20 Incredibly Useful Websites You Didn’t Know Existed
The Internet is a vast and wondrous place with hundreds of millions and likely billions of different websites of all shapes and sizes. However, in spite of the fact that there are so many wonderful websites out there, there are a great many that you likely have never heard of and never will hear of unless you read an article like this.
I’ve scoured the web to find the best of the best in order to share them with you, our loyal readers. Here are 20 of my favorite websites which you likely have never heard of before. Hope you enjoy them:
Every Stock Photo
I admit that I’ve mentioned this a couple of times in the past but it’s worth mentioning again here because it is by far one of the most useful sites that most people still seem never to have heard of. Every Stock Photo is a great website to have at your disposal. It is a meta search service which literally lets you find material from more than a dozen other sites which offer stock photos.
They have something like 30,000,000 photos available. I do find that the search options tend to be a bit wonky and of course like most sites that offer free photos, they are extremely top heavy with scenery and have a lot less content useful for stock work. You also need to register with the individual sites they link to in order to actually download the content but ultimately, it’s still a great website to use.
Down for Me or For Everyone
Every now and then, I come across a website which I need to use and I find that it’s down. The question of course, is it just not working for me for some reason or is it not working for anyone at all anywhere? A quick visit to this website will allow you to check whether or not the site in question happens to be down for or just not functioning correctly on your website.
Coursera
Ever wanted to learn how to do basic PHP coding? Want to learn what it takes to build a website? Or maybe you have more advanced desires. While you won’t get an official certification or degree, you can definitely learn everything you want to know about almost any subject under the sun on Coursera. This website lists courses from some of the top universities on the planet, all in English and all for free.
Of course it’s not just about Internet Marketing or coding. There are courses on all kinds of things such as history, sociology and everything in between. Most of the courses are the same courses that people pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for at the best universities around. You get the same lectures and the same exam materials as well as a full curriculum. The only thing you don’t get is to ask questions from the professor and you don’t get to receive a grade at the end.
Hubspot Blog Topic Generator
I am really loving this service. I know that I’ve been blocked in the past and needed to find some kind of an idea for the blogs I run. I often look to see what other people in the field are doing however, with this service, I don’t have to. Give the folks at Hubspot three very general topics (nouns actually) that your blog is about and they’ll generate five ideas for you to write about right now.
I gave the service a spin with some very basic topics such as SEO, Internet Marketing and Make Money Online. While the results are not awe inspiring, it does make it easier to come up with some good ideas if you’re feeling blocked.
Portent’s Content Idea Generator
While the Hubspot service does tend to make for some useful if slightly generic content ideas, Portent’s Content Idea Generator makes for truly irreverent titles. I punched in Internet Marketing and well, you can see below what it came up with for me. Is it useful? That’s a definite maybe. I mean every now and again, I do like to be whimsical so I suppose this could do the job but ultimately, the previous site is a better choice.
Hemingway
I’ve got to say that I am seriously loving the Hemingway web app. This thing is a great service where you basically paste in content that you’ve written and it will tell you what you need to know about. For example, the paragraph on Every Stock Photo was rated as being written on an 11th grade level.
They also suggest that one of the sentences I wrote was difficult to read but I tend to disagree. Either way, this is a great service for anyone trying to ensure that they get their writing right and make it look the way it needs to look.
On Page Optimization Tool
This tool is great for those who need to ensure that their writing is optimized for search engines. It will check a variety of different factors and tell you whether or not what you wrote fits the bill. Of course, you still need to ensure that whatever you wrote also makes sense for human beings since the content needs to be useful to your customers too.
After the Deadline
This service works similarly to the way that Hemingway works in that it will check your spelling and grammar and the like. However, I personally didn’t find it nearly as useful, both because it only work with Chrome (I’m a Firefox man myself) and because it doesn’t seem to offer the same kind of easy to understand format that Hemingway offers. However, it is a very useful tool to know about all the same.
