QUICK MBA
Analytics & Tracking Tools
Google Analytics
Is a very fast, accurate and user-friendly tool that will keep track of how your business is going on the web.
Alerts
Is great for tracking keywords. Set it up for your name and business and you will know when it has been mentioned online.
Mint
Is a very simple platform that keeps track of your personal or business budget.
Edgerank Checker
Creates easy to read graphs showing engagement of your Facebook business page.
Google Alerts
Get email updates with the latest Google results based on your queries. Monitor what is being said about your brand, industry, and competitors without doing research. There’s always room for improvement with this tool, but it’ll do the job.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a great surveying tool not just for entrepreneurs but for everyone. Its interface is very simple. You can design, create, publish your survey in minutes and then, Survey Monkey analyzes your results for you.
Talkwalker
Think of Talkwalker as Google Alerts, but better. It offers more comprehensive results and more options that allow you to check for mentions of your company online. This helps with public relations and the chance to interact with people who are discussing your brand online.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Buffer
Allows scheduling of social media posts in bulk for easy and efficient social media coverage.
Grip
Helps grow professional networks by putting entrepreneurs in touch with each other.
Social Mention
Is a free online software that tracks where your business is mentioned all across social media.
TweetDeck
Keeps track of every possible aspect of your twitter presence, feed and profile.
ClicktoTweet
Write the tweet you want to share and this link generator will generate a custom shortened link. Helping to generate more exposure, it gives readers the opportunity to share with just one click.
Hootsuite
Managing your social media can be a daunting task. Thanks to Hootsuite, your social media posts can be scheduled weeks and months in advance.
Pretty Link
Make all your URL’s more attractive and trackable with Pretty Link. Simply add the target web address, and add the shorter, prettier link to enhance your URL while still being able to track it.
Speak Pipe
Add this app to your website to allow your visitors to leave you a voice message. This is a great way for you to get to know your site visitors better. You can also reply with a voice message or via email.
Dlvr.it
Dlvr.it is a great social media management tool. If you’re an online entrepreneur, you know how important it is to make sure you’re distributing high-quality content to the people in your audience.
But curating excellent content can be quite time consuming, right? With Dlvr.it social media marketing becomes so much easier.
While other social media marketing tools might suggest content and allow you to schedule it, Dlvr.it does so much more. It will automatically curate content from any RSS feed you give it. Its settings allow you to make sure that it only disseminates a certain type of content. You can even exclude the types of content that you don’t want it to post.
Feedly
Entrepreneurs need to be constantly improving themselves. When you’re building a business, ongoing learning is extremely important. Additionally, it’s also important that you keep up with any major news in your industry.
Feedly is a highly effective way to do this. Feedly allows you to view all of your favorite RSS feeds in one place. Whenever you have some time to read, you can open the app on your mobile device or PC and select the stories you wish to read.
Google Hangout
Google Hangout makes it easy for everyone with a Gmail address to make a video conference. You can also share your desktop and let others see your screen during a hangout.
Sniply for growth hacking.
When you’re using social media regularly, you should also be sharing content from other, reputable experts in your industry. Sharing other influencers’ content will help you build trust with your audience, supplement your content, and also help build rapport with those relevant industry experts.
Sniply is a powerful tool that allows you to attach a call-to-action on every piece of content you share. Because the content you are sharing lives on a website that you don’t control, there is very little chance that the user will visit your site after reading the article. However, Sniply allows you to put a inbound button or CTA into a frame that the article sits inside. Thus, giving you some control of the platform and perpetuating traffic from the non-affiliated content that you share.
AngelList
If you are seeking funding for you business, AngelList is a great social network that can help you seek funding and make connections with those in your community.
Meetup
If you are looking to drum up business within your local community, try Meetup to find networking groups, industry meetings and speakers. EventBrite is also a great place to find tickets to smaller, local events as well.
Pinterest
Surprisingly, Pinterest can be a great place to find inspiration for new products and upcoming trends (so you can use them in your own projects), as well as a place to share your products and inspirations as a company. Power personal blender Nutribullet is a good example of a growing company that capitalizes on its audience’s interest in healthy living on Pinterest.
