Business & Blogging Resources

When you have your own business it can be overwhelming how many things you have to try and fit in. The good news is there are many helpful tools which can automate parts of your work which frees you up to get on with the important jobs!

Here is a list of the tools we use now or have used at different stages of our business. Some are free, we prefer to keep costs down! Those which have a fee, this is usually small and makes a big difference to our workload so we feel it’s worth having.

Tailwind Scheduler & Smartloop

Tailwind is a powerful Pinterest and Instagram scheduler, that lets you instantly create an optimal posting schedule based on audience engagement, virality, traffic and more. Scheduling pins is so easy and can be done in bulk, which saves an enormous amount of time compared to manual pinning and scheduling. There are browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Safari, so that you can easily schedule to your boards while browsing other sites and the analytics and insights are in-depth and incredibly useful for knowing what to pin and when. Smartloop is a tool which allows you to schedule evergreen content to keep looping and reposting at the perfect seasonal moment. So if you have lots of Christmas content on your site this could be scheduled to appear just as everyone is about to start shopping!

Social Oomph

Social Oomph is a social posting tool that will help you ensure your presence is maintained across all of your platforms, but without lots of effort or running the risk of spamming - particularly useful for Twitter. Posts can be set up in an evergreen queue, or can be scheduled for specific times and can be uploaded in bulk to save more time. We use this for Twitter and wouldn’t be without it. We scheduled all of our tweets to be published several times a day/week/month and they can also recur every day/week for the amount of days which you specify! This is a big game changing tool. We use the Advanced package which is $15 per month.

Planoly

Planoly is a really nifty app to help you create beautiful Instagram feeds by allowing you to upload your images to your grid first. You can then drag and drop them where you want, meaning you can see how your feed will look and can make sure you get the look you want. You can add your captions and hashtags (which you can store as lists for easy addition) and schedule a time to post. The free version of Planoly has a limit on the number of uploads per month, but the paid account lifts these limits, meaning you can schedule well in advance, set it to post automatically (Instagram business accounts only) and not have to worry about it. 

Later

Later is another Instagram scheduler. We prefer it to Planoly but really the free version offers the same so it’s just personal preference. Later have a great suite of blogs on Instagram and offer events throughout the year. They really know their Insta stuff! The only downside so far is not being able to schedule carousel posts. Apart from that they are a simple, easy to use platform.

We have tried their Linkinbio paid package which allows you to ad links to every Instagram post rather than being limited by the one link which Instagram normally allows.

Buffer

Buffer is a social media scheduler that can save you time when it comes to posting your content across your channels. Once you’ve connected your social media accounts, set up your queue with the content you want to share, set up the times you want it to go out and leave it to do its thing! Buffer also has a browser extension, meaning you can easily share content from other websites and social media platforms too.

The free version has a scheduling limit of 10 posts at a time. We use it for LinkedIn and every 10 days schedule our next set of posts.

Convertkit

Convertkit is GDPR-compliant email marketing software to help your grow your audience. If you use email to market your products and services, Convertkit makes it easy to ensure you send the right emails to the right audience by using tags and segments, and makes it easy to set up your email marketing funnels, as well as landing pages, forms and the delivery of lead magnets and downloads.

SEMrush

SEMrush is a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) suite that will help you with your content by offering SEO tools such as keyword tools and analytics. Advertising is made easier by using the tools such as PPC Keyword tool and the Ad Builder, and you can also check out potential competition with research tools such as traffic analysis and ranking. 

Payhip 

Payhip calls itself ‘the easiest way to sell digital downloads and memberships’. It’s a secure e-commerce platform using PayPal or Stripe to take payment from customers wishing to buy your digital products. Payhip handle everything for you, so you don’t have to worry about making sure you send out the download once a customer has purchased. 

We use it to allow customers/readers to download documents we’ve created ourselves either for free or with a small fee. Payhip send the document to the reader once they’ve signed in and either take the payment or give to them for free. We also use it for our paid membership group for our Bilingual Kids Group.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an email marketing platform that enables you to engage your customers in your marketing campaigns through emails, landing pages, postcards, digital ads, signup forms and social media. Using the multi-channel approach means a greater return on your marketing efforts. Mailchimp provides tools such as automated email campaigns, drag-and-drop templates for emails and landing pages.

The free version is available if your email list is up to 2000 subscribers.

