Being able to work from home has been a huge blessing for us as a family and financially.
If you're thinking of launching a business from home or you want to grow, here are the tools I use and love.
Building Up & Managing Your Business
As your business grows, you need to start searching for partners, tools, and services that can help you run it while you focus on what matters.
SumoMe: You can use them for free to see if they are the right fit. Once you're comfortable, unlock some of their PRO features to really increase your business.
Adobe Creative Cloud: Depending on your business, an Adobe subscription can be a steal.
Evernote: The busier become, the more valuable Evernote is! I use this for my notes, interviews, scheduling, and brainstorming ideas.
Accounting
Chase Business Checking: Looking for a banking partner that will establish your business? Sign up for Chase Business Checking Account. You'll align your business with a well-known brand and it allows you to bank from practically anywhere in the U.S.
Wave: Free and paid accounting solutions for small businesses.
Xero: You can easily manage invoicing, bookkeeping, and more. It's a powerful tool to help you stay on top of your money.
Deluxe: Deluxe Business Services offers several services like professional logo design, marketing design, and business forms at a truly affordable rate.
Setting Up Your Site
Having a website is essential to your business. Your clients need to be able to quickly and easily find you.
Domain/Hosting
Bluehost: Need a host for your site, but on a tight budget? BlueHost has some wonderful deals for new sites and its very easy to set-up and use.
Siteground: I use Siteground for Couple Money and love their service. It's fast and can keep up with my traffic.
WordPress: I use this for all my sites and I highly recommend using it. Wordpress is the framework for your site. You can customize as much as you like. If you're not a web designer, there are some great themes and plugins you can use to build a site that combines form and style.
Themes/Designs
Even though you're running your business from home, that doesn't mean you can slack off on design.
I believe a professional looking, easy to navigate site is the key to assuring partners and clients that you're serious.
You can use themes to get your website looking great without being a coder.
Creative Market: If your budget is tight, then Creative Market is a wonderful solution on finding a professional looking template at a discount. If you sign up with them, you can also get alerts for their freebies which not only can include free blog templates, but graphics, mock-ups, and more.
Marketers Delight: The single MD theme suite delivers the tools you've always wanted straight into your WordPress dashboard.
Thesis: Highly customizable wordpress theme; you can either build up from their design or add on ‘skins' to have a fully functional and good looking site.
Social Media
Buffer: This app has been a huge help for me. I can schedule my tweets and posts to Facebook and more quickly and easily with Buffer.
Canva: Make your posts look great without spending a ton of time with Canva. Using their tools helps me to get more shares with my social media channels.
BoardBooster: Pinterest is a huge source of traffic for me and BoardBooster helps connect and reach readers. It's a huge time saver that allows me to get my pins done, so I can have more time to engage in the community.
Education
Staying at the top of your game is crucial. Fortunately with the web, you don't have to spend a ton of money.
Lynda: Absolutely best deal in terms of courses, depth, and quality – all for $25/month! I've used them for years, picking up skills and learning new software – all from home and at my convenience.
Creative Live: When I launched my podcast, I knew I wanted to make it as professional as I could. The problem? I had no experience with crafting a show. CreativeLive had some of the best in the industry teaching the essentials. So if you want to learn from the best, please check them out!
