STAGE ONE – “HUSTLER”
At this stage, you’re a “Solopreneur” managing all the aspects of your business. You probably have an assistant helping you out but basically, nothing happens without you.
For Your Domain and Website
Domain Registrar
Namecheap
Namecheap is a budget hosting provider with 11 million registered users and 10 million domains. The company offers domain name registration and web hosting services. Finding the right hosting for your domain need not be time consuming because they’ve got you covered. From shared, VPS, dedicated, and managed WordPress options – they have it all.
Web Hosting
They’ve got the tools and services you’ll need for seamless site building. The platform is powered by Google cloud to create a powerful and technically superior web hosting service. A lot of their solutions are built in-house – you can leave it to them to make sure your site runs fast and safe. Their support team is also known for being fast, friendly, and helpful their satisfaction rate is close to 100% year in year out.
Bluehost
This is your best bet if you’re a big fan of WordPress! They have everything you need to start building your website to growing your customers and followers. If you sign up with them, you get all the benefits of the most popular site builder in a secure, yet easy to use package. They have hundreds of website themes to choose from while allowing you to customize the design to your heart’s content. They also have the all the powerful plugins you’ll need from bookings, online ordering, to live chats with your customers.
Website
Squarespace
Build a professional looking website minus the humongous fees and coding knowledge required. This platform allows you to present your portfolio or online store in a gallery format which lets you stand out from the crowd in an instant! It even has built in SEO tools that help maximize reach amidst thousands of search results. The analytics tool will also help you track where your audience is coming from or what they’re looking for which can greatly help you improve what you show on your website. It definitely helps creative professionals make a beautiful yet impactful online presence.
WordPress
Also known as the world’s most popular website builder – bloggers, small businesses, and fortune 500 companies use this platform more than all other options combined. This builder allows you to create websites with no coding background. They have professionally designed themes with plans for all sorts of people from book clubs, bond impersonators, to bed and breakfast owners or for anyone who simply wants to go online.
Marketing
Email Service Provider
Mailchimp
With their “Forever Free” plan, this platform can be the perfect email marketing partner as it allows you to send your emails up to 2,000 subscribers using their email builder, forms, and landing pages! It’s definitely a plus for someone who is just starting out because you’ll literally have zero expense when it comes to the email marketing aspect of your business. Not only that, they have all the marketing and commerce tools you need to send messages on all the right channels from landing pages to social media ads..
Especially built for creators, Convertkit allows you to sell your digital products directly to your raving fans with no “tech skills” required. Whether you’re an artist or podcaster, this platform gives you the perfect space to grow your audience not just with emails but also through landing pages, sign up forms, and link pages that make your work stand out. As a creator, your ideas will never go to waste because the free landing pages will enable you to share your ideas in no time! Their templates also look good on all devices – you don’t have to worry about your work not showing properly when viewed on the web.
Shopping Cart
Increase conversions and maximize profits with a single mouse click! Cartflows enables business owners like you to turn your website into an selling machine through frictionless checkout, order bumps, upsells, and more. This platform can also be easily integrated with the other products that you’re using like WordPress, Woo Commerce, or Elementor. In addition, you can easily customize their templates even without code!
Funnel Builder
Who said you need technical knowledge to build an online business? Definitely not Systeme.IO! They have all the tools you need to launch, grow, and scale your online business using their all-in-one marketing platform! Having just one tool for every part of your business will make it easy for you to manage your business – allowing you to grow faster than you ever thought possible. Whether you’re looking to build your website or online empire, Systeme.IO will help you get there!
Membership
Learning Management System
New Zenler
If you’re a course creator, this platform enables you to build your course, your community, and even manage the sales and marketing aspect of your business. From Sales funnels to Email Automation and Page designer, New Zenler eliminates the hassle of using various tools by having them all in one place! When it comes to your course – you can run live classes, interactive live webinars and even broadcast it on Facebook using the built in Screensharing, whiteboard, and even break out rooms. It’s a fully functioning platform that caters to the needs of online instructors!
