Being an entrepreneur or business owner can be a very difficult job, especially if you are launching a new business. But one of the benefits that the internet has brought us is that there are a huge amount of tools and resources that you can use to help you out. Here’s a list of many of the best ones.

Preparation

Before deciding to start a new venture it’s vital to learn as much as you can about running a business, here’s some great resources for doing that.

Websites

Here are some of the best general business websites which publish frequent articles and information to help businesses grow.

Entrepreneur.com – lots of articles and advice for starting a business.

AllBusiness.com – many resources that will be useful for small businesses in particular

ForEntrepreneurs.com – some excellent advice for business owners

EpicLaunch.com – lots of great tips for entrepreneurs

Smallbusiness.co.uk – guides and advice aimed at small businesses and start ups in the UK

Start Up Donut – Lots of useful information on all areas of concern for small businesses.

Smallbiztrends – Advice for small businesses and news

SMARTA – a website that acts as support and a source of advice for business owners.

The Self-employed – website offering advice in all areas of interest for self-employed workers

Businesszone – A wide range of articles useful for businesses. You have to sign up to read it but it’s free.

Start up Professionals – Advice for businesses from Martin Zwilling who is a startup mentor, blogger and author

Moz – Moz are experts in SEO and their blog is a great source of information for people wanting to learn about how to make their site more visible online

Business is Great – Business advice from the UK government for both small and large businesses

BusinessMatters –  A business magazine, which presently has 50,000 subscribers.

SMEInsider  – A business site that is primarily geared towards UK businesses

Small Business Administration – a great site for small business owners

No Passive Income – Informational blog for small businesses and for people looking to earn a passive income

Federation of Small Businesses – This UK organisation has been going for over 40 years now and provides a wide variety of information and services for its members

Quora – ask any questions about your industry.

StackExchange – answers to any questions you might have

Kaufman Founders School – an online resource for business people

Startup Stash – an excellent curated list for all your startup needs

SCORE – business advice from both retired and working business people

Books

7 Habits of Highly Successful People – Stephen Covey. A well-known and still useful book

The Networking Survival Guide by Diane Darling. The art of networking, one of the most vital sides of business.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield – Recommended

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg – The COO of Facebookm Sheryl Sandberg, talks about the particular problems faced by women in business and how to get over them.

The E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber – How to avoid failing in business.

Networking

Learning via the printed word or online is great but so is getting out there and meeting business people and seeing what they are doing

Meetup.com – there are many business-related meet up groups all over the world, just join up and turn up to one of the events

Entrepreneurs’ Organization – a very influential business community

Young Entrepreneur Council – Another very important community

Startup Grind – These events are focused on startups and take place in larger cities all over the world.

Young Presidents’ Organization – a networking group of young business leaders.

Charlie – find out all about the person you’ll be meeting at your next meeting

Setting Up

Business plans

You’ll often find that you have to write a business plan, especially if you’d like to borrow money for your business. Here are some useful resources to help with this.

Small Business Administration – Shows how to do a business plan

Bplans – examples of business plans

Palo Alto Software – DIY business plans for beginners

Launchpad – more wide ranging information about launching a business

Business Model Generation – create your business model

Name generators.

You’ll want to find a great name for your business, here’s some places that can help.

Impossibility – generates names for your business and also checks if that domain name is free

Naminum – Another business name generator

Wordoid – suggests good names for your business

Domainr – checks if the domain for your name is free

Knowem – checks if domain names and trademarks are free

Funding

You’ll often need cash for your startup, here are some of the best resources for finding this.

Kickstarter – particularly good for creative projects

Indiegogo – a very popular site internationally

DreamFunded – funding via crowdsourcing

GoFundMe – good links with social media on this site

RocketHub – Another good crowd funding site

Angellist – a hub to connect and raise funds

The Funded – a site where you can discuss fundraising and discuss investors

f6s – contains a social network for start ups and angel investors

Design

You’ll want a nice logo and branding for your business and good looking materials and website. Ourselves are obviously the best choice for you but here are other options if you must look elsewhere!

Withoomph – logo design

Canva – do your own design

99 Designs – more logo designs, you will get something cheap but not necessarily of high quality.

Email

Capturing email addresses is a vital way to get more business. You can send out offers and news to everyone on your mailing list.

MailChimp – collects email details via a sign-up box and sends out automated emails

Aweber – email collection and automated emailing

YesWare – check how many people have opened your email.

