Online Business Tools & Resources For Entrepreneurs
Below are some of the tools that I personally use and recommend
Through years of hard work, I have tested different tools, products, and services to grow my online business. On this page, I take you "behind the scenes" and show you my favorite tools, from creating your website to marketing your products and increasing your sales.
I often get asked questions like What is the best hosting to use for my website? or What is the best WordPress plugin to do that?
I've created this list of resources to help you make right decisions when choosing vital tools for your online business without having to waste your time and money testing everything yourself. I have done the hard work & research for you. I've made many mistakes and wasted a lot of money on things that did not deliver the results that I was hoping for.
You don't have to do the same mistakes!
To offer you the best value, I have even partnered with some of these tools to bring you the best offers and discounted prices. (No, these are NOT sponsored. I'm only sharing what have worked for me). If you decided to buy through any of the links on this page, not only you may get a discounted price but also, you may receive some additional bonuses & tips from me to help you make the most out of each product.
I hope you find this list helpful. Share this page to spread the knowledge.
Must-Have Tools for Your Home Office as an Online Entrepreneur
You need a good, fast, and reliable laptop to handle anything that you can throw at it. As an online entrepreneur you will be spending a long time working on your laptop so you should pick up something that you like and enjoy working on. Don't go for a cheap laptop, you will hate the slow performance later and you will end up buying another one so I recommend you invest in a good laptop with high specifications.
My first suggestion is this dual-screen laptop by Asus. While not everyone needs a dual-screen laptop for their business, I find it useful, especially if you are a content creator, video editor, or you like to work on multiple projects at the same time (multi-tasking). In all cases, you need a fast and reliable laptop so you can work anywhere, at any time. I love my Asus laptop as It everything that I was looking for; speed, performance, quietness, 1 TB SSD storage, Intel core i9, 32 GB RAM, NVIDIA Graphics, 4K resolution screen, face recognition and a dual screen which is great for multi-tasking.
If you just want a business laptop and you don't care about dual screens or any fancy features, my best recommendation for you is the Lenovo Thinkpad Extreme. This laptop means business, nothing fancy. It looks similar to a Macbook but the keyboard of Lenovo is actually better and it feels nicer while typing.
Lenovo has some great laptops for business and their Thinkpad series is one of the best for home/office work. I have used this Thinkpad laptop too daily and I think it offers the best value for your money. Just like my Asus laptop, this one has a solid body and durable design. It comes with high specifications that include an Intel Core i7, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, 4K resolution screen, NVIDIA Graphics and a finger-print reader.
If you are an online entrepreneur you're probably creating YouTube videos, online courses, or podcasts. May be you need to create webinars or arrange virtual meetings with your team members or clients. In all cases, you need a good quality microphone. I'm using Blue Yeti and it does a great job of delivering high quality audio for my projects. I have used it for many years and it's still one of the best USB microphones out there. It's easy to use and no software needed, simply plug it in your computer and start recording.
Desks come with all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it's hard to find the right shape or size that fits your home/office area. I found this L shape desk to be great as it has a reversible desk top design, which means you can assemble long or short panel on the right or left side as you like. It allows you to define your workspace, saving the space of your home office and providing plenty of surface space for writing, computer work and other home office activities. The wood board is waterproof and the desk frame is made of steel. It's sturdy and I like its modern appearance. I had this desk for a year now with no complains. It's affordable too.
Virtual Office & Mailing Address For Your Business
You can't use your personal home address for business, not only it is not safe to post your personal address online but also it does not look professional. It is always better to separate your personal life from your business assets. You need a professional business address to use for things like business mailing, company filing, email marketing compliance, ..etc. Also, if you are someone who lives outside the U.S and you want to run an online business in the U.S you will need to have a U.S address.
The thing is if you are an online entrepreneur you probably do not have an actual office so how can you get a real office address without having an office? The answer is virtual office address.
There are many companies that provide virtual office addresses and they charge hundreds of dollars each month! However, you do not have to spend a lot of money. You can simply get yours for only $10/month using ipostal 1. I have been using I've been using them for many years and they've been great.
Here's how it works:
1) You can choose an address from over 900 locations (in the U.S or internationally).
2) They will setup a digital mailbox for you and you will get notified when you receive a new mail or package (You can use their website or mobile app to check your digital mailbox). Also, they will send you a photo of the item that you received so you can decide what you want to do with it.
3) You decide what to do with the items, for example you can forward them to your home address or to a different address, consolidate & ship several items together, or you can simply discard and recycle the items.
