021. Resources for Every Entrepreneur

Every entrepreneur needs extravagant accessories to turn your passions into paychecks.

Don’t worry I’ve hand-selected tools to help you bring your dreams to fruition every step along the way. These are tools and resources I am currently using, have used, or which come highly recommended by other entrepreneurs whom consumer experiences I value. The resource provide are provided solely with the intent to be conducive to increasing your entrepreneurial scope. Therefore, let your soul guide you and follow your intuition to elect which tools are best for you.

Website & Hosting

Joomla – Joomla is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content, which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available.

Wordpress – WordPress is an online, open source website creation tool written in PHP. But in non-geek speak, it's probably the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS) in existence today.

Wix – Wix.com is a cloud-based web development platform that allows users to create HTML5 web sites and mobile sites through the use of their online drag and drop tools.

Shopify – Shopify is a complete ecommerce solution that allows you to set up an online store to sell your goods. It lets you organize your products, customize your storefront, accept credit card payments, track and respond to orders — all with a few clicks of the mouse.

GoDaddy – GoDaddy is a publicly traded Internet domain registrar and web hosting company. Get a custom web address that allows you to take control of your online identity by directing visitors to any site. The awesome thing about GoDaddy is it offers $1 domains.

Strikingly – Strikingly brings beautiful mobile websites to everyone. What's so special about a Strikingly site? Simplicity, clarity, and accessibility. The mobile age is upon us, and having a mobile-optimized website is more important than ever. Strikingly makes creating a straightforward, simple website very simple.

SumoMe – SumoMe is a suite of free tools that can be used to grow your website's traffic. The SumoMe tools are easy to install and work on any website. Some of its free tools include: Scroll Box, Image Sharer, and Highlighter.

BlueHost – Bluehost is a web hosting company. Its revolutionary Cloud solution is powerful, simple to install, and surprisingly affordable.

Elegant Themes – Elegant Themes offers amazingly beautiful Premium WordPress Themes coupled with advanced functionality and awesome support. Their themes are easy to customize and you get access to tons of awesome themes for one flat fee.

Graphic Content Curation

Death to the Stock Photo – Death to the Stock Photo is an organization created by two photographers tired of seeing the same old stock photos. As a subscriber you receive new refreshing images delivered monthly directly to your inbox. For premium access you can access all of their archived photos.

DepositPhotos – Deposit Photos is a photobank with a large variety of stock photos, vectors, and videos for an affordable price, great for instances when you have a specific image in mind.

Canva – Canva is a tool loaded with enough easy-to-use features and functionality that anyone can create a variety of engaging content that gets shared. You can easily create beautiful designs and documents.

Afterlight – Afterlight is the perfect image editing mobile app for quick and straight forward editing. Our simple design, paired with powerful and snappy tools, will give you the look you want in seconds.

Pixlr – Pixlr is a robust browser photo editor, for all your editing needs offering you full control over your images, including layers and effects. Pixlr includes a number of photo editors, a screen grabber browser extension, and a photo sharing service. The suite was intended for non-professionals, however the apps range from simple to advanced photo editing.

PicMonkey – PicMonkey is a free photo editor that works in your browser — nothing to download or install. Fix your photos and add beautiful filters and text. Touch up facial features or create outstanding graphics. Ridiculously easy, staggeringly gorgeous.

99Designs – Looking for an affordable designer to create your logo, website or book cover? 99 Designs allows you to host a graphic design competition to pick the best designer to complete your project.

PosterMyWall – Poster My Wall is a free online poster and collage maker. It is really easy to make posters using professionally designed, high quality backgrounds which users can customize with their own photos and captions. For a small fee you can access premium photos and existing posters.

Social Media & Marketing

Thunderclap – Thunderclap is the first-ever crowd speaking platform that helps people be heard by saying something together. It allows a single message to be mass-shared, flash mob-style, so it rises above the noise of your social networks. By boosting the signal at the same time, Thunderclap helps a single person create action and change like never before.

Edgar – Edgar is a social media scheduling tool. Instead of publishing your updates just once and throwing them away like yesterday’s rubbish, he carefully catalogues them in a limitless library that you build over time.

Hootsuite – Hootsuite is a social media management system for brand management which operates as a social media scheduling tool. It helps you keep track and manage your many social network channels. It can enable you to monitor what people are saying about your brand and help you respond instantly.

BufferApp – Buffer is a scheduling tool for Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn which is a great way to share what you want to share on Social Media. You add updates to your Buffer queue and it will be posted for you well-spaced out over the day - and at the best times.

Iconosquare – Iconosquare is a website that organizes the different sections of your account and provides you with metrics about their following for free. You can manage your account and also your hashtag metrics.

Instagress – Instagress is an Instagram bot which allows you to automate your activity and get more followers, likes and comments. Instagress is easy to use and has been successful at helping people get more followers and interaction.

Post Planner – Post Planner makes it easy for people to find and share amazing content consistently - to get predictable, measurable, and remarkable results with their social media posts on Facebook and Twitter. Find all the content you need for ANY niche or industry. Photos, articles, status ideas (anything you need!) from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and your favorite blogs.

Curalate – Curalate is the all-in-one visual marketing and analytics platform for Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr & Facebook. Tell story through imagery in order to drive consumer engagement, build brand awareness, and form stronger, more meaningful relationships with consumers.

Bit.ly – Bitly is a URL shortening service which allows you to easily save and share your favorite links from around the web.

Click To Tweet – With Click-To-Tweet you can create the message that you want others to share, create a custom link that allows people to instantly send a tweet. Share the link and track the activity of each link over time. Whoever clicks on the link will have the message automatically added to their Twitter status box.

