggest checking my helpful, step by step tutorial on YouTube of how redirect emails from a domain name to GMail.

With a domain name at Namecheap you can redirect emails from your professional email to a standard Gmail account. Then in Gmail you setup an alias to reply to emails as.

If this sounds a bit to complicated then at a minimum get a professional sounding GMail account: NameofWebsiteMedia@gmail.com sounds a lot better than LinseyBunny871 at hotmail.

The other way is to purchase dedicated email hosting that provides storage, security, ease of use and so forth. Checkout my breakdown on the best email hosting options here.

Don’t be a sell out

A sellout is someone who reviews anything for money. They take no consideration as to the quality of the product, the fact that their audience may make a purchase decision based on what they say or even the relevance of the product to their channel.

Your personal brand and integrity are your most valuable asset. Don’t review crappy products and say they are amazing and don’t review products just for the money or because you got it for free.

You end up becoming a sellout which long term damages your ability to engage in influencer marketing. Sometimes the best answer to irrelevant products is no thanks.

Know what you’re talking about

This may seem like common sense, but I need to lay it out clearly for beginners. No one of any intelligence is going to believe your hyperbolic language that “xyz” product is amazing, life changing and omg you need to get it right now.

Unprofessional reviews that leverage emotion and try to manipulate their audience, or worse, flat out lie about a product are a disservice to your audience. The best product reviews are honest and upfront about the pros and cons of a specific item. They explain the various uses, who should get it and who should not get it.

For example, in my SiteGround review video, I layout the real positives and downsides of that hosting company as well as the ideal customer and who should look for a different alternative. I can advise on this from actual experience of using SiteGround for well over a year.

YouTube SEO – Rank your reviews

YouTube actually has multiple algorithms. One for shorts, one for search another for recommended videos. Getting your review video to rank is not only a good way to drive affiliate sales long term, it’s also good for getting the attention of companies who are looking for influencers.

While YouTube works best with click bait thumbnails and titles, paying attention to rankings is a good strategy for a review product. Maybe you’re reviewing a diving watch as a travel vlogger.

A good blog post would be: “Name of diving watch review – 6 stunning things you’ll love.”

On YouTube you need to make it a bit more attention grabbing. Something like: “I can’t believe this watch only cost $60.”

Next, you’ll want to write out a detailed description of the product and your review. Your detailed description does help with your videos performance and more importantly, it helps people who find your video make a purchase decision.

Remember, even though you’re getting products for free, focus on being honest and helpful first.

Companies to get review products from

Next up, there are a wide range of companies that have influencer programs or programs or product testing services you can be apart of. Here are my top choices.

Amazon

Amazon is the most popular ecommerce website in the United States. They are built on trust, quality, and high customer service.

Amazon is known for leading the way with creative marketing initiatives. From the Amazon Associates program (which has become one of the, if not the most successful, affiliate programs in the world) to developing various influencer marketing programs.

Amazon Vine

The first is the Amazon Vine program, an invitation-only program where Amazon selects the most insightful reviewers to work as a Vine voice.

If you’re a regular buyer of stuff off Amazon and leave helpful reviews, you could be selected and receive free products. These free products you can also use for content for your platforms. Be it a blog, YouTube channel or social media profile.

Amazon Influencer

The next is the influencer program, whereby you post a video review of a product and then earn a commission if someone watches your review video and the purchases.

The influencer program also allows you to build a custom storefront to share your recommended products with your audience. The storefront is great if you have a big personal brand.

This extension of the associate’s program is reserved for actual influencers with a social media presence. Many influencers hire people to review products via video and then post those video reviews to Amazon.

You could offer a gig service on Fiverr where you can create product review videos. Someone buys the product for you and in return you create a video review for them.

Rebraid

Shop for rebates on Amazon! It’s an odd offer, so let me explain. Rebaid is a cashback website that will reimburse some or all of the purchase price if you choose to review a product.

They offer quite a few products found on Amazon but the selection is limited. Overally, this is a great way to get Amazon products for free or close to free though it does take some work and luck to find a product you want or need.

Once you create your account:

• Select the product you want.
• Buy it from Amazon.
• Get a cashback rebate.

Typically you’ll get reimbursed the remaining balance or the total amount (if the offer was for the product’s total price) through your chosen payment method.

Rebaid has an internal program similar to Amazon Vine, asking customers to leave honest product feedback. However, reviewing products is optional and not required when making purchases through the platform.

Daily Goodie Box

If you’re a resident of the US, you can sign up for Daily Goodie Box, a site that lets you test products entirely for free. You can be selected as a product tester just by signing up and creating an account.

This website also gives its members a chance to receive a free sample box every day, with no requirement for you to pay for shipping costs.

The website selects product testers based on their demographic information, website engagement history, and the quality of their past product reviews. So this is not for lazy people who want free stuff while giving nothing in return.

To increase your chances of being selected, post on Daily Goodie Boxes’ social media accounts (Twitter and Instagram are here).

This website has partnered with over 300 brands and provides free shipping for their products. In return, testers must provide truthful reviews to help brands improve their products.

Influenster

Influenster is a product testing app for both IOS and Android. Signing up is easy, just download the Influenster app to answer brief questions and post reviews.

From beauty products, personal care items, electronics, and toys, there is something to cater to everyone’s content needs. Members can also win a Voxbox containing samples and review products on the website to improve their chances of getting picked.

To improve your chances of winning a Voxbox, complete your profile with as much detail as possible. This makes it easier for Influenster to match you with the appropriate products based on your demographic.

Additionally, consider following Influenster on social media and engaging with their posts through comments. This increases your chances of receiving a complimentary Voxbox like being chosen on Goodie Box.

Snagshout

Snagshout is a website that connects Amazon customers with sellers. To access deals on various products, including home decor, books, clothing, and jewelry, you must register on the platform and link your Amazon account.

To get a product at a discount, click the “Snag It” button after finding a free or discounted item you need. Snagshout reimburses members for the discount by depositing the saved amount into their PayPal account, helping them save money.

One of the benefits of this platform is that you can purchase Amazon products without being required to leave a review. Nonetheless, it is still possible to support Amazon sellers by giving truthful reviews and taking advantage of excellent product deals.

Bzz Agent

BzzAgent is a company that conducts product testing and connects users with opportunities to test products. It has collaborated with popular global brands who seek feedback on their products.

To receive campaign invites from BzzAgent that align with your interests and preferences, keep your profile updated and check your email regularly. You’ll need to answer some questions to participate in a campaign, but if selected, you can try new products.

BzzAgent testers must follow specific posting instructions that differ depending on the product to share their product reviews. Testers need to mention BzzAgent in their social media posts. Utilizing this site is an excellent opportunity for those looking to begin their career as an influencer due to its social review features.

Pinchme

If you want to try products and give feedback, consider checking out PINCHme. This website partners with well-known brands to offer free samples to specific groups of consumers. You can sample items related to personal care, pets, food, and family products.

To get started, sign up and fill out your profile so the website can create sample boxes tailored to your needs. Additionally, they often send out bonus questions that can increase your chances of receiving free samples.

To participate in PINCHme’s Sample Tuesdays, held monthly, you must RSVP on their Facebook event to be notified when the samples will be released. The great thing about PINCHme is that you can customize your sample box with products you are interested in at no cost.

Giving thorough and truthful feedback on the products you receive can increase your chances of obtaining more free products in the future. You’re getting the products for free for a reason.

How to Get Review Products – Conclusion

That’s it for my guide on how to get review products for free. It all comes down to building trust and authority with an audience.

If you grow a large following on a social media platform, YouTube channel, or blog, companies reach out to contact you to offer their products and services for free to use and create content about. Don’t forget you can reach out as well when starting out with a small following. It will take work and a little luck but it is possible.

Even with product testing platforms, you have to put in the work and engage with them on their media and show you’re a good bet for sending review products too. But you’ll have long-term success if you’re consistent and put out high-quality reviews.

From the desk of David Utke

Subj: Take off the mast, expose your inner entrepreneur

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So you want to be an entrepreneur?

You feel it in your bones, you know you want it in your heart of hearts – but you just don’t know how to get from A to B.

You always seem to end up going from A to A.

Stuck in a loop.

I know, I’ve been there.

But first things first…

It takes time to find your “thing”

This process of finding your thing is done through trial and error and actually trying, doing and failing.

I started multiple niche websites that failed, a vlog and personal development blog that never really took off.

I did things I thought could make me money, but were not really me.

II started a website called “remember me” with my brother that completely failed. Our idea was to create a sort of alternative to Legacy.com.

A Facebook for dead people if you will where people could memorialize loved ones.

We spent a few thousand dollars on web development to create this website because it was such a “good idea” we thought.

It never occurred to us to actually create a website that people wanted. Instead, we did what a lot of people do.

You have a “great” idea for a website and think that’s enough. It’s not and we lost thousands of dollars on this project.

Super Awesome Failure

Then I launched a dating blog called Super Awesome Dating (opens in a new tab) years and years ago – I’m so good at this internet stuff

I paid 1k for a professional design because I was that naive (I also had no idea how to create a website or start a blog – before I developed my tech stack).

I wanted anyone who visited that website to be impressed by it and to trust it.

I got the idea to launch this website because I thought that there was an opportunity to create an authority website on the topic of dating.

Going after keywords for both men and women. Promoting products to both men and women – WIN.

But, 30 year old career women and 20 year old college bros have radically different wants and needs. Instead of picking a market and serving it, I created a broad website that had zero appeal to anyone.

Classic example of the old adage, if you’re for everyone you’re for no one.

To top it off, with a winning name like Super Awesome Dating (good for a comedy site about dating, not for a serious and helpful resource), and mediocre dating advice content written by a goofy out of shape twenty something from Connecticut (me) who only had 2 serious girlfriends up to this point.

What could go wrong?

Everything.

Stupid content, stupid name, unfocused selling point. But I did start to see some small success.

I got to a high point of making about $2-5 a day from AdSense ($120 a month roughly) and was making one-off affiliate commissions.

I made back my initial investment but more importantly was starting to learn what it takes to actually make money and that’s through providing value and solving problems.

Yea sure, SEO is important. Product creation, copywriting, knowing how to sell.

But fundamentally, it boils down to providing value and solving problems.

Leveraging some aspect of you that’s unique. So take off the mask and stop trying to be Mr Cool Guy. Take off the mask and expose your inner entrepreneur.

Treat yourself like a company

You must always present the best version of yourself if you want the best in life.

You’re a salesman whether you like it or not and you have to treat yourself as such if you want your piece of the pie.

You are the marketing for your own company – a YOU, INC.

You, Inc. is the umbrella company for everything you do in your life.

It’s your personal brand, your personal life mission, your reputation and your skills all rolled into one package…

You.

And you can do one of three things with your company:

1. Quit your business and let You, Inc. go bankrupt.
2. Bounce around from one idea to the other, living hand to mouth like all the other broke as a joke internet marketers.
3. Build a brand, be useful to others and make your mark.

You already know the way to succeed, I don’t need to tell you. But I will.

Build a brand. That’s how you succeed. Turn yourself into your advertisement. Don’t fake it ’til you make it – be it.

You’re a walking billboard so drill that into your head. Be the real deal. Not an echo of someone else.

“Am I someone people can trust and believe in?”

If you aren’t, then fix it.

Become the person you need to be and people will be begging for you to take their money, not the other way around.

You have to believe you are special

To be a billboard, to be the CEO of a profitable You, Inc you have to know you have something special to offer.

I know you were taught that you aren’t special. That’s true for most people, the give-up artists and the bankrupt owners of worthless echo’s of more successful people.

But some of you possess talents, traits or characteristics that are special. I do, I always did, and I always knew it…

…but I was afraid of what?

Being immodest? – who knows. 

Afraid of success like most people I guess.

When you believe in your heart of hearts that you are special other people will see it and believe it as well.

Because it’s real. Talent is palpable, everyone can see it.

Being modest or immodest about it is irrelevant as long as you believe it.

Paul Stanley from KISS was born with one-ear, had no friends as a kid, no confidence, no support from anybody.

But he knew one damn thing: “I am going to be a rock star.”

You think anybody believed him?

He put himself in a place where he had no other choice but to success. That’s actually a terrifying spot to be in if you think about it.

So who cares who believed what. KISS became one of the biggest bands in the world and one of the biggest brands in the world.

“You can gauge how important something is to you by how hard you are willing to work to get it.” – Paul Stanley

Stop asking for permission

You know what the difference between a private prep school and a public school really is?

Public schools teach you to get good grades, listen to the teacher and follow the rules or else…

Work your job, and move up the ladder for 40 years.

Then maybe you’ll get your chance if you’re a good boy.

Private, elite schools by contrast teach students to not ask permission.

To instead go straight to the CEO and ask. If you don’t ask you won’t receive. You have to ask for what you want and work hard to get it.

Not this waiting around for someone to give you permission in order to win.

So if you’re the type that needs permission, you aren’t going to succeed and your mission is destined for failure.

You’ll succeed when you become a professional decision maker, not a master beg artist.

If you aren’t driven enough to go ahead without permission guess what you are…

A passenger.

Passengers aren’t exactly in control, are they.

When you realize you are the decider, you make the choice, it’s your life and you’ll live it how you please, that’s when you’ll find success – that’s when you’ll get your treasure.

Me giving you permission will not get you what you desire.

I’m not the boss of your company because I’m not in the business of buying bankrupt Echo, Incs.

I only invest in up and coming “You, Inc’s” And when I do, I demand excellence.

I didn’t always know how to make money

I never had a mentor, a teacher, an older brother, a coach or a parent that taught me anything of value.

I didn’t know anything for a long time. That’s the reality.

Everything valuable I ever learned was by using my own eyes, experiencing life’s little lessons (trial and error, doing and failing) and putting the math together; 1+1=2.

Some people like to pretend 1+1=3.

Those people are the “play by the rules” types, even when it doesn’t benefit them and actively hurts them.

