I’ve been working my business and blogging for a while now and in that time I’ve researched a lot of tools to use in my work from home life. Not many of them make the cut. But while I try to maintain my overall expenses, there are some tools that just pay for themselves. This is my list for all WAHM business. They are day-in, day-out tools I use and recommend highly.
eBay

There’s aren’t many tools you need with eBay. A camera (iPhone works well), computer (iPhone works for listing, too), tape and labels. But there’s one thing that has made a difference for me… a lister. SellerSourceBook is that for me. It provides a whole lot of templates and they do look nice, but that’s not why I signed up. It’s the scheduler. While it’s possible to schedule your listings through eBay, it’s not cheap. Yeah, they charge you. When I list a lot through SSB, I’m able to a publish time. That good for eBay algorithm. It’s also one the cheaper of my selling expenses. Use the link above or this one here to sign up.
Blogging

Bluehost is one of the most recognized web hosting sites on the Internet. And for good reason they just get the job done. And when you’re blogging… that’s exactly what you want.
Social Media Schedulers
I’m in love with ViralTag. There are soooo many reasons. First, not only does it schedule my Pinterest pins and repins, but also my Twitter, Facebook and Instragram. Wow! If I had Google+ and LinkedIn working, it would do those two platforms two. It allows me to bulk upload and schedule my repins and get this… it allows me to clone. I can clone one image/message and send to the other platforms. There’s a little tweaking involved, because it’s just cropping the image. But… are you ready for this, it integrates with Canva and you can create an image & message on the fly. Oh my! And there’s one other biggie. If you sign up through this link, you get $15 credit, too. And that’s after a free trial.
Okay, there’s one think ViralTag doesn’t do so well and the reason I added BoardBooster as my scheduling schedule. Looping. It’s something BoardBooster does well. Looping takes my Best of WorkInMama PInterest board and republishes the images. This allows new followers to see older pins they might not have seen. But it also makes sure it doesn’t clutter up the board with duplicate pins, so after a few days it goes back, compares and saves the best (most pinned) images. It does more types of scheduling, of course, as you’ll see here.
Blogging and Writing
If you’re trying to put out a lot of words every day (or just get them done faster), the Dragon Speaking Naturally software is the way to go. It’s a dictation system that makes that just gets your words down fast. Then you can edit. I know, I know, you probably wince at the thought of dictating. I was the same way and that my brain didn’t engage until my fingers were on the keyboards. But I worked at it and now I get my first draft and editing out much faster. The Home version above more than adequate to work. You’ll need a microphone and there’s a bundle from Amazon for that. I opted for best grade desk microphone I could find, a Blue Yeti (very good ratings from the writer market). Dragon Naturally Speaking comes in a couple of Premium versions, too. One that allows for a Bluetooth microphone and another that allows you to dictate into a recorder.
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