It's interesting; I've been looking for more actionable "tools" like this for a while (i.e. places that have step-by-step actionable content) and even considered creating something like this myself. Now that I have access to something like it, though, I feel less than interested.
The first mistake they make is their ridiculous captcha that doesn't seem to work properly with Firefox 3. I'd love to sign up, but because the captcha won't explain how it works (do you put a space between the words or not? is it case sensitive? does it matter what order I type the words in?), nor give me something I can actually read and replicate (it's great that spam bots can't read it, but non-ideal if humans can't, too), I can't. (Yes, I can get past the captcha if I want, but that's not the point. The point is that there are thousands of people who'd have rather unnecessary trouble. Here's an example of
a good capcha.) I swear, after wrestling with the captcha, the sign up process has become like playing a slot machine. Will I win this time? *clicks sign up* Nope.
That already gives me a bad impression of the site and tells me that most of the site has probably been outsourced. Outsourcing is fine, but you really need to have a focus on quality. On Steve's site, for example, you can just tell it was made by Steve. "Steve" is just written all over his site in the various way he does things, and there's a consistent level of largely un-matched "Steve" quality throughout the entire site. It's quite refreshing, and one of the nice things about Steve's site. Most sites would take Steve's content and make it ridiculously challenging to find with various non-efficient, "I don't want to make money" methods of navigation and layout designs.
The second mistake I see is that they don't really let you scan through the content at will to actually get an in-depth look at it. Games do this, and it's a big mistake and partly why adults don't really take games seriously. Books and online articles don't do this (let's not get into the articles that split a single article into multiple pages), and they seem pretty popular.
The second mistake has the side effect of making the content seem like it has an emphasis on compartmentalised methods and processes instead of universal truths (this is just an assumption, but it seems accurate; it doesn't seem like a holistic site; it radiates compartmentalisation). Steve's "smart people" approach and years of my own experience have kind of spoilt me, making me extremely picky with the content I do dive into (especially when I can't access the content because I have both a captcha hoop to jump through, then a "you can't easily preview this content" hoop to jump through).
Clearly my next move should be to offer some design consulting to ToolsToLife so I can rake in some cash and monetise these inefficiencies. (Note: I won't be doing that.)
This isn't so much me complaining as it is me saying, "this is what isn't ideal; remove this, and the site would be better very quickly."
Edit: So I finally got the sign up to work. Apparently my user name had an invalid character in it, so it wasn't all the captures fault. The capture is still non-ideal for the reasons I explained above.
Edit #2: I've started testing out a "tool", or at least, I tried to, but they want me to sign some agreement before I even know what I'm getting into. Refer to "mistake #2" (above) for why that's bad. I feel like someone I don't know just walked up to me and said, "Relationships are a process. You must commit to them. Will you marry me?"
That's a deal-breaker, like not showering for your first date. My response is "websites are virtual worlds; don't create unnecessary barriers to those worlds when you have no trust with your visitors and have no good reason to create that barrier in the first place." I'm going to go read Steve's site now, or something.