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What Vendors Does AWeber Recommend?
Frequently, we get questions asking for business service recommendations. In this article, you'll find services either us or our customers have had good experiences with.
To assure you that we've made these recommendations based on the usefulness, for many we're including both affiliate and non-affiliate links.
Services We Recommend:
- Web Hosting
- Blog Hosting
- Search Engine Marketing / Pay Per Click
- Shopping Carts
- Membership Site Software
- Live Conference & Meeting Software
- Copywriting
- Search Engine Optimization
- Survey Software
- Royalty-Free Stock Images
- Website Analytics
- Order Fulfillment
- Web Browsers
- Screen Capture Video Production
Web Hosting
If your business is just getting started online, it will need a website. But there are thousands of web hosting services you could go with.
Here are two we've had positive experiences with and have heard some great things about:
1&1
Known in some circles as the "World's #1 Web Host", 1&1 has a reputation for outstanding products and impeccable customer service.
They have packages that cater to beginners as well as advanced users, which are reasonably priced.
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Dreamhost
With 10 years of experience, DreamHost has been around as long as we have. We think this means something, and each of their accounts come with plenty of space, bandwith, and features for a new and quickly growing business.
Expected Minimum Budget: $5.95 / month
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Enter the AWEBERPROMO promotion code at checkout to receive free, lifetime domain registration for your website.
Rackspace
For the medium to large sized business, dedicated hosting has its advantages of speed and reliability, since you won't have to share as many resources with other clients.
Rackspace is a good option once you're ready.
Expected Minimum Budget: $383 / month
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Blog Hosting
Thinking about starting a blog? Great idea! Once you've decided what topics you'd like to write about, you need to choose a host. Here are two popular providers that offer great features and simple interfaces:
Blogger
Just getting started? You can have your first blog post published in less than an hour using Blogger. If you'd like to send your posts to readers by email, it can be integrated with AWeber easily.
Expected Minimum Budget: FREE
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TypePad
Another hosted solution, TypePad, provides more templates and control over how your blog looks and works. You can even add pages (non-posts) to your blog / website.
They also offer customer support, in case you run into any snags or have any questions.
Expected Minimum Budget: $4.95 / month
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Search Engine Marketing / Pay Per Click
A website without traffic is like a store without people shopping. Having valuable content is a great start toward building traffic. Well designed advertising will give your site a boost.
Google AdWords
Millions of people search Google every day. When search results appear with something related to your industry, you can advertise your business right alongside the results and content targeted websites.
Pay as much or as little as you'd like. You can bid for popular keywords and/or find a keyword niche for your business.
Expected Minimum Budget: No minimum.
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Google AdSense
Google also has an ad network for where website owners can get paid to host advertisements placed by AdWords customers.
Payments are based on impression (views) or clicks.
Expected Minimum Budget: No minimum.
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Yahoo! Search Marketing
Although not currently as popular as Google for search, there is still plenty of opportunity to gain traffic through Yahoo's search users.
Expected Minimum Budget: No minimum
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Shopping Carts
If you plan to sell multiple products on your website, you'll want to have a shopping cart on hand that is easy to set up and easy for your visitors to use.
Yahoo! Small Business
Yahoo! is a leader in templated, small business websites with a simple set up process and everything you need to sell your products online.
Expected Minimum Budget: $39.95 / month
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Volusion
An alternative to Yahoo! is Volusion for a complete storefront solution. Pricing is based on the number of products you sell, and each package includes several features, including a free live support application so you can answer questions for your customers.
Expected Minimum Budget: $19.95 / month
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Payment Processors
If your website doesn't fit the "store" format, and needs only the ability to process payments for a few items, or if you're looking to integrate a more advanced shopping cart into your own custom site, you'll want to select from the available payment processors online.
PayPal
PayPal is a great way to go if you're looking to sell products directly on your website, using "Buy Now" buttons.
Integration with AWeber for post purchase follow up with your customers is quick and easy to set up.
Expected Minimum Budget: Fees based on transactions.
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PowerPay
As your business grows, you may want to set up and use your own merchant account and a shopping cart installed directly on your own custom website.
PowerPay comes recommended by many marketers as a reliable and valuable way to process payments, retaining more profit than with third party providers.
Expected Minimum Budget: Contact for Quote
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PayPal Payflow Pro
If you already have a merchant account, Payflow Pro gives you the gateway you need to integrate an online shopping cart with it.
Expected Minimum Budget: $59.95 / month + $249.95 setup fee
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Membership Site Software
Shopping carts are great for selling physical or digital products, but what about those of us who want to set up a subscription site to restrict or sell our content?