E-Commerce & Payments

PayPal – PayPal is an online payments system operating a worldwide that enables you to pay, send money, and accept payments without revealing your financial details. PayPal is the faster, safer way to send money, make an online payment, receive money or set up a merchant account.

Shopify – Shopify is a complete ecommerce solution that allows you to set up an online store to sell your goods. It lets you organize your products, customize your storefront, accept credit card payments, track and respond to orders — all with a few clicks of the mouse.

E-Junkie – E-junkie is a simple yet powerful selling solution which works on your site or any other site, blog or social media where you want to sell online. E-junkie provides you with Shopping Cart and Buy Now buttons to let you sell downloads and tangible goods on your website.

Etsy – Etsy is a peer-to-peer e-commerce website. It’s a marketplace where people around the world connect, both online and offline, to make, sell and buy unique goods.

Gumroad – Gumroad is a platform that enables creators to sell products directly to consumers. Gumroad is for independent writers, designers, software developers, musicians, artists, teachers, filmmakers, and anyone in-between. Whether you sell digital goods or physical goods, you can use Gumroad.

Smashwords – Smashwords, based in Los Gatos, California, is an eBook distribution platform founded by Mark Coker for independent authors and publishers. It’s fast, free and easy for any author or publisher, anywhere in the world, to publish and distribute eBooks to the major retailers.

Hiveage – Hiveage is an online invoicing and billing service for freelancers and small businesses. The company focuses on providing a faster and easier way to invoice clients and track payments, through a simple-to-use, intuitive and beautiful interface that is supported by a secure cloud-based platform.

Productivity

Google Analytics – Google Analytics is a freemium web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Improve performance across your sites, apps, and offline marketing with Google Analytics.

SEMRush – SEMRush is a tool that is specific to finding profitable keywords. We're living in a time now when SEO, is at the forefront of a successful blog. SEMRush is a program many new and older bloggers are using to optimize their sites, create the content their audience wants and create a better experience for their visitors.

ContentGem – ContentGems monitors the best online sources, including news sources, blogs, and social media accounts, and filters the results based on your keywords, social signals, and more. ContentGems keeps you at the forefront on the latest trends, advice, and news in your areas of professional interest. You can view content on-demand at ContentGems.com or receive a convenient email digest.

TaskBullet – TaskBullet is a virtual assistant company able to provide dedicated virtual assistants. You get a full-time assistant who can handle your website management, email marketing, social media accounts, customer service, research and more. Since they are your dedicated VA, you can train them to meet your specific needs and requirements, as well as determine how many hours will be allotted for your VA.

Clicky – Clicky is a complete web analytics tool that lets you see just about everything you could ever want about your website traffic. It combines historic reporting with real-time website monitoring in a way that is both easy and elegant. Clicky has both free and paid plans, as shown below.

Fiverr – Fiverr is a global online marketplace platform where people can buy (and sell) micro-services offering tasks and services, beginning at a cost of $5 per job performed, from which it gets its name. The site is primarily used by freelancers who use Fiverr to offer services to customers worldwide.

SurveyMonkey – SurveyMonkey is a tool that allows users to create their own surveys using question format templates. The basic version of SurveyMonkey is free; an enhanced version is also available at a cost. Use its robust analytics to make data-driven decisions.

Eventbrite – Eventbrite is the world's largest self-service ticketing platform. It allows anyone to create, share, find and attend new things to do that fuel their passions and enrich their lives. Music festivals, marathons, conferences, hackathons, air guitar competitions, political rallies, fundraisers, gaming competitions - you name it, they power it.

MeetUp – Meetup is the world's largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face with similar interest. Meetup's can be used to revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize.

MailChimp – MailChimp is an email service provider (ESP), which helps marketers send bulk emails to clients, customers, and other interested parties. MailChimp is a web-based application that works in most web browsers, which means you don't need to download or install any software on your computer. The application is based on the three main tasks of email marketing: manage subscriber lists, build email campaigns, and review campaign reports.

Crowdfunding

Kickstarter – With Kickstarter you create your project campaign, describing your projects, setting your goal amount and offering rewards for those who donate. Part of campaigning with Kickstarter is becoming a part of the community.

GoFund Me – GoFundMe makes it incredibly easy to raise money online for the things that matter to you most. In less than a minute, you'll be able to personalize your fundraising campaign and share it with the people in your life. With GoFundMe, the money you collect goes directly to you. There are no deadlines or limits - each donation you receive is yours to keep.

Indiegogo - Indiegogo offers personal crowdfunding to help fund projects to bring ideas to life. Campaign options include various areas, such as media and art projects, technology, health, and even environment or religious pursuits. Those raising funds include celebrities bringing film ideas to life and individuals trying to better their community.

Tilt – Tilt offers a crowdfunding platform where you can collect funds for any number of reasons. Campaigns include such various things as raising funds for a surprise birthday party and fixing potholes in a local neighborhood. Tilt is one of the few personal crowdfunding sites that does not charge a fee for collecting funds, though credit card processing fees apply, which is typical.

FundAnything – With FundAnything, you can use crowdfunding for personal reasons, including such various reasons as medical bills or vacations. There is no restriction or stipulation on the reason for your campaign. Funding primarily comes from friends and family or community members interested in helping you reach your goal. You keep all the funds you raise even if you do not reach your goal.

FunderHut – FunderHut is a crowdfunding website for individuals, small businesses, non-profits and communities. It offers both fixed campaigns, where you must raise 100 percent of your funding or you get nothing, and variable campaigns, where you keep the money you raise even if you don't reach your goal. This crowdfunding site has an added advantage of offering fundraising consulting services for an additional fee.

Patreon – Patreon presents a personal crowdfunding website that encourages people to donate a steady monthly stipend to you in exchange for access to your content and any benefits you might give. This site is for artists of all kinds, from cartoonists to photographers to YouTubers.