Online Business Tools I Use and Recommend!

Today I’d like to share with you the tools that have made me successful running websites and my very own online business. If you’re going to run a website/blog, you’ll need at least a few tools to get through the daily work you put in. I have quite a few tools that I use, some free and some paid. The tools I discuss on this page are crucial to my online business, and I use them almost every single day.

There’s a wide variety of tools I use on a day to day business, so below you’ll find an awesome tool for almost any type of online business task you’ll do.

Like mentioned, most of these either have a free version/trial, but I use the paid version of most. It’s completely okay to sneak by with the free version, or at least try out the free version before making a financial commitment on one of these tools!

Here’re some online business tools that are crucial to my business.

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Online Business Tools I Recommend

SiteRubix – Website Builder

SiteRubix is a website creator/hosting service that I highly recommend. If you’re looking to create a website you can easily do so in under 1 minute. SiteRubix is tied together with the next tool I’ll discuss (Wealthy Affiliate), but you do not have to pay anything to create a SiteRubix Site.

The awesome thing about SiteRubix is it’s completely free to use, hosting is free, it sets up WordPress for you, and it only takes a few seconds to get started!

To create your first website, just use the tool below and see how quickly you can create your first website or visit SiteRubix.com!

 

 

Wealthy Affiliate – Online Business Training

Wealthy Affiliate is an online training/community that teaches you how to build websites, create content, and make money through affiliate marketing and other various methods. If you’ve stumbled around my site, you’ve probably seen it as My #1 Recommendation.

Wealthy Affiliate is where I first learned to build and make money with websites. Even after reviewing 100s of other products, it’s still the training course and community I rank highest.

Even though I’ve been making money online for over two years, I still use this site every day to learn and connect with members who have more knowledge than me!

You can test drive the Wealthy Affiliate training and community for free, all you need to do is create a free account here.

They do offer a premium membership which is $19 for your first month, but I highly recommend starting with a free account to make sure it’s something you’re interested in.

Jaaxy – Keyword Research Tool

One of the most important parts of running a website and creating content is keyword research. I know that many people just stick with the old school Google Adwords method, but I felt from the very beginning I should invest in a keyword tool.

Jaaxy is my keyword research tool of choice, mainly because it offers a free trial and I got used to using the service before paying. It’s crazy how far trying a product for free can go in the long run.

Along with keyword research, Jaaxy has tools to find domain names, niche research, and braining storming keyword ideas. It’s an all in one keyword research tool, which is why I highly recommend it to website owners.

As mentioned, they do have a trial membership that gives you 30 free searches. After the free trial, the paid membership cost $19 a month with unlimited searches.

I highly recommend starting with a free trial and testing the waters before paying for a service; you can start your free trial by entering your first keyword search below!

 

 

Blue Host – Hosting

If you’re familiar with running a website, you know that one necessity is hosting. One of my favorite hosting companies, which is perfect for beginners, is Blue Host. They have some cost effective plans for any beginning blogger that can help you keep your start-up costs low.

The least expensive plan starts at $3.95 a month. This should be completely fine for any new blog and as your traffic increases you can easily upgrade accordingly. Another reason why I love Blue Host is they make it incredibly easy to install WordPress on your domain, with just one click.

If you have plans of starting a blog or website, I highly recommend checking out Blue Host for all of your hosting needs!

Aweber – Email

Email Marketing is a huge key to my online business plan. There’s no better way to build long-term customers than building an email list. My tool of choice is Aweber, they do have a free trial, but you’ll shortly need to upgrade to a paid membership.

There are some free email marketing programs out there, but if you want to build your list and have access to much-needed features, a paid email service will most likely be necessary. (Starting with a free service is fine, but transferring after you have many subscribers is a pain in the butt).

I prefer Aweber, because it’s incredibly easy to use, and the price is pretty good compared to some other email services.

As mentioned, they do have a free 30 day trial for all new members. After your trial, you can get Aweber for $19 a month (500 subscribers or less).

You can learn how to start your free trial by visiting Aweber.com

Thrive Themes – Premium Themes

Some of you might not be aware that Full-Time Job From Home isn’t the only website that I run, I have a few other blogs/websites that generate me online income as well. For that reason, I went out and found me a group of Premium WordPress themes that I enjoy. These themes are called Thrive Themes.

At this time purchasing a membership to Thrive Themes gets you access to 10 premium, high-quality WordPress themes. The next few tools I’ll mention also belong to Thrive, but if you’re only interested in gaining access to the themes, you can purchase an individual theme or the whole thrive themes package.

You can gain access to one theme for about $50, but you can get all Thrive Themes, plus their plugins, for $19 a month!

To learn more and check out the available Thrive Themes just visit ThriveThemes.com to get started!

Thrive Leads – List Building Tool

My favorite plugin that I use on all of my websites is called Thrive Leads, yes it’s another Thrive product. If you’ve been on my website for more than a few minutes, you’ve probably already seen an opt-in widget that I’ve created inside Thrive Leads. Since using Thrive Leads my opt-ins are converting much better, and I’m getting more email subscribers than ever.

One of my favorite things about Thrive Leads is it gives you the ability to split test opt-ins, which has helped me learn what does and doesn’t work. Another awesome perk is that you can set up opt-ins to only show in certain categories. For example on my site, all scam reviews are in one category, I have an opt-in that’s geared directly around that, and for Work At Home Job reviews I have opt-ins that appeal to those readers.

