As you know, I have turned blogging into a full-time business for me. And, yes, I do pretty well at it. Every day, I try to show people on this blog how to do things to turn their own blogs into a business. Another part of the story, though, is the tools and software I use to do what I do.

So, in this post, I thought I would just lay out what I use and why. I’m not saying that you have to use these things to work. It is just what I use.

Hosting

I use Pair Networks for my web hosting. I use two dedicated servers in tandem to run my business. Pair is a great hosting company with solid servers and solid support. It isn’t the cheapest game in town, however. You pay for quality. I also hate managing my own servers so they manage them for me.

When I’m not embedding videos from Vimeo or Youtube, I host my videos on Amazon S3. It works well, keeps load off my servers, and is cheaper than dirt for what you get.

Third-Party Services

I use Aweber to manage my mailing lists. Aweber is awesome and it was the best move I ever made in regards to my marketing logistics to switch to Aweber. I highly recommend them.

I use SurveyMonkey to run my surveys. I am signed up as a Pro subscriber which costs me $200/year but the amount of value you can get from even one well-written survey is well beyond that.

I use TubeMogul to upload my videos to third-party video sites. It is slick and it is free. And it saves so much time. For any livestreaming I do, I use Ustream.

I am also a Google whore. I use Gmail for my email client. I use Google Calendar to track and plan my own schedule. I use Google Reader to keep tabs on other blogs and the market in general. I use Google Analytics to track my website statistics. I use Google Alerts to keep track of who’s talking about me on the Internet. I use Google Docs for portable document management.

I use Authorize.Net as my payment gateway for credit card transactions. I also accept payments via Paypal. I just recently began offering a product (and accepting payments) via Clickbank.

I use Vonage for my office phone line. I use Verizon FIOS as my internet service.

Computer Software

I am a Mac user and therefore I use OS X Leopard. Love it. My workflow has improved quite a bit since I switched to the Mac. I still have Windows running, though, inside an instance of Vmware Fusion. My primary work machine is a Mac Pro with four processor cores (2 dual-core Xeons) and 9GB of RAM. My laptop is a Macbook Pro 15”.

Ironically, though, I still use Windows Live Writer as my blog client. It is better than all of the OS X blog clients I’ve ever tried.

My preferred web browser is Firefox. The add-on’s I use the most are S3Fox, Foxmarks, Firebug and SearchStatus.

I use Tweetdeck as my Twitter client of choice. It is an awesome app, however the memory usage is definitely huge. When I’m on the Iphone, I use Tweetie to interface with Twitter.

I use Adium for instant messaging and I have Skype open almost all the time.

I use Smultron as a text editor. Dreamweaver is my web-design program of choice. I use CSSEdit to do any stylesheet work I have to do. Transmit is my FTP client of choice for the Mac.

Believe it or not, I’m still using Paint Shop Pro version 9 for image editing. Under Windows. Really ironic, I know, considering I use a Mac. I actually own the full version of Photoshop CS3 and have it installed. I’ve just never taken the time to learn how to use it.

I am a big fan of Mindjet Mind Manager. I also use Evernote.

I use ScreenFlow to do screen recordings and iMovie 09 for editing. If I do any audio recording, I often use Wiretap Studio.

For local office software, I either use iWork 08 or OpenOffice.

Web-Based Software

WordPress, obviously. All the other options out there, forget them. WordPress is where it’s at.

I use vBulletin as my forum software of choice.

I use Amember Pro for anything involving a membership site or protected directory. My online store over on PCMech is powered by X-Cart.

I just recently signed up with EZS3 to manage my Amazon S3 account. So far so good, but I’ll have a full review of that some time later on, I’m sure.

So, What About You?

Found anything better? Do you have favorites you want to share?