Readability Test Tool
Yet another service to check whether or not your content is well written, this service is also not my favorite of the three. Unlike Hemingway, it gives you a lot more raw data to work with, providing a number of different scores and breaking it all down for you. However, what I don’t happen to like very much is the fact that it seems that’s all it does. Hemingway is much more natural in offering me clear and concise information about my writing.
Tweriod
When tweeting, you need to know how to come up with something pithy to say in just 140 characters. However, that’s not the only thing that you need to know how to do. You also need to know when to send out your tweets in order to ensure that they’ll get the maximum exposure. Tweriod is designed to provide you with that kind of information so that you’ll be able to get the maximum benefit from your tweets.
10 Minute Mail
This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like – an e-mail address that is good for just 10 minutes. This is the perfect e-mail address if you wanted to sign up for some kind of website which you don’t want to give out your real e-mail address to. Of course, it’s also possible that the website in question will know which domains are used there and block you so your mileage may vary.
WhatTheFont
Ever see a website which looks really cool and which has a great looking font but which you couldn’t quite place? I know I’ve occasionally seen fonts used on other sites that I wanted to use for my own stuff but I had no way to match them. Now I can – WhatTheFont will tell you exactly which font was used for pretty much any image that you upload to it. Note that you need to click the link for WhatTheFont at the link above. For whatever odd reason, a direct link doesn’t work correctly.
Online Etymology Dictionary
Not the most useful website for those doing Internet Marketing or SEO but I’m including it here because I can see it potentially being something that will help you out sometime. Basically, you put in a word and it will tell you the etymology of the word in question. I can see it being useful for someone doing some writing work but again, not a super useful site but still pretty interesting overall.
Check what it came up with for Lilliputian for example. Note that you do need to spell the word correctly for the site to work. It doesn’t do automatic spell check.
FlipText
This could be useful for designing websites at least on occasion or maybe it could at least be mildly interesting. The site will flip text for you and allow you to copy it out and paste it into your website. It seems the text complies with ASCII characters so it will work right out of the box and can then be set up with whatever font you like. ˙ʇxǝʇ pǝddıןɟ ǝɯos ɟo ǝןdɯɐxǝ uɐ sı sıɥʇ.
Word Frequency Counter
Another useful if very simple tool. This one will count how many times a particular word appears in the text that you paste into it. Useful but frankly, I can just easily do a count using Microsoft Word and the find feature. That said, if you need it for SEO purposes, this is a nice little tool to know about.
Strip Creator
I have to admit that this one is good but it does require you to come up with some creative story ideas of your own. In essence, Strip creator allows you to create a customized comic strip. You can choose from a limited number of artist’s work if you need to use the strip outside of the site (which I assume you would need to do if you want it for IM). Check the FAQ for details on that.
The creation of the strip is pretty simple but of course, you need to be creative about what you write. I admit that my efforts below were not exactly the best but it works to at least show you how the thing works.
Account Killer
I just really liked this service because it can be useful for pretty much anyone. It doesn’t really do a whole lot for SEO and IM people though I can see it being useful if you need to delete an account and start over. Basically, it allows you to completely delete pretty much any kind of social media account that you’ve ever created.
Date Duration
This one is great if you’re trying to create a sale on your website and you want to specify how many days are left before the sale happens. It basically lets you plug in two different dates and find out how much time there is between the two of them.
CScore
This is a nice little website which can offer you some insight into your Facebook page and how popular it actually is. I tested several different Facebook pages on the site to see what it would come up with and found it a little odd. One page I own which is not terribly popular got a rating of 5 but Amazon’s page had a rating of just 41. Kind of odd I thought…
Screenr
No need to pay for expensive software to create your screenshots and video presentations. Screenr does the whole job for free and it works straight from the web. This site is really awesome and it will help you to build videos that you can incorporate onto your own website. It’s really a great service and the best part is that it’s completely and totally free. There is however a paid version of the same website available with additional features.
What about You?
So, what are some of your favorite hidden websites? Share them with us in the comments section below. I’d love to know what they are why they’re sites that you think should be included in this list. If anyone gives me some good ideas, I’ll be happy to add them into my original list as it appears above so don’t be shy. Tell us all what you like and what you want to see put out there.