Resources for Growing an Online Business
These are tools, platforms and courses I confidently recommend for growing your online business. All links with an *asterisk are affiliate links. I wouldn’t and don’t recommend anything I haven’t used or am currently using for my own business.
TOOLS
I love Loom* and my clients do too. I use it mostly to create quick screen share videos that I share with clients to help them understand how to do something on their websites.
I like Whereby video conferencing, all you have to do is send a someone link and they ‘knock’ to get in at the time of your call. Nothing to download.
I finally found an SEO keyword research tool that I find easy to use and affordable, KeySearch*. They also have a nice welcome email instruction series.
A great resource for icons, graphics, background images, fonts and other visual assets is Creative Market*.
Unsplash as a great source for free stock images. The entire stock photo library is also built into Squarespace.
A key to making your marketing copy effective is getting it to convert. Headline Studio* is an almost addictive tool that rates the effective of your written headlines.
Weglot* never ceases to amaze me! You just install a little script on a Squarespace website and in a matter of seconds the entire site is translated (with machine translation). A tool I’m happy to recommend to clients who need a multi-lingual website.
I have downloaded my entire brain into Asana, my project management tool. I use it to run ‘regular’ life and my business. It’s great for running projects, tracking leads and assigning tasks to team members.
Obviously I recommend Squarespace*. Why? It's an all-in-one hosted solution (no plug-in updates for you), facilitates quality design and is easy for most of my clients to make edits and updates once I hand them the keys to their new website.
I don’t currently offer Shopify services, but I love this platform. If you’ve primarily doing ecommerce, don’t mess around and just go with Shopify.
Canva* is an easy-to-use, web-based tool that allows anyone to create social media graphics, presentations, flyers. No design skills or fancy software required.
Dubsado* is a powerful CRM (customer relationship management) tool for when you find your business needing to generate complex client booking, proposal generation, workflows and invoicing.
I really enjoy using Later for my Instagram scheduling. The preview function is great for seeing how your IG 9 grid looks. You can also use it for scheduling to other platforms like Pinterest or LinkedIn.
If you’re running your website out of North America, Canada, the UK or other English language regions Termageddon* is a fantastic service to use for generating dynamic privacy policies. The service takes the headache out of figuring out what you need as well as keeping up with the ever changing laws.
If you’re running your website out of the EU and/or a non-English language country take a look at Iubenda.* It‘s great for generating dynamic privacy and legal policies and can do it in multiple languages.
COURSES
I took Christy Price’s excellent course Make Money With Your Blog.* It’s a fabulous resource on how to blog using Squarespace as well as how to realistically and acheivably add a revenue stream to your business with affiliate marketing.
Simon is a veteran brand expert, and a great teacher! His class Brand Building Made Simple.* Is perfect For entrepreneurs who are starting small and thinking big.