Business Tools

I have listed out all the resources I have personally used to grow my blog and business.

I’ve gone through a TON of tools and I’ve narrowed it down to these below.

Affiliate Marketing

• Awin – the top brands work with this affiliate marketing platform. You have at pay $5 to get in, but you get that right back once you make your first sale.
• ShareASale – suitable for anyone, no matter how newbie you are to affiliate marketing, to help you get in contact with brands that will pay you to promote them.
• MaxBounty – you get a dedicated affiliate partner who helps you find the best deals for you to sign up for and promote.
• Etsy – everyone loves unique handmade gifts from Etsy, so why not make money from promoting them?
• Ultimate Bundles – the best bundle deals on the web for health, business, crafts and really anything! They usually bundle about $5K worth of course material and sell it for dirt cheap like $30-$50 a bundle.

Apps

• Freedom – get back your time, and freedom, by blocking out all the distractions on your phone.
• MileIQ – track your mileage automatically and store your receipts automatically.
• Strides – goal and habit tracker to help you learn better, more productive habits and make SMART goals.

Business Management

• FreshBooks – comes with an app to make it easy to keep track of your mileage, receipts, and invoices on the go. Great way to track your income and expenses all in one place.
• Dubsado – business management software built to save you time, it helps with invoicing, signing contracts, scheduling appointments and more.
• HubSpot – marketing, sales and CRM (customer relations management) tool all in one.
• Business Name Generator – free tool to help you come up with spectacular business names.

Books

• 5 Day Weekend – this book transformed my way of thinking. My favorite quote from the book is, “If you don’t find a way to make money in your sleep, you will work until you die.”

Courses

• Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing – where I learned everything about affiliate marketing from this 6-figure blogger.
• Pinterest Avalanche – where I learned how to use Pinterest correctly from these two 6-figure bloggers.
• How To Start A Money Making Blog – everything I learned from building a blog from 0-150K followers in 2 years and how you can also turn your blog into your business.
• How To Make Money As An Influencer – the exact ways to make money from social media, and it’s not all about having a huge following. I made my first $100 from one tweet when I had 6K followers.

Digital Product

• Teachable – I’ve tried other course creation software programs and settled on this one because of its user-friendliness and customer service.

E-commerce

• Shopify – I would recommend this over Amazon because you can actually build your own brand with Shopify instead of it just being a marketplace where you don’t have access to your customers.
• Woocommerce – The best way to get started for the e-commerce newbie. Also, it’s a free plugin!
• Printful – The fastest way to create a custom drop shipping brand.

Email Marketing

• ConvertKit – is designed for content creators who make (or want to make) a living online. They have integrated landing page and opt-in options as well as incredible segmentation and automation tools. It’s like 10 tools packed into one powerful software system. Here are 4 webinars to sign up for according to your level.
  • Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers – Beginner
  • Earn Your First Dollar – Beginner/Intermediate
  • Email Copy-writing Tips – Beginner/Intermediate
  • Make More Sales With Funnels – Expert
• Aweber – another great email marketing service provider.
• Sumo – a plugin to help capture leads who land on your website/blog.

Graphic Design

• DesignEvo – the fastest and cheapest way to make a professional logo.
• 99Designs – another great place to get cheap professional designs of all kinds!
• Design Contest – instead of having one person design your logo, host a competition where a ton of graphic designer fight to be your designer by proving themselves by designing your logo.
• Creative Market – the biggest online graphics store where you can get bundles of graphics for cheap and have pre-made content for a year, all you have to do is schedule it out!
• VistaPrint – the cheapest and fastest way to print a ton of business cards.
• PicMonkey – loved and used by most bloggers as a way to design on the go on your phone.

Organization

• Trello – a great way to stay organized as a team. You can create tasks and see the progress on different projects from everyone on your team.
• Wondershare – your all-in-one PDF solution!
• OntraPages – landing pages that you can easily create in 5 minutes.

Podcast

• Podbean – everything you need to create, manage and promote your podcast!

Social Media

• SmarterQueue – social media scheduler that I’ve used to grow my following on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn on autopilot. I haven’t touched my social media accounts in over a year and I just hit 150K followers.
• Tailwind – best Pinterest scheduler and with their Smart Loop feature you can be 100% hands-free from your account as you watch your traffic grow.
• Planoly – top Instagram scheduler because you can visually plan out your feed. Plus it’s one of the few Instagram-approved schedulers out there which is why you can auto post from it.
• Social Warefare – Makes your content easily shareable and tracks all shares for you!
• Loomly – the very first social media scheduler I ever used! It’s a great place to start especially if you’re a visual learner.

Video

• VidIQ – more YouTube views in less time with this analyzer tool.
• Telestream – video trans-coding, streaming, capture, screen recording and more!

Website

• WordPress – 90% of bloggers use WordPress, you should too.
• GoDaddy and BlueHost – Website hosting and domain name company.
• Grammarly – this free grammar and spelling tool has saved me countless times. I used to get called out for spelling mistakes on my graphics all the time, now it never happens!
• JetPack – way to keep track of your blog stats and where your traffic is coming from.
• Genesis and Divi – SEO optimized themes that most 6 figure bloggers use.

Fashion

• Sudara – charitable fashion company that supports women who have escaped human trafficking by giving them a job.
• Aliexpress – if you don’t know about this online store, it’s going to blow your mind! They are always running promotions and games to win points and coupons. Check out the best Aliexpress Coupons here.

Health and Wellness

• DaisyCup – a menstrual cup that has helped me stay focused on business without worrying about leaking or getting toxic shock.
• Heat Therapy Mat – infrared mat embedded with natural gemstones designed for wellness and pain management.
• Just Natural – all their products are 100% natural.
• Revive Light – red light therapy for anti-aging and health benefits. Use VIPLADYBOSS for a whopping 30% off!

Side Gig Opportunities

• VipKid, HAWO, and Education First – 3 companies that will hire you to teach students English online.

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Elaine Rau

Founder and CEO at LadyBossBlogger

Former National Wedding Sales Manager, Elaine Rau, packed her life up in a suitcase and moved to Honduras where she started her first blog LadyBossBlogger.com to learn how to become an online entrepreneur. Now Elaine teaches people how to become bloggers and influencers and make money online. For more information: Courses.LadyBossBlogger.com.

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