Hello Bar – collect email addresses with this free tool

Intercom – offers a way to chat to customers but also collect their email address.

Boomerang – Useful tool for scheduling emails and reminders, can be added to gmail

Ecommerce

Obviously making online sales is vital for any business these days, here are some of the top sites to help you with this.

WooCommerce – this is a plugin that can be added to WordPress best for smaller websites

Shopify – an online store where you can sell your product

Magento – commerce software, best for larger businesses

Prestashop – free software to set up shop

Symphony Commerce – advanced commerce solutions

Locate a co-founder

There are definite advantages in having a co-founder, including bringing in skills you might not have, but finding one can be difficult. Here are some places to try looking.

CoFoundersLab – find a co-founder in your industry or city

Founder2be – find a co-founder

YouNoodle – uses competitions to find a co-founder

FounderDating – brings the dating concept to finding a founder

Legal

You’ll unfortunately have various legalities to go through for your business, here’s some resources that can help you with this

Startup Documents – allows you to create and store legal documents to start your business

Orick’s Legal Documents for Startups – find contracts and other legal documents

Legal Zoom – legal documents and solutions

Nolo – find legal forms and lawyers

PandaDoc – find out how you can eSign any important documents.

Loyalty programs

Loyalty programs are not just for big business, all businesses can benefit from them. Here are some companies who can help you to do this

Technology Advice – find the best loyalty programs in your area

RewardStream – loyalty program

BigDoor – give rewards even if purchases not made

Market research

It’s vital to know your industry and the latest in what is going on in it. Here are some tools for helping you get the latest information.

Business Data and Statistics – US government stats

The U.S. Census Bureau – US demographic data.

BizStats – get free stats

SizeUp – compare yourself against your competition.

Conducting Market Research – find out how to carry out market research

Website

Wireframing and mockups

Before you or your designer create your website it’s a good idea to do some mock-ups to show how it could look, these sites will help with this.

Gliffy – create wireframes and technical drawings and charts

Wirefy – making wireframes for sites

Frame Box – create frames and share them

Pencil Project – an open-source prototyping tool – free

MockFlow – create wireframes and collaborate with others on it.

Website creation

If you’d like to have a go at doing your website yourself, there are various options open, you can either choose a company who will host it for you, or you can find the host yourself and use a content management system to create the site

Wix – make your own website and host it on wix.

Strikingly.com – a quick way to create a site

WordPress – if you want to create a site yourself and also host it yourself, this is the most popular software system to use, has a huge selection of plugins you can use

Joomla – another popular CMS system

Drupal – Very powerful open source content management system

Postach.io – if you’d like to convert an Evernote notebook into a CMS this is your site

Website registration and domain hosting

You need to register your site and also find a company to host it, here are some possible choices

Godaddy – the biggest registrar but not the cheapest

Namecheap.com – one of the cheapest places to register your site

Internetbs.net – another cheap registrar

Hostgator – the biggest hosting company in the world

Justhost – another very large hosting company

Ipage – a large hosting company, often have good deals

Web Analytics

Alexa – Check out the rankings for your website and your competitors

Google Analytics – google’s free analytical system allows business owners to measure traffic and what is working, or not, on your website

Ahrefs – see how content on your site is performing in the search rankings

PowersuiteSEO – a suite of tools for measuring your site’s performance and your competitors

Mixpanel – Measures searches and shares instead of page view

Simplereach – Uses real time data to judge the impact of content.

Funnel Analytics

Full Circle Insights – Tools for measuring overall marketing impact

Squeeze CMM – Check your ROI on content produced.

Insight Squared – Software for sales and marketing support data.

Marketing

Product launch

Product launchtime is a key moment and you want to get it right. Here’s some sites that can help

Unbounce – Some nice landing pages for your site.

LaunchSquad – get a press release and content created for your launch

LaunchRock – build your site

Effectively Launch Your New Product or Service – Plan your PR campaign

Prefinery – private beta software.

Beta Page – a website to upload your new business site to for people to check out

Content and online marketing

Content marketing is now the best way for businesses to market themselves online, here are some of the best resources to help you out with this.

