2024 Paid Tools

Here are the set of paid tools I use constantly. I think of them as workers I hire for specific jobs.

Learning

acm – ACM comes bundled with Oreilly & Pluralsight. Though I don’t use them often, I turned to them whenever I have to learn a a technical concept.
Everand – Been using Scribd for a very long time. Recently they carved out the books service into a separate service. I read at least 1 book a month here. This year might be different though.

Audiopen – Bought the life-time plan when it came out. So much easy to dictate, transcribe, and blog daily commonlog.
Wordtune – Wordtune helps me edit the posts I write. It is an editor that I hire to polish my writing.

Descript – Google docs for audio & video editing. If you are a podcaster, Descript is a must-have tool. Make editing transcript, clips so much easier.
Riverside – Tool to record all my podcast interviews. Have tried different tools (including the one from Descript), but nothing is as user-friendly as Riverside.
Transistor – Where I host Gravitas WINS podcast. Amazing service. Plus been part of Justin Jackson‘s Megamaker too.

Zoom – I use for all virtual calls. All my coaching calls happen via Zoom.
Linkedin – Been a premium user for 2 years. Since I write and post there daily, it helps to be a premium user. LI has morphed to be a first-class professional network. That is where I meet most of interesting people from a career perspective.
Twitter – In Dec’2023, subscribed to the premium plan to check out if it helps in getting a good user experience. So far no. May be too early to tell.

Dropbox – All my files are here. Been a user ever since they started
Opalstack – Where I host all my sites & apps. I have been using their previous avatar (Webfaction) for more than a decade. Switched to Opal when Webfaction was sold to Godaddy.
Webflow – My younger son uses it to make his site

What are the tools you pay for?