ONLINE BUSINESS RESOURCES
Here’s our online business resources collection to get you started
Here’s a list of the resources that we use or have used in the past. We’ve only included the ones that we think are good and will help you. In fact, we like these tools and resources so much that we are affiliates for many of them.
What that means is … if you click on the link we provided and then sign up, we will get a small commission at no extra cost to you. For which we thank you because it helps us keep on with our mission of helping you and others like you build a business that will (eventually) let you lead the life you dream of.
We don’t think you can do better than our Online Business Ignition mini-course if you want to come up with a viable idea for a business. Discover the things about you and your life experience that will help you solve problems you actually care about.
Or you can go straight to Pat Flynn’s SPI Community where they will help you find and validate an idea that you can build a solid business on.
I’m part of Pat’s community as well, so if you use my affiliate link to sign up, I’ll not only recieve a small commission (for which I thank you), but I’ll also be there to help answer your questions and provide advice.
(We’re an affiliate for the SPI Community).
SiteGround lets you organise your website hosting (including WordPress sites), email addresses and URLs, all in the one place. The reason we use them is because their helpdesk support is excellent and quick to respond. And that’s pretty important when you’re stuck on a website problem or challenge.
(We’re an affiliate for SiteGround).
Pat Flynn’s “Build Your Own Brand” course will not only help you learn how to develop your own WordPress website, it will help you brand it so it stands out. What’s even better is that the course is free when you sign up for the SPI Community. I used this course to help me learn how to build WordPress websites.
(We’re an affiliate for the SPI Community).
WordPress editors like Divi will make your life easier when trying to build a professional looking website without breaking the bank. We use Divi as our WordPress editor because it works and has great functionality … not to mention tons of templates you can use to quickly get your website set up and looking great.
(We’re an affiliate for Elegant Themes and Divi.)
Need to design banners, graphics or other images for your website and you can’t afford to pay someone to do it? Canva is a great tool to help you quickly create professional looking images. We use it all the time. You can use it to create your own images, including a logo, font, or theme. Try out their free account. You’ll love it.
(We’re an affiliate for Canva).
Part of good SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) practice is to make sure that you don’t have orphan pages on your website. And by “orphan” I mean pages that don’t have links to them from any other pages. LinkWhisper is a plugin you can use on your WordPress site that makes it super easy to discover your orphan pages and then fix them. I have no idea how we managed things before we got LinkWhisper installed on this website.
(We’re an affiliate for LinkWhisper).
Email Service Providers
There are lots of of ESPs out there and which one you choose, will depend on a number of factors, like your budget, the size of your email list, how much automation you want, etc. Over the last few years we’ve used AWeber, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign and Kit (used to be ConvertKit).
Our favourite is Kit, which lets you add tags and segment your customers into groups. It combines the power of visualisation and text to help you automate email campaigns and nurture sequences so you don’t have to do everything manually.
Our #1 pick is Kit. We’ve found it fairly easy to set up and use. And we’re pretty happy with how easy they make it for other people to recommend our newsletter.
Watch my free video on how to set up a welcome email sequence using ChatGPT and Kit.
(We’re an affiliate for Kit).
Email Marketing
And talking about email marketing–if you’re just getting started Pat Flynn’s “Email Marketing Magic” course is going to help you build a solid email list in a non-spammy, “nice-guy” sort of way. If you want to save your time, money and energy by NOT doing all the wrong things, this “Email Marketing Magic” course will get you going quickly. You can access it by joining the SPI community.
(We’re an affiliate for the SPI Community).
SparkLoop is a 3rd party app that you can use with several different email service providers (including Kit and Active Campaign) to set up a referral system for your email newsletter. It can be really helpful if your email list numbers need a boost.
(We’re an affiliate for SparkLoop).
Amy Porterfield is an online marketing guru who focuses on helping people build their email lists AND create online courses. She has a library full of ways to rapidly grow your email list. It’s free to access and I can guarantee you it’s full of really useful hints and things to try.