LinkedIn Content Platform
Once LinkedIn accepts your request to join its long-form content publishing platform, you have free reign to contribute content as much as you want. While the jury is still out among marketers whether or not Google will flag republished posts as duplicate content, it’s probably best to only post original content on LinkedIn. Because LinkedIn is already such a large platform, its content will get indexed faster and could potentially give you more visibility than your company’s blog.
Contently
LinkedIn content is just one way to build your brand through content. You should also set up profiles for your employees on Contently, which automatically creates a writing portfolio for them based on the websites they say they write for.
HARO
Help a Reporter Out is an email that goes out multiple times per day, with requests from reporters for sources for their stories. This can turn into free publicity for your company. Be sure to respond ASAP, as some requests can get competitive.
PressPass and JustReachOut
If you are looking to reach out to journalists to cover your company, product launch or other news, these directories allow you to search for journalists by beat, industry or region.
BlogDash
Like PressPass and JustReachOut but for bloggers, BlogDash allows you to connect with bloggers in your specific niche to review products, sponsor blog giveaways or build relationships. Bloggers have a significant audience base and impact on trends, product sales and more, so it’s important to have a great relationship with them.
Join.Me
Going back to working with a distributed workforce, Join.Me allows you to share your screen with another user quickly, for free. All you need is the free software, and the other user can see your screen from their browser. If both of you have the software, however, you can also cede control of your mouse to the other user, allow tutorials, customer service and how-to demonstrations easier than ever.
Jing
Jing is a free screencast (screen recording) and screenshot software that makes it easy to record product demos, illustrative how-tos for virtual assistants or screenshots for blog posts and product description pages.
Gratitude Journal App
I know what you’re thinking. Why in the world would an entrepreneur need a gratitude tool? What does gratitude have to do with growing your business?
I’d argue that gratitude has everything to do with growing your business. As you already know, entrepreneurs deal with a lot of stress. Building a business is hard, right?
Practicing gratitude is one of the best ways to stay sane while you’re dealing with the emotional challenges of entrepreneurship. It’s been shown to make you happier, healthier, and more productive. That’s why you need the Gratitude Journal App.
This app helps you focus on the things that are going right in your life. This is important because we all tend to focus mainly on the negative. When we do this, it hampers our ability to continue moving forward.
When you’re focused on the things you’re grateful for, it makes it easier to deal with the stress that comes with entrepreneurship.
PRODUCTIVITY
Docady
Stores copies of much needed and important paperwork.
Slack
Brings teams together and keeps everyone and everything organised and in one place.
MailChimp
Has a great platform that allows easy creation and analysis of email campaigns.
Google Drive
With near-unlimited functionality, it will revolutionize teamwork and collaboration on documents and plans.
Asana
Is a great online platform that enables teamwork without the hassle of emails.
Rapportive
Opens a pop-up when reading the latest email from a client and shows his LinkedIn information.
Evernote
The award-winning powerful note-taking app allows users to keep track of every note regardless of which device it’s on. Once you set up your free account you can add the app to your computer, smartphone and tablet. Each time you add or modify a note it will automatically sync to update the note on all your devices.
Wrike
Staying on track can be a chore, especially with everyday distractions such as emails, social networking sites and social games. Wrike’s project management software lets you to take your assignments with you anywhere you go, allowing you to keep track of your schedules, ideas, files and conversations.
Wunderlist
This is the perfect to-do list app. From making grocery lists to work tasks, Wunderlist is a great tool to help on-the-go professionals keep track of all their tasks.
Dropbox
The cloud-based, file synchronization service will allow you to store your photos, documents and videos in the cloud and share them easily. Now you can finally stop emailing yourself files at the end of the day.
AWeber
AWeber is an email marketing tool for those who are building an online audience. It makes it easier to communicate with your audience through email.
As you may already know if you’re an online entrepreneur, building a viable email list is immensely important. Your email list is where your money is. That’s why it’s important to communicate with them effectively.
AWeber is a great tool because it’s easy to use, affordable, and effective. It gives you several options for designing your own opt-in forms. If you prefer to use your own form, you can sync it with your AWeber account.