Content Marketing Institute – the latest information and news about content marketing

Buzzsumo – see what content is working best on the web and getting shared the most

Searchmetrics – market analysis for improving your content marketing

Quill Engage – customer reports based on google analytics

Content Marketing Guide – lots of good information here

AtomicWriter – a tool for analyzing who your audience is and which of your content they are
liking most

Content Ideator – inspiration for finding new ideas to write about

Daily Page – Great tool for jump-starting content ideas

Distribution

It’s vital to get your message out to the world however you can, here are some ways to do that.

PRWeb – a press release service.

Market Wired – PR and social communications solutions

HARO – you can sign up for their newsletter, journalists ask for input on various subjects and if you can offer this you can get exposure and a valuable link to your site

ProfNet – linking up experts and journalists in a similar way to Haro

Facebook – you can promote your posts to reach more people

Monster Funders – if you are doing fundraising, Monster Funders will promote your promotion via Twitter

Blogging platforms

With your startup you need to make sure it’s built on a strong framework. Here are some of the strongest CMS systems that can help your startup scale online.

Blogger.com – google’s free blogging platform

WordPress.com – different from wordpress.org, this is where you create a blog and it will be
hosted for you on WordPresses own platform

Livejournal – Huge blogging platform

Medium – a site where you can blog

How to start a blog – find out all you need to know about starting a blog (or a website) on this great site.

Video

People love video and so does Google so it’s a great idea to either have video on your site or to post a video about your business on Youtube or Vimeo.

Youtube – the most popular site to post videos

Vimeo – another popular video hosting site

Wistia – hosting for your videos with extra marketing and analytics tools

Powtoon – make your own videos or animations.

Stupeflix – create your own videos

Wideo – animated video creation

Growth hacking

After a while you may want to start growing your business, here are some places you can go for advice on this.

GrowthHackers – learn from an online community how to expand your business

Colibri.io – gain visibility by tapping into social networks

Nimble – assemble a list of contacts and track your relationships with them

Pay With A Tweet – expand by allowing content to be accessed in return for sharing your information on Twitter

MixRank – get a targeted list of possible customers

SEO

Getting your site visible in the search rankings is vital, here are some of the best sites to learn about SEO.

Searchengineland –  SEO information and news

Search Engine Journal –  Another of the top SEO news sites

Quicksprout – Neil Patel is one of the experts on content marketing and SEO and there is a huge amount of information on his website.

Backlinko.com – a huge list of how to get backlinks in a white hat way that Google will like.

Yoast.com – SEO blog by the makers of one of the most famous optimization plugins for WordPress

Search Engine Watch – SEO news and articles

Matthew Woodward – UK blogger and internet marketing expert.

Charles Floate – excellent SEO and internet marketing tips

Robbie Richards – SEO advice and online marketing strategies

SEO Nick – SEO blog and advice

SEO analytics

Google Analytics – discover how your website and content are performing, free tools

Raven Tools– Get reports on SEO, Social Media and ad campaigns.

SEM Rush – Allows you to track keywords on your own site and on competitors’ sites.

Moz – Montior your website and social media performance.

Majestic – track how your website is performing and the links you are getting.

Social Media

Here are some of the sites you should think about using

Twitter – Share messages and photos of up to 140 characters to your followers

Facebook – Share articles, messages and promotions and attract online followers

Pinterest – Upload and share images

LinkedIn – Professional online networking site, connect with people in your industry and post content that will appeal to them

Google+ – Similar to Facebook, upload messages and make contacts.

Tumblr – Create and share multi-media content via this microblogging platform

Reddit – a huge community who share articles and information

Social media management

Social media can take a lot of time up so it’s important to do it as efficiently as possible, these tools can help.

Hootsuite – You can manage all your social networks from one dashboard

Buffer – simplify your social media activity

HubSpot – advanced inbound marketing software

Tweetdeck – the best tool for organising and tracking your Twitter activity

Adstage – allows you to manage all your social media activity in one place.

Social media monitoring

Socialbakers – Find metrics on which social platforms are working best for you

Curalate – Find out which visual content from Pinterest and Instagram are working best.

Visible – Social media analysis tool

CrowdBooster – Find out how your social media efforts are doing

Trendspottr – Spot which trends are rising on social media

TrackMaven – Gather information on what your competitors are doing on social media

Simply Measured – Measure social media impact

Zuum – See what your competitors are doing on social media

Cafyne – A set of tools to manage your social media activity

Analysing performance

Analytics systems

It’s vital for any business to judge how they are performing, here are some sites to check this out.

