Unlock the secrets to a thriving online business presence with Robert Brandl, the insightful founder of ToolTester. Our conversation is an eye-opener for anyone from budding entrepreneurs to seasoned business owners looking to harness the power of digital tools. Robert narrates his transformative journey from searching for a simple website builder to creating a robust platform—ToolTester—that guides users in choosing the ideal digital assets. His experiences illuminate the critical role of SEO and affiliate marketing in catapulting your business to new heights, while also underscoring the accessibility of platforms such as Weebly and Squarespace that have democratized the online landscape for non-techies.
Dive into the heart of digital marketing's evolution with us, where personalizing content and optimizing for various devices is now the name of the game. I share firsthand the rigorous process of continuous testing and updating that ToolTester undergoes to help your business climb the search engine ranks. Our discussion spans the integration of video content, the intertwined growth of blogs and YouTube channels, and the dynamic nature of email marketing—emphasizing the importance of staying current with tactics that resonate with your audience.
Step with us into the world of web tools, essential for any content creator or small business aiming to make an indelible mark online. From exploring efficient website builders to dissecting the nuances of e-commerce and email marketing services, this episode is a treasure trove of recommendations tailor-made to fit your needs. As we offer gratitude to Robert for his invaluable expertise, we hope you find the inspiration and information necessary to empower your journey and select the right digital tools that will turn your online endeavors into a resounding success.
Have I got something extra special for you? Today we are talking about tools. So if you listen to the podcast regularly or you check out what we talk about on the YouTube channel, you know we did a recent episode on my content tech stack. Now what does that mean? That means all of the tools that I use to run my business, from creating this podcast or writing emails or just doing things on my website. I shared every single tool that I use on a regular basis in my business. But today we're going to talk about a fantastic resource that I found to test which tools should you use, because often I'll let you know like, hey, this is what I used for my budget or my experience or the things that I know will work well for me and my business and the way that my brain works. Right, because I'm an Enneagram 3. I'm an extrovert. I have a certain skill set that maybe not everyone has, and I think that that's the beautiful part of being a creator. We don't all have to be the same. We don't all have to have the same skill sets or approach to creating content and running our business, which is why I was so excited about today's guest to come onto the show and share all about tools. So Robert Brandl is joining us today and he is the founder of Tool Tester. Now this is a super cool resource that I want you to go check out after our interview.
Speaker 1:
But Robert is a German entrepreneur and has always felt drawn to online tools. He founded ToolTester in 2010 as he managed to turn his passion into a very profitable business, allowing him to live in his dream city, barcelona. With ToolTester rapidly taking off, robert realized he needed to work on his digital marketing strategy and find a way to connect with readers outside of the website. So, having worked in an email marketing agency, he quickly put his skills to work, building a long email list of subscribers looking for actionable information on website creation. He then began sharing a free ebook and resources for small businesses to grow, and when I say the amount of resources that they have on this website, it is incredible. I want you to go check it out.
Speaker 1:
But first, enjoy this incredible interview with my new friend, robert. Let's get right to it. Welcome to the Profit Podcast, where we teach you how to start, launch and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, crystal Profit, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today, because if you've been trying to figure out the world of content creation, this is the show that will help be your time-saving shortcut. So let's get right to it, shall we All right? Profit Podcast listeners. We have a special guest today. Welcome to the show, robert. How are you today?
Speaker 2:
Thank you very much, Crystal. I'm excited to be here. Very fine today.
Speaker 1:
Yes, I love geeking out on tools. I mean, my audience knows, like, I'm just a marketing nerd at the core of who I am, and so to have you come on and us just get a chance to talk about marketing tools and digital products that can help all of us in our businesses and our content creation like it's just going to be such an incredible conversation, but I want to go back and digital products that can help all of us in our businesses and our content creation. It's just going to be such an incredible conversation, but I want to go back to how did you get started in the online space and what did that journey look like for you?