It became clear to me, while I was pursuing that 9-5 life, that playing by the rules and going by the book was fruitless.

I didn’t know anything valuable but I knew I wanted out. I didn’t know how I would get out or what I would do.

…but I wanted out.

I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur in some way, I just didn’t know how. It seemed like an insurmountable problem.

I only knew it was possible because I saw others doing it online. Running large blogs, selling stuff, doing brand deals, making products for sale.

“Where does money come from if you don’t have a job”? 

Through providing value and solving problems for the market. But what value and what problem could I solve? I kind of did that with my goofy dating blog, I made some money.

But how do I make real, life changing money? How do I build something that’s mine?

Honestly, I never even met an entrepreneur until my late-twenties in Thailand.

He was balling it out in Chiang Mai while I was in a training program to become an ESL teacher.

What do you do?

“I run Facebook ads for business and my own offers.”

I had known of people who ran pay per click advertising (PPC). Some even were called “super affiliates.”

I was aware that running ads for affiliate networks was thing too, but to meet someone who showed me they were making a 6 figure income from it?

Wow, just wow.

…and here I am training to get a 1k a month English teaching job in Thailand.

Before that, I used to dream about running some big blog, and magically making a ton of money somehow. I would disappear and come back a changed man.

Free to live in a different country every 6 months or something.

That was the silly way I thought I could change my life.

I was actually training for a mediocre job, an extended vacation if you will where I would inevitably end up back in the rat race in America.

But I was comfortable enough….

I complained, I wished things were different but I didn’t do anything to change my situation.

I never actually worked on providing value and solving problems, I just “pretended” to work by writing yet another pointless blog post on my then personal blog.

I was waiting for a miracle to come and save me from my destiny as a 9-5 worker bee.

The miracle came when I started working hard on learning skills to solve problems people actually had.

Looking back, the solution was so simple.

Instead of working fruitlessly at a job, I started working for myself – Becoming the best version of myself.

The thing about hard work is that it’s temporary, like pain.

You do the hard work first and then you can live off of it later. I know this for a fact. I’ve done it with two businesses.

My teaching website where I provided value from my time teaching abroad and online (coaching, referrals, affiliate links, free content as the top of the funnel)

To now my professional brand that you’re engaging with now.

It took me a long time to even realize what was possible, though, and if I could get in a time machine and tell the young and clueless me, this is something I’d tell him…

Provide value and solve problems!

If you want to make money, online or off it comes down to solving problems.

No, your “Mr Cool Guy” blog or YouTube channel where you show off that you’re with some farm girl in a travel vlog the Philippines is not providing value.

Neither is your “fashion and makeup Instagram” where you get to pretend you’re a model and influencer.

Develop a skill, leverage your talents (I’m great on camera and I’m a skilled copywriter) and get to work.

Be consistent and do more of what works too.

Complaining gets you nowhere but it does adds to your unhappiness, exposes you as a whiner and drains the energy of the people you complain to.

Last, if you can’t be great at what you do, don’t do it as you’re going to be competing against those who are actually talented and great.

Do what you’re scared to do as what got you here, really won’t get you there

You can’t make a big change in your life if you don’t do something big. Something big, something drastic, requires change and it’s always scary to change.

It’s easy to stay the same.

I don’t care if you’re a grizzled war veteran, changing your life is frightening because you don’t know what will happen until you try.

It really comes down to a battle between the mind and the soul.

When you have to talk yourself into something it means your soul is saying no but your mind says yes. Your soul wants you to change and move forward, your mind is talking you into staying put because it’s comfortable.

Follow your soul, your heart and ignore the mind.

You know what you need to do, but your mind will always tell you to play it safe. It will rationalize you not taking action.

Talking yourself into staying put instead of making that big change because, eh it’s not that bad right? Your soul is saying no. Make the change, do it.

But like I said, It’s scary to change, that’s why the mind drowns out this other voice.

Make a commitment

Make a commitment to better your life – to become the man you were born to be.

When I say I’m going to do something, especially something big, I do it. No matter how many doubts and second thoughts I have – I just do it.

Jump in the icy cold water, no matter how much you don’t want to.

You’ll never, ever, get anywhere quitting and re-starting.

Reject your paycheck

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times…

You don’t need a job to make money.

You can make money on the internet.

You don’t need a job and that’s not a big problem because:

1. If you’re American your jobs have been outsourced to foreign countries and job growth is a lie.
2. Jobs steal your time, your health and your soul – look at the dead eyes and fat bellies of employees for proof.
3. Life is better without a job.

Don’t stop learning

College was a waste of time for me but the endless books, endless experiences and endless amount of self-study has proven invaluable.

For Website Creative Pro, I put in the time to learn how to treat this blog and YouTube like a business, not just a hobby. The thing that started as a little idea in my head has now turned into a profitable personal brand.

What’s the difference between a guy with a guitar in his bedroom and a guy with a guitar on stage? His attitude about his business.

The guy onstage treats it like a business and the guy in his bedroom treats it like a hobby.

You think rockstars are born to rock? No. They might sing about it, but they worked like hell to get what they’ve got. Just like anyone you think is “living the dream.”

Some fellow sent me an email the other day that said “I don’t consider blogging a business.”

Yea, blog alone is not a business, I never said it was. A blog is your “top of the funnel” marketing tool when done right:

Here’s the cold, hard reality: I broke 6 figures a year living abroad (100% online income) while most men of any age make jack shit working a job.

You don’t have to blog to make money online. Shopify stories, running a marketing agency, PPC advertising. The options are limitless.

Working a job is limiting though. I’ve been there, I’ve done it, I wouldn’t wish that life on you.

Life is much better with financial freedom.

You know how I got it?

I put in the time and I worked for it. Consistently. I became a man possessed and did more of what works.

It’s so simple to read but so hard to do. I was there before. Always reading and never doing.

You’ll often hear me say how easy it is. And it is easy because I already did all the heavy lifting.

But it wasn’t easy those years ago when I was in Chiang Mai Thailand for the first time.

Don’t bankrupt You, Inc.

You’re the CEO of your own company, so make your own decisions and make a commitment to those decisions.

Give up too much or beg too much and You, Inc. will go bankrupt.

When You, Inc. goes bankrupt what do you do?

You get a day job.

Well, you call it your day job but what you’ve done is sold your soul, your brand, yourself.

Your day job is now the owner of You, Inc. You went bankrupt and sold out to the lowest bidder.

Now they own you and you’re left with no bargaining power.

Employees are easily replaceable in any company except for one (You, Inc. – the one you sold to the lowest bidder).

When you sell your bankrupt company (You, Inc.) you become like the untouchables of India. Gone, forgotten, invisible and worthless.

Is there a way out?

Yeah, there are 6 ways…

1. No.
2. More.
3. Compromise.
4. Get.
5. To.
6. WORK.

Until next time.

-David

To start a blog you need to use my free tutorial. It’s free and easy. It’s a no-brainer. 

Here’s how to take advantage and get started: How to Start a Professional (and Profitable) Blog.

From the Desk of David Utke

Subj: You need to create sales pages to actually make sales.

So you want to make money online? One of the best ways to do this is by actually selling your own stuff.

Sure, affiliate marketing is quite lucrative when done right, as can be running display ads. But nothing, and I mean nothing gives you the kind of freedom, control and profitability as:

• Selling your own products and services to your audience.
• Running paid ads to your own offers.
• Having your very own affiliates.

I call this “algorithm free” income.

One critical aspect of selling your own products and services is creating high converting sales pages through copywriting and design.

So in this easy to follow guide, I’ll walk you through my process of creating sales pages that convert.

Simple sales page framework

Let’s get into a simple sales page framework you can model after. You don’t need to follow this exactly, it’s just a framework to pay attention to – aspects you will need to address.

The goal is to take your reader on an emotional journey.

Let’s get to it.

Establish what the problem is

What clear and specific problem are you solving for your audience? People buy products and services for a specific outcome they want.

One of the simplest things to incorporate in your sales copy is the language your audience uses into your when describing their problem.

If you’re able to do this, it’s easier to make sales of your product because you’re demonstrating that you know and understand the issues your target audience is facing, and how to overcome them.

Describing problems in clear specific connect with your target audience from an emotional perspective.

Just stop and consider this, why would someone be interested in learning what your selling?

What is the deeper desire than the surface level stuff. No one wants to buy a course or hire you for a service, they buy because they want a specific outcome.

People want to create profitable websites and YouTube channels because they want more freedom, flexibility and income in their lives.

Maybe they are unhappy with their work or are perhaps stuck in dead end positions. Maybe they already have a blog or YouTube channel but it’s not going as expected and they want to learn from someone successful.

It’s these deeper desires you want to hit on.

Not simply, “learn how to make a website” or “learn how to make money from YouTube.”

What is your unique solution?

Once you establish what the problem is, quickly get into what your unique solution is and how it works.

At this point your language should still be emotional and not technical.

I don’t mean this in a manipulative way, it just goes back to people wanting an outcome. So talk about how your solution works and how you understand your audiences frustration.

A good method when writing out this section is to leverage a before-after bridge copy.

Before I used to be a fat slob with no money, but after I became a handsome and successful man. All thanks to my unique solution.

Always tie back your solution to the problem.

Relate how your unique solution works on people like your audience

Once you establish the problem and solution, emphasis how it will work for your your target audience.

The goal here is to address objections to purchasing your product or service and make it a “no brainer” to buy.

Include various things someone who buys your product will learn.

In other words, what is included in the price of admission?

People are way more apt to buy if you tell them exactly what is in the product as it helps them make the decision to buy. Use the right mix of graphics, copy, screenshots, testimonials and any other type of example that makes sense for your product.

This works because maybe someone someone what interested in your product, but they see a few sections that do interest them and it’s these sections that compel them to buy. Remember, with selling online, clear and specific always wins.

Examples and proof

Yea big guy, prove you know what you’re talking about and can get results.

This may seem obvious, but you will need to show specific results you got and how you can give those results to your potential customer.

The best proof are screenshots and quick video captures demonstrating that you are the real deal.

Show, don’t tell how your product will specifically benefit potential buyers. For example, here is my actual Amazon Associates account earning from my online teaching website:

The results section needs to demonstrate that your unique solution can work for your target audience.

What else is included in your offer

Create an exclusive bonus, or bonuses people get if they buy today.

This should be after you show proof of the results of your solution as a way to make a more compelling offer.

A good bonus needs to compliment the core offer in some way. Like templates, a cheat sheet, exclusive interview or ebooks.

For example, let’s say I offer create a “website setup” service where if you buy web hosting through my affiliate link, I’ll set up your website with all the professional backend settings you need.

That’s a decent offer, but if you incorporate some bonuses that make sense, it makes the overall offer even more compelling like:

“In addition to that,” I’ll also give you guides on:

• How to create the perfect blog post.
• The best affiliate programs to make real money.
• The best business tools for running an online business

You see how throwing in a few bonuses help transform a pretty basic offer into something way more interesting?

This is why you want to create bonuses. It makes your overall sales copy much much better.

The price is normally this, but today you can get it for this

Now is when you reveal the price point.

I repeat, do not reveal the price point at the top of the sales page with a button to buy. It’s to early and your target audience is not emotionally invested yet.

When revealing the price point, emphasis how normally it’s one price point or how it should be a specific price, but today you can get it for much less.

Testimonials

To compliment proof of results you’ll also want to show testimonials.

Now, if you don’t have testimonials because this is your first product then show results or testimonials form somewhere else.

For example, I’m a top rated seller on Fiverr. When I create products in the website creation space, I can leverage the thousand+ of 5 star reviews I have.

It’s not directly related, but it demonstrates I’m highly competent.

There are a few ways you can show testimonials. You can obviously just quote someone who wrote a testimonial for you or take a screen shot:

You can also setup a Trust Piot review page where people can leave testimonials:

What’s useful from Trust Pilot is that you can embed reviews directly from Trust Pilot and set it to only show 4 and 5 star reviews.

Finally, there is Testimonials.to:

This website allows you to easily collect both video and text based testimonials from your audience without needing a developer and it also provides the hosting for all your video testimonials.

Once you have a collection of video testimonials you can then embed them into your sales page with ease.

The way it works from the user side is that you can send them a link to a dedicated landing page from Testimonials.to for your business.

This link can be shared easily through email, social media, or even SMS. Setup takes a few minutes and then you’re good to go.

FAQ

I like to thrown in an FAQ right above the final call to action.

The goal of this FAQ is to answer any final objections someone might have to making a positive purchase decision:

Final call to action

Last, have a final call to action at the very bottom of your sales page with a big button and the price.

Create a Sales Video

Finally you can also create a sales video that you put at the top of your sales page above all the copy.

Sales videos are proven to increase sales and conversions and if you’re going to be selling anything online, it’s worth taking the time to create a short and to the point sales video.

With your video you have a few different options but since I want to keep this simple I recommend one style, the talking head video.

Talking head – The easiest option

Talking head videos are the easiest option because they don’t require a lot of editing.

You simply need to practice being on camera as well as having quality gear required to make videos. You could get a professional camera with a microphone or you could even just use your phone.

The reason why recording with your phone is a good idea is because it gives more a natural feel that people watching can relate to.

Emphasize:

• What’s on the inside.
• The value your customers are going to get.
• Additional bonus content and any unique selling points (monthly calls, exclusive interviews and so forth).

Sales page builders

Great, so now you have a solid base for creating landing pages from a copywriting perspective.

So, uh, how do you actually make a sales page from a technical standpoint?

I got you covered, here are a few of my favorite tools.

Thrive Architect

This is a plugin for WordPress. It’s specifically designed for creating landing pages and sales pages. Combined with Thrive Cart (made by the same company) you have a very effective 1-2 combo for creating a sales process for digital products.

What I like about Thrive Architect is that you get over 300 templates to choose from that you can then customize with their user friendly, drag and drop builder.

