Episode 867 – Marketing Tools
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 867 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about a bunch of marketing tools that I use regularly. Many of them are cheap. Many of them are free, but they really, really increase your productivity and allow you to do things you couldn't do by hand or that would cost you a fortune if you had to farm them out. All right, so make sure you pick up a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my mentor program, the longest running, most unique, most successful ever in the field of internet and digital marketing. Over 1800 students in the past, uh, 24 years or so. All right. So, uh, so check it out. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com.

[00:01:10] All right, so here's a bunch of the tools, and I don't use them every day, but, uh, and I'm going to categorize them for you. So grab what you want. All right. Let's start with audio stuff. I use Adobe Audition to edit these podcasts. However, you can use audacity, which is free. I mean, audition cost me $20 a month, but, you know, it's pretty fancy. Uh, program. Uh, also, another audio thing we use is called Speakpipe, and I really want you to try it out. Go to my website, Antion comm, and you'll see a little blue thing that says leave a voicemail. You can click on it. Talk into your computer and it sends me an email.

[00:01:51] And I hear what you said. It's like an online voice mail. And then I can click another thing and leave you a, uh, send you a message back verbally. So pretty cool. Speakpipe either I think it's either free or super cheap. All right, some video stuff. I use Camtasia as a screen capture video. Uh, now going on 24 years, I've been using it and all its different versions, and it allows you to I have a whole episodes on screen capture stuff, but anyway, you can capture what's on your screen, narrate what you're seeing and sell that as training or customer service, all kinds of stuff you can do. I just love screen capture. Another program is called handbrake, hand brake, brake. It's a free program and it allows you to convert videos from one format to another. For instance, when you take an iPhone video, it's a movie a lot of times, and then you can convert it to MP4, which is the standard everybody can use and stuff. So there's that. Now we've got reflector. I used to use three and now it's up to four. This allows you to capture the screen off of your cell phone, to make demonstration videos of what people are seeing on their cell phones. That's reflector four is now out. Now I'm pretty sure. All right. I've got a big list of stuff here I want to tell you about. Adobe Premiere is a really high end editing program.

[00:03:21] I only know how to do little bits of stuff on it, but if I need something really important, I use Adobe Premiere, or I turn it over to mark my video guy who uses Final Cut Pro. Animoto is something I don't use anymore because we do so much custom stuff. But but you can just load up some pictures and stuff and it'll create a marketing video for you. And if you don't like it, you hit the button and it redoes the whole thing and music and everything. Uh, here's a free thing everybody should have VLC. Victor Lima, Charlie media player. It's a free media player that plays just if you can't get something to work. Usually if you put it into VLC, it'll play. It'll play like any kind of media. Uh, let's see now we don't use any more. Easy video. Sweet. It's been discontinued, so that's off the list from the last time I did this marketing thing. Okay, let's look at word processing. We use Word and Notepad like crazy. If you're on a mac, you might use, uh, I think it's called pages. And then we have, uh, Grammarly plug in so that it, uh, underlines things that it says is misspelled or wrong punctuation and just makes it so fast to fix things up, you know? So, Grammarly. All right. Graphic stuff. Oh, I just love this one. It's called Ippiki. Ippiki totally free. I don't even think I ever had to sign up for it, but once you learn how to use it, it's just I do.

[00:05:00] Anytime you see a Facebook story of mine or any kind of graphics, I made it in Ippiki. It's a way easier. It'll do all kinds of stuff, but it's way easier than Photoshop. Uh, PowerPoint. We use, uh, to make some graphics sometimes, uh, Pinterest pins and, and other graphics. So we use that sometimes because it's already have it. Uh, tailwind is uh, also for making Pinterest pins and to schedule pins for Pinterest tailwind. And we use the Snipping Tool all the time on our Mac or excuse me on our PC. I don't know what it is on a mac, but it just does screen captures. So we can, if I need to grab something and make a graphic out of it, or send it to somebody to show them something, we use a snipping tool. You can use Snagit. I think that's one that comes with, um. Camtasia. If you happen to get Camtasia, Canva we use for book covers. I used to make them from scratch or hire them, but they've got, I think 700 or more sample book covers that you can just change the name and the move the graphics around a little bit and make custom book covers. All my latest books were from Canva, free book covers. And I hate to say that because one of my good friends was a $2,500 minimum graphic person to make book covers.