Speaker 2:
Well, yeah, so, as you said, tools are a bit of my life story. Runningtooltestercom, the website. I mean, how did I get started? I was looking for a tool because I wanted to create a website back in the days when I was still in my regular full-time job and I didn't find a really good way to build a website because WordPress wasn't that big and I was also not very technical, so I had a hard time. I understood a little bit of the basics of HTML, but that's about it.
Speaker 2:
And then, yeah, I was just looking on the web and I found website builders like Weebly, squarespace, that kind of thing, and it was just the beginning that these tools were becoming bigger. And, yeah, and I also. The problem was that I couldn't find a lot of information on the web, so I was just basically putting together a free website and filling it with information that I could find about these website builders and, to my surprise, people started to come to this website and were asking questions, and I saw there was a huge demand on the internet from people that wanted to learn more about these tools and know what website builders are the best, and that led into creating the ToolTester website and, yeah, I managed to monetize it with affiliate marketing, which is, yeah, for review content. It's a pretty good way of monetization and then getting the traffic through SEO. It all works together like a dream team, especially I mean 10 years ago, when the competition wasn't quite as intense as it is now.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, oh my gosh, what a fun journey actually.
Speaker 1:
Just, you said a key phrase in there that I want to hone in on, because everybody in the audience will relate, is you're not a super technical person, or you didn't want to be a super technical person, because I think when people start thinking about tools, they immediately go to oh, I need to be able to build my own website on WordPress, or I need to be able to build all these tools from scratch because I need to have this, to build all these tools from scratch because I need to have this in order to have this successful business.
Speaker 1:
And I mean, that was so much of my perception. I started with Weebly way back in the day. It was the first website tool I ever messed around with and even that felt very overwhelming. So how did you kind of start navigating the different tools that you wanted to try? Did you just dive in and say, all right, I'm just going to learn how these work and figure out what works best for me, or did you kind of have like a guide or a mentor to help you navigate the different pieces of figuring out this journey?
Speaker 2:
I just I'm naturally curious with these tools and I just enjoyed a lot playing around with them and and testing the different website builders and I found them all relatively easy to use. I mean, the target audience is beginners and so, yeah, but I judge them also by their ease of use. That was one of the key criteria because I mean, the whole website is intended to work well for beginners and I mean, yeah, that was mainly what I was looking for. And then I mean, over time they became more complex because they were adding e-commerce features and all kinds of features, even some have podcasting features like Squarespace. Over time they got more complicated, but compared to WordPress, it's probably still a lot easier. Now we have the next generation actually popping up with AI-powered website builders that are even easier to use.
Speaker 2:
Yeah so it's always interesting to follow this development.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, well, you just said the keyword that everybody just kind of leaned in a little bit. They're like oh, he said AI Like if anybody had it timed on when we would mention that in today's episode. That's a great time. But what are you seeing in tools for AI that are just really astonishing, or maybe things that you're like man, I wish I would have had this when I first started. Is there something that you're just loving right now?
Speaker 2:
With regards to website building, I mean it speeds up the whole journey because you have website builders that create the content for you and that find pictures and images created by AI. I mean it is nice, but also, I don't know, maybe it's still not there. If you want a really basic website, then that's maybe fine, but you have to work on it, of course, and make the content of this website yourself. You need to put your personality in it, because I don't think AI is really able is not really able to do that just yet. So I think it speeds up the journey, but you still have to have your own ideas and to really get creative with your website, or be it website, newsletter, whatever. Basically, you have AI-powered tools now everywhere, but it's, yeah, mainly they help you to get faster and to create content faster, but, yeah, it's all a bit limited still.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's good to know too, because I know that. I think that there's like a camp of people that are saying, like, oh, I'll just get AI to do everything for me, and I want everybody that's listening to understand that, yeah, there will be that subset, and they could even be your competitors out there that are doing this, but you're always going to have the advantage when you make it your own and you really add your story or add the pieces that make you stand out, and I think that that's what y'all have done so well. You know, I was playing around on your website earlier, robert, and looking at all the different features, and I just love how easy your website is to navigate and to poke around. So, oh, is that something that y'all have like just kind of iterated over the years? Like, is what you have today totally different than when you first launched ToolTester?