Selling points

• Choose a theme to customize or build your sales page from scratch.
• Drag and drop builder to easily add text, images and videos where you want it on the page.
• Conversion packed design elements like calls to action, count downs, forms, calendars, beautifully displayed coupon codes etc.
• Can be installed and used along site your current WordPress theme.
• Reasonable price of $99 a year.

If you’re wanting to stick to WordPress, then Thrive Architect and Thrive Cart is your best combination for selling online.

Lead Pages

Lead Pages is a paid software tool that allows you to easily create high converting sales pages and landing page. I suggest you either use it on it’s own custom domain, or a sub directory (something like davidutke.com/pages/lead-page).

Lead Pages provides a drag and drop builder to customize your page, 250+ templates to customize, unlimited traffic and leads so you don’t have to worry about your page going down if you drive a lot of traffic, conversion tools and A/B testing.

I think the biggest selling point of Lead Pages is actually A/B testing. You can get actionable data to slowly improve your page to optimize conversions.

The biggest drawback? Lead Pages is not particularly cheap and starts at $37 a month or $444 a year for their entry plan.

Carrd.co – The budget friendly option

Carrd.co is a one page website builder. You can use it to create any type of one page website, not just landing pages and sales pages.

Where Carrd.co shines is the price – $19 a year.

Sure you don’t get any advanced features like conversion tools, A/B testing, and the actual page builder is not as feature rich, but the price point is tough to beat.

If all you’re looking to do is create a sales page for a low priced product, then Carrd.co is excellent.

Yes, Carrd.co has a free plan on top of that, but if you want to setup a custom domain you’ll need to upgrade to a pro plan.

So I suggest Carrd.co and something like E-Junkie or Thrive Cart if you’re looking for a way to sell digital products online that won’t break the bank.

Remember, Carrd.co is only for building the sales page, to actually deliver the product you’ll need shopping cart software.

All in one tools

Finally, I just want to mention that there are some all-in-one tools you can use for your marketing and sales.

These tools combine everything for one price. The blog, landing pages, sales pages, page building software, email marketing and a way to deliver the product.

I personally don’t like all-in-one tools because they tend to be expensive and if any piece breaks, you’re entire business and income is at risk.

They also don’t tend to do any one thing well.

But there is no denying that all-in-one builders make sense for anyone looking to keep things simple. There are really only two options I can recommend you checkout in good faith:

• Click Funnels – They started off as a sales page/landing page builder that could host your video course. They have since expanded to be a full marketing suite.
• Kajabi – Kajabi is basically the same as Click Funnels. But Click Funnels has more that traditional internet marketing style sales pages with big buttons and yellow highlighter.

Conclusion

Alright I’ll leave it there, you have everything you need to start creating sales pages that convert. From both a copywriting perspective as well as the specific tools I recommend to actually create sales pages.

Your first copy won’t be that great, but you’ll get better at it the more you do it.

From the desk of David Utke

Subj: Idiots guide to selling online (affiliate marketing and/or your own products)

After making tens of thousands of dollars from selling digital products online, there are a few key essentials you need to have in place to make it work.

First off, some proof:

The following essentials are exactly that, essentials. You need to have them in place, or none of this will work and you won’t sell anything.

1. A Traffic Source

You absolutely need a traffic source to sell digital products. This can be either organic earned traffic or paid advertising. Without traffic, none of these platforms will work for you – it’s that simple.

The type of traffic source you choose will also depend on your product’s price point. If you’re selling something low-ticket like a $27 course, template or access to a community, you can typically make sales by linking directly to your offer – no funnel needed.

For example, that Evan Marc Katz affiliate program was an offer for a $47 dating ebook I promoted on an old dating site I ran back in the day. My site ranked well for the keyword “how to tell if a guy likes you” and sales came in with only organic traffic.

However, if you’re selling something more expensive like a $497, $597, or $997 course, you’ll need some type of sales funnel leveraging email marketing.

2. A Sales Funnel (For Higher-Priced Products)

A typical sales funnel might look like this

“Watch my masterclass,” “Get my cheat sheet,” “Here’s an ebook,” or “Sign up for my branded email newsletter.” You want to use some type of lead magnet to get people on your email list first.

Once they’re on your email list, you can send them through a sales process. This could be as simple as a one-time offer page then a series of emails promoting something.

So, email opt in >>> one time offer page >>> sales funnel for both low- and high-ticket products.

When someone signs up for your free cheat sheet or course, they’re taken to a one-time offer page where you present them with a special deal.

What should your one-time offer (OTO) be?

That depends on your audience, and you’ll need to test to find out what works. Sometimes it’s effective to give a substantial coupon code to your main offer.

Maybe you’re selling a $597 product and you offer a 50% off coupon code and use something like Deadline Funnel. Other times, you might create a completely separate product that’s only available on your one-time offer page for $7, $27, or whatever price point makes sense.

3. A High-Converting Sales Page For The Right Niche Specific Offer

You need to create a sales page that converts visitors into customers. Here’s the structure I recommend:

• Problem identification: Quickly establish what problem your product solves.
• Unique solution: Present your specific solution to that problem.
• Proof of concept: Explain why and how your solution works for your target audience.
• Social proof: Include examples and testimonials showing your solution works.
• Bonuses: Highlight additional value like bonus ebooks, guides, cheat sheets, or courses.
• FAQ section: Keep it short and sweet – about 5 frequently asked questions that address genuine concerns.
• Final call to action: A clear, compelling CTA right above your footer.

If you craft the right offer your audience want’s, then a highly effective sales page makes selling much easier. Don’t forget to focus on the outcome the user gets from your product.

No one wants to buy a course; they want the result they get from said course

I just want to emphasis that the right offer is essential. I made 5K in a month from Unstoppable Domains because I had target traffic and the right offer.

You could have the most perfect sales page, but if you’re selling something people just don’t want you’ll find out quick through having minimal to no sales.

The reverse is also true, a mediocre sales page with product that solves a niche specific problem will sell, though sub-optimally.

4. A High-Converting Checkout Page

After users click “buy” or “add to cart” on your sales page, they should be taken to a checkout page that converts. A good checkout page includes:

• Clear product title and image
• Bullet points summarizing what they’ll get
• Simple form to fill out
• Consider incorporating bump offers and upsells

The strategy here depends on your product price. For example, if you’re selling a $7 ebook, how do you increase cart value? You might add a $27 course as a bump offer; something users can add with one click without being redirected to another page with an additional upsell.

Including an order bump alone takes your cart value from $7 to $34.

After they purchase, you can present a final upsell, perhaps a $47 product that complements what they just bought. The key is ensuring your upsell feels like a valuable add on, not like something they need to get the full value from their original purchase (your customer will feel ripped off).

5. Product Delivery

Finally, you need to determine how customers will access your product. Typically, you have two options:

• They get a user account on your platform
• They receive a download link via email

Your choice depends on what you’re selling – whether it’s simple downloadable product like an eBook or templates, comprehensive video courses or community offer.

Product platforms I like

I have a whole dedicated guide on platforms to sell digital products, but here is the TLDR on the platforms I like and their use cases:

Teachable – Great for building out a high ticket, bundle offer of multiple courses. You get an affiliate program, abandon cart recovery and a beautifully designed website. You can sell courses individually, but the bundle offer is where it’s at with this platform. You also get a community aspect built in.

Thrive Cart – Excellent checkout pages with order bumps and you can host digital downloads. The do have a “learn” function built in for video courses, but you’ll need to source your own video hosting. However, Thrive Cart is a one-time fee.

Sam Cart – Hosted solution for video courses and digital downloads. Very similar to Thrive Cart except that they cost a monthly fee. With that monthly fee you get product updates, video hosting and sales pages.

For the entire list:

9 Best Platforms to Sell Digital Products (Ranked & Reviewed)

Conclusion

A traffic source, some type of sales process to convert traffic as well as both a high converting sales page and product page for a quality offer your audience wants.

From the desk of David Utke

Subj: Blogging is dead.

I get asked a lot of questions about marketing and advertising.

Makes sense, you need to actually advertise and market products in order to make sales, and a blog is still a good way to do exactly that.

So, how exactly do you get blog traffic?

Do you have run some blog marketing campaign?

The simple answer is… I haven’t. But I’m not against it – it makes sense for the right copy and keyword phrase.

Personally, I run my own version of a marketing campaign. But what “they” think of as a marketing campaign, is not exactly what I do.

I have never done advertising elsewhere and I have never drawn out some kind of content marketing map.

Cost per click, ad rates, buy rates – all of this traditional marketing means nothing to me when it comes to blogging.

However, I do have a marketing and advertising plan and it has been wildly effective.

I judge how effective my marketing is by these 5 words: You have a new sale.

Those are the only words that mean anything to me and I see those words every day, multiple times per day.

Even after so many years of playing this game, I’m still making sale after sale.

Would you like to hear what my marketing strategy is?

This is how I do it…

I write really good content.

I am a simple man and I keep a very simple plan.

My marketing plan is so simple that most people cannot even see it.

I have probably told people the million dollar blog marketing secret one thousand times.

Yet I still get asked always, “how do you blog and get traffic?”

This is how…

Write really good articles for your site and popular social platforms (X, LinkedIn, Medium – pick your poison)

Allow me to explain how this plan works so dang effectively.

Here’s a hypothetical situation…

Let’s say you have written a mediocre blog article on a topic you don’t know much about but the search traffic is there according to aHrefs or UberSuggest.

You have decided to market this mediocre blog article on every marketing channel you can find.

Your advertising and marketing campaign is very effective and tens of thousand of people see your mediocre blog article.

Do you wake up to see the magic words (“you have made a sale”)?

No, you don’t.

You spent your hard-earned money driving traffic to your blog article, but there was one very important ingredient missing.

Because this ingredient was missing (a great article), nobody stuck around to buy something from you.

They clicked on the ad, spent a few seconds browsing your mediocre article and then they left.

However, you still have received tens of thousands of visitors, at least you can turn them into regular readers, right?

Wrong.

Since your heavily advertised article was very mediocre, these ten thousand readers will never return.

They have no reason to return and unfortunately for you, your advertising campaign was a waste.

You spent all of this money to get readers to your article but you did not spend the time necessary to write a really great article.

You followed all of the most up-to-date marketing and advertising rules and your hi-tech marketing strategy produced no results.

Now let’s look a the website creative pro style of marketing…

I do no “real” advertising or marketing.

Instead, I spend all of my time writing the best articles on the internet about whatever topic I’m taking on.

I make it my business to impact the reader in such a way that they cannot deny the power of the words.

I hook them from the beginning. I put all of the fire into the words, I put my entire world into the words.

I assume no marketing or advertising will ever exist, so I must make every article the best it can possibly be.

I make sure they are hypothetically punched in the guy and fired up when they read my words.

I make the work impossible to deny.

I don’t ask their permission, I don’t put my faith in some outside ad strategy.

By simply writing great articles again and again…

I MAKE THEM WANT TO RETURN AGAIN AND AGAIN.

And do you know what happens?

Because I make them want more, I always wake up to the magic words…

“You have made a sale.”

How do I do this?

This is exactly how…

I write really great blog articles.

An easy to follow framework to write great articles

I say “just write really great articles” and you say “ok, but what does that mean?”

Let me explain a bit more.

I do pay attention to keywords when I blog. You do need to create content people are searching for, otherwise you’re going to get nowhere.

But beyond that, I simply write the best article on the topic.

I don’t use AI tools to generate content, I don’t create a topical map like a lot of SEO’s talk about, I don’t try to “optimize” my content.

I’m a skilled copywriter and writer.

I write so good, that it attracts readers who then go on to explore the rest of the site, subscribe to the email list where they are offered higher ticket offers, buy a low cost product directly from a blog post or share the content with others.

A really great article is an article that jumps out to the reader and commands them to read.

A really great article starts with the title. The title must be great or they won’t click.

• Good title example: Magic Marketing (How I Always Get New Readers For My Blog).
• Bad title example: How to Blog – Learn How to Write a Blog Post.
• Good title example: How To Harness Copywriting For High Converting Sales Pages
• Bad title example: How to Create a Sales Page.
• Good title example: How to Start a Blog That Makes Money Forever
• Bad title example: How to Start a Blog.

The good title makes you want to click because it is interesting. The bad title does not make you want to click because it is boring.

After the title comes the introduction. The introduction is the very first line of text in your article.

Too many people waste this valuable space and start their articles with dry and boring bits of nothing because they write for search engines and not people.

Meaning they try to optimize the article in some weird way to help it with o

Keep the intro short and powerful. Ask them a question or give them a bold statement.

• Good intro example: “Are you tired of being a loser? Want more money, women and success in your life? Great we all do…”
• Bad intro example: “In this post I’m going to discuss how not to be a loser. To stop being a loser is something we all think is important…”
• Good intro example: “New York City is dead forever…”
• Bad intro example: “I really like living in New York City, there are so many nice places to go and things to do. But living in the city is very expensive and I don’t really like how it…”

Cut out the crap and start with a bang.

Grab their attention and with each line of text, pique their curiosity more and more, always building to the next line.

In the middle of the article, teach them something. They’re here to learn from you so treat your blog like a business and give your customers what they want – knowledge.

Ending an article

End the article with a “call to action” of some sort. Give them a next step. Ask them to do something, buy something or subscribe, never leave them with nothing else to do.

I’ve made thousands and thousands of dollars by just doing this alone:

“If you want to dive deeper on this topic, checkout Brian’s product on XYZ, it helped me. Maybe it will help you?

“My friend Marc has and excellent guide on how to do XYZ thing. In it he breaks down specific pain points you’re facing and a clear framework for how to get the outcome you’re looking for.”

In short, you need to know how to write.

Not like a school essay, but how to write with heart and soul.

A great blog = new readers

People read really great blog articles and become impacted in a way they never can be impacted by lesser works, no matter how well advertised.

