- Hi everyone.
I'm attorney Aiden Durham with 180 Law Co.
in Denver, Colorado.
And welcome back to All Up In Yo' Business.
(cheerful music)
We are capping off a week
of talking about online businesses.
I've been posting a video every day this week
going into detail about how you can start an online business
from your house when you can't leave your house,
in light of COVID-19, the coronavirus pandemic,
and the fact that a lot of people
are losing their jobs, or their income because of it.
And so in this episode, we're going to kind of
wrap it all up and talk about some essential tools
that you can use to start and run your online business.
But before we get into it, please be sure to like,
subscribe, and share, and check the description
for some links to additional information and resources.
All right, so I'm gonna talk about some of the tools
that you can use to help you start
and run your online business.
Many of these are tools that I have used myself,
I have personal experience with them,
I know them and like them.
Some I'm just kinda familiar with.
But a lot of these are gonna be very beneficial
in your productivity,
and management of your time, and your work
when you're starting an online business.
Let's talk first about a couple of tools
to get your business started,
to get it up and running off the ground.
First, my favorite tool for forming a business
whether you need to form an LLC, a corporation,
a nonprofit, in any state, is the tool available
on my website.
You can form an entity in any state,
instantly online, very affordable.
So if you're interested in that,
I have linked to it down in the description.
And then of course,
for opening up a new business bank account
you guys have heard me talk about 'em before,
Novo is my favorite option,
it's a completely 100% online bank,
and completely 100% free.
So if you've started a new business
and you need to open up a new business bank account,
I suggest checking out Novo.
Again, there's a link in the description
if you wanna learn more about them.
So you've got the business started, the LLC is formed,
you've got the bank account set up.
Now we need to get it out there.
Get your business, get the word out there.
The first place is with a good website.
WordPress is my favorite platform for creating websites.
My very first website, when I first started
my law office was on WordPress, and I'm still using it.
I like it very much.
And there's just endless possibilities
with what you can do within WordPress.
However, I've heard a lot of good things about Squarespace
which is another website design tool for you to create,
and house your website.
Or if you're gonna be selling a lot of products,
either tangible or digital products,
then I've heard Shopify is a great option for that too.
I haven't personally tried Shopify,
but I've heard good things about it, and heard good reviews.
If you are going about this having to create
your website on your own,
if you don't have a whole lot of background
in web development, then a good resource
for learning how to do that is where you are now.
Of course, YouTube.
When I was trying to learn
how to create a website for myself,
YouTube was where I lived for a long time.
You can find videos on any kind of web platform,
how to design, and how to create,
and how to tailor what you need.
When it comes to the things
that you just can't do for yourself,
sometimes we need to hire people for that.
And my favorite platforms for finding temporary work,
or independent contractors to help with things
are Fiverr, that's an excellent resource, and Upwork.
So if you need a design, if you need a logo design,
or any kind of content designed
Fiverr is an excellent resource for that, Upwork as well.
And Upwork is great for other types of work
that you might need, like more professional work.
I know when I was first getting started
I was advertising a lot on Upwork,
and doing a lot of low cost legal services
to help the businesses, and the people on Upwork.
So if you're in need of other services
and you can't afford to hire someone full time,
or hire an actual employee, then Upwork is a good resource
for finding people to help with your business too.
Email marketing is a big part of running
a successful online business.
You wanna be collecting email addresses
from the very beginning, as early as you can.
And 'cause that's your audience,
that's the people that you wanna speak to.
So when it comes to managing your email lists
and sending out marketing newsletters, and email blasts,
there are a lot of different options out there.
Mailchimp is a very popular one.
I used Mailchimp for a long time.
I liked it a lot but the interface
wasn't quite as intuitive as I would have liked it to be.
I found it a little difficult to navigate
and find what I was looking for in Mailchimp.
But the features that they offer,
and the way their program works is really great.
I did recently switch to MailerLite,
which is another similar email marketing platform.
It works pretty similarly to Mailchimp.
I just, I like the dashboard and the interface a lot better.
It's really affordable, and the templates
for email newsletters are really great to use
and they have a lot of options.
I've also heard really good things about ConvertKit.
So I tried ConvertKit for a little while
and it didn't really click for me.
I think it's best if you like to send out newsletters
that are primarily text, not a lot of elements,
images, buttons, clickable things,
unless you're good with HTML.
