Resources

My Favorite Newsletters

Continued Education

SPI Academy from Pat Flynn – Pat Flynn is one of the smartest and kindest marketers out there. He genuinely cares about people, and that’s reflected in his training courses. He wants everyone to be successful. His All-Access pass ($179 per quarter or $599 per year) includes all of his courses, including full courses on podcasting, growing a YouTube channel, getting started in affiliate marketing, and growing a community, among many others. He also does weekly webinars, and his team offers weekly office hours where anyone can ask questions or hang out.

Tech SEO Pro from Kristina Azarenko – I’ve tried many SEO courses for team training over the years, and most are too basic. Kristina’s course is the only technical SEO course I have ever recommended. It’s not terribly expensive (currently $697 one-time), and it’s absolutely worth it. And once you’re in, you get access to any updates to the course she adds in the future, which she does often.

SEO MBA from Tom Critchlow – Tom has two courses; “The Art of Client Management” ($500) and “Executive Presence” ($695). You can also upgrade each course to get direct feedback from Tom. I upgraded and found it extremely valuable. This is the account management stuff that takes you many years to learn on the job, but Tom has managed to teach it in about 4 hours of succinct, straight-to-the-point training videos. I truly wish I had a course like this 15 years ago. I believe Tom’s courses are a must for anyone working with clients or executives.

Traffic Think Tank – The training videos in TTT are excellent. Like their newsletter, their training content is often highly technical, but they have courses for beginners, too, so their academy is great for all levels. My only complaint about TTT Academy ($99/mo.) is that the content is more often in a long-form webinar-style format and less like a structured and organized course-like format. If you upgrade to their Academy + Mastermind plan ($119/mo.), you get access to their Slack group, which is absolutely worth the price. If you have a question about anything, no matter how difficult, there’s someone in the TTT Slack community who will have an answer for you.

Content

Content at Scale (affiliate – you get 20% more credits if you sign up with my link) – This AI content development tool produces excellent long-form content using NLP analysis. It might seem a bit pricey compared to tools like ChatGPT (it starts at $250 per month for eight posts), but this does way more. You put in a keyword, and it’ll produce a long-form post that I’ve seen typically come out to around 1,400 to 1,600 words. It’ll automatically create a table of contents, add headers, create an FAQ section, and include shareable takeaways for social. The tool also recommends a URL slug, meta description, and title. And then, you can use their SEO checklist and built-in optimization tool (with keyword data) to optimize the content (similar to Clearscope or SurferSEO). The optimization tool also includes an AI detector, plagiarism detector, competitor analysis, and image gallery.

WriterAccess – There are so many copywriting marketplaces out there (other big ones are Zerys and Textbroker), but Writer Access has been my go-to because they have dedicated account managers, an easy-to-use platform, and they are constantly upgrading their services and features. We’ve built a team of writers that we use over and over and who know our clients so well that they can take an order and run with it with little to no direction. Just a heads up; I only recommend working with 6-star writers, and maybe 5-star if that’s your only option for a specific expertise.

DesignPickle – If you have an ongoing need for custom graphics, I highly recommend Design Pickle. We’ve been using them for years for social media ads, blog post images, infographics, and even to design our company team logos. You get unlimited requests and revisions, and their plans start at $499/month.