There are so many free applications and services available for bloggers that many of us get into a mindset of being anti paying for anything. However sometimes you get what you pay for in life and as a blogger wanting to build your blogging into a business there are some things that can be well worthwhile paying for.
In this post I wanted to look at some of the tools that I do pay for:
Skype – Skype has become the backbone to my online communications. I use it as my primary instant messaging tool as well as to chat voice to voice with business partners and in networking. For the main it is free – however I pay for a couple of extras to make it even more useful.
The main thing I pay for with Skype is calls to landline phones and mobiles with SkypeOut. I regularly call overseas and the rates on Skype are considerably cheaper. I also pay for SkypePro which gives free calls to landlines within my country, free skype Voicemail and a discount on having an online number (something I also have). I spend around €20 a month on Skype.
Aweber – For a long time I used a free newsletter service to send out weekly newsletters to many thousands of subscribers. However I increasingly found that you DO get what you pay for. Emails were not being delivered in greater and greater numbers and I was finding the service quite unreliable. Since switching to Aweber I’ve felt a weight lifted from my shoulders.
It works – every time. Emails are delivered in much higher numbers and the tools that Aweber offer are leave anything else I’ve used for dead. This is one tool I should have paid for years ago. Pricing varies depending upon how many subscribers you have but starts at $19 a month.
ImageWell – this image editor (for Macs) is amazing. It is a light image editor that gives you the power to do a whole heap of image editing quickly yet professionally. It is how I edit most of the images that I use here on ProBlogger and allows the adding of text, cropping, adding borders, reshaping and in it’s latest version the ability to change contrast, brightness, saturation and sharpening.
Yes you can do all this in photoshop – but this is a much lighter and easier to use tool. It used to have a free version but recently it became a paid only tool – well worth the $19.95.
Picturesque – this tool is similar to ImageWell as it is another Mac image editing tool. In many respects it leaves ImageWell for dead as it’s got some great extra features (it allows you to make images 3D, add reflections etc – however the only thing that it doesn’t do is add text to images (something I need).
Still – I’ve paid for this one too and am using it more and more. It costs $34.95.
ecto – regular readers will know about this one already as I’ve been an ecto (for Mac) fan for quite some time. I’ve tried other Mac desktop editors and they are quite good but ecto ‘fits’ with my own posting rhythm so well. The only one that I’ve been playing with lately that I’ve found increasingly useful is Scribefire (a firefox add-on). However I tend to do a lot of offline writing so ecto works well for me. It costs $17.95.
Other Expenses
I’ve only picked out five tools that I pay for – but of course there are many other services and expenses that can come into blogging including hosting, domain names, paying writers, advertising, ISP costs, computer costs, blog design etc
With most of these you can find ways to do them for free – however sometimes the outlay can be worth it.
What blogging tools and services do you pay for?
Only thing I’m paying for is hosting and a domain …
… so far. :)
Definitely count me in as another aWeber individual. I also paid for Adobe Acrobat Distiller and Download Guard for the deliverables of my products.
Being penny-wise and pound-foolish is never wise when doing work online, I’ve found.
Data points,
Barbara
I can’t say enough good things about ImageWell. Highly recommended!
A good accurate stats package with support and high uptime is a great option too. Tracking your data correctly is important so that you know how you are really growing your traffic.
I notice that two of your 5 are image related. Do you think this would change substantially if you didn’t have the digital photography blog or at least the serious interest in digital photography? If so, are there two non-image related things that would have made the list?
I use and pay for an autoresponder and hosting and have yet to find a good image program that is not big and expensive like Photoshop on my PC.
I am currently using Irfanview for viewing and resizing photos(free) and using just text files copied and pasted up to wordpress to compose and post blog posts. I have heard great things about Live Writer (Microsoft, also free) though I have not used it much yet.
Darren,
Which image service do you use to get high-quality stock images for your posts? I’ve been using Stock Exchange but find myself wanting larger, unique images vs. amateur photgraphy and smaller sizes. (Not sayin stock exchange isn’t good, but you leave wanting more…)
What’s the deal with Skype?
I use Vonage and pay $25 per month and ALL my calls are free even back to the UK (unless its a cell phone and then it’s a nominal fee). I used to have Skype a couple of years ago but then it ran through my PC whereas Vonage is just like standard phone with all the flexibility that entails. Does Skype do that now?
Ecto is indeed an awesome one – makes navigating WordPress much, much easier, especially with Safari’s WordPress difficulties.
As usual some really helpful information. Where have you been all my blogging life?
Thanks!
I use GoogleGroup to send out my monthly newsletter to my subscribers. And it is free, and powerfull.
Justo Llecllish
http://www.enterministry.com
Fitness Guy, you should try Paint.NET. It’s a great, free, powerful little image editor program that may give you what you’re looking for in an application. I also use IrfanView, SnagIt 9 and Fireworks all for Microsoft Windows.
I love Photoshop and I prefer to stick with one image editing tool.