[00:06:32] And, you know, the a lot of these people are going to tell you, well, it's got to be this and that, and you've got to have this woo woo this and that. Well, yeah, but I'd rather just make money in a hurry. How about that. Right. So and you can, you could, you could test ten different book covers for free. Uh, clipart com is where I get almost all my clipart, cartoons, things like that. It's a paid service. I think I pay it yearly so that I don't have to worry about copyright infringement. And that's a big, big issue. You can get sued for copyright infringement. And how do I know this? All right. Yeah. A long time ago, I got a federal lawsuit when I had my nightclub just on a song. One song. So you don't want to mess with that. So clipart.com. And also, you got to make sure that if you're having web people do work for you, they're not stealing graphics, and then they disappear and you're the one that gets sued. Okay. So you got to be extra careful with that even if you're farming out the work. Okay. Kindle create we use for formatting Kindle eBooks. It's free for either Mac or PC. Amazon is happy to give it to you, and it'll also format your print on demand books for you too. And then for QR codes, we happen to use scan OVA, scan OVA, and that's something you should be taking advantage of.

[00:07:56] There's lots of free, free ones out there. I'm not saying you got to use a paid service, but it'll do fancier stuff and color and all kinds of stuff. But you should be using QR codes and I've got episodes about that. Other see website stuff we use Thrive Themes and Thrive Architect content builders. Well, most virtually all my students. That's what they use. Wordpress is the gold standard. Don't let anybody talk you into this crap you see on TV. Wordpress is the gold standard. Um, and then we do have photo. Mark has Photoshop. Uh, we definitely use Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Premiere for, uh, video stuff. Okay. What else we got? Uh, for email, I use a lot of Gmail now. I was totally outlook for for years, but when Rackspace, I think it's Rackspace had a big problem. Uh, I kind of got switched to Gmail, and I use it quite a bit now for my personal correspondence, but, um, you kind of want to have an email that has your domain name in it. If you're really coming up through the ranks, you want to promote the domain name. I got so many domain names, I don't know which one to use. Um. Let's see. Live stuff. We use zoom, but. And we used to use Belyve and now we use StreamYard, which has been all kinds of new features on it, and it's relatively easy to use.

[00:09:32] So we use StreamYard for live events. Um, and there's a, there's a thing called Irian I r I u n and it turns your cell phone into a webcam. Now, I only use that once in a blue moon, but it is good to know that such things exist if you need to make your cell phone into a webcam. Uh, team viewer joining me are ones that we use to take over our students screens to help them. So some of them we can take access to your screen, uh, your computer. And while you're sitting there watching, we show you we do the work for you. And sometimes we just want to see what you're doing. But the team viewer and joined up me are those kinds of things. Okay. Let's see. Uh, still we have Skype also because even some of the biggest podcasts, I don't know why, but they still use Skype. So. So we've got Skype, okay. Security stuff and backups. Well, uh, if you've ever heard of a VPN, I've got episodes on that. That's a virtual private network that kind of anonymizes what you're doing on the web so that you can't be spied on easily. Uh, it does slow down your computer a little bit to go through a VPN, but and it's something like in certain countries, like, I've had some students in China that weren't allowed to go to certain websites, but if they go through a VPN, they can't get caught doing that or, you know, nobody can spy on them doing it.

[00:11:08] Then, uh, you got to use some type of password manager. I use Roboform, I've used it for many, many years. It's got hundreds and hundreds of passwords and user IDs, and it's one click log in. You can click on, uh, eBay and it'll go it goes eBay and put your with face ID and password ID to get. And then they start. You can have it even never go, which I've use it on a keyboard and then it wipes itself clean. If you're traveling, you know, have it on a thumb drive. So it's all kinds of cool stuff you can do with that and keep you safe. And, uh, let's see, we use different Dropbox, iCloud, carbonite backup stuff. We use Amazon S3 for our big video files, and it's super dirt cheap and high quality. So it's just if you have an Amazon account, you just ask for, uh, you know, just type in Amazon S3 and you can just log into it separately and, and use it and learn how to use it. Uh, copywriting, we use fresh title as my secret weapon. And, uh, and then of course, copywriting. I have a whole course on that copywriting901.com, which is the number one skill. I just saw some other big guru come out and say that today.

[00:12:24] You know, I get hundreds of emails a day. Says the number one skill in in your career. And it was copywriting. You can't depend on ChatGPT, you know, or artificial intelligence. You have to have some of your own intelligence and, and, uh, write your copy because it's extremely expensive to pay for it. And guess what? Some of the professional copywriters are going to charge you a fortune and then go generate it with ChatGPT anyway. So so it's way more to it than just slapping out some stuff. You have to be able to split test it. You have to know your audience and things like that. So you can't depend on artificial intelligence for that. In fact, I've been calling it artificial insemination because you get screwed before if you use it too much. Okay, some automation stuff. Well, you have sites like audience, buffer, Hootsuite, Meet Edgar. These are where you can put it in a bunch of stuff and it'll you know, I know social media drives people crazy. So you put a bunch of stuff in and you can schedule them to go to the different services at different times. And then if you run out of stuff, it'll go take something old and put it out there for you that people forgot about and so forth. So those kind of places, um, we use stealth seminar, uh, if you go to hybridwebinars.com that's my affiliate link.