TrueGether
Truegether is a great tool to use if you sell your products online. It’s a marketplace and also allows you to sell across multiple channels online. It allows you to have all of your channels in one place.
It makes it much easier to manage your business effectively. If you sell on Ebay, Amazon, or Google Shopping, it takes a lot of the hassle out of dealing with multiple accounts. It’s a perfect solution for e-commerce businesses.
Yoast
One of the most important factors that an online entrepreneur must consider is search engine optimization (SEO). Along with content marketing, SEO is one of the best ways to turn your website into a lead generation tool.
If you’re using Wordpress, Yoast is a great plugin that you can use to enhance your SEO efforts. When it’s activated, it can give an “SEO score” to each page and blog post on your website. When you’re creating content, you can choose the keyword you want to rank for and Yoast will let you know how well you’re doing when it comes to writing for that keyword
LastPass
Tired of having to remember tons of passwords? With LastPass, you won’t have to. LastPass is a tool that keeps your passwords in one place.
Chances are, you’re going to be using a lot of different websites when you’re running your business. Of course, it’s important to make sure that you’re using effective passwords to protect your security.
Elance
If you need a freelancer for a long-term project or something more extensive, try Elance, a platform that allows you to post projects and find freelancers that have what you are looking for.
Fiverr
If you have been an entrepreneur for any amount of time, you probably know that you can’t build your business all by yourself. There are so many different roles that you must assume. It can get quite overwhelming.
If you want to maintain your sanity, you need to learn to outsource. But outsourcing can get quite expensive, can’t it?
This is where Fiverr comes in. They make outsourcing a lot more affordable. You can hire freelancers to take care of some of the tasks you need to accomplish. It’s a relatively inexpensive way to take some of the load off.
Fiverr allows you to pay people to create content, edit, research, and fulfill many other functions. Many of these jobs can be done for only $5 (hence the name “Fiverr”)
Here’s a caveat: you need to be careful about which tasks you outsource. You also need to do as much as you can to ensure you’re getting quality work from the people you hire. Since it is so inexpensive, you are going to get what you pay for in most respects.
Canva
Building an online business means producing visual content. People tend to digest visual content more easily than just text. Whether you’re writing blog posts, or sharing content on social media, you will need a striking visual that will draw your readers in.
Canva is a tool that makes it easier to create images that will attract attention. When you are creating an image using Canva, you can choose from the stock photos they carry, or you can upload your own. They also have tons of icons you can add to the image as well.
DreamItAlive
Let’s face it. Entrepreneurs need inspiration. We all need something that keeps us motivated. Visualization is an easy way to maintain a positive attitude.
When you visualize yourself accomplishing the goals you have set for yourself, it drives you to succeed. It allows you to see a future when you have achieved your goals. If you’re an entrepreneur, you have an idea of where you want your business to be.
When you practice visualization you are able to almost literally “see” yourself being who you are striving to be. It helps you maintain your focus, and it puts you in a more productive mood.
You’ve probably heard of vision boards, right? DreamItAlive is like an online vision board. Using this tool, you can take images from all over and use them to create a vision board that will keep you motivated.
Launchrock
Launchrock helps you to build a simple “launching soon” web page and allows your potential customers to sign up your email list. In this way, you can get a list of people interested in your business long before you actually launch your website.
Madmimi
Madmimi is great for email marketing. It makes it easy to create, send and track emails online. It is free up to a certain amount of contacts and lets you send unlimited emails for free.
Hiver
Hiver turns your Gmail into a helpdesk. You can track your tasks in a sidebar and assign them to your teammates. It is free to use up to three users.
Trello
Trello lets you organize projects of any size. You can organize your work on cards, make comments and even assign others tasks.
Spaces’ free logo maker.
Branding is one of the most critical steps when marketing your business, and the logo is arguably the most important part of your branding. Fortunately, with tools like Spaces’ free logo maker, you no longer have to waste resources on hiring a designer to interpret your vision of the perfect logo.
Using its library, filled with hundreds of icons, frames and font classes, you can create a stunning logo that expresses your brand identity without any design training and without spending any money.
Scraper - extract content from web pages.