Which I mean I kind of am,
but ain't nobody got time for that.
So if you don't wanna do any HTML,
and if you just want kind of a simple plain text email
then I've heard ConvertKit is great
for online service based businesses,
and all kinds of online businesses.
So it's worth checking them out too.
Along with emails, is social media.
This is where you're gonna get all of your exposure,
this is where you're gonna interact with your audience.
You're gonna find your audience on social media.
The more active you can be, the better.
The more social you can be on social media, the better.
And so how do you manage social media?
It can be incredibly time consuming and stressful
trying to make sure you're posting regularly,
and posting the right kind of content.
Hootsuite is a really popular
and well known social media management tool.
It allows you to schedule posts for later,
and it will automatically post to Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn,
a number of other platforms automatically.
I used Hootsuite for a pretty long time,
and I liked it a lot.
I recently though, switched to Later,
which is a similar social media marketing tool.
It allows you to schedule posts,
and the features that Later has
that I liked a lot was with like Instagram,
you could schedule a first comment.
So if you wanted to load up your Instagram posts
with hashtags, you can schedule it as a first comment
to be posted along with your posts.
And it also includes a link in bio feature
where you can automatically add a new link
to your link in bio page.
Later isn't perfect,
there are a few features that it's missing
like you can't create posts without images.
You can't just create a text post.
But if you need something like that,
then that's where Hootsuite is a good option.
I've also heard really good things about Buffer.
I have never tried it before,
but a lot of people have said good things about it
and that it's a really useful tool.
So worth checking that one out too.
Creating an online business, especially right now
during coronavirus times means no face to face.
We can't see people, we can't come in contact with anybody.
So that's gonna mean video conferencing or video chats.
I'm sure you've all heard of Zoom by now.
It has been around for years and years,
I've been using Zoom since my business started pretty much,
but it's getting a lot of news and recognition now
because so many people are using it.
But Zoom really is a great tool for video conferencing.
If you need to have some kind of face to face with a person
but you can't be personally face to face,
then Zoom for video conferencing,
or webinars is a really good tool.
Speaking of webinars, Zoom has a webinar function
but if you're gonna be doing live webinars
or online webinars, then some other options are WebinarJam.
That's a pretty popular one for using webinars as well.
Or kind of related, if you're gonna be doing
like an online course, or an online workshop, masterclass,
something like that,
then platforms such as Kajabi, or Teachable, or Thinkific,
those are great for hosting online courses.
So if you need to provide a video
and maybe some documents, some worksheets, some guides,
then those online course platforms are really useful too.
Some of them can be a little pricey.
If you're doing something like a membership,
or trying to restrict access, or doing some subscriptions,
then if you have a WordPress website,
there are a lot of plugins that you can use
to create a membership site
within your existing WordPress site.
One that I'm familiar with and have used is MemberPress.
It's pretty easy to get set up and get started.
For accepting online payments,
Stripe is a really good option
for accepting credit card payments online.
I've heard about Square too,
I think that's more primarily
for collecting payments in person.
I've never used it, but Square might be an option.
And then of course, PayPal, old reliable PayPal too,
but Stripe is really one of my favorites.
Or if you have an online store like with Shopify,
many of those eCommerce platforms will integrate
with credit card processors like Stripe, or PayPal.
Canva is one of my favorite tools
for creating literally everything.
Social media posts, guides, free opt-ins,
really anything that you need to create
that you want to look pretty,
Canva is a great option for you.
It's free, you get a lot of really good features
with a free Canva account,
but then there's paid accounts that give you even more.
But really you can do a heck of a lot
with a free Canva account.
Forms are something that are gonna be important
to your online business.
If you need to collect information,
have people fill out questionnaires,
or fill out some kinda forms,
Typeform is a really popular option.
And as far as I know, it's free,
I haven't used it, but I have a lot of colleagues
and friends who have used Typeform.
And then Google Forms is available too.
Again, that's free.
And with both of these,
you can just stick or embed the form on your website
and then people can complete 'em and submit 'em right there
without having to navigate
to any other kinda page or anything.
Bookkeeping, when we're first starting our online business
let's not forget about accounting and bookkeeping.
If you can't afford a bookkeeper or a CPA
to help you with this,
if you're trying to do it on your own,
then it's important that you have a good bookkeeping
or accounting tool to help you with it.
