Just like in any other profession, having the right tools to run your online business is essential. Tools let you work faster and smarter.
With the right tools, you can create an online business fast and relatively easy, as these days, UI and UX in these sites have come a long way to help non-techies use their tools. Working online is a great way to earn a living, but you must have the right tools before starting your home-based business.
Below, I’ve listed the most important 5 tools that you need to get started building your biz and have something up and running this weekend.
A Domain Name
A domain name plays the role of a web address that your clients can use to find you online. While looking for a domain name, it is essential that you choose a name that represents your business and which people can easily remember.
Domain name registrars sell domain names. Some of the most common domain name registrars include GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Uniregistry.
I have used all of these places in the past but now I almost exclusively use Namecheap.com for all my domain registrations. I like to keep things all in one place. It helps keep things neat and organized.
Domain registrars will tell you if the name you want is taken already. If a domain is available, the registrar will tell you if it’s new or already registered in the past.
Once you find a domain name of your choice, all you need to do is open an account on the domain registry site and purchase your domain.
When purchasing a domain name, aim for a .com extension. Customers are more likely to visit your website if it is hosted on a top-level domain (.com), so avoid using other extensions or hyphenating your domain name.
While the type of extension you choose has no impact on your website performance, you could miss out on clients who fail to find your website online.
Website Hosting
The first step to establishing your online business is to have a website. This is where your website will be located on the internet. Web hosting is where you will store your website so customers can access your business resources online.
With hundreds of web hosting solutions out there, it’s vital that you choose the right hosting for your online business.
Choosing the wrong web hosting company could lead to a lot of problems and slow down your website.
On the other hand, a good web hosting solution should have enough storage space, bandwidth, and other essentials necessary to run your website.
A good web hosting service also ensures that your website is stable and secure so that you can focus on running your business rather than fixing technical glitches or addressing security concerns.
Typically, a great web hosting company should have features such as:
- 99% uptime
- Fast loading speeds (typically 2 seconds or less)
- 24/7 customer support
- Safety features such as firewalls, SSL certificates
- Scalable bandwidth and storage
While purchasing your web hosting services, you should also consider the hosting environment options available.
Shared hosting is the least expensive solution for your website, but it comes with trade-offs. Your website is hosted with other websites on a common server, and you share space and hosting resources. This is fine for beginners who are just starting out with a few websites.
Virtual private server hosting is an environment that hosts multiple websites on the same server but dedicates a portion of the server to your website. Your website is safer with VPS hosting, and you have more control over your hosting. Usually, the performance of a VPS is better than shared hosting so this is a good option for an intermediate level marketer.
A dedicated hosting environment is where you have a single server running your website only. All server resources are allocated to you, and you can control its usage fully. This option is best if you run multiple websites and have the technical capacity to manage a server on your own.
I have used close to a dozen different hosting companies over the past 15+ years, including all the popular ones like Hostgator, Godaddy and Bluehost. Big name hosting usually don’t have any issues, apart from one time Hostgator shut my account down for no apparent reason – so be careful with them.
I recommend you find a hosting company that fits your needs and is on par with your tech skills.
Autoresponder System for Email Marketing
Autoresponders are automated email marketing services that let you build an email contact list and send emails to the contacts automatically, and manually whenever you want to send a ‘broadcast’ to your entire list.
An autoresponder is an important tool in your online business as you can automate your email marketing. They save you time and help you share information and offers in your marketing campaigns.
Autoresponders are also useful as they enable you to segment your contact list into segments based on your audience’s interest and actions. i.e. You want to segment your paying customers from your non-buyers.
Segmenting makes it easy to customize your marketing campaigns based on interest, demographics, and other types of data.
Aweber – My #1 recommend
Aweber is an excellent autoresponder service, ideal for both beginner and advanced users. Aweber has customizable email templates, easy-to-use campaign building tools, affordable monthly plans, extensive knowledgebase, and excellent customer support available 24/7.
Aweber assures high deliverability, concise and in-depth reporting and analytics, an easy-to-use experience, with a well-organized dashboard.