Scraper lets you easily pull content from a web page and export it into an Excel spreadsheet. It’s a perfect way to extract contact information or competitor’s data. Once you have this data, you can use it to create cold-email lists, content topics, and other data-driven marketing tactics.
SoundGecko
Translate online content -- like news and blog posts -- into an audio file. This allows you to “read” any content that can help you with your business -- including articles on productivity, sales and branding -- on the go.
ShareDesk or DeskTime
If you need an office or just a place to work for the day, try ShareDesk or DeskTime to find a co-working office or open desk that allows you to have office space without paying for an entire office.
Google Now
If you are an Android user, connect your Google account to your phone and take advantage of Google Now, which can tell you when to leave for appointments that are on your calendar, whether or not your flight is delayed or even new articles from websites you frequent often. This “virtual personal assistant of sorts” can help you stay organized and on track, even if you have a lot of balls in the air, as most entrepreneurs do.
AllConferences, Lanyrd, ConferenceAlerts, and Confradar
One great way to build a good business is to meet other entrepreneurs and industry colleagues through conferences. There are several conference search engines available, but some work better in certain industries (and areas) than others. Make sure you check out a variety to see which one fits your needs.
FINANCES
NerdWallet
Startup NerdWallet offers an array of airline credit cards, which can help you accrue points to fly where ever you need to build your business. Put all your business expenses on a single card -- from Dropbox subscriptions to office supplies -- and watch the points stack up.
Due
Due is an online estimates, invoicing, and payments platform that can help an entrepreneur organize their time through a time-tracking tool plus automate numerous time-consuming tasks. The free platform offers estimate and invoicing templates, reports, database for client and project information, automated reminders and acknowledgements, integration with Basecamp, and multiple payment methods.
HelloSign or EchoSign
These are legally binding digital document signing services that allow you to get contracts, agreements, W2s and more signed quickly and over email. Be sure to check your state’s regulation on these documents, but they usually stand as legal in the majority of states.
TRAVEL
TripIt
If you fly or travel to a lot for conferences, meeting with investors or clients, or other events, TripIt Pro (there’s also a free, less robust, version) can help you stay on top of flight changes, frequent flyer numbers and more.
Analytics & Tracking Tools
Google Analytics
Is a very fast, accurate and user-friendly tool that will keep track of how your business is going on the web.
Alerts
Is great for tracking keywords. Set it up for your name and business and you will know when it has been mentioned online.
Mint
Is a very simple platform that keeps track of your personal or business budget.
Edgerank Checker
Creates easy to read graphs showing engagement of your Facebook business page.
Google Alerts
Get email updates with the latest Google results based on your queries. Monitor what is being said about your brand, industry, and competitors without doing research. There’s always room for improvement with this tool, but it’ll do the job.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a great surveying tool not just for entrepreneurs but for everyone. Its interface is very simple. You can design, create, publish your survey in minutes and then, Survey Monkey analyzes your results for you.
Talkwalker
Think of Talkwalker as Google Alerts, but better. It offers more comprehensive results and more options that allow you to check for mentions of your company online. This helps with public relations and the chance to interact with people who are discussing your brand online.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Buffer
Allows scheduling of social media posts in bulk for easy and efficient social media coverage.
Grip
Helps grow professional networks by putting entrepreneurs in touch with each other.
Social Mention
Is a free online software that tracks where your business is mentioned all across social media.
TweetDeck
Keeps track of every possible aspect of your twitter presence, feed and profile.
ClicktoTweet
Write the tweet you want to share and this link generator will generate a custom shortened link. Helping to generate more exposure, it gives readers the opportunity to share with just one click.
Hootsuite
Managing your social media can be a daunting task. Thanks to Hootsuite, your social media posts can be scheduled weeks and months in advance.
Pretty Link
Make all your URL’s more attractive and trackable with Pretty Link. Simply add the target web address, and add the shorter, prettier link to enhance your URL while still being able to track it.
Speak Pipe
Add this app to your website to allow your visitors to leave you a voice message. This is a great way for you to get to know your site visitors better. You can also reply with a voice message or via email.
Dlvr.it
Dlvr.it is a great social media management tool. If you’re an online entrepreneur, you know how important it is to make sure you’re distributing high-quality content to the people in your audience.