Kajabi
The platform with the most ways to monetize what you know – Kajabi has everything you need to build, market, and sell with just a few clicks. No matter who you are – a coach, course creator, or even a podcaster, the tools you’ll need to build, market, and sell your products are in one place. With everything built together, it will naturally work better – together. Say goodbye to wasted time on tech – you can now use and focus your energy on building your business!
Webinar
Zoom
Can you still imagine working from home or anywhere without Zoom? This tool has allowed everyone to connect and communicate in order to get more done even without seeing each other! Being the only platform that started with video as its foundation, Zoom has set the standard for innovation ever since. It’s no surprise that small business and large enterprises use this not just for meetings but also for town halls and webinars.
Webinarjam
Hailed as the most powerful all-in-one webinar platform, WebinarJam’s cloud-based broadcasting technology allows you to reach up to 5,000 people in one presentation! Since the platform allows for 6 presenters, you don’t have to do all the hosting alone because you can easily do it with other industry experts. No matter what method you’re using to present, the platform allows you to present it in High Definition so you need not worry about pixelated images! The platform is also device agnostic. Whether you’re using a laptop, tablet, or iphone – you can bet that they support them all!
Video
Video Editing
Quicktime
QuickTime is a multimedia player developed by Apple. It is the perfect video editor if you’re looking for basic editing functions like trimming, rotating, or combining video clips. The application is able to handle a wide range of picture, video, and panoramic image formats – it even works on Windows Vista 7 but not Windows 10. Since it is pre-installed on Mac computers, it’s very useful for outgoing videos especially when uploading content on Social Media.
Video Hosting
Youtube
In this day and age, who hasn’t heard about Youtube? Every day, millions of people come to the platform to learn, be entertained, or to just be inspired. The platform prioritizes three elements to provide the best search results across 500 hours of uploaded content uploaded every minute. These are relevance, engagement, and quality. In addition to these, they make the search results relevant for each user so you can be sure that your content reaches the right audience.
Operations
Screen Recording
Loom
Show it, say it, send it. Loom really makes it easy and seamless for people to effectively communicate with each other. No need to schedule or type anything – just record it and send! It is a great addition to any team since it allows for easier communication across team members by letting them see who is actually talking to them. Not only that, you can also use this as a teaching tool because it allows you to record your screen making it an essential tool for hybrid workplaces!
Project Management
Slack
Slack provides a way for teams to communicate in a more effective way than email. Instead of sifting through endless email chains, you’ll be able to see the discussions in one thread using channels. It’s also easy to grab someone’s attention with a notification when you need a quick response – you’ll know who’s responsible for what and how to move forward without leaving conversations.
Trello
Manage projects and organize tasks all in one place. With its intuitive features, Trello allows the team to quickly set up and customize workflows for just about anything. The board provides you with an avenue to grow with the task assignments, timelines, and productivity metrics. Trello’s built in automation helps reduce the number of tedious tasks on your project so your team can focus on what’s important. Your team will also benefit from your integrated work tools, which makes your team’s workflow more efficient.
File Organisation
Dropbox
With everything that needs to be done in the business, it’s no surprise that everyone (even non-entrepreneurs) needs to organize their files for all the tasks that they need to complete. Dropbox can bring all these files together in one place. This is definitely a secure way of giving access to all your files across your colleagues allowing them to access it from any device. With its store and sync feature, all files are up to date any time, all the time!
Google Drive
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful and they’re definitely not one to rest on their laurels when it comes to the need for a systematic way to organize one’s files. Google drive provides easy and secure access to all of your content because users will be able to seamlessly integrate and share content via Docs, Sheets, and Slides in real time. Microsoft office files can easily be shared without the need to convert file formats. Google Drive works on all platforms enabling you or your team members to work seamlessly across your browser, mobile device, tablet and computer.
Disclaimer: Many of these links are affiliate links, which means I may get a commission if you purchase. However, none of the fees of these resources have been increased to compensate me. In fact, many of the creators of these tools have given me special discounts that I get to extend to you!