Speaker 2:
Oh gosh, totally different. Yeah, I mean the old website was built with a website builder and, yeah, not quite the same as it is now. But yeah, we do constant testing and, yeah, trying to make it as easy as possible, testing it in different devices so important because so many people they see their website only ever see it on the laptop, on the big screen, and on mobile it does totally different things. So that is so important to do all the testing and to make it really easy that it works for your users and visitors 100%.
Speaker 1:
I think that the iterative, you know thinking about how it used to just be desktop only and then it's like you got to have the mobile, you got to have the tablet version.
Speaker 1:
For those people that are still looking at you know, it's like I don't know how much of everyone's audience, but when I look at my analytics it's mostly mobile and then desktop is very close second, and then I don't know who the tablet users are in my community. But you know, if you're out there, I see you, we're still making things for you, but it's also not the highest priority as much as the desktop and the iPhone responsiveness, but it's so interesting to see, like the journey of your own content over time, but also the tools that are coming on the market. So I have a question for you that would really relate to people that have been creating content for a long time and you're having to refresh stuff because you know on y'all's site you have, you know, the five best tools for this type of process or, like you said, e-commerce or websites, and how often are you going back and updating that older blog content or giving it a refresh or looking at it again for SEO optimization? Is that something that your team is constantly doing. You're looking at it like once a year, like what does that process look like for you?
Speaker 2:
I mean, yes, we do update a lot, and the frequency depends a lot on how badly we want to rank a certain article on Google. So if, yeah, if it's just a requirement to have like to update it every couple of weeks, then we have to do that. It also depends, of course, if there's really something new Is there a new feature with one of the tools that we have to add and that is missing from our review Then we definitely have to do that. Sometimes there's not much newsworthy to say about certain tools or articles, but even then, if you want to rank on Google, the SEOs are a bit the slaves of Google, so we still have to find things that we could update. Yeah, it's how it works.
Speaker 1:
Unfortunately, yeah, well, it's good to know, because I think that there's a lot of people that have been podcasting or creating, you know, show notes on their blogs, that have been thinking, oh, you know some of this content, it's just been there for a long time, but there's some refresh things that I could do. And so in hearing that, it's like, well, if you want to kind of feed the SEO monster, you do need to make those updates, and I know that the way that y'all have it formatted is you'll have like kind of a blog style and then you have your YouTube videos that are, you know, in the relevant places along you know all the blog articles that you have. Did you see a big jump in either your blog views or your website I mean, sorry, website your YouTube subscribers or your viewer base whenever you started incorporating the two, like, did one of them kind of go up higher at the same time? Or are your blogs and your YouTube videos kind of helping each other grow? Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:
It does. It does, I would say, maybe five, six, seven years ago I always saw quite a jump when we added a video to a review or to any piece of content. Then usually it went up pretty quickly after adding the video, especially if the competitors didn't have videos. These days almost everybody is producing videos, so it's not quite the big advantage anymore to have video on the site, but I think it is in many cases just a requirement that without the video you wouldn't be able to rank at all. So it is very important and, yeah, we see that SEO drives a lot of the growth we have on YouTube. So most of the new subscribers in well, many of them at least in some way or other they come through our SEO content and land on our videos. But then of course, youtube also drives traffic to our website. So it is a really nice collaboration of different channels. So, yeah, seo and YouTube or video works together really well, I would say.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's awesome and you know, in looking at your website, I love talking about like how everything I call it like the spiderweb effect how everything you know. You get your podcast talking to your YouTube, talking to your blog, talking to you know all the different things but is email marketing one of those that you have seen that's constantly evolving Like? Is that like? Do you do you still have like the same top five that you've been recommending for a long time, because that's really a hot topic that people are wanting to know about? Is you know how relevant is email marketing? If I'm still doing things on YouTube and on my blog and my podcast, is email like still something that I need to be focusing on? And what have you really seen from your side of things?