But curating excellent content can be quite time consuming, right? With Dlvr.it social media marketing becomes so much easier.
While other social media marketing tools might suggest content and allow you to schedule it, Dlvr.it does so much more. It will automatically curate content from any RSS feed you give it. Its settings allow you to make sure that it only disseminates a certain type of content. You can even exclude the types of content that you don’t want it to post.
Feedly
Entrepreneurs need to be constantly improving themselves. When you’re building a business, ongoing learning is extremely important. Additionally, it’s also important that you keep up with any major news in your industry.
Feedly is a highly effective way to do this. Feedly allows you to view all of your favorite RSS feeds in one place. Whenever you have some time to read, you can open the app on your mobile device or PC and select the stories you wish to read.
Google Hangout
Google Hangout makes it easy for everyone with a Gmail address to make a video conference. You can also share your desktop and let others see your screen during a hangout.
Sniply for growth hacking.
When you’re using social media regularly, you should also be sharing content from other, reputable experts in your industry. Sharing other influencers’ content will help you build trust with your audience, supplement your content, and also help build rapport with those relevant industry experts.
Sniply is a powerful tool that allows you to attach a call-to-action on every piece of content you share. Because the content you are sharing lives on a website that you don’t control, there is very little chance that the user will visit your site after reading the article. However, Sniply allows you to put a inbound button or CTA into a frame that the article sits inside. Thus, giving you some control of the platform and perpetuating traffic from the non-affiliated content that you share.
AngelList
If you are seeking funding for you business, AngelList is a great social network that can help you seek funding and make connections with those in your community.
Meetup
If you are looking to drum up business within your local community, try Meetup to find networking groups, industry meetings and speakers. EventBrite is also a great place to find tickets to smaller, local events as well.
Surprisingly, Pinterest can be a great place to find inspiration for new products and upcoming trends (so you can use them in your own projects), as well as a place to share your products and inspirations as a company. Power personal blender Nutribullet is a good example of a growing company that capitalizes on its audience’s interest in healthy living on Pinterest.
LinkedIn Content Platform
Once LinkedIn accepts your request to join its long-form content publishing platform, you have free reign to contribute content as much as you want. While the jury is still out among marketers whether or not Google will flag republished posts as duplicate content, it’s probably best to only post original content on LinkedIn. Because LinkedIn is already such a large platform, its content will get indexed faster and could potentially give you more visibility than your company’s blog.
Contently
LinkedIn content is just one way to build your brand through content. You should also set up profiles for your employees on Contently, which automatically creates a writing portfolio for them based on the websites they say they write for.
HARO
Help a Reporter Out is an email that goes out multiple times per day, with requests from reporters for sources for their stories. This can turn into free publicity for your company. Be sure to respond ASAP, as some requests can get competitive.
PressPass and JustReachOut
If you are looking to reach out to journalists to cover your company, product launch or other news, these directories allow you to search for journalists by beat, industry or region.
BlogDash
Like PressPass and JustReachOut but for bloggers, BlogDash allows you to connect with bloggers in your specific niche to review products, sponsor blog giveaways or build relationships. Bloggers have a significant audience base and impact on trends, product sales and more, so it’s important to have a great relationship with them.
Join.Me
Going back to working with a distributed workforce, Join.Me allows you to share your screen with another user quickly, for free. All you need is the free software, and the other user can see your screen from their browser. If both of you have the software, however, you can also cede control of your mouse to the other user, allow tutorials, customer service and how-to demonstrations easier than ever.
Jing
Jing is a free screencast (screen recording) and screenshot software that makes it easy to record product demos, illustrative how-tos for virtual assistants or screenshots for blog posts and product description pages.
Gratitude Journal App
I know what you’re thinking. Why in the world would an entrepreneur need a gratitude tool? What does gratitude have to do with growing your business?
I’d argue that gratitude has everything to do with growing your business. As you already know, entrepreneurs deal with a lot of stress. Building a business is hard, right?
Practicing gratitude is one of the best ways to stay sane while you’re dealing with the emotional challenges of entrepreneurship. It’s been shown to make you happier, healthier, and more productive. That’s why you need the Gratitude Journal App.
