Tools & Resources
Choosing the right tools and resources can make a significance difference in your business growth and profit, especially if you're a busy entrepreneur who needs to maximize the return of every minute and every dollar spent.
Below are the methods, tools, sites, and other resources that have been helping us along the way. Everything we list on this page, we have actually used (past or present) as a piece of a puzzle that has helped us profit as in our online business ventures.
Now, without further ado…The Blogtrepreneur Recommended Resources:
Hosting & Domains
While there are ways to generate an income online without having a website, there’s a 99% chance that it’s a good idea to have a a site for some reason. Most likely, you will have more multiple sites.
We’ve been using Hostgator for years. Not only do they have extremely affordable pricing for the how much they offer, but they have amazing customer service as well. We once had emailed them (too busy for live chat) regarding a security issue and received an email reply 11 minutes later stating that the problem has been resolved and asking if we needed anything else. We replied “Yes, we’d like to move the rest of our sites over to you!” 🙂
It doesn’t really matter that much where you register your domain, but we prefer Namecheap for a couple reasons. The overall interface is simple and minimalistic which makes managing our domains a breeze. Also, whenever we want to register a new domain, we can just quickly grab, pay, and get down to business in a few minutes without being bombarded by upsells that we don’t need during checkout, like some of the others (*cough* GoDaddy) do to you.
ResellerClub is one of the largest players in the Web Domains and Web Hosting business. They provide Cloud Hosting, Shared Hosting, WordPress Hosting, VPS and Dedicated Server Hosting Solution, and one of the best managed WordPress hosting solutions we have tried yet!
Email Marketing & Management
We’ve been exclusively using Aweber as our email marketing/broadcasting tool for years. If you’re just getting started with your online business, do yourself a favor and use a powerful email marketing service and start building a list from the beginning. You’ll be glad you did. The site has a ton of spectacular templates, tips, and tutorials to walk you through everything if you’re unfamiliar with how this type of service works.
Mail Plane is an app for Mac users that allows you to EASILY manage multiple Gmail accounts in one window. As busy entrepreneurs who use MANY separate Gmail accounts, that one feature alone is gold to us. But, it also has a plethora of really cool integrated features that will make you NEVER want to access Gmail through a browser again.
WordPress Themes
While there are ways to generate an income online without having a website, there’s a 99% chance that it’s a good idea to have a a site for some reason. We have multiple sites built with WordPress and choosing premium theme, designed and coded by a professional, is well worth the cost.
If you’re looking for a lot of style and design out of the box without the need for customization, then you should look for a theme on Theme Forest. There’s so much to choose from because it’s more of a marketplace where individual designers can list their themes for sale. Some of the best themes we’ve ever seen are sold there. The theme that we're for this blog was purchased there. It’s called Max Mag Theme
Elegant Themes are…well…elegant. We’ve used them for a few projects in the past, (namely membership sites). Most of these themes have a unique style with a professional appearance right out of the box, but still with lots of white space and room for customization if you need it. Plus, you don’t have to pay “per theme”! They charge a low one-time payment for a one-year membership that grants you access to all their themes and updates.