Best Domain Registrars to register a name for your website
Namecheap is one of the most well-known domain registrars with around 11 million users and they offer a good support. I've been using them for many years without any problems.
There are two great things that I like about NameCheap:
1) Includes WhoisGuard (privacy) for free forever
WhoisGuard is a privacy protection service that hides your personal info in the public Whois database, keeps your data safe, and helps to avoid spam. Without WhoisGuard, anyone can see you are the owner of the domain name and they can contact you so you'll often end up getting some spam. With Godaddy, you pay a little bit more for privacy.
2) Better pricing for domain registration & renewals
Generally, Namecheap has better pricing. Registrations cost around $10/year, sometimes even cheaper using coupons. You keep paying the same price on renewals plus you get Whoisguard for free. With Godaddy, you may get a good price for the first year but renewals usually cost around $15/year and they try to upsell you other services including privacy so you usually end up paying more for you register the same domain name on Godaddy vs. Namecheap. That's why I recommend Namecheap, especially if you have many domain names. You can save hundreds of dollars each year on renewals.
Godaddy is a good company with great support. I have used Godaddy for many years before I transferred my domain names to NameCheap.
They are one of the largest domain registrars with around 18 million users. You can't go wrong with them however keep in mind that if you have many domains, it would cost you a little bit more to renew your domains each year on Godaddy vs. using another domain registrar such as NameCheap.
Also, Godaddy does not include Whoisguard (privacy) for free. You'll pay a little more to hide your info. on the Whois database for each domain so you usually end up paying around $15 or more for the same domain that you can register at NameCheap for around $10.
Note: Both NameCheap and Godaddy offer other website hosting & security services. However, I won't use either Godaddy or NameCheap to host my websites. They are great for domain registrations and DNS management. But for hosting, there are better-hosting providers out there. I'd use a different hosting service that offers more scalability, speed, and optimization. See my hosting recommendations on the next page for more info.
Best High-performance web hosting providers to host your website
Best means high-performance, speed, and SLA uptime without breaking the bank.
Best option: Cloudways (Get 20% off)
Why? Unlike any other cloud hosting provider, Cloudways is not just another hosting company that will take your money and give you a shared or VPS hosting on their servers! Cloudways is a fully managed cloud hosting platform that allows you to host your sites on the world's biggest cloud service providers such as Google Cloud, Amazon, Digital Ocean, and Linode without any technical knowledge.
Managing your own servers on Google or Amazon can be a pain. Cloudways acts as a middle man between you and the cloud service provider that you choose. Their interface makes it easy to launch, maintain, and update all your server stack without entering a line of code. Nothing is better than hosting your website on Amazon or Google cloud, right! You know that you will get the best uptime, speed, and value for your money.
Their infrastructure is optimized for speed, performance and security. And best of all, it cuts a huge chunk of the development costs compared to you trying to create & manage these servers yourself on Amazon or Google cloud. The Cloudways platform makes it easier to launch servers or applications, scale servers, duplicate applications, run backups, and they have a dedicated support when needed. I have tested their platform and still using them. I've not noticed any issues. Additionally, they will help you migrate your websites for free.
With Cloudways there is no upfront costs for running the servers. You are only billed for the amount of time when you have your servers up. It's a pay-as-you-go service. It's very affordable. You can get your server up and running on Cloudways for as low as $10/month.
Best WordPress Themes to use on your website
Best theme means well-coded, fast, lightweight, fully customizable, and SEO friendly.
Astra is one of my favorite WordPress themes. It is lightweight, fast, and fully customizable. It's developed by a good team of developers (Brainstorm Force). These guys have been there for a long time and their company is behind many other successful WordPress products so I feel confident using their products.
Astra theme works great with Woocommerce and Learndash so you can use it to build beautiful an E-commerce site or an educational website for selling online courses. It comes with many useful features to customize almost everything on your website and with Astra Pro you can do even more cool things like creating custom layouts, header sections, mobile headers, sticky headers, blog layout, custom typography, and much more!
Additionally, if you don't have to build your website from scratch, you can simply install their Astra sites plugin to import any of their full pre-built sites. This is one of the fastest ways available today to build a WordPress site in a matter of minutes.
Astra theme has a free version that you can try but it limited in features. In order to unlock all the featured mentioned above you need their Astra Pro. Use the link below to secure your discount (subject to availability).
More resources coming soon
Thank you for your patience