Hello there!

I threw down the Gauntlet of Frugality earlier this week and boy did the Dealsverse respond.

Your trusty Deals Sherpa should never have doubted the discount hawkers of the world — they always come through on Black Friday, which is why it’s my favorite holiday of the year, just edging out Talk Like A Pirate Day and the Feast of Saint Vitus, who is of course the patron saint of oversleeping.

We have a glittering collection of bona fide bargains here, people, all of which are amazing tools to grow your author business or run it more efficiently. 

Most of these links are affiliate links, meaning I earn a small commission if you decide to make a purchase, but all these deals are products which I have personally use and heartily recommend.

Indeed, I can go further than that.

I’m not featuring these deals because they have generous price reductions but because they are the very best products in their category. 

I spent some time winnowing down approximately 86,193 Black Friday deals to find you the biggest savings around on the very best products for authors, helping you avoid the dreaded Crevice Of False Bargains.

What’s that you say? Get a wriggle on? Right-ho.

Publisher Rocket – the best keyword generating tool – free course

I’m all for discounts – I’m definitely on #TeamDiscount! – but some Black Friday Deals take a different tack and offer you something extra instead.

Publisher Rocket is the industry-leading, keyword-wrangling, time-saving tool which you have heard me rave about before, formerly known as KDP Rocket. And if you purchase it this weekend you will get a FREE course on mastering Amazon keywords, which normally costs $49.99.

Download PublisherRocket for $97 and get the keyword course free!

Note that Publisher Rocket has a 30-day no questions asked returns policy if that helps you off the fence.

Siteground – best value hosting on the planet – 75% off

This is a pretty stonking deal from what is the most consistently recommended hosting company around. I moved some of my other websites to Siteground earlier in the year, and it’s where I plan to move my main site too when the time comes to switch from my current host (Flywheel). Packages even comes with some extras that others charge for, like email addresses.

I canvassed the author community widely earlier in the summer and Siteground’s name was, by far, the most recommended hosting company out there – a result matched by a straw poll of web experts I conducted too. My own experience matches that; I was super impressed with customer service – something you don’t need to avail of regularly with a hosting company but something you really need to be on point when you do.

Siteground is offering a humongous 75% off annual hosting plans.

DepositPhotos – the most popular stock photo deal in history

The two deals I recommended earlier this week are still active for the weekend, so if you haven’t yet grabbed your pack of 100 DepositPhoto credits (which never expire BTW), for the record-low price of just $39, then I strongly recommend you do that right away. “I have too many ridiculously cheap stock photo credits,” said no one ever.

Grab 100 DepositPhotos credits for just $39 from AppSumo.

As with all AppSumo deals, this one has an easy-to-avail-of no quibble return policy.

ReMasterMedia – pro-level audio remastering for a steal - $59 (save over $1000!)

This will only be of interest to a small portion of you, but those of you who are doing anything that might benefit from professionally mastered audio are going to loooooooooove this monster saving. I’m talking podcasters, narrators, voice-over artists, YouTubers, those making video ads etc.

It’s super easy to use. Just upload your video/audio, select the kind of effects you want, listen to a short demo of various options, choose the one that sounds best for what you are doing, and, bam. Done. Professional remastered audio. Whole process only takes a minute or so.

I can’t describe the difference that this makes; it’s better just to show you. They have tons of examples on their site, but seeing the effects on my own videos might be more convincing.

So if you want to see a before/after, check out the last two videos on my YouTube channel. “How To Market A Book” is without remastering, and it sounds pretty good as-is IMHO.

Now listen to “10 Ways To Improve Your Email Open Rate” – which is with remastering – and good lord that’s quite a difference. It has that “warm professional radio presenter” sound, if you know what I mean. Not a technical audio person here… but I now sound like I am.

Grab RemasterMedia on a lifetime license from AppSumo for $59.

Remember that the standard, liberal return policy from AppSumo applies.

Namecheap - the best domain name provider in the world - up to 98% off.

You might already have the domain for all your pen names, but it can be smart to block off some alternate formulations too and just redirect them back to your Author HQ, especially at these rock-bottom prices.

And if you have a name that people can struggle to spell, like me, then you might find also it useful to grab a vanity URL for dropping in interviews and podcasts and video chats, and something the history books call “in-person conversations.” 

I bought marketingwithastory.com which redirects to my non-fiction site. It’s much easier to say on a podcast, and I don’t have to fumble around spelling my stupid name.

Namecheap does a much better job than the likes of GoDaddy with redirects, has stellar customer service, and offers some of the best prices around too. Those prices have been further slashed now and you can pick up .com domain names for 44% off on their Black Friday Deals Page where you will also find offers on a range of other products too.