When they come here to read a new article they are so emotionally impacted and motivated to make their own mark, they must return to checkout the latest and greatest; day after day, year after year.

Because they are so positively impacted by what you publish, they tell 2 friends about your great blog.

Those 2 friends go to read a new article, any article because they are all spectacular, and they are punched in the guts.

They become addicted to the words and they tell 2 more friends about the great world of your blog; Those 2 friends tell 2 friends tell 2 more friends and so on.

Eventually you have a pyramid of hungry readers below you, salivating for every new word.

You are at the very top of the pyramid you have created, where you can count your dollars and cents with a grin.

All of the most advanced advertising campaigns in the world cannot replicate the benefits of writing one great blog article.

If you have 10 great blog articles…

You are on top of the mountain as there is no competition.

If you have 100 great blog articles you have entered the world of the marketing master, without ever running a marketing campaign.

In the world of blog artistry, marketing and advertising are pointless and ineffective.

Even if you receive tens of thousands of visitors, nothing will happen if you didn’t follow the Magic Marketing formula (write really great blog articles).

And if you do follow the Magic Marketing formula and you do write really great blog articles, it’s a waste of time farting around with marketing and advertising campaigns.

Who has the magic how to blog touch?

If you have the ability to write really great blog articles you need to spend your time writing really great blog articles, as perfection does take a very long time.

If you don’t have the ability to write really great blog articles then you are in the wrong business and all of the marketing and advertising in the world will not save you.

But, but, but, but, but….

If you always write great blog articles you will always wake up to the same words I wake up to…

“You have made a new sale.”

And…

You will get the added benefit of actually making a difference in a person’s life.

The prize of changing lives

Getting comments on how you helped your audience is incredible.

They will come to you daily and say how you have changed their life and helped them in ways no one else has ever helped them.

In this simple way of writing great blog articles you can change the world and you can change the life of many people around the world.

They will write to you directly to say:

Thank you! You helped change my life

If you follow the Magic Marketing formula and write great blog articles, you will get so many comments like this they start to become ordinary.

That is because extraordinary becomes your new ordinary.

If you give the work just a little bit extra you get to wake up to people expressing their gratitude to you and your work, and it will always put a smile on your face.

What’s better than changing other people’s lives?

Well, actually, there is something mildly better than changing other people’s lives.

The best thing about following the magic strategy is…

Changing your own life and actually making money from your hard work.

As great as it is to change lives, it is greater to be paid well.

$$$$$$$$ = Happy life

Everybody wants to make money and everybody wants to make a difference.

Most of them will put half effort into their articles and full effort into their social media marketing.

A few of them will put no effort into marketing or social media and they will put all effort into writing great articles.

The one who call themselves “marketing superstars and advertising gurus” will disappear within a few months.

The ones who buckle down and do the hard work of writing the world’s greatest articles will be here day after day, year after year, always waking up to the most beautiful words in the world…

“You have made a sale.”

From the desk of David Utke

Subj: Best platform for building a profitable weekly email newsletter

When it comes to building a newsletter website and email marketing platform, two names consistently rise to the top: Beehiiv and Ghost.org. Both platforms offer compelling features for content creators, but they serve slightly different purposes and excel in different areas.

I’ve worked extensively with both platforms, creating tutorials and building websites on each. After diving deep into their capabilities, I’m here to break down exactly how these two platforms stack up against each other across every dimension that matters.

Primary Focus: Newsletter vs. Publishing Platform

The fundamental difference between these platforms lies in their core mission and design philosophy.

Beehiiv exists for one primary purpose

That purpose is to help you create a branded email newsletter website and a branded email newsletter. That’s it. Their focus isn’t really on blogging or anything else, it’s primarily on the newsletter experience.

When you build with Beehiiv, the newsletter is the core offer. You’re going to Beehiiv because you’re wanting to create something like “The Saturday Entrepreneur Newsletter” where you invite people to “join 7,000 other subscribers.”

The goal with Beehiiv is to get people onto your email newsletter and then contact your audience directly via direct response email marketing. People aren’t necessarily going to be navigating directly to your Beehiiv website per se, the website exists to support the newsletter, not the other way around.

Ghost.org’s Approach

Ghost.org takes a different approach. It’s more of a combination blogging platform with email marketing and paid subscriptions all built in.

The end result with a Ghost.org website is that you’re going to have some type of independent publishing site – think something like “The David Report” where people navigate directly to your website to log in, access private content, and subscribe to your email newsletter through the platform.

With Ghost, you’re building a destination website with private members-only content, paid subscription tiers, and a full-featured blog that happens to have email marketing capabilities.

The Bottom Line Both platforms give you a website and email marketing capabilities, but the overall intent is different. Beehiiv is newsletter-first with a supporting website, while Ghost is website-first with integrated email marketing.

Content Creation: Basic vs. Feature-Rich

This is where the platforms really start to diverge, and Ghost.org takes a clear lead.

Beehiiv’s Content Creation With Beehiiv, the content creation process is pretty straightforward. You go to your post section and write a post with H1, H2, H3 title tags, text, images, videos, and buttons. Nothing too fancy. You do have customization over how the email looks, but it’s pretty basic overall.

Since Beehiiv is still relatively new and focused primarily on email marketing, their content creation tools reflect that simplicity. It gets the job done, but don’t expect advanced features.

Ghost’s Content Creation Powerhouse Ghost is much more feature-rich. You get all the basic stuff like H2, H3 title tags, text paragraphs, images, and videos, but Ghost also includes a lot of additional blocks that make content creation significantly more powerful:

• Free Preview Block: If you have private content, you can make the top part publicly available and close off the bottom part for paying members only
• Email Only Block: When writing a blog post that you’ll send to your audience, content in this block is only readable in an email client – perfect for adding personal touches to your newsletter version
• Call-to-Action Blocks: Professional-looking CTAs that convert better than basic text links
• Product Blocks: Showcase products or services directly in your content

Ghost is very powerful and feature-rich, with useful blogging features designed to make your content more engaging and high-converting.

Publishing Options Both platforms work functionally the same way when it comes to publishing. You create a blog post, and when you’re ready to publish, you can choose what to do with it:

• Publish to your website and send to your email list
• Only send to your email list
• Only publish on your website
• Send to specific subscriber tiers (like paying subscribers only)

Both Beehiiv and Ghost.org allow you to have paying subscribers and send private members-only content.

Winner: Ghost.org – The content creation process is simply more robust with a wider range of features to increase engagement and create high-converting blog posts.

SEO: Clear Winner

Not much to say here – Ghost is better for SEO, hands down.

Ghost has significantly better SEO capabilities than Beehiiv websites. I don’t really see Beehiiv websites ranking particularly well in search engines, whereas with a Ghost.org website, you can absolutely rank and get organic search traffic.

I rank with my Ghost.org blog and get organic search traffic every day that converts meaningfully:

Again, this goes back to Beehiiv being focused as an email newsletter solution. You can publish content that’s publicly available, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to get ranked and indexed by search engines effectively.

Technical SEO Details Both platforms allow you to have basic control over on-page SEO – creating title tags, metadata, and so forth.

However, there’s one small detail I don’t like about Beehiiv: their blog posts have URLs like website.com/p/post-title, whereas Ghost.org websites use the cleaner website.com/post-title format. It’s a tiny thing, but I prefer the cleaner URL structure.

The Verdict If creating blog posts and ranking them in search engines is important to your strategy, you’re probably going to prefer Ghost.org over Beehiiv.

Email Marketing and Automations: Beehiiv Dominates

This is where there’s really no comparison – Beehiiv absolutely crushes Ghost.org in this department.

Beehiiv’s Automation Power

With Beehiiv, you can set up sophisticated email automations. Since it’s designed as a branded email newsletter platform, you get access to powerful automation features on the back end. If you’re trying to sell a product or course, you can create a year-long automation sequence if you want. It’s incredibly powerful.

You can set up automations for a wide range of purposes beyond just selling:

• Re-engagement sequences: If people aren’t opening your emails, send them through a recovery email sequence to get them re-engaged
• Subscription management: Send emails asking if people still want to stay subscribed, and if they don’t respond, tag and remove them appropriately
• Onboarding sequences: Create welcome series for new subscribers
• Product sales funnels: Build sophisticated sequences to sell products and services

Ghost.org’s Limitations

With Ghost.org, you can’t set up automations. It’s really just direct response email marketing. You can send out a weekly email newsletter but you don’t have access to any sophisticated automations on the back end.

Ghost does have very basic automations like directing new subscribers to a thank you page and sending a welcome email, but that’s as far as it goes.

You can manually filter your email list to see people who have unsubscribed or haven’t been opening emails, then manually remove them, but there’s no built-in automation for list management.

When Automations Matter If automations are very important to you, if you need to create:

• Email onboarding sequences
• Re-engagement emails
• Product sales funnels
• Even a year-long autoresponder sequences

Then you’re going to love Beehiiv.

Ghost.org is just direct response email marketing without the automation sophistication.

Monetization: Beehiiv’s Multiple Revenue Streams

Beehiiv really stands out in the monetization department, offering more built-in revenue opportunities than Ghost.org.

Make money with Beehiiv

Beehiiv’s Monetization Arsenal Beehiiv offers several monetization options:

1. Paid Subscriptions: Standard paid subscription functionality with monthly or yearly options
2. Private Members-Only Content: Restrict content to paying subscribers
3. Built-in Ad Network: When you publish and send emails, you can include display ads within the email once you qualify
4. Boost Feature: Accept cross-promotion from other newsletters. When people subscribe to your website, a lightbox appears suggesting other newsletters. You get paid when people subscribe to these other newsletters – this can become quite lucrative
5. Automation-Powered Sales: Use the automation features to create sophisticated sales processes for products or services

Make money with Ghost.org

Ghost.org’s Monetization Options Ghost.org offers solid but more limited monetization:

1. Paid Subscriptions: Same as Beehiiv – monthly or yearly options connected through Stripe
2. Three Content Tiers: Public content, members-only content (free subscribers), and paid subscriber content
3. Manual Ad Management: You can run ads in your newsletter, but you have to handle advertiser relationships manually

Content Display Quality I give Ghost.org the edge on how private members-only content actually looks. When someone clicks into a private blog post on Ghost, they can read a bit of it, then hit a content-locked block that prompts them to subscribe. It looks professional and converts well.

Winner: Beehiiv – The native ad network and Boost feature give Beehiiv more passive income opportunities, plus the automation capabilities enable more sophisticated sales processes.

Customization: Ghost’s Flexibility vs. Beehiiv’s Simplicity

If website customization is important to you, you’re probably going to prefer Ghost.org over Beehiiv.

Beehiiv’s Limitations

Beehiiv is honestly kind of cookie-cutter. Beehiiv websites all tend to look the same, sort of like Substack websites. You have very limited control over how your website looks – just basic customization like colors, logos, homepage format, and subscribe page layout.

Beehiiv is rolling out some type of website builder that’s still in beta at the time I’m writing this, so more customization options may be coming. But right now, if you just want an email newsletter website and basic customization is fine, Beehiiv works. However, if having a cool, branded, unique-looking website is important to you, you’ll find Beehiiv limiting.

Ghost.org’s Customization Power

Ghost.org, like WordPress, is fully customizable. On their cheapest plan, you are limited in what themes you can use, but once you upgrade your account, you unlock everything. You can add custom themes and design any type of theme exactly how you like.

Email Design Quality Regarding the actual emails your audience receives, I give the edge to Ghost.org. The emails from Ghost just look great out of the box.

Beehiiv emails look okay, but Ghost gives you more control and flexibility over the look and feel of your emails. Beehiiv’s email customization can be a little confusing and overwhelming for complete beginners.

Bottom Line If your primary focus is building an email newsletter and basic customization is fine, Beehiiv works even with its cookie-cutter appearance.

If having a branded, unique-looking website is very important to you, you’ll be much happier with Ghost.org.

Ease of Use: Ghost Takes the Lead

Ghost.org is by far way more simple and easy to use than Beehiiv. This is actually why I created that detailed Beehiiv tutorial video – because I find Beehiiv a little bit confusing for complete beginners.

Beehiiv’s Learning Curve When you’re trying to set up everything with Beehiiv, you have to deal with:

• Complex DNS setup using their entry feature
• Multiple different name servers for the website and email marketing aspects
• Setting up different domain names or subdomains for emails (different from your primary website domain)
• Various technical details on the back end that can confuse average users

Ghost.org’s Simplicity Ghost.org is refreshingly simple:

1. Sign up and pay for your account
2. Set a custom domain name by pointing name servers to your domain registrar
3. Set up a Stripe account to accept payments for paid subscriptions
4. You’re done

It’s really that simple. Ghost.org is very intuitive, particularly if you’re coming from WordPress.

Long-term Usability Once you get over the initial learning curve with Beehiiv, it becomes pretty simple to use on a day-to-day basis. But that initial setup can be a barrier for many users who just want to get started quickly.

Pricing: Free vs. Affordable

Beehiiv’s Pricing Advantage Beehiiv shines with their completely free plan that you can use to grow your email list. Yes, it’s going to be a subdomain (like mywebsite.beehiiv.com), and you don’t get access to automations, but you can grow your email list without paying anything upfront.

When you’re ready to upgrade and access automations (which I highly recommend since automations are powerful for selling products and creating onboarding sequences), the paid plan runs about $30+ per month.

Ghost.org’s Pricing Ghost doesn’t offer a free plan, but they do have a $9 per month plan (about $100 per year). This gets you 500 email subscribers, and you can email them as many times as you like – daily if you want.

Value Comparison

• Beehiiv: Free to start, ~$30/month for full features
• Ghost.org: $9/month minimum, no free option

If you want a completely free way to start building your email list, Beehiiv wins. If you don’t mind paying a small monthly fee for a more polished, easier-to-use platform, Ghost.org offers good value.

Final Verdict: Which Platform Should You Choose?