QuickBooks online is a classic,
I've used QuickBooks for a long time,
and it's really easy to use.
Even if you have no bookkeeping
or accounting experience,
there's a lot of informational resources
that QuickBooks offers,
and it's dashboard is pretty intuitive
and easy to figure out.
So QuickBooks is one option.
FreshBooks is another option that I'm familiar with.
I haven't used it myself,
but I have researched it and looked into it a bit.
It functions kind of similarly to QuickBooks,
but again, this is a totally online
bookkeeping and accounting platform.
Wave Accounting is also a good option to look into.
I believe Wave is completely free too,
at least last time I looked into them they were.
Most of their features were free.
So Wave, FreshBooks, and QuickBooks are probably
in the top three, as far as I'm concerned at least,
for online bookkeeping and accounting software.
As far as task management or project management goes,
again, lots of options out there.
I've tried most of them.
My favorite currently is ClickUp.
ClickUp when I first started using it
I used it primarily for task management.
When I needed to get things done
I could delegate it to my assistant Mariah,
and you can comment,
have running conversations on certain tasks.
But since I started using it, it has really developed
and grown more into like a project management system,
and kind of an internal process housing system too.
So now not only do we use it for task management,
but we keep track of different projects,
or developments that we're working on.
And then we also house a lot of our internal manuals,
and procedural documents within ClickUp too.
It's got a bunch of other really cool features
like a Chrome plugin where there's this little image
in the bottom of your browser screen,
and you can hit it and instantly create a new task.
Or you can do a screenshot of what you're looking at
on your computer and add that screenshot to a task.
There's a notepad function.
So ClickUp is by far my favorite right now.
I've heard really great things about Trello,
and the way that Trello is set up primarily
for project management.
And then Asana is another pretty popular
task management program as well.
I used that one for a little while
a few years ago, and it worked fine,
it was easy to use, and did what I needed it to do.
But it just, it was pretty simple at the time.
It may have changed and become more robust since then.
And then the last two things that I'm gonna talk about
are my personal favorite tools.
One is Grammarly.
So this is a program that you can download on your computer,
but it's also a Chrome plugin for your browser,
and it can be used within Microsoft Word as well.
But this is a grammar and spelling check
that works on most online, most websites,
and most online apps and stuff.
So if you're working in Google Docs,
then Grammarly usually works there.
And it goes, it's much more robust
than like the Word spellcheck is,
it looks for obvious spelling errors,
but then it looks for grammar inconsistency
and other potential errors in your writing.
Grammarly is one of my favorite tools,
I use it multiple times a day, every day.
And finally, again, since we can't leave the house,
since we can't see each other face to face,
or after coronavirus has gone
if we're just running an online business
and we don't wanna see anyone face to face,
we need signatures.
If you're running an online business
you still need people to sign some documents.
You'll still need to get some signatures.
So you need a good online electronic signature program.
DocuSign is probably the most popular one.
And I've been using DocuSign for a long time.
Really easy to set up your forms, or your agreements,
and send those out for electronic signatures.
Adobe Acrobat has, I believe it's called Adobe Sign,
but if you have the the Acrobat Pro account,
or if you have Adobe Acrobat,
then you can add that Adobe Sign onto it too.
And same way you create the forms within Acrobat,
and then you can send them out within there too,
and track who's viewed them,
and signatures, and all of that.
All right, so those are just a handful
of some of my favorite tools for starting
and running an online business.
This is certainly not an exhaustive list,
and definitely not a list of all of the options out there.
There are really endless options.
And every day new programs and new apps are being developed.
So it's worth it to do your homework,
look into the different programs, compare.
Almost all of them do some kind of a free trial,
or they have a free version of their program available.
So take advantage of those, and test every one out
until you find the one that works better for you.
And then remember that your business is gonna change,
these programs are gonna change,
and your needs are gonna change.
So you don't have to be married to one program forever.
You can always switch to something else
if it doesn't work out for you.
That's all for this episode folks.
Please drop a comment below
and let me know what some of your favorite tools,
or programs are for running your online business.
I know personally, I wanna know,
I am always interested in finding out what other software,
or what other tech tools are out there
to help me be more efficient, and more effective at work.
Thank you all so much for watching.
I'm Aiden Durham, and I'll see you next time.
(spacey music)