If you’re interested in Thrive Leads, you can purchase it for a one-time fee for as low as $67, but I highly recommend paying the $120 annual fee and getting access to all the Thrive Themes and Plugins. It’s much more value for your money. To learn more about Thrive Leads or to purchase visit ThriveThemes.com.

Thrive Content Builder – Landing Page

My favorite tool for building an awesome landing and sales pages is called Thrive Content Builder, another Thrive Plugin. If you’re like me, you probably don’t know much fancy coding and building awesome visuals on a landing page is not a strong suit. Luckily Thrive Content Builder gives you the ability to drag and drop certain visuals into place.

Thrive Content Builder gives you the tools to make any landing page or blog post look exactly like you imagined.

You can get Thrive Content Builder for a $67 one-time fee, but again, I highly recommend paying for all themes and all plugins for $120 a year. To learn more or to purchase, visit ThriveThemes.com!

BoardBooster – Pinterest Automation

For awhile my social media presence was non-existent, but about a year ago I began to put forth the effort to build a social following, the most successful social media site for me has been Pinterest. One tool that I use to automate my Pinterest Pinning is called Board Booster.

BoardBooster has a few features that I like, the main one I use is automatically posting pins from one board to another. For example, I use this to pin my pins from smaller boards on to large group boards. Doing this has helped me grow my Pinterest following, but more importantly, it drives tons of traffic to my website daily.

BoardBooster has an entirely free trial that gives you 100 pins for free after you can pay for a number of pins, I think the smallest amount is 500 pins for $5. I highly recommend trying the free version, if you’re interested in growing your Pinterest account purchase a paid membership. To learn more or to join visit BoardBooster.com.

PicMonkey – Photo Editing

If you’ve followed my site for awhile now, you’ve probably noticed some recent changes, mainly with images and the design of my site. Well, most of that positive change is because of the tool I use called PicMonkey.

PicMonkey is basically a photo editing software that also lets you create impressive text images. If you scroll to the top of this page, you’ll see a picture made with PicMonkey.

If you know me, I’m not artistic or creative in any way, but with the help of PicMonkey and some trial and error, I’m able to create awesome images that get shared on social media!

PicMonkey does have a 30-day free trial and costs $33 a year after. Honestly, it’s an incredibly useful tool that you can add to your arsenal for a very low price.

To start your free trial visit PicMonkey.com to get started!

Grammarly – Proofreading

I’ve been using the proofreading tool called Grammarly for about a year now and felt like I should add it to this list because for the price, it’s a must have for bloggers/writers.

They have a free version, that isn’t that useful and pretty restricted, but you can get the full premium version for $29.99 a month or just $11.99 a month if you pay for a full year in advance.

To try Grammarly for free visit Grammarly.com to get started!

Canva – Photo Editing/Infographics

Canva is another great photo editing software that you can use to create blog images and Infographics. I don’t really use them for Pinterest images, but it is a good option for that.

I prefer to use Canva for creating infographics. They have 100s of templates you can easily modify to create infographics that generate a ton of shares!

You can see some of their templates at Canva.com!

Tailwind – Pinterest Automation

I still use BoardBooster, but I recently started with Tailwind to automate my Pinterest profile and pins. Tailwind has a ton of great features you can utilize to schedule pins and optimize your pinning schedule.

Since joining Tailwind, my repins have gone up 70% in the first week!

You can try Tailwind for free or upgrade to a paid version. After seeing the results, I upgraded to the paid membership.

To learn more visit Tailwind.com!

MiloTree – Grow Your Social Following

MiloTree is a company that allows you to create a pop up on your website that asks visitors to follow you on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, or Instagram.

Since installing the pop up on my site, I went from 1-2 Facebook likes a day to 5-6 a day. I’ve seen a huge increase in Pinterest followers, adding 8-10 new followers a day by using MiloTree!

You can get started for free or upgrade to a paid version starting at $9.99 a month.

To learn more visit MiloTree.com

Long Tail Pro – Keyword Research

If you’re a website owner, you know the key to making money is driving traffic to your blog. One of the best methods of getting traffic is through free organic search traffic.

As of today, I drive over 3,000 visitors a day to my blog for free from search engines. How did I do this? My writing articles targeting keywords. One tool that I use to find awesome keywords to target is Long Tail Pro.

I’ve been using Long Tail Pro for awhile now, and it’s probably my favorite keyword research tool out there.

You can start a free 7-day trial to make sure it’s right for you or get started for just $25 a month!

To learn more visit LongTailPro.com!

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What Tools Do You Use?

This pretty much wraps up the list of tools I use to run my online business. These are not the only options when it comes to tools for running your online business. For example, Aweber is not the only email marketing service out there; there are many others that work just fine. This list is just the tools I’ve started with and currently use to grow my business.

If you have another program that you recommend, leave me a comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the tools that I use and what you use to run your online business!

If you don’t have a website to use these tools on, you can learn how to get one for free at Wealthy Affiliate or learn more about the making money with a website process at Start Your Own Online Business. 

Thanks again for checking out these tools I use to run my online business, leave comments with your recommendations! 🙂