SendinBlue

SendinBlue is another email marketing platform that is free when sending up to 300 emails a day. Features include automations, a responsive template gallery for your emails, custom sign-up forms and segmentation of your list.

This is perfect if you are sending out large mailings and want to be able to have a bigger list without paying a fee.

Etsy

Etsy is a global online marketplace populated by independent retailers and craft sellers in particular. It has a vibrant, community feel which empowers sellers to sell their products with confidence to an engaged audience of buyers. With low fees, powerful tools, and support and education, Etsy help creative entrepreneurs start, manage, and scale their businesses.

We use Etsy for our Shop front for our Mammaprada slogan clothing. Etsy integrate with most websites and have the lowest fees when you’re just starting out.

Inkthreadable

Inkthreadable are a UK based dropshipper. They provide blank clothing and some accessories which they will print your designs onto on demand. They then ship them for you. We use them for UK and Europe orders of our T-shirt designs.

Redbubble

Redbubble are a US based dropshipper although they do have small operations outside of the US. They offer the same as Inkthreadable but have a much wider catalogue of items. We use them for US orders as it’s quicker for a US customer to receive something made in the US.

Canva

Canva is a drag-and-drop design editor that makes creating your own designs super-simple. It features thousands of ready-made templates, free stock images and graphics, filters and hundreds of fonts to use in your designs. Packed full of features such as a logo maker, colour matcher, palette generator and tutorials, Canva is the easy way to create beautiful social media graphics, printed products and more. Recent updates to the program enable direct posting to social media or your website too.

We use the free version of this for ourselves and our clients. We literally create all of our graphics for social media and our language workbooks using this tool.

Unsplash

Unsplash is a fantastic resource if you need stock images that are either free from copyright or licensed for public use. It has over 850,000 free high-resolution photos from the world’s most generous community of photographers. Images found on Unsplash are usually a little more ‘arty’ than other free stock image sites. There is an active community to join and photographers are encouraged to submit their own work to share.

Snapseed

Snapseed is a great app for editing photos quickly on your phone. Even though it’s free, Snapseed really packs a punch with its features, enabling users to edit photos in one click using preset filters, or by using the suite of tools included to fine-tune pictures in the edit. 

Amazon

Who hasn’t heard of Amazon? Since starting in 1998, Amazon now has approximately 285 million active customer accounts worldwide and sells pretty much any product you could need, including digital downloads, and memberships to its music, video and ebook platforms.

We have an affiliate account with them for the UK and US as this is where our customers are based. We know our customers tend to love Amazon for its ease of use and ability to deliver language books and products quickly.

While it can be worth having an account with them they have dramatically reduced the affiliate commission during 2020 so it may be worth finding other providers of your main referral products.

Grammarly

Grammarly’s AI-powered products help people every day to make their messages, documents, and social media posts clear, mistake-free, and effective. Adding a simple browser extension means that Grammarly will automatically pick up errors in text and make suggested corrections. It can also be downloaded onto Microsoft Windows.

Wave

Wave is an award-winning financial management software company providing solutions that empower small business owners to simplify their finances while giving them more confidence to run their businesses.The company has more than 4 million registered customers around the world and its features include accounting, invoicing, payroll and receipts, as well as a handy mobile app to keep track of your business finances on the go. We use it for all our invoicing and find it a perfect free tool for a small business.

Paypal

PayPal is the service that lets you pay, send money, and accept payments without having to enter your financial details each time, making paying for goods and services online quick, easy and safe. 173 million people use PayPal to shop on millions of sites worldwide, in 202 countries and with 21 different currencies, and this makes paying in different currencies much easier too. Paypal can be integrated onto your website or ecommerce store meaning that you can receive payment for your products easily.

While it’s worth having a Paypal account if you are receiving funds in different currencies their fees can be prohibitive. For this we use…

Payoneer

Payoneer is a bit like having an overseas bank account. Their free service allows you to receive payments in another currency and then transfer it to your own bank account. The fees are much better than Paypal for currency exchange.

Ezoic

Ezoic is an ad network which places adverts on your website. To join the network you need a minimum of 10,000 page views per month. Earnings are calculated by number of impressions rather than clicks on ads.

We’ve joined this ad network during the Summer of 2020 and so far found it very useful. The setup process takes a bit of time but the support from Ezoic is very good.

Our earnings so far are way beyond anything we’ve earnt through Google AdSense.

We hope you found this lengthy list useful!

There should be something here for everyone and these tools will make your life easier

and your time more productive!