Both platforms are solid choices, but they serve different needs:

Choose Beehiiv if:

• Your primary focus is building an email newsletter
• You want powerful automation capabilities
• You need multiple monetization options (ads, boost, subscriptions)
• You want to start completely free
• You don’t mind a learning curve and cookie-cutter design

Choose Ghost.org if:

• You want to build a professional publishing website
• SEO and organic traffic are important to your strategy
• You prefer ease of use and polished design
• You want more content creation features and customization
• You don’t mind paying from day one

My Personal Take

If you’re serious about email marketing and want the most powerful automation and monetization features, Beehiiv is the way to go despite its limitations.

The automation capabilities and built-in revenue streams like the ad network and Boost feature make it incredibly powerful for creators who want to maximize their newsletter income.

However, if you want to build a professional online presence that attracts both direct visitors and email subscribers, with better SEO capabilities and a more polished user experience, Ghost.org is the smarter choice.

The decision ultimately comes down to your primary goal.

Are you building a newsletter business (Beehiiv) or a content publishing business (Ghost.org)? Both can be successful, but they represent different approaches to online content creation and audience building.

Consider your technical comfort level, budget, long-term goals, and whether automation features are critical to your success. Both platforms will serve you well, it’s just a matter of which aligns better with your specific vision and needs.

This platform is excellent if you’re looking to start a branded, email newsletter that you send out once a week to your audience.

It’s not perfect (not platform is), but where it really shines is that you get a high converting website, the ability to custom design the emails, automations for sales, the ability to segment your audience and a lot of creative ways to monetize your list.

Let’s get started.

High converting websites (though a bit cookie cutter)

Beehiiv websites all have the same sort of “cookie cutter” layout, but it works (similar to Substack).

First you get a big offer section inviting visitors to subscribe to your website.

You can end your site design here, or you can add in different sections at the click of a button. The most common sections to add in are an “archive” section, another call to action to subscribe to the email list, or specific blog posts you want displayed.

Simple and no code

Beehiiv’s website design tools use a simple, no-code approach that focuses on conversion and simplicity over creative control. It makes it easy to build sites quickly but this approach does end up creating websites that all look very similar to each other.

The platform offers basic options like uploading logos, changing fonts and colors, and choosing from preset layouts like Default or Headliner.

These limited choices force most newsletters into the same basic structure with nearly identical home pages and subscribe sections.

While users can adjust spacing and text styles, the underlying framework stays the same across all sites. Most people end up with slight variations of the exact same visual template because there aren’t enough customization options to create something truly unique.

On top of that, free plan users are stuck with a Beehiiv subdomains that make their sites look obviously platform-hosted. But it is free and you can build your list and upgrade later if you like.

Pros:

• Quick and easy setup with no coding required
• Perfect for beginners without design experience
• Fast publishing and launching capabilities
• Simple interface that’s not overwhelming
• Built-in newsletter integration that converts

Cons:

• Limited customization options
• Cookie-cutter appearance across all sites
• Restricted to basic themes and layouts
• Free plans use Beehiiv subdomains

Beehiiv website builder rolling out

Beehiiv is working on a proper website builder so you can have more control over the layout and design of your newsletter website.

Here’s what the website builder (still in beta) can do:

• Drag-and-Drop: You can move stuff like text, pictures, or buttons around with your mouse, like playing with blocks. It’s super easy to make pages look how you want.
• High converting templates: It comes with new designs to start with, so you don’t build from scratch. You pick a template, add your colors, and change fonts in a few clicks.
• Marketing features: You can add animations, custom signup forms, or special pages that change based on what your readers like. It also works great on phones and computers.
• Design control: You can tweak the menu bar, footer, or even add your own code if you’re on a high plan. This makes your site feel more “you.”

Beehiiv’s Website Builder v2, still in beta but it will become fully available at some point.

Email delivery and customization (important!)

The most important aspect of any email service is deliverability. That means, do your emails hit the inbox? Not the spam folder. Not the promotions tab in Gmail. The primary inbox.

Beehiiv focuses on making sure your emails reach your subscribers’ inboxes instead of getting stuck in spam folders.

For most users on Launch and Scale plans, the platform follows a standard delivery process that starts when you hit send. The system automatically checks your subscriber list to remove bad email addresses that don’t exist, which helps avoid delivery problems.

It then records how many people will receive your email and runs additional checks to catch issues like full inboxes or fake addresses.

When problems are found, Beehiiv handles them differently depending on the type. Soft bounces happen when someone’s inbox is temporarily full, and the system will keep trying to deliver these emails for 72 hours.

Hard bounces occur when an email address is completely fake or no longer exists, and these are immediately removed from future sends.

The platform uses Twilio SendGrid as its email delivery service, which they say has improved their deliverability by 52% compared to the previous year. However, getting delivered doesn’t always mean reaching the inbox.

Emails can still end up in spam folders if your sender reputation is poor or your content triggers spam filters.

Several features help improve your email delivery rates.

List cleaning allows you to filter out inactive subscribers who haven’t opened emails in a set time period, like 90 days, which keeps your list healthy and improves open rates.

The analytics dashboard shows important metrics like open rates, click rates, and bounce rates so you can identify delivery problems early.

You can also create segments to target your most engaged readers, which helps with overall delivery. Beehiiv automatically sets up authentication protocols called SPF and DKIM, and provides a DMARC wizard to prevent others from sending fake emails using your domain name.

Smart warming

For users on Max and Enterprise plans, Beehiiv offers beta features that provide more advanced delivery tools like “smart warming.”

Smart warming automatically builds your sender reputation by gradually increasing your sending volume, which helps new newsletters avoid being flagged as spam.

Re-engagement campaigns can automatically send emails to win back inactive subscribers or remove them from your list entirely.

Perhaps most importantly than anything else is that these higher-tier plans include dedicated IP addresses, giving you complete control over your sender reputation instead of sharing an IP address with other users whose poor practices could hurt your delivery rates.

Email marketing automations with Beehiiv

With Beehiiv, you can setup an email autoresponder for new subscribers and various triggers of your choosing. Perfect if you want to create an email welcome series, sell a product or service, create a 6 month autoresponder sequence or a re-engagement sequence.

Email automations work like a chain of messages that send automatically when something specific happens, such as when a new person signs up for your newsletter.

Beehiiv offers different automation features depending on your plan level.

Automations for the Launch, and Scale Plans

For basic automation needs, all beehiiv plans include at least one welcome email feature:

• Launch Plan (name of the free plan): You can set up one welcome email that goes out when someone subscribes. Find this option in your dashboard under “Settings” where you can use a simple editor to write your message.
• Scale Plan Features: This plan gives you access to more powerful automation tools. Go to the “Automations” tab and click “New Automation” to get started. You can choose different triggers like “Signed Up” for new subscribers, then add steps such as sending emails or adding delays between messages. For example, you could create a welcome series with three emails that go out over one week.

How Triggers and Actions Work

The system uses triggers and actions to control when and what happens:

• Triggers include events like someone signing up or upgrading to a paid subscription
• Actions are mostly about sending emails, but you can also add time delays or basic conditions (like sending a different email if someone clicks a specific link)

Tracking Your Results

beehiiv provides analytics to help you understand how your automations perform. You can track open rates, click rates, and see how many people complete your entire automation sequence. This data helps you figure out what works well, like whether your welcome email gets opened frequently.

Current Limitations

The automation features have some restrictions depending on your plan:

• Free and Launch plans only allow the single welcome email
• Scale plan automations are fairly basic, offering only a few trigger options and no advanced logic
• There’s currently no way to automatically stop an automation if someone replies to your emails

While Beehiiv’s email automations handle basic needs like welcome series effectively, they remain simple for most users.

Grow and monetize your audience with Beehiiv

With email marketing and unique monetization features build into Beehiiv, there are quite a few ways to grow and monetize your audience.

1. Beehiiv Boosts (Get Paid to Recommend)

Boosts is like a marketplace where you promote other newsletters and get paid for each new subscriber you send them. After someone joins your newsletter, they see suggestions for other newsletters. If they subscribe, you earn $1-$4 per person (average $1.63).

Who can use it: Scale, Max, or Enterprise plans

Tip: Pick newsletters that make sense, if you’re publishing a personal finance newsletter, a real estate newsletter is a good related topic. You can also check the marketplace and sort by highest payouts.

2. Built in ad Network

Beehiiv has it’s own built out network that you can leverage once you’re on the Scale plan and have a subscribe base as you’re paid based on impressions and clicks of any ads you display.

This ad network connects you with brands that want to advertise in your newsletter. You get paid when people click the ads or just see them. In your Beehiiv dashboard you’ll have an advertising section when creating a new email.

Here you can reject ads that don’t fit your audience.

3. Paid Subscriptions

Charge readers for exclusive content they can’t get anywhere else. Set monthly or yearly prices (like $5/month or $50/year). Create special posts only paying subscribers can read.

4. Affiliate Marketing

Promote products with special links and earn money when people buy through your link. Beehiiv’s also offers a Partner Program that pays you 50% of what new users spend for 12 months. You can also promote other companies’ products.

5. Sponsored content

Companies pay you to write about their products in your newsletter (or they will write the content for you to publish). You can charge $100-$1,000+ based on how many subscribers you have. Write in your own voice while talking about their product.

On top of that, they may also give your audience an exclusive coupon code and an affiliate link. So you get paid to publish the content and make ant commission on conversions.

6. Sell Digital Products / memberships / communities

Create and sell e-books, courses, templates, guides or private communities to your subscribers. Take advantage of the automation feature built in to warm up your audience and convert them into buyers.

Yes, you’ll need a way to host your products (like with an online course platform)

7. Donations and Tips

Ask readers to support your work with one-time or monthly donations. Add “Support Me” buttons linking to a “Buy Me a Coffee” page.

8. Run your own referral programs

Reward subscribers for bringing in new readers, the bigger your audience the better your monetization options become. Give prizes like free content or merchandise for successful referrals. More subscribers means more opportunities to make money from all the other methods.

Final thoughts

Overall Beehiiv is growing in rapid popularity because it’s simple excellent and what it’s designed for; and that’s to publish a weekly email newsletter.

With great monetization features built in a various ways to grow your audience as well as reliable email delivery it’s no surprise that popular brand like The Milk Road and The Neuron use Beehiiv to power their respective publishing businesses.

BEEHIIV

Build a beautiful, high converting newsletter website today with Beehiiv.

Free plan to get you started, Scale plan unlocks all the features you need to grow and monetize your audience.

CLICK HERE FOR BEEHIIV

This sort of headline and topic has been in circulation since early 2010.

Each year, people talk about how blogging is dead and that you should move on to other forms of marketing. Before, it was all about how social media would kill off blogging and how YouTube and video creation would make blogging irrelevant.

But a good blog, with great content and high rankings, is a valuable asset. So what is the reality? Is blogging dead

My answer is yes, it’s kind of dead, here is how you need to pivot.

Personal Blogging is Dead

Dooce.com is one of the original mommy bloggers and one of the first bloggers to become famous, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and landing multiple book deals.

Her writing is smart, funny, and brutally transparent. It’s like a real-life soap opera. It’s this excellent writing and drama that drew a massive audience to her blog. It’s this sort of blogging that is dead for most people. Writing about whatever you want, hoping and wishing to build an audience.

Don’t get me wrong, if you feel compelled to write, then write.

Writers write , and I would never want to discourage you from doing what you are supposed to do.

However, the overwhelming majority of people who visit my blog want to make money from blogging and want to know how this business model actually works.

If you’re more interested in creating a personal writing outlet that has readersI would strongly suggest using a platform like Blogger for casual writing, or better, use a writing and email marketing platform like Substack to build an audience around a topic of expertiese.

The reason is because casual writing or writing about your passions tends to not lend itself to getting a lot of organic traffic. With Substack you’ll have a network of built in readers and a way to keep in touch with them through email marketing.

Outdated Blogging Advice

I launched DavidUtke.com in 2021. I’ve launched blogs for the last decade and blogging advice you’ll see online is incredibly outdated and often pushed by those who started their blogs 5-10 years ago.

What worked in the past does not work today and I want to share with you some common advice that does not work.

• Click bait headlines
• Posting a lot to get a lot of traffic
• Gust posting extensively
• Blogging about your personal life and thoughts

Click bait headlines

With blog posts, your headlines need to be clear and specific. They need to relate to the blog post directly, meet the particular search intent, and use distinctive keyword phrases that people use.

If you want to rank a blog post for Bluehost Review, for example, you need to create a catchy title with that specific phrase.

Just calling your blog post “Bluehost Review” will not cut it. It needs something like “Bluehost Review – The Stunning Truth.” At least that second title is more interesting.

So, as Google has gotten more sophisticated about ranking content for search intent, pure clickbait no longer works with blog posts.

Posting a lot to get traffic

Seth Godin made this type of blogging strategy famous. He initially used a free blogging platform called Type Pad but has since switched to WordPress. He has posted a 300 to 600-word blog post every single day for over a decade.

That’s an excellent writing habit, but it’s not the secret to blogging success. He claimed that it was this consistency that made his blog famous.

Back in the early 2000s, when blogs were still relatively new, publishing a lot of content day after day made a difference. But in today’s landscape, publishing just for publishing’s sake is a waste of time.

Instead, it would help if you focused on creating helpful, searchable content. Content with some specific keyword focus so people can organically find your content. Because that’s why you blog today. To get search engine traffic that you can convert into product sales or email signups.

Just posting a lot of mediocre content will not help you get search traffic. Quality over volume is the reality of today.

Guest posting (with a caveat)

Guest posting used to be a very powerful strategy for building up authority and your rankings with a website.

If you could get content on other websites linking back to yours, it helped create authority for your website so that you would rank more quickly and easily.

Today, guest posting is a massive waste of time IF you’re not posting on high-traffic, high-authority websites with a link back to your homepage of a specific blog post.