You can get a free account with Aweber to start with. They also have a landing page builder which is an awesome bonus. The free account is limited to 500 subscribers and 3000 email sends a month. Click here to open your free account.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a good choice for bloggers and online business owners who rely on content marketing. ConvertKit is a cloud-based lead generation and email marketing software that will help you grow your audience and automate your email marketing.
One of the best things about ConvertKit is that you can set up automation rules that trigger custom automated workflows.
ConvertKit offers affordable plans, a drag-and-drop email builder, multiple landing page templates, robust scheduling capabilities, and segmenting. Check out ConvertKit’s plans here.
Page Builders
Every website needs pages for its different components. But designing these pages can take long hours, whether you’re doing it yourself or hiring a web designer.
Hiring designers can be expensive, and if you want to design your page, you need to learn design skills.
This is why page builders are essential tools that every website owner should have. Page builders help you build pages easily, without any coding or design experience required.
While there are multiple landing pages out there at your disposal, most online business owners have found massive success in creating landing pages using apps like ClickFunnels, Leadpages and others.
ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is perhaps the most well-known funnel and page builder for marketers. It’s a drag-and-drop landing page builder that allows you to build beautiful landing pages and shopping carts for your online business.
ClickFunnels also allows you to create sales funnels, webinar registration forms, membership sites, affiliate pages, and more in just a few minutes.
If you’re interested in starting with ClickFunnels, I recommend taking the One Funnel challenge.
Convertri
This is the page and funnel builder that I have been a happy user of for the last 4+ years. Convertri is a free-form page builder. You can place and move anything you want, anywhere on the page. It really is a remarkable app.
They aim to always be optimizing their pages for the fastest loading speeds possible. This is something that is critical for page conversions.
There is a lot you can do with Convertri – from simple landing pages to full blown websites. They have a large array of templates you can start with and they are constantly improving by adding more and more features.
You can test drive Convertri with their free 14-day trial. If you want to create pages exactly how you want, then Convertri’s free-form editor is what you’ll love most.
You can check out my Convertri review here on my blog too.
Leadpages
Like ClickFunnels, Leadpages is a landing page builder that helps you drive more leads and sales for your business.
Leadpages offers customizable template options, integrates with your email autoresponder, and displays your landing pages across devices.
Another great thing about Leadpages is that you can integrate Google Analytics to track visits and form submissions before converting them into paying customers. You can also test different pages against each other for the best performing option.
Keyword Research Tools
Keywords are relevant phrases that potential customers type into search engines when they’re looking for products and services like yours. This process is called search engine optimization or SEO.
Getting your website to rank higher in search engines like Google and Bing is vital for your online business. This can be complicated at first, but you’ll find that the process becomes much easier when you use keyword research tools. There are many free and paid keyword research tools available these days.
Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is a great tool to start with that will give you all the keywords you need as a beginner and seasoned marketer. It’s a browser extension that you install and will give you insights on the Google SERP page.
To search for long-tail keywords, you can click the button where it says “Find Long-tail keywords” or go to their site and search.
The free version is fine to start with, but if you want to do some heavy research, the Pro version will set you back around $10/year. This is much cheaper than competing KW research tools.
Try Keywords Everywhere at https://keywordseverywhere.com
KWFinder
KWFinder is a more advanced and complex keyword research tool that lets you find long-tail keywords plus essential information like search volume, CPC, and competition level.
KWFinder is easy to use, with a clean interface that allows you to filter through keywords.
The free version of KWFinder is only good for 10 days and will only show ten keyword results, so it’s a very short trial.
If you upgrade, you will get access to more keywords and other deeper keyword analysis data, plus unlimited searches.
Conclusion
I have listed the top 5 essential tools to get you started and set up with a real online business in as short as a weekend!
You just need a domain name, web hosting, autoresponder, a page builder, and keyword research tool. All in all, you’re looking at around $150 per month in expenses to run a pro level business.
The first step is deciding on a brand name and niche, then it’s a matter of setting up your online real estate in the form of a website. After that, your job is to get traffic to your pages. I have another article on my blog here where you can learn the best 5 ways to drive free traffic to your web pages.
If you have any questions about any of these tools, please get in touch.
Stuart Stirling