Speaker 2:
I think email marketing is still really relevant because it's a nice booster for all the other channels, so it works so well together with SEO, with social media, with YouTube, because you can collect email addresses, which you just can't If you only have your YouTube channel or your website. Without a subscription form. It's much more difficult to push something out specifically and target it. It's nice to be able to post something on LinkedIn, twitter, whatever, but you can't target it very well, which you can with email. And with email you can also be pretty sure that they won't miss it entirely, because if you don't log on, log on to twitter, then all these tweets, they just go away and the email stays in your inbox.
Speaker 2:
I mean even if you don't open it or read it, um you, you still see that there's an email and that's important, an important reminder that you exist to the reader. So I think also more and more. I think it's important for SEO to do email marketing, because it seems to be important for Google to see that all the traffic is not just coming from Google, but that there are other traffic sources, be it social media or whatever, and also email marketing For Google. If they realize that you get a lot of traffic from other channels, they think that you are more important and for that reason I think it's also a brand booster. No-transcript Like in our case it would be email tool test, email marketing service which gives the signal to Google if someone is looking for an email marketing service, they think that email tool test is a relevant result. So for that reason it's super important.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I think I mean you just laid everything out. First of all, I feel like I just want to tell everybody I didn't pay Robert to say any of that, because all of it was exactly how I feel about email marketing and I was like, oh my gosh, if I were asked that same question, that's exactly the way that I would have said it. So I love that we're on the same page, but you even offered so much more behind the scenes with the SEO and Google, and I think that it's just such a fun. I don't know Again. This goes back to me being just a digital marketing nerd. I love talking about and watching everything evolve over time and how there's never a dull moment. Everything is constantly changing in a good way, because it's making everything either easier for us to create as business owners or creators, but it's also giving us more opportunities to reach our audiences in new ways. So I just I totally agree and I think it's so fun.
Speaker 1:
What is your favorite? I'm just curious what kind of content do you consume on a regular basis? Are you a podcast listener? Are you a YouTube Like? What's your favorite?
Speaker 2:
I'm a big podcast listener. It's just whenever I have a moment alone I mean I have twins at home, six-year-old twins Whenever I have a moment of peace and quiet, I put in my earphones and listen to some podcasts. It's something I really enjoy. I think there's something magical about being in someone's ear because you have such an intimate connection. I find even I don't know it's even more intimate than watching a video, because I think when watching a video I'm often distracted, but with podcasts I can just fully focus on the audio. I love that. Again, I didn't pay Robert to say that y'all, I just want to focus on the audio.
Speaker 1:
I love that. Again, I didn't pay Robert to say that y'all, I just want to put that on record. I didn't pay him to say that, but we are totally on the same page. I'm 100% in agreement. I think that it's just. It's something that can't be replicated in other platforms and it's just.
Speaker 1:
It's so much fun to have that connection with your audience and I know everybody's listening right now. They're nodding and they're like yes, crystal, we know how much you love podcasting, so we won't get on that soapbox today. But it's just so cool to talk to someone who has explored and tested so many different products that are out there on the market. And one of the things I would love to know when you're really evaluating, let's say, three to five different options for a tool set or a subcategory, whether it's, you know, podcast hosting let's just take that, for example what do you typically use as like your standardization of how you're going to measure oh, this is good for. Is it like the type of creator or the type of audience, or is it usually the ease of use and the price range or affordability? What are some of those things that you use to measure the tools that you're testing?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, usually ease of use plays a big role and we often put in our list. We put in the best for small businesses, the best for podcasters. We try to put it in different criteria because there's usually no one-size-fits-all tool for everyone. So we have to differentiate a little bit what the target audience is, what the target audience is. But of course there are also tools that we just don't think are very good and then we don't recommend them at all.