That means you want to create guest blog posts for big players in your niche where you make a 2000-word+ blog post for them. A link from a trustworthy, content-relevant website is much more valuable than a random link from a new blog.

So, guest posting works, but it’s no longer a lazy man strategy. You’ll need to put tremendous effort into finding, negotiating, and creating high-quality content for other websites.

Blogging about your personal life and thoughts

The old idea behind this was to make your blog more personable to help readers connect with you to help grow your blog.

You can and should leverage personal experiences and stories into your blog post when possible, but it should be done in a tactful way where it enhances the content.

People need to know why you have the authority to give advice.

However, publishing personal updates does not help grow your traffic and may hurt your blog as it’s too off-topic for what Google and other search engines think you website is about.

Honestly, this type of writing you should do over on X and then link to your email list or website.

Blogging Advice That Works

Instead of blogging about your personal thoughts and opinions (which most likely no one will read). You need to instead focus on keyword research and create content people are actually looking for.

Next, depending on how competitive your topic is will determine if you need to promote your website by getting links from other websites. Link building is always important but it is critical when you are entering a well established market.

In addition, you’ll want to focus well on internal links and getting external links pointing back to specific blog posts on your website. Let’s jump into some blogging advice for 2022 that actually works.

• Quality and quantity
• Focus on the 80/20 rule for publishing
• Go where your audience is
• Don’t pay attention to search volume
• Build a brand with authority
• Email marketing

Quality and quantify

Only expect to build a high-traffic website with content. Too many get excited about starting a website, publishing 11 blog posts, and then abandoning their project for one reason or another. You need quantity when starting, so do that or don’t even start a blog.

When starting a blog, you first need to get to at least 25 to 30 blog posts to get any traffic. At this point, you’ll be indexed and considered a resource on a topic.

From there, you’ll want to work to get to around 100 blog posts, which should earn you 100-1000 visitors a day depending if you are creating searchable content. More than that, it depends on your niche and ability to keyword research topics.

One hundred good blog posts are time-consuming if you do it yourself and expensive if you’re hiring writers. But if you’re going to blog, know that if you do it, do it right.

In the long term, you’ll want to get over 250 posts. To do that, you’ll typically need to focus on the writing by putting in the hours or instead hire writers and curate content yourself as the business owner.

Focus on the 80/20 Rule for Publishing

The 80/20 rule for publishing means that 80% of the content you put out goes after content ideas you know people are looking for.

The other 20% is for you to round out your website with the required content for your topic. Sometimes, that means creating content that is on an overly competitive keyword or a keyword phrase that is not too popular, but your website would not be complete with it.

For example, I have a detailed blog post on how to create a website. That topic is incredibly competitive, and my blog post will likely never rank, but this blog would only be complete with it.

Go where you audience is

Your audience will determine where you spend the most time. Some topics it does makes more sense to focus on other platforms either as the primary traffic source or the secondary source.

I’m a video first creator, the YouTube channel comes first, this blog second. But that’s just me.

Others it may be using X and Linked In to drive traffic to a newsletter; or perhaps it’s using Pinterest and/or Facebook to run paid ads to your blog posts.

Again, know your topic and go where your audience is.

In short, I strongly suggest creating SEO optimized blog content. You need a website no doubt. However with AI disrupting Google’s dominance, you can’t rely on just blogging naymore.

So don’t overwhelm yourself but know that you will have to create content across multiple platforms where your audience is.

Don’t pay attention too much to search volume

You need to create content that people are looking for, but don’t focus too much on search volume so much.

As long as people are looking for a specific topic, your piece of content on that topic has the potential to rank for that phrases as well as similar phrases.

Google is sophisticated about indexing and ranking content and driving traffic for multiple search phrases to one piece of content. SEO’s in the past would make a distinction between phrases like “create a website” and “make a website” when in reality the search intent is the same.

Google knows this so you don’t need to stress about search volume per keyword. Just create a quality, best in class piece of content that goes after the main keyword and incorporates and related keywords in it and that content will get traffic for multiple keywords.

Build a brand with authority

Google and other search engines love brands and will rank brands that build trust and authority on a given topic over time. Brands are valuable because over time they will rank well for competitive, valuable keyword topics without much effort.

By creating a brand your goal is to be the authority on a given topic. Instead of creating a website on the best “tea kettles” go after the broader and more useful topic of brewing tea. Brands can take a year or more to build, but it becomes a valuable digital asset long term.

Email marketing is how you turn a blog into a business

Email marketing should be on your radar as an online business owner after you prove your idea will work. In general, for most bloggers, I recommend focusing on growing your blog to around 300 visitors a day at a minimum before investing in an email list provider.

When you do start email marketing, make sure to have a proper funnel setup for lead generation. That means you have a compelling reason to subscribe to your email, you take your visitors to a dedicated “thank you” page, and you have some onboarding series of emails set up.

Last, you have some sort of purpose or strategy for starting email marketing. You know what products, services, and content you want to promote. Don’t go in blind; build out a roadmap for what your goal is with your email list.

Google also has a “big publisher” problem

Sean Kaye has an excellent break down of the existential problem Google has:

The TLDR is that Google ranks brands over experts unfairly.

The complications here are twofold:

1) These sites are often not experts, authorities, or trusted advisors on these topics but will generally outrank sites that fulfil all of these requirements.

2) This runs afoul of Google’s position that you should create content for “users” and not search engines.

Sean Kaye

Big brands have professional writers, lot’s of authority due to them existing for decades and rank for competitive keywords that perhaps they should not. Like the New York times ranks for the keyword “best vlogging cameras.”

They recommend the Blue Yetti as a microphone for your iPhone vlogging setup:

This is honestly silly advice.

People who vlog are looking for a mobile, on-the-go setup.

The Blue Yeti is a big (emphasis on big) USB microphone. While it does provides decent audio, there are better options. Also, what if you’re wanting to travel vlog and record from your car or on the go? An oversized USB mic is again a silly choice.

Don’t write for search engines?!

So experts like myself who run websites, create content for these competitive keywords yet are told by Google that we should create content for users first, and not search engines. But that’s exactly what I’m doing with my vlogging camera article as I actually vlog.

Finally, Google has stated that unhelpful content could penalize an entire website, even if all the other content is helpful. So, if I write a personal blog post that is aimed at users first but is not helpful runs the risk of hurting traffic levels?

Make it make sense.

Give your hot takes on X

The reality is that your website is where you need to create helpful content that people are looking for around a topic you know and understand. If you want to share your personal takes and opinions on topics then X (formerly Twitter) is the best place to do that.

In addition, having a presence on X and other social platforms helps your website’s authority because you’re proving to the algorithms that you’re a real person with experience and a following instead of being some lazy person creating bulk content on a topic they know very little about with no e-e-a-t over the subject.

Is Blogging Dead?

Blogging is not dead if your intention is to use a blog and website as a form of content marketing to drive leads, sales, affiliate commissions and subscribers by being helpful and useful to your audience.

If you’re wanting though to focus more on writing, then I would use some combination of X and YouTube and drive traffic to a Substack website where you can offer paid subscriptions and can email your articles to your audience.

If you want to start a blog that makes money, that model still works, but not to the same degree as it used to as there are simply more creative ways people consume and share content.

But a great blog with excellent content that’s optimized around a topic people are wanting to know more about is still a very valuable asset and quite lucrative. It’s why I still run and maintain my own website and blog.

Something like hello at your website.com. It builds trust with your audience and makes brands comfortable doing business with you.

There are three ways to do this:

• Create an email inbox using your shared hosting account.
• Setup a redirect with your shared host so you can use Gmail.
• Purchase dedicated email hosting (super cheap!)

Let’s get to it.

Setup a pro email with a shared hosting account

By far, the easiest method is to use your web hosting account. If you’re doing anything online, you need a website so get a shared hosting account.

With any shared hosting account, (I’ll be using Bluehost as they are the most popular shared host recommended by WordPress) you can create a few different inboxes for your domain.

Step 1: Create an inbox with CPanel email

First log into your hosting account. Depending on your web host, you’ll need to navigate to where you can manage email.

For Bluehost, CPanel email is under the hosting tab with your websites.

From this point simply click on “CPANEL EMAIL” and you’ll be able to setup any email for any domain you have added to your hosting account.

I suggest creating an email with something like your name at your website, hello at your website and so forth. Have a personal touch to it if possible as “info” or “support” is a bit corporaty and boring.

Step 2: Type the email handle you want

Once you click on “continue,” you’ll be looking at a CPanel dashboard to create an email. Simple set your username and password and that is it.

To check your email, you’ll need to log into your hosting account, then go to your CPanel email and log in using the password you just set.

Pros:

• This is the simplest way I know to get a professional email.

Cons:

• CPanel emails are quite limited with storage which is why most people end up getting dedicated email hosting or they use Gmail with their CPanel email as Gmail gives you 15 gb of storage.

How to use Gmail with your CPanel email

Gmail gives you 15 GB of storage so it’s a much better option than using a CPanel email alone.

To use Gmail with your Cpanel email you must setup an email forward from your professional email that you just created to a free Gmail account.

Then in your free Gmail account, you’ll need to setup a “reply as” to reply as your professional email.

Here’s how to do that:

Step 1: Create an email forward for the pro CPanel email you just made

You can setup a forward of domain forward. Domain forward means all emails sent this domain are redirected where a forward is for a single email.

I suggest using a forward so direct emails from your CPanel email to your Gmail.

Step 2 – Set an alias in Gmail

You need to create an alias to “reply as.”

This sounds complicated but it’s quite simple. When you reply to emails that have been forwarded, the reply will come from the Gmail account (obviously).

But the issue is if someone emails “hello@example.com” and gets a reply from a random Gmail account, it looks weird

As such, you need to setup an alias to reply as.

Go into your advanced settings in Gmail by clicking on the gear icon and navigate to “accounts and import” then click on add another email address:

What you’re doing is that you’re verifying that you own the professional email you want to reply from. So once you click to add another email address, you’ll see a popup:

Put in the professional email you created. Change the name as needed as well. When you reply to emails forwarded to this free Gmail account, the reply will look like it came from this email address.

When you click on “next step” fill out the form as follows:

Now you’ll have to fill out a few pieces of information. It should auto populate the required fields, but if not you’ll need to verify this information in your shared hosting account.

Bluehost as a dedicated guide as to their SMTP settings. Your host will provide the same information.

• SMTP Server: This is your servers mail address. It’s usually mail.example.com.
• Username: This is the professional email you setup.
• Password: The password you created for your professional email (not the Gmail account mind you).

Step 3: Test it out and “reply as” your professional business email

The last step is to actually reply to emails from your professional email account. Now that you have added an alias, you need to make sure it’s selected when replying to emails.

You can choose to reply as the Gmail account or the alias you setup.

Get an email hosting account

The last way I want is to purchase dedicated email hosting.

This is the method you want to use once you’re getting a lot of emails, need more advanced tools and want more security and privacy than what a Gmail provides.

Functionally, this is a private email server. Once you purchase an email hosting account, you’ll have to setup a few things. First, you need to decide which of your domains you want to create an email hosting account for.

Setup a mailbox and the DNS settings

Once you signup for an email hosting account for a specific domain you’ll need to navigate to “advanced DNS” and set “private email” as the mail settings.

Next, simply manage the email for your domain. It’s an intuitive interface where you can add and delete mailboxes and check your email.

Please note that from now on, you’ll have to log into Namecheap to access your email. Alternatively, you can setup an email client like the Mail app on Windows or the IOS Mail app.

What to look for in an email host

As you’re shopping around you will want to look for are how much data you’re able to store for both email and media like images. You’ll also want to know how much adding additional mailboxes to your account costs.

My three favorite email hosting plans are from Namecheap, Dynadot and Google Workspace.

Namecheap – Best overall choice

With Namecheap, their starter plan is a low cost choice for those who just need a pro email with a good amount of storage.

You get 1 free mailbox (like “hello” at your website), 5 GB of email storage and 2 GB for files. For anyone starting out this is more than adequate. They do charge roughly $8 per year for each additional mailbox.

Namecheap

Low prices on domain names, low renewal rates, free WHOIS protection and good support.

I use Namecheap for all my domains and use them in my tutorial videos.

Visit Today

Dynadot

Dynadot provides 1 inbox totally for free. You don’t get any sort of advanced spam filters, backups or any guarantees, but it’s free.

Their email hosting plan which allow more advanced features an unlimited email address costs just $20 a year.

Google Workspace

Google Workspace is basically all of Google’s suite of services under a paid account. That means no ads, no sharing your data. You get Gmail with a custom domain, storage and a wide range of collaboration tools.

Conclusion

So that is it for this guide on how to create a professional business email for your brand.

I would start out with using a shared hosting account and doing a redirect to a Gmail account. Then when it makes sense, upgrade to a dedicated email hosting account.

Any questions or comments? Let me know via the contact page.

No, you really you don’t need to do any tricks like sub for sub (which will hurt your channel by the way) or buy subscribers from some shady website.

Instead, let’s focus on the fundamentals you’re probably overlooking or are not aware of as an aspiring YouTuber:

• Create a pro channel
• Make 50 bad videos and pay your dues
• Find keywords related to your niche
• Optimize your videos
• Review and adapt
• Turn viewers into subscribers
• Promote your videos in different ways
• Create YouTube shorts

Create a Pro Channel

Just like starting a blog, your vlog needs to look professional. That does not mean it needs to look boring or corporate, it just means you pay attention to all the details with the way your vlog channel looks so it inspires confidence and interest.

Channel banner

First, pay attention to your channel cover art. It does not need to be overly complicated, but you do want something that looks great and gives new visitors an idea of what your vlog is about.

To create your channel banner, use a service like Canva and edit a large image to be your cover art for your channel:

Clark is a good example of simple and elegant. This is a large picture taken with a mirrorless camera and a 50mm lens for that blurry background.

There is not “right” way to approach channel art. It really depends on your audience. For some topics, if you have an associated website, show it off.