But the deal I want to particularly highlight is their Transfer Service – which is stellar. Namecheap really shines here because there they make the transfer process simple, there’s no downtime with your site, and – here’s the best part – any remaining time you have with your provider is gets transferred across.

Get your cheap domain names here, and remember to use code BFTLDREG on checkout to maximize savings.

Stickermule – where have you been all my life?

Also still available is this ridiculously priced deal from AppSumo, where you can get your graphics/logo on a roll of sticker tape sent to your house, somehow, for $9. 

My life can be divided into two periods: before I knew about this deal, and after. Where am I going to stick this tape? Everywhere. I will paint the world.

Grab your StickerMule pack here for just $9.

Deal includes one free tape (you can stack codes if you wish) and free shipping too. A stone cold bargain!

Divi – the world’s favorite WordPress theme – 25% off

Once you have your domain name and hosting package sorted, you will need a WordPress theme and Divi is the most popular choice on the planet for a reason.

This Black Friday, you can grab it for the biggest discount ever offered and level up your author website. All purchases today come with a rather mysterious free prize too from a pool of prizes worth $800,000. Yegads!

Existing Divi users can play along too by upgrading here, and grabbing all sorts of exclusive perks… and one of those prizes too.

BookSweeps – the best list-builder promotion for authors - 10% off

BookSweeps is easily the best list-builder promotion for when you want to strategically augment your organic mailing list efforts. And the very best time to run a promo like this is either in the busy run-up to Christmas, or in the equally busy period in January when people have shiny new devices they are looking to fill with books.

The latest slate of promos has just been announced and you can grab a BLOODY WELL EXCLUSIVE 10% off here by using my super special link (below) and entering this exclusive-to-this-newsletter promo code: DECODERS.

Book your promo with BookSweeps here.

WP Rocket – the #1 speed-boosting plug-in – 30% off

More for my fellow non-fiction writers, but fiction authors who send a lot of traffic to their site might be interested too — especially if they have heard of the big Google update coming in May 2021 which looks like it will severely downgrade any site with a poor user experience, particularly on mobile, and especially when it comes to site loading speed (I might do an email on this early next year).

This is a tricky area to get right – I’ve spent the last few months making adjustments in preparation for the change, trying all sorts of tools and techniques to increase site loading speed. Easily the best I’ve found so far is WP Rocket, which led to significant and noticeable improvements in speed right out of the box – I mean I could really notice my site loading faster just after installing it, before I even fiddled with any more advanced settings.

WP Rocket is 30% off right now, which is a real bargain for what it can do for your Author HQ.

Yoast – the only SEO plug-in you will ever need - 30% off

One more for the non-fiction crowd — or anyone else who has content on their site which they want to appear higher on Google — is an amazing little plug-in called Yoast, which is so easy to use and actually has a killer free version which everyone should just grab.

I’ve been using the free version for a year or two, and it doesn’t just provide a super simple way for you to optimize your content for SEO so that it ranks higher on Google, it also does it in a way which actually teaches you a lot about SEO best practices without you even realizing it.

The free version is packed with awesome features that plug-ins normally hold back for the premium version. Too many to list here, but just one example: it allows you to set-up custom images and descriptions for Facebook and Twitter so that your content looks amazing on social media when your readers share it. No more garbled descriptions or wrongly sized images! I’d recommend it for that feature alone, but Yoast does so much more.

To the extent that I was actually wondering if they had left any features for the premium version, and didn’t bother upgrading to it myself until just a few months ago. Zero regrets on that front, because the premium edition just takes everything to the next level and adds a ton of new ways to help you rank those pages higher on Google, and lots of unexpected features like SEO audits, related content link-ups, and a handy redirect tool. A must if you are serious about SEO.

Grab the Premium version here for 30% off.

This is not an affiliate link, just another amazing product which I’m very happy to recommend.

HappyScribe – best transcription/captioning tool - Save $255

Definitely of niche interest, but super useful for the podcasters/video people/course floggers among you. I tried a few different transcription tools and this was the easiest to use and the most reasonably priced - my favorite twofer.

Grab it on a lifetime deal from AppSumo for just $69.

In the interest of balance, I should mention that when I was raving about HappyScribe on Twitter an author from Liverpool complained that HappyScribe didn’t work out quite as well for him. 

Although I’m not personally surprised we have solved the technological challenge of landing a satellite on an asteroid before training a computer to understand Scouse. (It handled my own accent just fine!)

That's it! I'm sure to spot even more deals as the weekend progresses and some sites dole out new ones too, so keep on eye on Twitter and Facebook, where I'll be sharing those.

Dave

P.S. Countdown-inspired music this week is Muse with Time Is Running Out.