Recommended tools

Recommended tools for entrepreneurs, start-ups and small businesses

1. Hosting, domain registration

If you are looking for a user friendly hosting service that offers hosting plans for both individuals and businesses covering a wide range of needs from beginners to advanced options, there are many options available. Before you choose a service providers, go through the features and options they offer.

A2 Hosting:
A2 Hosting is especially popular with businesses because of their top notch customer service and smooth operation. Their hosting plans can seem a bit pricey compared to the really cheap providers, but you will get an excellent service for your money. To save money, grab one of there promotional offers where you can get the products much cheaper. More details >>

Namecheap Hosting:
If you are on a budget, Namecheap is an ideal choice for starting out with a very basic plan. It's also a good place for shopping for domain names. Both registering and transfering domain names is quite cheap. When you buy a hosting plan, depending on which one, you can also get a free domain. However, there are limitations for the domain extensions that you can get for free. More details >>

GreenGeeks Hosting:
As the name suggests, GreenGeeks puts emphasis on sustainability when it comes to their business. This is something that can appeal to many users when choosing a provier. The introductory prices for the promo periods are quite low cost for hosting plans. Once the promo period is over, just like with A2 Hosting, the prices become higher, but still affordable. More details >>

2. Website building

What is Wordpress and why is it good for your business?

Wordpres was originally developed as a platform for blogging. But since then it has become a very versatile tool for building corporate websites, online magazines, business directories, job boards and even online stores. If you are a total beginner, it's a perfect choice for you.

Where to get Wordpress?

This is a free script. More advanced users can download it from the official site and install it manually. For absolute beginners the way to go is to install it through their webhosting account. Wordpress is available as a pre-install at many web hosting services within the control panel.

Where to download professional looking Wordpress themes?

What you need to know is that the original install of the Wordpress will pretty much look like a basic blog. If you want to turn it into a professionally looking corporate website, or an online store, or a niche magazine, you will need to replace the original theme (the layout of the site) with a ready-made template. Luckily, there are thousands of themes available for download on the internet, both free and paid for all kinds of niches and industries. Themeforest offers thousands of professionally designed Wordpress themes for practically every need.
CLICK HERE TO BROWSE THEIR THEMES >>

Build a static HTML website using a pofessional ready-made HTML website template

For marketers with an intermediate level of HTML and CSS, setting up an old-school HTML site could be both efficient and fun. When you need a company website or a niche site that consists of only a couple of pages, a static website can be a quick and cheap solution. However, just because it's old-school, it doesn't mean that it's out of touch with the requirements of modern technology. Responsiveness in web design means, that a website is optimized not only for PCs and laptops, but also for tablets and mobile phones. And if you don't want to spend too much time with web editing and programming, just use one of the many thousands of responsive HTML templates available on the internet. Themeforest is a place where you can download high-quality, professionally designed templates even under 10 bucks (which is really a bargain).

How to spice up your website and give it a more professional look?

There are a few tricks and tools that can help you make your website stand out from the crowd. One way to do that is to use stunning images. Many stock photo sites offer royalty free images at a low price. As you know, a picture can tell more than a thousand words. So, they are definitely worth the investment. Bigstockphoto has some cheap options for both subscription and packages.

Another way is to use a professionally looking website design. Templates offer this at an affordable cost. Just check out Themeforest and browse their vast back catalog of web templates. If you need graphical templates (e.g. web banners, buttons, icons, pre-designed navigational panel), go to Graphicsriver. And if you seek to add more functionality to your website, why not use a script or a plug-in? Codecanyon is a great place for finding scripts according to your needs.

3. Selling online

Online store, webshop software

When you sell products through the internet, practically the whole world is your target audience. There are very little geographical limitations and you can take orders even while you sleep. This is a rather convenient way of selling goods and earning an income. You only need to set up a sales page or a webshop. This can be automated by using a free ecommerce script / shopping cart script or something as simple as a Wordpress plugin installed on your already existing Wordpress blog.