Google Analytics – Google’s free analytical system allows business owners to measure traffic and what is working, or not, on your website

Buffer – social media stats.

Piwik – similar tools to Google Analytics

Cyfe – an app where you can check out your business performance

KISSmetrics – See what is working and what’s not in your digital marketing campaign

Google Trends – look at what are the most popular trends on Google

Product Hunt – find popular new products

Erli Bird – testing and beta testing tools.

Google Alerts – Discover when your brand is mentioned online and get sent an alert

Webtrends – Tools for analysing digital campaigns.

Customer feedback and support

It’s vital to give your customers the support they need and to get good feedback from them.

Olark – provides a platform for customer chat

Tender – provides support software for your customers

Desk – easy to use support software

Zendesk – customer support and tools for self-service

Groove – offers an online help desk

Surveys and polls

Surveys help you to get information to base your business decisions on.

Google Consumer Surveys – High quality market research tool from Google.

Typeform – make your own surveys

Qualtrics – an advance survey platform

Tally – allows you to create your own polls.

A/B tests

A/B testing means checking which of two versions of a page on your site are most appealing to people coming to your site so you can constantly tweak them. Various companies can help with this.

Experimentation and Testing: A Primer – some great information for getting started with A/B testing

Google Analytics – this multi-faceted program allows A/B testing

Optimizely – A/B testing site

Crazy Egg – look at heatmaps of your site to see what readers are looking at

Vanity – A/B testing development framework

Keywords analysis

It’s vital to see how you and your competitors are performing online for the most important keywords that you are trying to rank for.

Google AdWords – let’s you see how much competition there is for various keywords

SEMRush – find out how you and your competitors are performing for keywords

Spyfu – look at what keywords your competitors are advertising for

iSpionage – analyse your competitors

WordStream – improve your adwords performance

Productivity

Clouds

Having information in the cloud helps you keep it safe and accessible on all your devices.

Google – offers the Google drive, where you can store data for free, as well as a lot of other tools. Create a Google account and access all these tools.

Dropbox – free cloud storage that you can also share

AWS Free Tier – Amazon’s cloud offering

Github – a hub for the open source community.

Joyent – offers cloud solutions

Box – keeps and shares content

Payment – billing and invoicing

To help with your billing and invoicing check out some of these online companies.

Yardbook – invoicing for professionals.

Stripe – Take online payments using an APIs and other tools

Aria – helps develop recurring revenue strategies

Due – track your invoicing and billing online

Quickbooks – keep a track of your books online.

Remote working

These days it’s possible to easily work with anyone in the world, here are some resources to help you do this.

Skype – allows you to call or message people who also have the software anywhere in the world

Asana – lets you assign tasks to members of your team

StartMeeting – facilitates audio conferences

Yammer – have your own social network in your company

Hipchat – allows group chat and messaging

Freelance

At some point you may need more work doing. Since hiring a full-time employee is expensive you might want to employ a freelance. Here are some places to find one.

Freelancer – find freelance help

Elance – one of the most famous sites to hire freelance help.

upWork – freelance worker site

How to Hire Your First Employee – if you decide you want to hire a full-time employee check this site out

Damongo – A good place to find freelance workers for small jobs

Project management

It’s vital to keep track of the projects you are working on, so here are some of the best tools to
allow you to do this.

Trello – allows you to keep lists of things to do and share these with a team if necessary

BaseCamp – this is probably the most popular software for project management

Campfire – adds real-time chat to collaboration

Wrike – team collaboration.

Doodle – keep track of your calendar and find the best dates to have meetings with colleagues

GoToMeeting – Web conferencing and online meeting tool

Time management

Making the most of your time is vital for all businesses, here are some resources to help.

Self-Control – this allows you to block out distracting websites such as Facebook for a certain amount of time.

RescueTime – tracks your daily use of time so you can change your working habits if necessary

FocusBooster – an online timer.

Last Pass – Keeps track of all your passwords and you can access them from anywhere with just one password, which will hopefully have to be the only one to remember

OneLogin – Has similar features to Last Pass

Travel

Many business owners will have to travel a lot, here’s some sites to help with this.

Trip-it – helps store all your travel plans in one place

Shoeboxed – scan all receipts that you get on a trip and store them

Time Trade – schedule all your appointments

Airbnb – if you want to find cheap lodgings this is the site to look at.

Tripadvisor – if you get any time off, this is the site to find out what you can do

To-do lists