[00:13:50] That's the number one gold standard for. Webinar replays. And so when you see one of my webinar replays, it's going through stealth seminar or a hybrid. Hybrid webinars is just my term that I invented because I was one of the probably the first one, but one of the first ones that started doing, uh, replays. But I'm there live to answer questions. That's why I call them hybrids, so I don't have to do all the work of doing the webinar again. But I'm there answering questions for people live. And so I promote it like that. And I called it hybrid webinars. And it kind of caught on. So it's hybridwebinars.com. Let's see what else we got here. Go to any chat. Is a bot that a user with Facebook and we may have just canceled it because, um, in the beginning, just like in Facebook, they suck you in to try the whole people on it, and then to reach the people that are on your chat bot, then they to go charging you, you know, so I could see it coming so I, you can put a lot of stock into it even though a lot of ask customer service. In fact, I think they said by the end of the. This year, 85% of customer service is done by chatbots. You know, so it's good to have a chatbot, but I can't get behind many chat anymore. Now. Short keys is something that I am absolutely in love with.

[00:15:17] I've been using it since 1977 and it has saved me. We estimated 8 million keystrokes. This is called a macro program, where you can type a couple letters and it will type in a whole bunch of pre-programmed stuff for you. Just crazy good. Make sure you download my automation e-book because it's one of the featured programs, and I think it cost me 20 bucks, one time, 20 bucks to save me 8 million keystrokes. And that actually made me money because all the time I'd have been fighting with my computer. I was helping customers and selling stuff. See, that's where the money is. And of course, kickstart Cart is our lifeblood of everything around here. It's the shopping cart system, the coupons, the upsells, the broadcast, the autoresponders all in one place, and a mere mortal can actually use it. And it'll do 90% of what programs that are 3 or 4 times the cost per month. So that's why a, um, I've been using it for now, 22 years, something like that, and had, uh, several thousand people doing it because we give unlimited one on one tutoring on it to, to teach you how to use it, because I want you to know how to use it if you're going to bother investing in it. So that's kickstartcart.com. Uh, let's see, we talked about email. Let's see miscellaneous stuff. What I got under that category.

[00:16:48] Oh, Zillow is like an online walkie talkie that you can use with your remote employees. So instead of texting and phoning and emailing, it's like a walkie talkie. Hey, Larry, what's, uh, I need help with so and so. And I let up on the button. Hey, Tom. What do you need? You know, it's that quick. Uh, let's see, you got pixel helpers. If you're doing some online advertising, you should learn how to use a speed test. I do get a lot of complaints from my, um, students and everybody really about their internet connections. And so I say you got to, you know, get a handle on this. You have to first of all, one lady, you know, doesn't like the to to run a cord. It doesn't look nice in her floor. So but her her internet sucks. And so you're always going to get the highest speed if you plug in directly to your, um, you know, to your modem or your, your Wi-Fi, uh, you know, thing. So but if you don't, you have to. You got to make sure you're getting a decent signal and it can change, especially if you're on cable rather than fiber optics like Fios is like, it doesn't have any trouble. It's buried underground and there's nobody else on on it that is going to bother you. But cable, the more people that are on it, the slower things go. So I told her, hey, do this, you know, five, six times a day, different time, make a log and do the speed test.

[00:18:31] So you just go to like speedtest.net hit a button and it'll tell you your upload and download speeds and you'll be amazed. Sometimes it's worse than old AOL dial up. You know, I'm harping on this because it's such a hassle for people and they don't know that they need to be bitching at their, you know, their cable provider. But unless they have some evidence, they're just going to blow you off. But if you have a log for a couple of weeks saying, okay, uh, here's the speeds I've been getting and I'm paying for these other speeds, then you got a leg to stand on, but you can't have stuff quitting on you in the middle. And when you're trying to do a live event or you know, you're trying to download and upload stuff, you can't, you got to have a fast connection. Okay, let's see what else. Pretty links. This is a link cloaking plugin. Uh, I think it's for WordPress only, but I don't know. It might be for other things, but you got to have a link cloaker. Because if you want to do affiliate marketing, a lot of places you can't put a weird, crazy, wild looking link in. So this makes a crazy, wild looking link look like a normal link, and then you get accepted. So if you see some of my stories when I'm promoting these, uh, these summits, like the last one was BSS, you know, screwthecommute.com/bss.