I’ve been using the default wordpress in-built rich text editor to write my article and sometimes I find it difficult. ScibeFire looks very interesting. Thanks for the link.
Ramesh
The Geek Stuff
I haven’t tried any of these, but Drawn.ca recently posted “10 Free Web-based Alternatives to Photoshop” here:
http://drawn.ca/2008/06/12/10-free-web-based-alternatives-to-photoshop/
Thanks Darren – nice useful stuff…although a little Mac biased! For me, I only use Adobe CS3 (which can cost a bomb!) and Zemanta which is free! All other tools are pretty much standard…although I do also have Skype Pro – I do not really use it all that much….but you have me rethinking that strategy!.
I don’t use it anymore, but doesn’t scribefire let you work and save copies locally that you can post later when you connect to the internet? It seems like it used to allow that at least.
Would (e)books count as a tool? I’m happy to pay for a book that I will learn something useful from.
Apart from that, all of the tools I use are freebies (Bar Photoshop).
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I also pay for SkypePro which gives free calls to landlines within my country, free skype Voicemail and a discount on having an online number (something I also have).
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Heh, if you pay for something, it’s definitely not “free”. I think you mean unlimited calls to landlines and access to Skype Voicemail. Free = free. Paying = not free. =p
Personally, I have Illustrator and Photoshop for my image editing. If I’m on my Linux box, I use Gimp.
Apart from the usual domain and web hosting costs (I actually host on blogger but still keep a VDS server for email and ancillary hosting), the only thing I have paid for is TextMate (http://macromates.com/). It’s my swiss army knife of editors – I find it incredibly useful for editing things like code samples for my blog.
@Fitness Guy – Try Gimp for a good free image editing tool
@Save, You Fool! I use Dreamstime for my photos. Great photos for free and if that is not enough you can buy premium from $1 to $3 each.
Besides the hosting, domains, advertising and stock photos, I bought WP templates, plugins and designing services.
Skypeout is great. For $76 you get 1 year of unlimited calling to 34 countries.
It’s nice to see a blogger write reviews about Mac related applications. I use a 17″ MacBook Pro.
The majority of the time when I see bloggers mention applications they are mainly for Windows PC.
I can understand it, its the computer they use so naturally that is what they are going to
recommend.
There are a lot of applications I use for my personal blogs along with the blogs I write
for. I’m a writer. I write mainly about Macs. I’ve included a few of my favorites below.
Mars Edit is my offline blog editor of choice. It’s developed by Red Sweater Software, the owner
Daniel Jalkut, is extremely friendly and helpful. I’ve contacted him a few times via email and
through the support forums. He’s always been responsive. It costs $29.95.
BBEdit is a high performance text editor application. It’s developed by Bare Bones Software. Although most of my offline blog editing is completed in MarsEdit occasionally I work with BBEdit. I also use it for programming. It costs $125.
Snapz Pro X created by Ambrosia software. It lets me record anything on my screen. I can save it as
a screenshot or Quicktime movie. I have a lot of options on how I want to deliver it, email or
I can put it up on the web. As technical writer this tool has been extremely effective when I’m
tutorials that include screenshots or how to videos. It costs $69.
1Password remembers all my passwords so I don’t have to. I let it create the passwords for the
variety of applications that I use. It costs $34.95.
Endicia for Mac is my at home post office. I can send packages from the comfort of my home. It cost
$15.95 for month. On one of my blogs I have contests naturally I use Endicia when shipping out the
prizes.
Scrivener is designed for writers. I’ve used it to create ebooks that I sell on one of my personal
websites. It goes beyond simple word processing and has a lot of features that I cannot live
without. It costs $39.95.
I use Picturesque also, it’s an extremely useful application.
All the applications I mentioned will let you try a free fully functional copy of the application
for free. I think they all let you try them out for 30 days.
You are correct, at times, you get what you pay for.
I use MarsEdit. I just couldn’t get used to ecto and I had issues with their tagging (I think that’s been since resolved, but I already bought Marsedit).
I would, and probably will, pay for Skitch, whenever they move to a paid model.
Increasingly, I’ve been considering a project management tool like backpack, since I run more than one blog. It’s hard to keep track of everything I need to do, but I also need a place to put down ideas. I’ve tried paper, but I can’t stick to it.
I noticed that the image editing tools on list are for MAC. Do you have any great image editor tool to recommend for non MAC users?
I found Scribefire very very useful.
The two things I pay for specifically for my blog are its domain and the hosting costs. These are definitely things I can’t imagine going without any more. Even though I started out with free alternatives this quickly changed, it’s definitely worth the money.
Next to that I do make use of image editing tools, mainly photoshop, but not specifically for blogging alone.
So far, the only services that I really pay for as a blogger is my webhosting. Since I paid a year’s worth I practically spend nothing for my blogging needs.
I’d like to try out the software tools you mentioned but since they are Mac-only apps, I can’t. :P
@Tim: The Vonage site appears to only offer the service to the small USA, UK, and Canada part of the world.