This app helps you focus on the things that are going right in your life. This is important because we all tend to focus mainly on the negative. When we do this, it hampers our ability to continue moving forward.
When you’re focused on the things you’re grateful for, it makes it easier to deal with the stress that comes with entrepreneurship.
PRODUCTIVITY
Docady
Stores copies of much needed and important paperwork.
Slack
Brings teams together and keeps everyone and everything organised and in one place.
MailChimp
Has a great platform that allows easy creation and analysis of email campaigns.
Google Drive
With near-unlimited functionality, it will revolutionize teamwork and collaboration on documents and plans.
Asana
Is a great online platform that enables teamwork without the hassle of emails.
Rapportive
Opens a pop-up when reading the latest email from a client and shows his LinkedIn information.
Evernote
The award-winning powerful note-taking app allows users to keep track of every note regardless of which device it’s on. Once you set up your free account you can add the app to your computer, smartphone and tablet. Each time you add or modify a note it will automatically sync to update the note on all your devices.
Wrike
Staying on track can be a chore, especially with everyday distractions such as emails, social networking sites and social games. Wrike’s project management software lets you to take your assignments with you anywhere you go, allowing you to keep track of your schedules, ideas, files and conversations.
Wunderlist
This is the perfect to-do list app. From making grocery lists to work tasks, Wunderlist is a great tool to help on-the-go professionals keep track of all their tasks.
Dropbox
The cloud-based, file synchronization service will allow you to store your photos, documents and videos in the cloud and share them easily. Now you can finally stop emailing yourself files at the end of the day.
AWeber
AWeber is an email marketing tool for those who are building an online audience. It makes it easier to communicate with your audience through email.
As you may already know if you’re an online entrepreneur, building a viable email list is immensely important. Your email list is where your money is. That’s why it’s important to communicate with them effectively.
AWeber is a great tool because it’s easy to use, affordable, and effective. It gives you several options for designing your own opt-in forms. If you prefer to use your own form, you can sync it with your AWeber account.
TrueGether
Truegether is a great tool to use if you sell your products online. It’s a marketplace and also allows you to sell across multiple channels online. It allows you to have all of your channels in one place.
It makes it much easier to manage your business effectively. If you sell on Ebay, Amazon, or Google Shopping, it takes a lot of the hassle out of dealing with multiple accounts. It’s a perfect solution for e-commerce businesses.
Yoast
One of the most important factors that an online entrepreneur must consider is search engine optimization (SEO). Along with content marketing, SEO is one of the best ways to turn your website into a lead generation tool.
If you’re using Wordpress, Yoast is a great plugin that you can use to enhance your SEO efforts. When it’s activated, it can give an “SEO score” to each page and blog post on your website. When you’re creating content, you can choose the keyword you want to rank for and Yoast will let you know how well you’re doing when it comes to writing for that keyword
LastPass
Tired of having to remember tons of passwords? With LastPass, you won’t have to. LastPass is a tool that keeps your passwords in one place.
Chances are, you’re going to be using a lot of different websites when you’re running your business. Of course, it’s important to make sure that you’re using effective passwords to protect your security.
Elance
If you need a freelancer for a long-term project or something more extensive, try Elance, a platform that allows you to post projects and find freelancers that have what you are looking for.
Fiverr
If you have been an entrepreneur for any amount of time, you probably know that you can’t build your business all by yourself. There are so many different roles that you must assume. It can get quite overwhelming.
If you want to maintain your sanity, you need to learn to outsource. But outsourcing can get quite expensive, can’t it?
This is where Fiverr comes in. They make outsourcing a lot more affordable. You can hire freelancers to take care of some of the tasks you need to accomplish. It’s a relatively inexpensive way to take some of the load off.
Fiverr allows you to pay people to create content, edit, research, and fulfill many other functions. Many of these jobs can be done for only $5 (hence the name “Fiverr”)
Here’s a caveat: you need to be careful about which tasks you outsource. You also need to do as much as you can to ensure you’re getting quality work from the people you hire. Since it is so inexpensive, you are going to get what you pay for in most respects.