A Wordpress site as a sales page

Wordpress is a very popular tool for setting up a website without having any web programming skills. You can install it with a couple of clicks through your web host's cpanel. There are thousands of professionally looking high-end Wordpress templates available for download that you can customize quickly and easily, and use it immediately to start selling your products on the internet to the world.

Where to get Wordpress templates:
There are many places for downloading Wordpress themes. One of the key providers is Themeforest with thousands of templates categorized by industry or niche. Follow the links below to browse their catalog.
- General Wordpress templates >> (including templates for niche blogs / sites)
- Wordpress templates for corporate websites >>

Merchant accounts:

order to handle credit card and other forms of payments through the internet, first you will need to get a merchant account.

A third party merchant is a service provider that collects money on your behalf. They can take credit card payments, handle checks and even wire transfer. Their role is to connect vendors with customers during the payment process. Merchant account service providers are also referred to as payment gateways.

The most popular and well-known online payment gateway is PayPal. When you register an account with them as a vendor, you get a snippet of code that you can insert into your web pages. These are usually in the form of 'Buy buttons'. When a customer clicks this button on your web site, PayPal will take money from the customer and credit the sum to your account.

Popular merchants (or payment gateways) for online payment:

You can search for other alternatives on Google. When choosing a merchant account the most important factor is their reliability and reputation. Does this payment processor have a good reputation? Is it widely known? Then come the other important aspects like geographical limitations(in which countries is the payment gateway supported) and the variety of supported payment forms like credit card payments, wire transfer, echecks, etc.

External shopping cart services

When you sell only 1 item or a handful of products, but you don't want to install an ecommerce software, the simple solution is to use an external shopping cart service. All you need to do is to get a 'Buy button' code (a snippet of HTML codes) from these services and insert it into your own web pages. Then, in the case of selling digital products, product delivery is done in an automated way after payment is completed.
Please note that in many cases you will need to incorporate a payment gateway / merchant account like PayPal into these shopping cart solutions in order to handle payments.

Here are a few popular external shopping cart service providers:

Some of these shopping carts allow you to start your own affiliate program which is a type of referral program. You will find dozens of other useful features included in these shopping cart services, such as using discount coupons, integrating it with your autoresponder service, collecting recurring payments, and a whole lot more.

Selling products through an external market place

A convenient way of selling product on the internet is to join an online market place, list your goods there and let potential buyers find your listings. Auction sites are a good example for such market places. Here are a few other examples:

eBay
etsy (for crafts and hand-made stuff)
e-junkie Marketplace (it's an external shopping cart service, but they also have a market place where sellers can upload 'product listings')
JV Zoo (for digital products)
Clickbank Marketplace (it's an external shopping cart service, but they also have a market place where sellers can upload 'product listings')

When you use an external marketplace, there's no need to have your own web page. However, you might need a merchant account. Many auction sites use PayPal to process payments and deposit money from buyers to vendors.

Selling products and services online is not a difficult process. You just need to find the right tools. But what may be the right tool for Business 'A' may not be for Business 'B'. You always need to consider which solutions fit best to your own needs. Do a research and pick the ones that cater most to your busienss's needs. If it doesn't work out, you can always switch to a better, more effective sales method and tool.

4. Autoresponders, email list building tools

How to capture contact information of prospects and web visitors?

When a visitor arrives at your website, make an attempt to persuade them to give you their contact information. It could be something as simple as their email address. In order to achieve this, offer them something for free. A free report, free tool, template, script, or even a free consultation. Set up a form on your web pages where prospects can enter their contact information.

How can autoresponders help you in generating leads?

An autoresponder is a tool that sends an automated reply to people who contact you through email. The most well known example for that is the 'vacation response' in email programs, where you can set a message that says you are out of the office. Whenever someone sends you an email during your vacation period, they will receive this automated reply, so you don't have to personally check your emails and write responses.

Popular autoresponder and email marketing services:
GetResponse, Constant Contact, Aweber, Mailchimp, MailerLite, Brevo, ActiveCampaign, Omnisend, ConvertKit.

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