On this page I am presenting you the small business resources I love and use on a daily basis. I know how confusing it can get for new entrepreneurs to choose from all the thousands of possibilities that are available, so I hope that these recommendations for small business resources are useful for you. Some of the links on this page are affiliate links, so if you click on them and sign up for a service, I receive a small commission.
Because you know me, you know I will not recommend you anything that doesn’t live up to my high expectations.
Hosting
One of the most frequent questions my clients have is: “What is the best hosting service out there?” As there is a vast majority of hosting providers available, I’m just not able to try out every single one. So here are my favorite recommendations for hosting. I have my own hosting account with each of these companies and use them for various different projects.
Email Marketing
It’s without any doubt very important that you have an email marketing service provider to build your list and connect with your prospects regularly. Albeit a lot of people have jumped on the Social Media Train recently and claim that you need no list (or even worse, that you don’t need a website), your list is the only thing you really own. If you are just starting out and are looking for a free solution, you can try out MailChimp. I have recently switched from my free MailChimp-Account to a paid account with ConvertKit because it offers some great automation tools and is subscriber-centric instead of list-centric. But one thing that hasn’t changed in my strategy is to use PopUp Ally Pro for all of my forms, as it gives me the ultimate control over every design aspect I need. I also use it on all the websites I build for my clients, no matter which Email marketing service they use.
Fonts
“Hello, my name is Natascha, and I am addicted to fonts.” Does that sound similar? Or maybe you are still looking for that perfect font for your branding kit? Fontsquirrel and Google Fonts are great places to start, because all of the fonts are available for free and licensed for commercial use. The downside of these fonts is that, because they are free, a lot of people are using them already for their businesses (I am looking at you, Lobster!). So if you are looking for something a bit more special you might want to try out fonbundles.net. The offer quiet a nice selection of free fonts but also have great and affordable deals on font bundles with extended licensing.
Images
It’s important for your brand to have strong visuals. I’m all for sharing from your personal world and infusing your personality in your brand, but you won’t achieve a professional look for your website when you use the blurry images from your iPhone as your main visuals. And although places like Pinterest have gorgeous visuals at your fingertips, you should never rip off these images to use on your website – besides from the ethical standpoint to use someone else’s work without their permission, this way is plain illegal and doesn’t comply to copyright laws (and yes, there have been people sued for this!). Depositphotos.com offers a huge selection of all sorts of stock photos at a really affordable price. If you are looking for styled desktop images, my secret tip is Haute Chocolate. And last but not least there is Pexels.com – a free resource which searches several free stock photo sites on the web.