Canva
Building an online business means producing visual content. People tend to digest visual content more easily than just text. Whether you’re writing blog posts, or sharing content on social media, you will need a striking visual that will draw your readers in.
Canva is a tool that makes it easier to create images that will attract attention. When you are creating an image using Canva, you can choose from the stock photos they carry, or you can upload your own. They also have tons of icons you can add to the image as well.
DreamItAlive
Let’s face it. Entrepreneurs need inspiration. We all need something that keeps us motivated. Visualization is an easy way to maintain a positive attitude.
When you visualize yourself accomplishing the goals you have set for yourself, it drives you to succeed. It allows you to see a future when you have achieved your goals. If you’re an entrepreneur, you have an idea of where you want your business to be.
When you practice visualization you are able to almost literally “see” yourself being who you are striving to be. It helps you maintain your focus, and it puts you in a more productive mood.
You’ve probably heard of vision boards, right? DreamItAlive is like an online vision board. Using this tool, you can take images from all over and use them to create a vision board that will keep you motivated.
Launchrock
Launchrock helps you to build a simple “launching soon” web page and allows your potential customers to sign up your email list. In this way, you can get a list of people interested in your business long before you actually launch your website.
Madmimi
Madmimi is great for email marketing. It makes it easy to create, send and track emails online. It is free up to a certain amount of contacts and lets you send unlimited emails for free.
Hiver
Hiver turns your Gmail into a helpdesk. You can track your tasks in a sidebar and assign them to your teammates. It is free to use up to three users.
Trello
Trello lets you organize projects of any size. You can organize your work on cards, make comments and even assign others tasks.
Spaces’ free logo maker.
Branding is one of the most critical steps when marketing your business, and the logo is arguably the most important part of your branding. Fortunately, with tools like Spaces’ free logo maker, you no longer have to waste resources on hiring a designer to interpret your vision of the perfect logo.
Using its library, filled with hundreds of icons, frames and font classes, you can create a stunning logo that expresses your brand identity without any design training and without spending any money.
Scraper - extract content from web pages.
Scraper lets you easily pull content from a web page and export it into an Excel spreadsheet. It’s a perfect way to extract contact information or competitor’s data. Once you have this data, you can use it to create cold-email lists, content topics, and other data-driven marketing tactics.
SoundGecko
Translate online content -- like news and blog posts -- into an audio file. This allows you to “read” any content that can help you with your business -- including articles on productivity, sales and branding -- on the go.
ShareDesk or DeskTime
If you need an office or just a place to work for the day, try ShareDesk or DeskTime to find a co-working office or open desk that allows you to have office space without paying for an entire office.
Google Now
If you are an Android user, connect your Google account to your phone and take advantage of Google Now, which can tell you when to leave for appointments that are on your calendar, whether or not your flight is delayed or even new articles from websites you frequent often. This “virtual personal assistant of sorts” can help you stay organized and on track, even if you have a lot of balls in the air, as most entrepreneurs do.
AllConferences, Lanyrd, ConferenceAlerts, and Confradar
One great way to build a good business is to meet other entrepreneurs and industry colleagues through conferences. There are several conference search engines available, but some work better in certain industries (and areas) than others. Make sure you check out a variety to see which one fits your needs.
FINANCES
NerdWallet
Startup NerdWallet offers an array of airline credit cards, which can help you accrue points to fly where ever you need to build your business. Put all your business expenses on a single card -- from Dropbox subscriptions to office supplies -- and watch the points stack up.
Due
Due is an online estimates, invoicing, and payments platform that can help an entrepreneur organize their time through a time-tracking tool plus automate numerous time-consuming tasks. The free platform offers estimate and invoicing templates, reports, database for client and project information, automated reminders and acknowledgements, integration with Basecamp, and multiple payment methods.
HelloSign or EchoSign
These are legally binding digital document signing services that allow you to get contracts, agreements, W2s and more signed quickly and over email. Be sure to check your state’s regulation on these documents, but they usually stand as legal in the majority of states.
TRAVEL
TripIt
If you fly or travel to a lot for conferences, meeting with investors or clients, or other events, TripIt Pro (there’s also a free, less robust, version) can help you stay on top of flight changes, frequent flyer numbers and more.
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