Other topics that have a younger audience, it might actually be more appropriate to have a colorful and crazy cover art. Again, it depends. Look at your niche and model what works.

Regardless of what you do, the fundamentals still apply. According to the YouTube branding guide, your image need to be 2048 x 1152 px with an aspect ratio of 16:9.

The file also needs to be smaller than 6 MB. Lastly, you’ll also want to use the .png format as it’s the highest quality image you can upload.

When you do upload an image, everything is store in your photos for your Google account, not on YouTube if that makes sense.

Channel profile picture

Your profile picture again depends on your topic, but for most vloggers a high quality .png picture of you looking into the camera works best. You’ll want to select a profile picture that matches your channel banner and also an image that best represents the kind of content you’re making.

Are you an aspiring travel vlogger? Maybe a picture of you with sunglass on or in front of some spectacular landmark makes sense. Vlogging about life in Japan? A picture of you eating sushi would work.

Again, there is no right, one size fits all approach. It depends on your topic.

YouTube Thumbnails – have your own style!

YouTube thumbnails in addition to your vlog titles are the two most important factors in having a high click through rate. Again, you’re building a style and a brand so your thumbnails need to reflect this.

That means you have your own unique style. Let’s take a look at two popular travel vloggers. First up is Harald Baldr:

Harald uses clips from his videos as well as thumbnails shot from the Sony X3000. Then he applies saturation and contrast to make the pop a bit more in terms of color.

Are they overly complicated with big text and emojis? Nope, they are simple and consistent. They work because they show him in the thumbnail, have good contrast and an off set angle.

Next up, is successful pro travel vlogger, Drew Binsky:

Drew’s thumbnails are a combination of showing a person or himself if he’s the subject of the video, adding text and small graphics with consistent colors. His thumbnails are not difficult to make, but they are his own style and work for this reason.

When looking at both these vloggers, they have different styles but both work. The rule here is that your thumbnails don’t need to be complicated, but they do need to stand out amongst everyone else, have a person in the thumbnail and remain consistent.

Consistent in a way where people see your thumbnails they know it’s video from you. Don’t copy, but emulate others and find a style that works for you.

Bad thumbnails

Last, let’s mention what a bad thumbnail is. In short, bad thumbnails use too much text that’s difficult to read and are overly complicated with emojis, multiple pictures or no picture of a person.

These thumbnails are at least better than relying on YouTube to choose your thumbnail, but the issue is that they are not optimized for mobile. When people see your thumbnail, it’s on their phone or laptop.

While your thumbnail may look great when designing it, make sure to see how it looks on mobile. Also, keep your text on image big. Use a heavy font like League Spartan and keep it under 5 words. Don’t have multiple competing pictures where it becomes a confusing mess.

Make 50 bad videos

Your first 50 videos are going to be really bad. You’ll think you’re videos are good, but you’re wrong. You must pay your dues. That means spending your time and money on getting a camera for YouTube, creating content, editing and uploading to YouTube for nothing other than to gain experience creating content.

Your first 6 months to a year on YouTube as a vlogger, you’ll most likely be ignored. You’ll wonder why you’re only getting 20 views and then your views die off.

It’s because your video are not good. You don’t have good audio, your vlogs are too narcissistic, the topic is boring, you’re not taking people on any sort of a journey, the pacing is off and so forth.

Remember, you’re not entitled to others peoples attention. As you create vlogs, just do your best to incrementally improve. Improve your introduction and hook at the beginning of the video, create a more thoughtful and interesting body for the story and have a strong conclusion. Keep people engaged and don’t give up, but don’t keep doing the same thing that’s not getting results.

Types of videos to provide value

Next up, let me cover the types of video styles you need to make if your goal is to grow on YouTube. With your channel you want to incorporate these tyles regularly into your content creation.

• Education
• Hot new thing
• Documentation

Education – Teach them something

These vids don’t need to be long form tutorials or anything, they could be content like “best niches for Fiverr sellers” or “7 best ecommerce plugins for WordPress.”

Obviously you could go long form tutorial style content if it makes sense for your audience.

Hot new thing – Present new opportunities to your audience

They types of videos are where you cover a brand new topic that your audience will find interesting. Like “how to start a blog for free with a specific software” or “ChatGPT update is insane!” type content.

Document your experience

You would be surprised, but documenting your experience and giving your honest thoughts on a topic works quite well. Like how I created a tutorial on Google Sites and Blogger.com, then I created a more personal vid on my experience and thoughts between the two.

You can also give personal updates that relate to your channel. The goal with these videos is to allow your audience to connect with your more personably and to provide value if you can tie it into a related topic.

What about vlogging and entertainment?

These types of videos are a specific form of content creation that don’t blend well with the other three types. I would both group them together as entertainment, and while you can build an audience and a following, were here to grow and monetize our audience through creating a business.

Not create a TV show style entertainment channel.

Find keywords related to your niche

This is a balance with a vlog, but you do need to pay attention to keywords related to your niche. Keywords are just phrases people use to search for videos. For example, “Osmo Pocket vs GoPro” is a keyword.

While YouTube drives traffic and attention to your vlogs in different ways like suggesting your vlogs and recommending them to a new audience when they are watching other videos, going after search is still important as YouTube is a search engine.

With a vlog, you need to make interesting content. You also want people to be able to find your content through search and you want to improve the chances of your vlog getting recommended. You can do all this through using keywords.

If you watch a vlog on “Bangkok apartment tour” what types of suggested videos would you expect next or in the sidebar when on YouTube.com? Other vlogs from the same creator, but additional vlogs about a similar topic.

So think about what people want to watch and what you want to make. Don’t be selfish and create a “day in the life” video when no one knows who you are (or even cares for that matter). Create content that goes after a keyword phrase.

Clickbait titles

Clickbait works if you deliver on the title and have an established audience to feed the YouTube algorithm. If you have 350 subscribers, creating a video with title “Wow! You won’t believe what happened” just won’t work because your channel is too small.

Clickbait works, but you need to have an audience. So wait until you get to 30k subscribers and are getting thousands of views per vlog you make.

SEO your Videos

YouTube SEO is simple but not easy. It’s a mix of creating content people are looking for, that also has a good title, thumbnail, click through rate and watch time. For beginner vloggers, here is what you need to know for optimizing your vlogs so they have a good CTR and watch time the algorithm will love.

Keywords in the title

If your vlog is about Bangkok apartments, which is a keyword people use to look up videos, you’ll want to have that keyword in the title. Titles are important as they do help vlogs rank (but your CTR and watch time are way more important).

So model after other content creators. If we look at the apartment example, most videos have some sort of price in the title. Like “Amazing! 250$ for this Bangkok Apartment?” They also tend to use “condo for rent” or “apartment for rent” or “cost of living + name of city” format.

All of these are keywords which help with making your vlog relevant to these search terms, but you also need good copy to get people to click (and hopefully watch).

Write out descriptions

YouTube has clearly stated that thoughtful video descriptions help:

“Write full descriptions: up to one to two paragraphs.

Some creators only put their social media links in the description, potentially missing out on a lot of extra views.”

– YouTube Creator Academy

A video description should describe what the video is about, take the time to write 500 words or more describing your video. Make sure to use your keywords and related keywords when appropriate.

This is all about optimization. There are a lot of creators who don’t write descriptions at all, you don’t have to do this but if you want to help your vlogs get found it’s a small thing you can begin doing.

Video Tags

When you upload a video to YouTube you can add tags. Tags are not that important but they are still something you want to do:

Tags as it states “play a minimal role in helping viewers find your video.” They do help though, so add tags related to what the video is about. Don’t over do it with excessive, irrelevant tags.

Don’t end viewer watch time

You’ll see a lot of content creators promoting their own products, driving traffic to an email list or a product on Amazon. This is fine, but don’t do it in every vlog as this hurts your videos rankings and views because you’re ending viewers watch time.

So have a right mix where some videos you send people off YouTube and other videos you try to keep your audience on YouTube.

Promote your playlists

With YouTube you can create keyword rich playlists for your videos. Create relevant playlists and link them in your video description. You could phrase it like “binge watch my travel vlogs” and then link to your playlist in your video description or the top pinned comment.

Playlists are great because it keeps people on YouTube watching your content.

Focus on the first 30 seconds

The first 30 seconds is your hook. Tell people what the vlog is going to be about, get them interested to watch the whole video. Meet the expectations of your vlog title and thumbnail quickly and get to the point.

Review and adapt

Don’t get stuck in your ways. A lot of YouTubers tend to find a few things that work and just want to continue doing the same thing. Except, then their channel flatlines in terms of growth.

Instead of thinking of a new approach, they double down on what worked in the past to no avail. Instead, review your channel performance, videos, see how you compare to other channel and think of ways to stand out.

Turn viewers into subscribers

Want people to subscribe? It’s easy, first focus on creating content people love. You will organically build an audience just through creating good vlogs that are engaging.

Next, use the YouTube end screen feature. This is where you can have a watermark button that people can click on to subscribe. Also, use a bell emoji along with the word subscribe and create a subscribe link:

Last, just remind people to subscribe at the start and end of the vlog if they enjoyed the video.

Promote your Videos

YouTube is a slow grind, unless you have an audience on a different platform or are willing to run paid ads for your vlogs (known as discovery ads). For your average vlogger, you’ll want to use social media to get attention to your vlogs.

This helps because you’re able to feed the proverbial algorithm. New views, increased watch time, higher clickthrough rate all cause YouTube to push your vlogs more. How exactly do you do this? There are a few ways:

• Email marketing – If you build an email list you can send broadcast emails every time you publish a new video.
• Premier your video – YouTube video premiers are great at getting attention on an upcoming video.
• X – Post your video to Twitter, you’ll need an established audience on Twitter already however.
• Tik Tok – Very easy to get exposure on Tik Tok, build your audience and funnel them over to YouTube.
• Pinterest – A picture search image where you rank rank your pins and get new views on your videos.
• Build a blog – You can embed your videos in your blog posts that rank.
• YouTube shorts – Shorts are easy to get attention and you can funnel traffic to your main video.

In addition to YouTube, we suggest picking one or two alternative sources of views for your videos. It depends on your topic and where you audience is online. Some may find Pinterest or Facebook to be effective, others may find building a high traffic blog to work best.

Create YouTube shorts

YouTube shorts are fun, 1 minute long videos recorded with your phone. When you upload a short they will be found in the “shorts shelf” on mobile. Shorts are are able to drive a lot of views and subscribers to your channel.

They don’t help with watch time if your goal is to be monetized as views on your shorts are not counted. But if you’re looking to get views and subscribers fast, then shorts are a useful tool for doing that.

With short form content, you’ll want to add in captions, emojis as needed and you’ll also want to created a dedicated thumbnail for your shorts that are attention grabbing.

See Julian Goldie as a great example:

How to Grow on YouTube Conclusion

So that’s it for this guide on how to get subscribers and grow on YouTube.

It’s simple but not easy.

It takes a year of work laying the foundation. But if you’re willing to do the work, you can start to build an audience on YouTube.

Just create various types of content to serve and audience and leverage YouTube shorts for consistent growth.

In this honest Surfer SEO review based on actually using this software, I will break down its pros and cons (here is a video tutorial and review).

Surfer SEO, in combination with Grammarly, I’ve found to help increase overall rankings if you’re willing to take the time and make the required changes Surfer SEO outlines.

Just take a look at my Google Search console results for my piece of content on the best cameras for YouTube

Notice that little jump in the middle?

That’s a week or so after updating that content based on Surfer SEO’s suggestions. It jumped from being on page 7 to page 3.

Not enough to where it’s getting a significant amount of traffic yet, but heading in the right direction.

What is Surfer SEO and why do you need it?

Surfer SEO is a cloud-based software tool designed for on-page SEO analysis. It examines the highest-ranking content related to a specific keyword you give it and offers comprehensive insights into the on-page factors that contribute to its success. So you don’t need to guess what works.

The result is that you will now have specific actions to optimize your content and improve its ranking for the specific keywords relevant to your website. Keep in mind; however, a broad range of factors influence your rankings—backlinks, topical authority, site authority, etc.

Surfer SEO helps you craft content that people are looking for by comparing your content to what is ranking and getting organic traffic. In addition, Surfer SEO offers a few other tools, including a site audit, keyword research tool, SERP analysis, and their monitoring service called “grow flow.”

Pros:

• Excellent on-page SEO optimization recommendations that work and result in increased rankings via their content editor.
• Useful data collection from the site auditor and SERP analysis tool.
• Integration with Jasper AI and Grammarly.

Cons:

• SurferSEO is the best at optimizing for on-page SEO. They offer other tools as well, but I find them to be a distraction from their core offering.
• Subscription based. Yes, another subscription. I usually signup for 1-3 months, get my content optimized then cancel. Then when I have another batch of content, I repeat the same process.

Surfer SEO features

Surfer SEO’s core offering is its content editor, which tells you precisely what keywords you need to add to your content to make it more relevant, helpful, and accurate for the search intent behind the keyword.
For example, in my post about vlogging cameras, the original post did not mention frame rates or battery life (whoops).

These are helpful metrics camera buyers want to know, so Surfer SEO is quite beneficial at pointing out content gaps as it compares your content to what is ranking.

When you sign up to Surfer SEO you get access to:

• Content editor (with the an AI writer as an extra add-on)
• Keyword research tool
• Site audit
• SERP Analyzer

All of these tools help provide a more technical understanding over main and secondary keyword usage, common backlinks your post should have, heading structure, NLP keywords that are needed, meta tags and word count.

Surfer SEO then utilizes these metrics to construct a highly valuable model of search engine preferences for specific search queries. However, its capabilities extend beyond content optimization. Surfer SEO provides various tools for keyword research, SERP analysis, overall site optimization, and much more.