@Ramesh: Ahh but do you pay for a legit copy of Photoshop? Given it’s cost, I wouldn’t (unless I was a graphic designer). Flamebait perhaps, but I find for quasi-professional use GIMP does evenything I need it to (yes I’ve used Photoshop and used to be quite competent at it).
@Neil: I agree, although it does have a bit of a learning curve to Photoshop die-hards.
Amen to Skype Pro Darren. I make a LOT of business calls within Australia each month, and I’d estimate I save at least $30-40 per month over using a landline handset or mobile to make the call.
Of course, about one in ten callees does gripe about the quality of the call. Tip – don’t run Bittorrent while trying to make your Skype calls.
I make a real effort to go free on as many tools that I can. I finally caved on a couple, primarily tools for SEO.
I had to automate some of the process of acquiring links. That was just too tedious.
I get some images from stock photo site 123rf.com, and pay stumbleupon for some ads, and a google adwords campaign, of which three people have clicked my ads so far.
Besides web-hosting charges and domain name registrations, I pay for flickr because it helps me organise my photos and provides a repository in case my home computer gets wiped out.
I have also recently subscribed for mobile broadband service that allows me to access internet anywhere within Singapore if I am away from office/home.
Thanks! I will consider using these tools in the future.
What I’m looking forward to trying out is scribefire, after reading the article. Since I’m a windows user most of those things don’t really help me out. I do use skype, but not very frequently.
For brainstorming I use two tools. One is Curio. The other is Conceptdraw Mindmap 5. Both are similar, but have some subtle differences, and both work very well on a Mac.
I use them to begin the writing process, and then can take the filled outline into a word processor.
You can take a free test drive of both (60 days for Curio and 30 for Conceptdraw.
I never tried ImageWell, but I heard they offer nice services.
Zemanta has potential, but it’s just not there yet. it’s young, though.
I would have to say that Live Writer surprised me. I am always surprised when MS makes a product that’s actually useful and doesn’t suck my resources. The plugins make it even more useful.
The Gimp has been handling all my graphics needs for some years now. I’m not good enough with graphics to actually pay for something like that.
I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned magicJack. It’s free for 30 days and it’s like $40 a year. Not sure about it’s international capabilities, though.
I pay for my notepad that I always carry to got down ideas. Probably my most valuable item :)
And then there is hosting costs.
@Todd – how did you automate?
I use Photoshop CS3, hosting, SEOmoz pro, Aweber, statcounter
For free – Skitch, Filezilla,
Want to try editor that works offline – anxious to hear any other comments.
Thanks for the post, Darren.
The only thing I pay for now is hosting and domains, but Skype and Aweber seem interesting…
I like to use MagicJack. Pay a flat fee with a phone number I can take anywhere in the world and plug my phone into the USB and hooked to a highspeed internet and crystal clear phone service. Saves me a TON of money on long distance bills for talking to my customers or prospects interested in our whole food based business.
Hi Darren,
I also use ecto on mac. Its the only software I purchased in my life. ;-)
But I seriously think its miles way from Windows Live Writer (WLW) by Microsoft. This may look freaky but I installed Parallels on mac, then Windows XP via Bootcamp & Parallels just to use Windows Live Writer on mac.
I don’t think Microsoft will ever port WLW on mac… :-(
Yep ecto is best on mac, but they are too slow & bad at adding required minimum features. ex. their WYSIWYG editor is worst I have ever seen. Gmails composer is better that that… :-)
Anyway nice list… I use skitch very much.. :-)
Skype is really cheap when talking about communicating. I only pay for some photo stock images for now , but as I am a contributor on several photo stocks I just use some of my credits earned to purchase these images. Otherwise some great service Darren listed here , and a very great post.
I’ve been thinking about paying for an RSS feed syndicater. (I’m not even sure if that’s the correct term.) I would like to publish headlines from a network of blogs to one of my sites, but I’ve only found FeedTwister online, and they update my feed about once a day.
Any suggestions?
I am using SKype for communication with other bloggers including Gtalk. I am using all free services to my blog. May be i will shift to commercial tool later stage of my blog life.
Your posts are always great, I like them. Every post has something new to offer; but I’m wondering what’s going on with your alexa ?
I’m totally loving Blogo right now, I’m an ecto user myself, but Blogo’s image resizing and upload is slick and editing existing posts with the slide out panel is awesome. It also keeps drafts greyed at the top of the list!
It also crops thumbnails too, which is handy if you want to isolate a particular area of interest in the image for people to click to the larger version.
Ooh! and it has a full screen mode… ah la writeroom.
https://www.drinkbrainjuice.com/blogo
I’d ditch Skype and buy a SIP or IAX service on the open market. It works about as well, in my experience, and you can call customers of most other SIP services providers for free too (unlike Skype, where you’re stuck in a walled garden). Skype looks like the VoIP equivalent of 1990s’ AOL – would you use 1990s AOL in today’s world?
I just like only Skype as it help me connected to my family while travelling and paid once only. Thanks
Thanks for a great list, I am sure that I have paid for Skype nearly $100.
Great, but Skype is the best option for me among them.