[00:19:56] And that was book Sales summit. Well, the actual link was like five times longer. Weird looking thing with question marks. And you know, a f equals affiliate equals and a bunch of numbers. And you can't put that in, you know, in small graphics or even say them on a podcast like now I just told you screwthecommute.com/bss. Now it's no good now because the summit's over. But you see, I can say that you can listen to it and write it down and go, go to the summit. Right. All right. Another thing we do is riddle, which is a quiz, uh, program. So I have a quiz like at my school imtcva.org/quiz. And it's the like the seven college rip off quiz to show you how colleges are ripping you off. So quizzes are great to get people love them, gets a lot of traffic and opt ins and stuff like that. Now Roku. Roku is where we're on television, so we're on the Roku Channel. It's called the Public Speaking Channel as part of Roku. So go subscribe to it. If you're on Roku and you get $100,000 worth of my training for free now, Midnapur is something myself and my girlfriend really likes. I just saw her walking through there, uh, because on eBay. Uh. You know, if you should never bid on eBay ever.

[00:21:27] Because all you're doing is jacking up the competition and raising the the final cost. So bid napper is something that you can put what you're willing your maximum you're willing to bid and put it in bid napper. And at the last possible electronics. Uh, second of the auction. It will. Bid for you and you'll only pay like the a little bit over the last bid before you. You don't even pay your maximum. So I've had all kinds of winning things on Bid Napper for cheaper prices because I didn't jack up all the bids and it bidded at the last second and nobody knew I existed until I won the thing. Okay let's see expert click. That's a press release service and it's way more than that. But you can get in touch with Mitch Davis if you go to expert com and get one of their packages because it's got a full time blog. And he's, he's really ingrained in the media in Washington DC where a lot of the major people are. And so he's got this press release service and everything is really good. And then of course, Fiverr. Fiverr is where it used to be. Five bucks for stuff and now they started five bucks. But you can buy way more expensive stuff there too. But a lot of times you can get graphics custom made. And I mean, you can't believe I got the 32nd commercial for my school for five bucks.

[00:23:03] All right. From a professional voice over artist, I mean, there's all kinds of stuff there, so it's f I v e r. And let's see, don't forget to check out my mentor program. Great internet marketing training.com. Longest running, most successful, most unique ever in the field of internet and digital marketing. It's all one on one. We never, uh, lump you in with a bunch of people because we tried at one time to get the cost down for the students because, um, but I quit because I had the dummy things down to the lowest common denominator, you know? So you're lumped in with either people more experienced or less experienced. And then I got a wishy washy stuff. So now I went back to it's all one on one with myself and the rest of my crew that we tutor. You take over your screen, help you, you know, you got me for the big marketing ideas and and shopping cart training and it's all one on one. So you're not lumped in with people you know. So and it doesn't matter where you are if you're advanced. I talk to you in advanced manner. If you're a beginner, I talk to you in a beginner manner, and we don't hurt your feelings and make you feel dumb like a lot of these geeks do. Okay. Let's see. Let's get back to some of the things we used Linktree.

[00:24:20] Because on Instagram you can only have one link in your bio. So but there's so many things that I do. If you click that, it takes you to my link tree and it shows you a whole bunch of other stuff. So it's very handy. It's couple dollars a month. Uh, we use jack prints for printed stuff. We use outbrain for, uh, you know, if it's some really general big, uh, advertising promotion, it's pay per click outbrain. So you show up on all kinds of big sites. Uh, we use sonics uh, in the for, uh, transcriptions. Uh. Let's see. We use wufoo. It's a form builder w UFO. And for instance, we have this thing where you can apply to have a strategy session with me, and it's a marketing tool for me. It's not a big sales thing where I, you know, hammer you to death to, to get in my program. But it is it does pre-qualify you and gives me tons of information so I can help you better. Uh, so that's it. Screw the com slash application. And so, yeah, if you really want to, you know, if you, if you play with the thing just and you don't really want to talk to me and consider getting in my program, just write test, uh, and then I'll know that, you know, you're just checking it out, but it's a form builder, so you'll see all the kinds of cool questions you can ask and answers, uh, with wufoo, uh, by going to screwthecommute.com/application.

[00:25:54] And if you really want to do it and you're serious and you want to get in my program, this is a good place to start to make sure that we're a good fit and you can afford it. And I can afford to take the time with you. I got to see what you're all about. And then lastly, on this list, I mean, this is not by means the overall I'm sure I missed some stuff, but wetransfer.com as a site we use all the time. And it's a site that you can transfer files up to two gigabytes for free. And we do have to do it all the time when I have to send video stuff to my mark for editing or, you know, we got to send files to a student or they have to send them to me. Uh, it's too big to attach to an email, then we use wetransfer.com all right. That's my story. I'm sticking to it. So, uh, check out a lot of these things. If they if you need help in a certain area, you got all these areas to pick from productivity, audio, video, uh, graphics, word processing, website stuff and, uh, and some cool, uh, like, speakpipe some cool things to throw on your site that, uh, all help the productivity and help you make money online. All right. We will catch you on the next episode. See you later.