Pay With Credit Card Even When NOT Accepted

Realistic text-to-speech AI, advanced financial modeling, and more

Author

Aziz
February 23, 2023

Greetings from The SaaSsy Entrepreneur, a weekly newsletter that injects a healthy dose of digital steroids into your life and business 💉

Today we'll cover 10 useful tools and 5 interesting links.

⌛️ TL;DR

 

💻 Productivity

  • Small library of focus, meditation, and relaxation sounds

  • Free, no sign up required

  • Minimalist UI

  • Categories: ambient, noise, nature, zen

Pricing: Free

My 2 cents: I have it bookmarked which already says a lot ) It's dead simple, clean, and free. I love Lofi Girl and beats like that, but I need something different every so often. Keep in mind, this is [or seems like] a side project by Rasmus Lian so who knows how long it lasts.

  • Browser-based AI conversation assistant

  • Works with most messaging apps

  • Multi-language support

  • Can even respond with a GIF

Pricing: Credit-based plan starts at $15/month. Unlimited - $19/month

My 2 cents: ChatGPT is nice but The SaaSsy Entrepreneur is all about saving time & money. Constant copy-pasting and context-switching kill productivity. Hence why I like niched tools such as ConversAI. It puts the power of AI right where you communicate saving you precious time.

🎨 Creativity

  • PDF to interactive flipbook converter

  • Supports image, audio, video, and iframe embeds

  • Mobile responsive, downloadable, customizable

Pricing: Free basic; standard plan $49/year; professional plan $89/year

My 2 cents: If you want to add a bit of flare and interactivity to your static PDFs a la Flipboard then HeyZine is for you. The page-turning animations add a feel of premium. More so in fashion, design, or anything visual.

  • Text-to-speech AI converter

  • Incredibly life-like

  • Clone your own voice or create new one from scratch

Pricing: Free basic; paid plans start at $5/month and go all the way to $330/month based on usage

My 2 cents: While AI-powered TTS is nothing new, especially in recent months prime voice AI by Eleven Labs takes it up a notch. Other similar tools make you manually tweak annunciation, emphasis, tone, pauses, etc. Eleven Labs nails these out of the box. Very impressive.

📈 Marketing

  • Embeddable user-generated content (UGC) for e-commerce

  • Curated network of 1000+ vetted creators

  • Hosted UGC-powered product landing pages optimized for conversion

Pricing: Plans range from $59/month to $249/month based on # of impressions; $75/video

My 2 cents: Social proof is probably the most effective marketing these days, especially among Gen Z. And UGC is the best social proof there is. If you run an e-commerce store and struggle with conversions, try Gander's UGC tech.

  • Personalized targeted AI-powered email campaigns

  • Rich email templates and drag-&-drop editor

  • Dynamic AMP components

Pricing: Free basics; $15/month standard; $65/month pro; 20% off when billed annually

My 2 cents: AI-powered email service provider (ESP) was only a matter of time. TinyEmail's automated targeted campaigns and highly personalized messaging set them apart from the competition. IMO other ESPs like Klavio will start catching up soon but for now, AI-powered TinyEmail is ahead of the pack.

💰 Money

  • Custom financial modeling

  • Advanced simulations and backtesting

  • Cash-flow visualization

  • Multiple data storage options

Pricing: Free basics; $12/month premium; $60/month pro; 33% off when billed annually; 7-day trial

My 2 cents: What I like the most is the option to use the product without having to connect all my financial accounts. Plug in the numbers and off you go. You can do advanced financial modeling, track cash flow, visualize projections, and so much more.

  • Pay vendors by credit card even when not accepted

  • 2.9% fee for 60-90 day float

  • Supports 45+ countries and 22 currencies

Pricing: Free basics; $59/month pro, $119/month enterprise; plus fees

My 2 cents: With PlastiqPay not only can I pay whatever with a credit card: bills, leases, etc. I now get to spend money on anything (let's say FB ads) and not have to repay for up to 90 days. Way after I get the ROI. Granted, there's a 2.9% fee but it's still much lower than a traditional SMB loan or most cards' APRs.

💻 Business

  • Simple e-commerce platform with must-have features

  • Easy to use, fast to set up

  • Social shopping, international orders

Pricing: Free basics; extra features from $6.25/month to $98.75/month; 20% off when billed annually

My 2 cents: A lot of merchants started looking for Shopify alternatives after they announced price hikes. Cococart, while much more bare-bones, is a great alternative if you don't require all the bells and whistles under the sun.

  • Look up people's professional info using personal email address

  • GDPR compliant

  • Automated data entry

Pricing: Free for 5 searches/month; search-based pricing; 30% off annual subscription

My 2 cents: Useful tool for gathering professional data on a person of interest. A little freaky, too. But, oh well. It's quite accurate as long as the person has a LinkedIn profile.

🔎 Rad reads & resources

An advanced guide to writing prompts for Midjourney (text-to-image) teaches the basics of Midjourney prompts for the best results. Prompt engineering is the hottest skill these days. Lars offers practical examples (with images, of course) and reusable keywords to use in your own projects.

Revenue is easy, profit is hard - Ryan makes a strong case for optimizing for capital efficiency rather than blindly chasing revenue at all costs.

21 Tactics to help you become a better writer - While the primary audience of this post may seem to be writers, these tactics are applicable to all content creators and marketers. Because good marketing is storytelling.

4000 Weeks - A tribute to the book by Oliver Burkeman - Beautiful visualization and reminder of the precious gift we call life. Packed with nuggets of wisdom from the book. One of my faves - embrace boring single-purpose tech. So true.

Cloaked - A new privacy app, still in beta. It creates burner identities every time you're prompted to enter your personal info, i.e. email address, phone #, and password. It's free while in beta and available on the web, Chrome, iOS, and Android.

Let's play a little, shall we

The name of the game is "Guess the number of replies" 🎰

Simply reply to this email with your best guess of how many people reply to this email in one week. Whoever guesses the correct number wins the prize pool money 💰 The counter resets every week, btw.

If no one guesses the number I'll double the pool and the show will go on. Heads up, I'll be posting the # of active newsletter subscribers on Twitter and LinkedIn occasionally.

If by the year's end, the game is still on I'll donate the money to a charity of y'all's choosing.

May the odds be ever in your favor!

Current prize pool: $20

What do you think of this week's edition? Anything I might've missed? Reply and let me know what YOU found interesting this week. If it's really dope I'll include it in the next email 🤜

Until next time,The SaaSsy Entrepreneur

DISCLAIMER: Some links here might be affiliate links. I may earn a small commission whenever you click on them and/or make a purchase. This doesn't cost you anything and helps me keep putting out useful content like this. In fact, many of these links come with a discount or other perks attached. Win-win 😉

P.S. See those buttons below? They're not a décor ;) Gimme a follow on whichever platform is your jam. I'd love to say hello.

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