In the digital age we live in, there are so many online tools, software, and plugins to help you succeed in your business. However, there are so many that are quite expensive and not necessary, especially when you are just starting out. As an entrepreneur, your main goal should be focusing on revenue, growing your audience, and brand awareness. There are many marketers out there forcing their expensive solutions onto small business owners and many of them you don’t need just yet to be profitable. You can bootstrap your way through a lot of solutions.
Here is a list of resources and tools we use that I recommend for growing your business.
ACCOUNTING
- Quickbooks online – at first we started out tracking all of our finances using spreadsheets, however as we grew it became more complicated and got out of hand. From some advice from our accountant and doing lots of research we decided to try Quickbooks online – a total game changer! Yes, it is a small monthly cost (around $35) it is totally worth it. You can get a snapshot of your finances in a flash, everything is online and backed up in the cloud, and our accountants can access all files instantly. No software to download and totally easy. I highly recommend this tool to entrepreneurs to stay organized and on top of your finances!
WEB HOSTING
- Bluehost. As we help many, many clients start their websites and setup web hosting we recommend Bluehost. We personally use it for our own sites and for most of our clients. It is affordable, reliable, and secure. Their CPanel is easy to use and set up and customer service is pretty good. You also get a free domain name when you buy web hosting. For discounted rates click below.
- Another great web hosting company is WPEngine. They are specialists for WordPress web hosting however they are a little pricier.
WEBSITE PLATFORM
- WordPress all the way. We get asked all the time which platform you should use to build your website comparing WordPress, SquareSpace, Wix, etc. and we have some favourites. WordPress is easy to use, open-source so there are always endless resources available in terms of plugins, themes, etc. it’s reliable, free, and easy to customize for your own unique look and design. We don’t advise using Wix as it is very limited in terms of search engine optimization (SEO) and what options you have. This will limit your ability to gain the top rankings in Google and other search engines. We help many clients get off Wix and on to WordPress other platforms purely for this reason. Please do yourself a favour and don’t build your site on it! You will regret it.
E-COMMERCE
- We love Woocommerce on WordPress. Once installed, it’s pretty easy to set up and you can load your products to heart’s content and start selling easily. For payment options, you can use either PayPal, Stripe, etc, or purchase your own SSL certificate and make purchases through your own web hosting server. There are lots of themes out there you can customize to easily create a beautiful layout you love.
- Shopify and Squarespace are great as they are all-encompassing and include your web hosting and domain and payment options with integrated security. There are really beautiful layouts and they have great reporting and analytics.
NEWSLETTERS & MAILING LISTS
- Mailchimp. Great for when you are starting out and want to easily capture leads and mailing list, subscribers. They have great designs for newsletters or you can create a custom design from scratch. There are tonnes of integrations with other tools so you can set up your forms, newsletters, thank you pages easily and quickly. Gaining subscribers and followers is one of the most important parts of your business, so you can market your products and services to and gain a loyal tribe of consumers.
SQUEEZE PAGES & OPT-INS
- Leadpages. We have used Leadpages for generating opt-ins, call to actions, and sales pages in the past and it was great. Their proven techniques and methods can’t be beaten and the results speak for themselves. Perhaps when you’re starting out, you may not want to have this initial expense and work your way up to it.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS
- Asana and Jira are awesome for project management. Both allow the creation of tasks, boards, and allocation of items to team members. Jira is really great, especially for software development.
Ok so now its time to get to it. Start today! Get started on that project or task you wanted to. Got any questions? Want to share any ideas? Leave a comment. Let’s chat!