Nathalie Lussier’s 30-Day List Building Challenge is a classic and it’s free. Over the course of 30 days, you’ll be given tips and advice about how to quickly build your email list. You won’t regret signing up.
Customer Research / Segmentation / Quiz Building
We love LeadsHook. It helps us build quizzes, questionnaires and diagnostic tools that deliver highly customised results for customers and useful segmentation data for us. Best way I know of to ensure the leads we get are super highly qualified. And you can use all of those tools to make your online courses and workshops more memorable and useful.
If you’re just getting started with quizzes and want to experiment, have a look at Fillout. You can quickly create nice looking quizzes that have the functionality you need right now. Easy to learn, easy to use. Very, very affordable. You might even get away with their free version. Great for surveys and forms as well. For a quick example of what a quiz made with Fillout looks like, check out beyourbestyouhq.com. And yes, we’re an affiliate for Fillout
However … if you’re just getting started with quizzes and there’s not a lot of float in your budget, you might want to check out Interact. You can use Interact to quickly set up a quiz and run it without breaking the bank.
(We’re an affiliate for Interact).
The Profit First Method for managing your business’s cashflow was created by Mike Michalowicz. I use it religiously and it has saved my business from going down the gurgler more than once.
Forgot to set aside money for taxes? Didn’t think to set aside money so you can pay your team when they are on leave? Not going to happen if you’re using the Profit First Method.
(Amazon affiliate link).
Airwallex lets you make cross-border payments in other currencies without all the hassle. It also lets you create “virtual” credit cards that you can share with your team. You can control spending based on total amount spent or on how much can be spent at one time or over a given period. Super useful when it’s tough getting access to physical credit cards and their virtual credit cards are easier to manage.
(We’re an affiliate for Airwallex).
Stripe is a payment gateway platform that can integrate with many different types of software … allowing you to easily collect payment from your customers. It has a lot of functionality which makes it possible to link your backend financial systems to it for tracking payments.
When I first started my podcast, getting the episodes ready to publish took hours! In fact, it was so much work that some weeks, I wouldn’t be able to get all the things done that I wanted to, when it came to repurposing the episode and using the content elsewhere.
And then I found out about Descript. When you upload either audio or video files to Descript, it automatically creates a transcript. And as you edit the transcript, Descript automatically edits the audio and/or video files as well.
So what used to take hours and hours AND HOURS, now only takes hours 😄.
And I am able to create my podcast audio file, upload the transcript, create video snippets for YouTube and social media and write my shownotes … all in less time than it used to take me to just do the audio file and shownotes.
So if you ever want to easily edit audio or video files for your website or a podcast or a YouTube channel, I can definitely highly recommend Descript.
(We’re an affiliate for Descript).
If your community is the heart of your business, you want to make sure that they have a great experience when they are on your community forum.
We’ve tried MemberPress and Facebook and they just didn’t do what we needed them to do. So when we discoverd Circle and started using it, we were delighted to find that it does everything we need and it’s easy to set up.
Need to manage multiple tiers? Yes, Circle makes it super easy to do…including managing payments.
Need to chat with your community live? And don’t want to use Zoom? Circle can do that to.
Want to gamify your content for better community engagement?
Want to host your courses and trainings? Circle makes it easy to do that which means you DON’T have to pay another platform like Thinkific or Teachable or Udemy to host your course.
Check out our blog post about the 5 key questions you should asking when setting up your community forum.
Or our YouTube video that shows you how to set up multiple memberships tiers.
Or my community management resources page.
And by the way, if you do use my affiliate link to check out Circle and decide to sign up, let me know (use the “Contact Me” form) and I will jump on a free strategy call with you to help you get your Circle membership set up as quickly as possible.
(We’re an affiliate for Circle).
Affiliate Disclaimer:
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. That means that I may sometimes get commissions for purchases made through links in this website
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