Speaker 2:
So that also happens. But yeah, in terms of how we find the relevant tools, it's usually that we check what people are talking about and also would check our SEO tools. How much search volume do the tools have? Because in the end, it's also important to get that search traffic. If nobody is interested in a review for a specific tool, then yeah, it's not that interesting for us to have it on the website. So that's a bit of our process of evaluation.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's great. That's great Again. I'm a nerd for behind the scenes too, of just seeing how you do it, and I think that this is such a great reminder for everybody listening that that's a great way to create content in general is understanding what are people talking about, what are the SEO Like, what are those keywords that your audience is looking up over and over again, and what are you creating around it? Because you need to. If you don't have anything on that topic, you need to create it and put it out there so that they can find you. But I'm also curious, excuse me, just looking at all the different categories that y'all have for the tools that you test, is there one in particular that you just find like fascinating, or you really like just one, one type of tool that you like nerding out on, whether it's websites or email, or is there anyone that's your favorite?
Speaker 2:
um, it's becoming more and more email marketing tools. Yeah, it's just. The thing is, for a very long time we were focused on tool tester and website builders and all these tools, e-commerce tools. I guess that the interest for email marketing came a bit out of necessity because it got very, very hard to compete with other website builder review websites.
Speaker 2:
If I'm honest, and I have my background in email marketing, I used to work for an agency and actually I don't know, I wasn't too keen on getting back into email marketing, but then the more I worked on it and because it works pretty well, the more interested I also got again in it. And it reminds me of something that I guess you know Mark Manson, the author. He once said passion is practical, and I think that explains very well my process, because at first I wasn't that into email marketing tools, but then the more I worked with it, the more excited I got about it, because I understood it better and I saw what is possible with these tools. So yeah, I guess right now my focus is pretty much on email marketing tools for all these reasons.
Speaker 1:
Do you have a favorite that you can share with us?
Speaker 2:
share with us. Well, it really depends, as I said, on the use case. But at ToolTester we work with Brevo, which is pretty neat because it integrates a lot of different things like online scheduling tool and a live chat tool, which I like to use and all in all.
Speaker 2:
it's a nice experience. They have recently rebranded it used to be called Send in Blue and I think doing a rebrand really helped them to build a very nice piece of software. But other than that, I think if we are more talking about podcasters, maybe with regards to email tools, I think the two usually mentioned are ConvertKit and MailerLite. I think they are both great. Mailerlite is a bit cheaper and if you don't do extra fancy things, I think mailer light is a really solid option. It also has this, this whole rss to email thing that you can plug in your rss feed and mailer light will send it out automatically, and they have a very good deliverability. We we do these deliverability studies twice a year and MailerLite is usually ranked pretty highly on that. So you're going to have an easier time to actually landing in the inboxes than with other tools. It's, of course, not impossible with other tools, but you may have to invest a little bit more work into getting into the inboxes may have to invest a little bit more work into getting into the inboxes.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, oh, my gosh, like I feel like we could nerd out about chemo marketing. And it's so funny because it sounds like you did like a full circle, like back to your roots, because you worked in chemo marketing, and then you were like, no, that's not for me. But going back to what did you say it was, it was like passion is practical.
Speaker 2:
That's what the quote is yeah, it's less follow your passion, but but develop your passion like find something that you have a little bit of an interest in, but then then double down on it and become passionate yeah, I love it well, and I mean email marketing.
Speaker 1:
I mean, even just this year is changing and like there's different rules and different regulations depending on where you live and you know just the other bigger corporations you know, as soon as they make a decision, it kind of just trickles down to other areas of your online business.
Speaker 1:
So I highly recommend you know keeping up with sites like Robert's like go to tooltestercom and check out everything that they have, because when things change, I have found your site to be so helpful in understanding, like, oh okay, to your point. Earlier you said, if there's a new feature, you're going to have it there and is it recommended? Is it a great feature? Sometimes it's a great addition, sometimes it's like ah, there's pros and cons on all the different tools that you have listed and I think it's so helpful to understand, especially if you are just beginning your business or starting your content. Go check out ToolTester, because they're going to have all the reasons why you may or may not want to use certain tools. So again, I could just talk about email marketing, all the digital products, but I actually want to move into our next segment and I have some rapid fire questions for you. So are you up for that?
Speaker 2:
Of course.
Speaker 1:
A little nervous, but we'll see.
Speaker 2:
I am, I am.
Speaker 1:
You'll be great. You'll be great. The first one is what piece of advice would you give to a brand new podcaster or content creator?