Content Editor

First up is Surfer SEO’s content editor that helps you optimize your on-page seo. This is the main reason why you want to sign up for Surfer SEO, even if only for a month. With the editor, you can import your blog post from a URL, write it in Surder SEO’s editor, then export it to WordPress or use AI to write the blog post.

The AI option uses Jasper.ai and has a straightforward step-by-step process for crafting blog posts. Whichever approach you choose for creating your blog content, the editor will give you an overall score and clear and specific keywords to add to your blog post to improve that score.

It will also tell you roughly how many words your article should be and how many headings and images should be in the article. I don’t want you to get bogged down in these technical details. They are just broad metrics; you should create unique content that fulfills the search intent.

Optimize by adding in recommended keywords

Your article will be scored on a scale of 0-100 in Surfer SEO. To increase your score, ensure your article is in the target word range, with similar headings, images, and, most importantly, add in the suggested keywords the recommended amount of times (green means your article has enough, yellow means you need to add more, no color means you either have too much or not enough):

This is important because it helps make your article more relevant for the target keyword based on what’s currently ranking. This is helpful for search engines and users because you often create an article and must remember to mention an essential concept.

Like in my best cameras for YouTube article, I did not initially mention battery life and specific framerates for different cameras. This information omitted from an article about cameras is a significant oversight, and Surfer SEO caught it.

You can either manually add in each keyword as you expand your content to make it better or you can use the “insert terms” option which will do it automatically for you. I like doing things manually as the “insert terms” options sometimes makes sentences unreadable and unnatural sounding.

Surfer SEO

Create mass produced blog posts that are optimized for on-page SEO using AI.

SIGN UP TODAY

The content editor is a must for any professional publisher

To wrap up, I’ve found the content editor a must have tool for optimizing content. It’s the whole reason why you want to sign up for Surfer SEO.

Follow the recommended changes, add in the relevant keywords, make sure your article has the right amount of words, images and headings and be within the score range Surfer SEO recommends.

Keyword research

You can do basic keyword research with Surfer SEO. It’s nothing to write home about to be honest and I find that a proper keyword research tool like Ubersuggest, aHrefs or SEMrush do a much better job at helping you find keywords.

The way the keyword research tool works with Surfer SEO is that you input the keyword you want to explore and the tool will then give you a wide range of keyword clusters to explore.

I did keyword research for “how to start a blog” with Surfer SEO and it gave me a keyword cluster for that term as well as clusters for related terms.

What is a keyword cluster?

A keyword cluster is an SEO industry concept for phrases that are related and either should all go into a single article or be created into independent articles on their own that link back to one main blog post.

Like if your main keyword and main blog post was about the best website builders, you would then create separate articles on “best free website builders,” or “best website builders for ecommerce,” and so forth which all link back to the main keyword or your main blog post (in this example “best website builders) would have these related, less popular keywords be paragraph sections.

Overall, I find the concept of keyword clusters a bit over rated.

Yes you need to to have topical authority around a topic to rank and address multiple concepts on a topic. But just publishing a lot of content around a topic is not enough.

I could write a bunch of blog posts about baking banana bread, but it would’nt mean I’m an expert on the topic. That comes down to your backlink profile which Google and other search engines rely heavily on.

Turn keyword clusters into articles with Surfer SEO

One feature that you may find helpful (I don’t) is that you can turn keyword clusters into rough draft articles that you can then optimize in the content editor.

Personally, I found the output to be pretty average and require a lot of human editing to the point where it is not particularly helpful.

Overall this is a nice idea, but anyone who’s serious about creating content knows how they want their article structured. In short, the keyword research tool within Surfer SEO is a nice to have, but there are other far superior keyword research tools out there.

Site Audit

The site audit feature audits your website from a technical perspective compared to other websites that are currently ranking for the terms you want to rank for.

It’s helpful, but there is a lot of overlap with the content editor and like the keyword research tool, it’s a “nice to have tool” but not as good as other options.

With the site audit feature it will give details on the following:

Content Score

Your content score is from the content editor and indicates how relevant your content is to what is currently ranking in Google.

Internal links

This feature tells you what internal links you should consider building between your pages. Internal linking works; it needs to be more noticed, and I find this particular feature helpful if you’re wondering what blog posts are best to link from and within your website.

Terms to use

From the content editor again, this tells you what keyword terms you need to add to your blog post to make it more relevant, helpful, and accurate.

Word Count

Another similar data set from the content editor. This will tell you how many words, headings, paragraphs, and “strong words” (words in bold) should be found in your article. Not particularly useful as far as I’m concerned because you want to write the best-in-class content available, not a duplicate article of what already exists.

Exact keywords and partial keywords

Learn where and how your exact keyword and partial keywords should appear in your article and where. So if your exact keyword is Scalenut review, you will see how to put that in your article correctly. This is useful to know, but it gets a bit too technical with placement. Naturally, add your exact keyword.

Page structure, title, and meta description

Get a high-level view of how your blog post page structure compares to the competition. This feature recommends how much more content to add or remove, including images and paragraphs.

You can also get feedback from Surfer SEO on improving your title and meta description or if the way you have it currently worded is accurate.

Speed

Get data on your page speed. Not particularly helpful as Google Search console provides this information in much greater detail that is useful and actionable

Missing common backlinks

Finally, something very helpful; this feature compares your competition’s backlink profile to what you have and gives suggestions on any backlinks you should try to obtain.

SERP Analyzer

Last is the SERP analyzer. It analayzs the top results in Google for a given keyword you’re trying to rank for. It breaks down each page that is ranking with it’s content editor score and overall authority. You can also click to add each article to

On the left hand sidebar you get a wide variety of filters analyze each blog post and can get a high level overview of each competitor in a similar way to the site audit. Except auditing your own page, you can break down your competitors from a technical standpoint.

Technical breakdown

You can change the search visibility for your competitors based on the URL, domain, backlinks, structure, page speed and images. You can even compare your website to your competitors. In general, this is a nice breakdown and gives you an idea of how you should structure your content.

But again, your goal is to make the content that’s better than what’s ranking so just focus on that instead of getting bogged down with these technical details as you don’t want to create an article that’s just an echo of what is already ranking.

Pricing

Essential – Optimize 30 articles and track 200 pages. The page tracking gives you ranking updates and tips to improve your article. Perfect for an individual or small team.

Scale – Optimize 100 articles and track 1000 pages. You can also analyze 100 SERPS a day.

Surfer SEO Review Conclusion – The content editor is a must have

To wrap up my review of Surfer SEO, at it’s core it’s an on-page SEO optimization tool that works. The content editor is why you want to get a monthly or yearly subscription to Surfer.

Optimize your content with Surfer SEO and grammarly and watch your rankings rise simply by making content that is better and more optimized to the search intent behind the keyword.

Surfer SEO

Create mass produced blog posts that are optimized for on-page SEO using AI.

SIGN UP TODAY

Your personal name is great for your business but not necessarily for your brand.

If you have a cool, unique name then you can use that as both the face and name of the business. If you don’t have have cool name then you’ll have to create one.

David Utke is a unique name. So is Adam Enfroy.

Max Prezon is pretty cool name too. Bob Johnson? Eh, not so much.

You should always own your name, even if you don’t use it, someone else will.

You want a cool name that is relatable and easy to remember. One that can also be shortened down into something else is useful as well.

…or you can use your name (if it’s cool or unique enough) as a business name.

Great domain names will cost you though. But if you’re lucky, your name or brand might be available. TeachandGo.com cost me $250. DavidUtke.com cost me $10.

You need a domain name and a website. This isn’t even optional.

When picking your domain name, remember this: no dashes, no underscores and no numbers (impossible to remember: this-is-an-awful-domain123.com).

Make your name easy to read, easy to say and easy to remember.

I love how Ryan Robinson (a boring and generic name) turned his name into something cool, RyRob.com.

Get a free domain when you buy hosting with Dream Host

You need a website with a dot-com domain name and no, this is not optional. I know there are exceptions like MarkManson.net and JustinWelsh.me but you’re not these guys.

Get a dot-com and be done with it ( I suggest Namecheap or get a free domain with hosting at Dream Host).

If you can’t afford $8 a month for web hosting (rent) then You, Inc. isn’t for you. Instead you could try holding a sign on the side of the highway that says “Homeless, and Hungry, Please Help“.

A good domain name has incredible value.

When you have the right name, one that contains the essence of what your website is about you can:

• Charge more for products and services because you have something that has an identity.
• Get more back links to your website naturally as a thought leader. 
• Network with successful people more easily because you’ve made something of value.
• Increase the social shares of your website and brand.

If your website is perceived to be generic, like BlogMarketingAcademy.com it will lack that critical differentiation you need for your unique selling point.

It won’t capture the essence, the soul, the art of what your website is about.

Because, maybe your website has no soul. It’s not art, it’s just a thing that exists on the internet in black and white.

It will lack a distinguishing characteristics to make it better from the rest. This also applies to your tag-line as well.

Only when you get the name right does that turn a bunch of words into a recognizable identity that defines something greater than its parts.

Use Alliteration

Many of the best brand names use alliteration to great effect.

Examples: BoingBoing.net, JavaJacket.com and Coca-Cola.com

These names are not simply good website names, they’re fantastic examples of brand equity.

Particularly the Java Jacket example whose name is clearly worth but more than the product itself.

That now ubiquitous paper cup sleeve or “java jacket” is an all too common feature at any coffee house. That part of the coffee drinking experience we don’t even think or care about actually had to be invented by someone.

Now, is the product itself that creative?

No.

Is revolutionary?

No really.

It’s definitely one of those “duh” ideas huh?

Yes!

Anyone coffee lover who drinks coffee out of a paper cup could have made this product (especially any paper manufacturers), but none of them did.

So the real genius is in the implementation of the idea for the product to bring it into reality.

The second part is the creation of that the brand name – Java Jacket.

Why Java Jacket is so perfect as a name

Java Jacket is the perfect name for the product and website because it describes so clearly what the product is in a clever, creative and concise way.

It adds novelty to an otherwise boring product.

It also builds brand equity like Coca Cola in that it defines and industry. Sometimes you say I want “coke” but in reality you don’t really care what you’re brought so long as it’s soda.

It’s a domain name that’s also easy to type in since it’s so easy to remember.

No dashes, no numbers, no additional words. Just Google “Java Jacket” or type in JavaJacket.com (not .org, not .net) and you find their website sitting at the top of the results.

Brilliant.

How to name You Inc.

Ready to create a domain name or slogan with rhythm and a musical nature to it?

Ready to build you online, make art and not just create a dumb niche site on Bonsai trees?

1) Create a list of core words related for your website. 

They can be keywords but they can also just be words related to your topic. Come up with a long list of related and relevant words associated with your industry. Alternate spellings, slang and so forth.

(10 minutes – 20 minutes)

2) Come up with potential names and tag lines for your website. 

Just start writing. The creativity will eventually kick in and you will move from a writers block into a fluent out pour of names and tag lines. Your first few tag lines will be basic and generic but as you keep writing you’ll come up with something better.

(30 minutes – 60 minutes)

3) What are your non negotiable words?

Once you have an extensive list of words, what words must stay in? If you’re launching a coffee blog as an example, the word “coffee” would most likely be one of your non-negotiable words.

4) Use domain name generator tools. 

Write everything down. Even if it’s stupid and not usable. Some words like “website” are terrible for this exercise. Other words have the potential for brand equity gold.

Find synonyms for words that have the same sound as your select words. Even if they start with a different letter. The sound is what’s important – like “melt in your mouth” as rhythmic sound.

Last is to use all these word and name combination in a domain name generator to get more ideas.

(30 minutes+)

How to name your website

Let’s cover some advice for different types of websites names. I’ll break it down into a few specific verticals when creating a website:

• Web Service Website
• Blogs
• Business

Specific service/product website

A service website is a website that does one specific thing very well. Like a file converter website or an image editing website.

For these types of projects, often the best names are either something cute, fun and short like Pixlr.

Which is a play off the word pic, or to use a specific exact match domain name.

I suggest you shy away from keyword heavy domain names because they can come across as spammy and low quality.

Though they do make sense for specific service oriented websites like CreateaClickableMap.com.

It’s not a blog with endless blog posts, it’s a clear and specific website that let’s you create a clickable map that you can embed on your website.

Name your blog

Generally with a blog, go for a domain name that’s more memorable, brandable, and related to a topic over something that is keyword focused.

Like the travel blog onestep4ward.com -which is written by Johnny Ward.

See how it’s a play on his name? The “4” is not great though, forward would have been way better.

The travel site PracticalWanderlust.com is good too because wanderlust is related to travel and practical works too because they provide practical travel advice.

When it comes to blogging, you’ll do much better by building a brand.

One of the most popular blogs about the topic of minimalism a few years ago was called “far beyond the stars” which was a magical, interesting and strange domain name.

Blogs are the most fun to name because they can be true, artistic expressions. Build a brand, don’t name your blog something boring.

Name a local business

A local business should strive to own it’s own .com.

Your domain name should match your business name but sometimes that is not always possible.

To counter this you can use alternate domain extensions apart from .com, use an abbreviated form of your business name as a domain name or add devices onto the end of the domain.

Domain Name Tools

There are numerous domain name generators available that you can take advantage of. I suggest using these tools after you’ve spent an hour or so brainstorming possible domain names following our process.

• Name Boy
• Panabee
• Lean Domain Search
• Domainr.com
• NameStation.com
• Shopify Name Generator

You can also use generative AI tools like ChatGPT to help you come up with something.

These domain name generators are free to use, but make money by referring you to a domain name registrar where they receive a commission if you purchase through their link.

Again, I suggest using Namecheap as your domain registrar. This is the company I use for all my domain names.

You can also get a free domain name with purchase of a hosting account with Dream Host.

How to name your website

Alright ladies and gentlemen, I’ll leave it there.

Spend time on this and get it right.

Your domain name is important, but it’s not the end of the world. What is more important is to get started creating your website, publishing content and getting traffic.

Those are the things that will make an actual difference long term.