I pay for about 14 pieces of software that return 500x their cost, and I run CopywritingCourse and SwipeFile.com on them. Let’s dive in.

1. Buffer – $36/mo

Our trusty social media scheduler. If you’ve seen a perfectly timed post at 9:00 a.m. — that was Buffer, not us.

We post content pretty much every day across 6 social networks, so a scheduling tool like Buffer is a must.

2. InvisionCommunity – $169/mo + Dev $500+/mo

This is the heart of CopywritingCourse — the engine behind our private community. We pay for hosting plus custom development each month.

It’s where lessons live, members chat, and feedback happens. This is the “town square” for all our students. We use a forum software because since we re-do a lot of copy we need the editor to do images, tables, font changes, etc….a lot of community software doesn’t do this.

3. Bunny.net – $30/mo

Our file storage system for SwipeFile’s backend, and also for CopywritingCourse videos. We use a ton of videos. Reliable, cheap, and boring in the best way possible.

4. ReportingNinja – $20/mo

To keep track of how our socials are doing we use ReportingNinja, and it just gives us access to clean reports. Every week we review them, and it’s mostly boring data, but every once in a while a post pops and we’ll see a bump of several hundred thousand or million extra views on a platform.

I was originally gonna remove Facebook and Pinterest, but then we see these occasional big pops on the platforms that makes it worth it to stay,

5. GoHighLevel – $97/mo

https://swipefile.com/gohighlevel

We use this for calendars, AI chat bots and some social media automations. This is like a mega-platform that does a lot of things, replacing a lot of different software, and some people run their entire business on it.

6. ChatGPT – $20/mo

Of course — ChatGPT. I use it daily for brainstorming, research, help fixing stuff, making images….it’s like having a creative intern. I still think there’s areas where it falls a little flat, but I can’t imagine my life without ChatGPT anymore.

We also use the Open AI API’s as well as Google Gemini API’s for swipe file content and image generation.

7. Grok – $50/mo

I use Twitter/X all the time so I pay a $50/mo subscription which also gives me Grok. Grok has actually been awesome for making images and videos. It’s way less nerfed than ChatGPT.

8. Kit – $4,470/year

https://swipefile.com/kit

We use Kit pretty much every single day, and my entire business runs on it. Through Kit we send all our emails for CopywritingCourse and SwipeFile, all our sales email sequences, all our download and lead magnet functionality, and now we even do some sponsorships and ads through the platform.

I have a big enough email list where Kit becomes pricey, but I’m happy to pay for it because of all the software mentioned here it directly makes me the most amount of money.

9. Google Suite – $38.38/mo

The unglamorous MVP that still runs everything. Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive storage, Google Meets, this is still our operational backbone.

10. Zoom – Free + Pro ($15–$20/mo)

For Copywriting Course Office Hours, we use Zoom. Every Thursday, members hop in live — cameras on, questions flying, Neville answering in real time.

It’s the most human part of our entire business.

And honestly, one of the most valuable things we offer.

11. Lead Pages – $36/mo

For quick, high-converting landing pages. We’ve tested a bunch, and this one just works and is easy enough for most people to use.

12. Captivate FM – $19/mo

Our podcast host. Uploads, analytics, auto-distribution — simple and stable.

13. Canva – Free to $13/mo

I use Canva several times per day. Everything from thumbnails to flyers to course graphics to random tshirts I make for friends..

I previously used Photoshop, but I’ve gone 100% Canva since it does everything I need to do EASILY. They keep putting out features, make it easy to share with employees, and they’ve done a really good job at adding useful AI tools.

14. Camtasia ($135)

We use Camtasia to edit and create all our videos, to screen record our Office Hours in HD and to make the gifs. Occasional gif.

I’ve tried almost every video editor out there, and Camtasia is just so stupid simple we keep coming back to it.

Books About Writing (w/ Sam Parr and Neville Medhora)

Command Palette