MemberGate
A complete solution for building a membership based website. Includes or supports many modules such as payment processing, shopping carts, discussion groups, affiliate programs, and reporting.
Expected Minimum Budget: $3,995 for software purchase
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Live Conference & Meeting Software
The second best option to meeting with groups of prospects, customers, and associates in person is to share your screen and your voice with them using live conferencing software.
GoToWebinar
A reliable service we've been using for some time to run our Education Team's live seminars. Flat recurring fee includes unlimited number of sessions with up to 1,000 people attending each.
Expected Minimum Budget: $99 / month
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GoToMeeting
How many times have you talked with a colleague on the phone wishing you could just show them what you see on your screen to walk them through something? That's exactly what GoToMeeting allows you to do, sharing your screen's video and audio (by phone) with up to 8 people at once.
Expected Minimum Budget: $49 / month
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Copywriting
When the cat has your tongue, or when you're looking to optimize the marketing copy on your site and in your email newsletters, you can turn to the professionals.
ContentLaunch
Expected Minimum Budget: Check website
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Success Doctor
Michael Fortin is a well-known and successful copywriter. Through Success Doctor, he employs a team that produces copy geared toward response and results.
Expected Minimum Budget: Free quote on website
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Search Engine Optimization
Search engines drive the majority of traffic to many websites. They are like the Yellow Pages for the 21st century, connecting seekers with information and service providers.
But if your content isn't optimized for search indexing and ranking, you might not be getting as many visitors as you could with some help.
Seer Interactive
Firm focused on working to increase ROI for your business. Empahasis on the bottom line and monetary results rather than rankings and analytics.
Expected Minimum Budget: $2,500 / month
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Survey Software
Feedback is essential to the kind of understanding of email subscribers that promotes better targeting and results.
You can write messages to solicit responses, or come up with a standardized survey to send to subscribers using an online service.
Survey Gizmo
A robust service with flexible options and a long list of features for surveying subscribers and reviewing useful results in reports.
Four packages with different levels of features are available, including a free, basic version.
Expected Minimum Budget: FREE for up to 250 survey responses / month
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Google Documents
Many businesses use Google Documents to collaborate on projects including print and online copy, as well as reports and spreadsheets.
With their spreadsheet software, Google provides a very basic, yet simple and effective way to survey.
Expected Minimum Budget: FREE
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Royalty-Free Stock Photography
Most of us don't have professional photography training, expensive cameras, or the time and resources to compose images from scratch for our websites, newsletters, and print materials.
Stock image sites allow you to search a database of thousands of professional grade images at affordable prices for your own use.
iStockphoto
No subscription fee service. Just search for keywords relating to an image you're seeking and sort through hundreds or thousands of related photographs, illustrations, and videos. Buy credits and pay for each piece of media individually.
Expected Minimum Budget: No minimum.
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Website Analytics
Sales are good and traffic is high, but could they be better? Do you really know how well your website is performing?
Web analytics software allows you to track visitors and goals in ways that can provide insight to help you get better conversions.
Google Analytics
Requires installation of some JavaScript to your website. Then, you can track traffic sources, set goals, follow sales funnels, and review popular search terms. Plus, lots of other useful stats, and you can't beat the price!
Expected Minimum Budget: FREE for AdWords customers
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Order Fulfillment
If you have a physical product you're selling in volume, you might consider having someone else do the packaging and shipping so you can spend time on other business activities.
Corporate Disk Company
Offers replication and duplication of disk media, as well as custom printing, packaging, warehousing and distribution services.
Expected Minimum Budget: Call or Visit Website for a Quote
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Live Support Software
Having real, live people available to discuss support issues with website visitors can benefit your website.
We use PHPLive Support installed on our website to allow our team to chat with our visitors. Both hosted and installed solutions are available.
Expected Minimum Budget: Installed: $89.95 one-time, Hosted: $19.95 / month
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Web Browser
Not all web browsers are created equal, and sometimes the browser your computer comes loaded with is not the one with the features you'd like most.
Mozilla FireFox w/ Google Toolbar
We use FireFox on all of our systems at our offices and recommend it to all users. It is stable and tends to be the most compatible browser across websites using modern technologies.
Google Toolbar adds some perks such as an auto-fill form feature and a helpful PageRank meter.
Expected Minimum Budget: FREE
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Screen Capture Video Production
With more and more people adopting high-bandwidth internet connections, video is taking off like a wildfire online.
Video production software can help you publish compelling videos on your site without an expensive production team.
Camtasia Studio
Hook up a mic to your computer, and you're ready to create videos for your website. We use this software to produce Flash video demonstrations for our blog and website.
Plenty of helpful resources from the developer for getting started with ease.
Expected Minimum Budget: $299 to purchase
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