Speaker 2:
I guess. Find a good niche. Yeah, don't repeat the same thing that has been said a thousand times already. Find something very specific. The internet is a very big place, so you can find a niche that not everybody is already talking about.
Speaker 1:
That's great. The next one is what is a dream podcast you would love to be on and who is your dream podcast guest you would love to interview?
Speaker 2:
would love to interview my dream podcast. I used to listen to Pat Flynn I guess you know him. Entrepreneur's Journey. I think that would be a nice podcast to be on, but probably very difficult to get on that In terms of a guest, that is, I think I would just interview you.
Speaker 2:
It's been very fun so far, so we could have so much fun yeah, I'm gonna invite you to my podcast when I have one, but yeah, I'm dreading a bit of work that is involved oh no, trust me, robert, we'll make it easy for you.
Speaker 1:
We'll make it easy. We'll just just stick with us. And trust me, robert, we'll make it easy for you. We'll make it easy. We'll just just stick with us and we'll help you out. We'll make it happen. Okay, my last question is do you consider yourself a perfectionist?
Speaker 2:
Well, I think my motto is that perfect is the enemy of good. So maybe not perfect In some areas, yes, but overall I try not to be too focused on the finer details that don't matter that much.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, awesome, awesome. Well, robert, tell us all the places where everybody can learn more about ToolTester and all the fun things that y'all are doing and where they can start seeing these reviews and really helping to understand more about the tools they can use in their online business, and emailtooltestercom.
Speaker 2:
I'm quite active on Twitter under my handle, robert Brandl, a bit on LinkedIn as well, and for everyone who wants to start out creating a newsletter, we have a free e-book the email marketing crash course that people can download if they're interested. And yeah, basically that's what I can offer.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's perfect. We'll have links to everything that Robert mentioned in the show notes, because I want you to go check out. Like if the only thing you do after listening to this conversation today is go check out the tools that they have available, because it will help you. I mean, even if you aren't brand new and you've been doing this for a while and you've been wanting to reevaluate, maybe you have a different budget in 2024 and you can try some of the tools that have been on your to-do list or your dream list. Well, go check out ToolTester before you do that. That way, you can go with Robert's recommendations and the tools that him and his team love. So thank you so much, robert, for being on the show today. This was so helpful and a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:
Thank you, Crystal. Yes, it was indeed a lot of fun. Thank you.
Speaker 1:
This might be one of those episodes where you're like, oh my gosh, crystal, that was so impactful, that was so helpful. Thank you for all this. Like finding this new resource and sharing it with us. Or you may say that was super nerdy, and I'm going to say yes to both, because this is who I am Like behind the scenes. Like you may see a lot of the extroverted, quirky things that I talk about here in content, but at my core, I love, love the techie stuff.
Speaker 1:
I'm obsessed with AI. I'm obsessed with finding tools that can help me do my job better, and my job as a podcast coach is to help you find the resources that are going to help you in your everyday life, whether it's in your content, in your business or just in general helping you navigate the online space. And I think that ToolTester is an incredible resource for you to have in your back pocket. So I want you to go check it out. So it is as simple as it sounds tooltestercom and you can explore. I'm actually looking at their website right now as I'm talking to you. They have website builders, e-commerce, email marketing, live chat. I mean. It just keeps going on and on.
Speaker 1:
So if you just navigate over to website builders. You can find all the different ones listed, and I'm pretty sure the one that you're using will be there, and so you can navigate some of the features that it has. Or you can look into e-commerce or other types of web hosting other tools. They even have ones for content creation. So if you want to get more in depth on other options for what you could use for your podcast or YouTube channel, go check it out Again. That's tooltestercom. But I want to say thank you so much again to Robert for coming on the show sharing his story and just being a part of the conversation about helping content creators, helping small business owners, really get the tools in their hands that will help them do a better job at their business, getting more clients, getting more customers and, overall, having a better experience as a creator. But that's all I have for you today. So make sure you are subscribed or following the podcast wherever you are listening and, as always remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.