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Toolkit list of the best tools and services to create your online business. The tools and platforms in this list will aid you in your business and help you do things in a more organized and professional manner.
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Importance of a Toolkit I can relate to how confusing and frustrating it is when you are starting a new business online or want to scale your business fast. Eight years ago, I was at the same point as you are today. The sheer number of tools to choose from, what tools to buy, which service to subscribe, the pressure of deploying the product live on time, etc. used to drive me crazy. My friends often called me insane. But long story short, I realized that having a toolkit can save me a lot of money and time. This toolkit saves me time and gives me the very best from the bundle of options available. I can now focus on my projects with ease. No matter where you are in your business, there are amazing tools that can save you dozens of hours per week, automate key marketing activities, and save you thousands of dollars on pricey graphic designers, programmers and tech wizards. Please note that the best tools don't come for free. And this is where I have struggled to find, collect, and include the best combination of free and paid ones. Instead of looking at them as an expense, I consider them as long term investments. To your success… Ansh Gupta 1 1 EmpireCrafter.com
Table of Contents Useful Chrome Extensions .......................................................................................... 3 Image Editing ................................................................................................................ 4 Video Editing/ Screencasting ...................................................................................... 4 Emails Campaigns ........................................................................................................ 5 Funnel Builder .............................................................................................................. 6 Funnel/ Course Builder ............................................................................................... 7 Video Hosting ............................................................................................................... 7 SEO Tools ....................................................................................................................... 8 Deals Finder .................................................................................................................. 9 For Self Hosted Sites – Best Hosting Providers ...................................................... 10 For Self Hosted Sites – WordPress Themes ............................................................ 11 For Self Hosted Sites – WordPress Plugins ............................................................. 12 2 2 EmpireCrafter.com
Useful Chrome Extensions Extensions add functionality to your web-browser, modify the user interface, and even makes 3rd party web service available straight to your browser. AwesomeScreenshot With over 2 million active users, AwesomeScreenshot is a popular and functional screen recorder Chrome extension. This free extension lets you record both the screen and video so that you can narrate what you’re doing to eliminate confusion. You can instantly share your screenshots and recording, or you can save it locally. It even has an annotation feature along with other nifty editing options. Try Awesome Screenshot: empirecrafter.com/ec/awesome-screenshot/ MailTrack MailTrack lets you track an unlimited number of emails and know if your emails are being opened. It even tells you how many times your email was opened along with the time. It’s fast, lightweight, simple, and absolutely free. There are paid plans available that come with additional features like real-time notification, link tracking, and no MailTrack signature on your emails. Try MailTrack: empirecrafter.com/ec/mailtrack Facebook Pixel Helper This diagnostic tool that lets you know if your pixel is properly firing. It notifies you if a website has an installed pixel and indicated the events being fired through the extension’s drop-down menu. It is simple and doesn’t exactly what it is supposed to do. The dynamic icon has a combination of colors that notifies you if the site is loaded correctly or not, along with an explanation. Try Pixel Helper: empirecrafter.com/ec/facebook-pixel-helper 3 3 EmpireCrafter.com
Image Editing You can make any image look good, vibrant, and fun with these image editing software. Canva Canva has an excellent collection of graphic design tools suitable for any businesses and individuals. It comes with easy yet powerful features like drag and drop builder, more than a million images, graphics, fonts, templates, and an intuitive user interface suitable for creating any graphic project. Whether the designs are for a presentation, marketing campaigns, or anything you can think of, Canva can help you with all your graphic designing needs. Try Canva: empirecrafter.com/ec/canva Adobe Photoshop This tool needs no introduction. It is a market standard and one of the leading raster image editing software in the market. Adobe Photoshop is a part of Adobe Creative Cloud service and lets you edit images, design websites, apps, and so much more. It comes with a click and intuitive interface and enough tools to do anything image related. Try Adobe Photoshop: empirecrafter.com/ec/adobe-photoshop Video Editing/ Screencasting This is to record everything you do on your computer screen while you narrate. It is a great way to share ideas. Camtasia This all-in-one screencasting and video editing software is built for businesses and educators to share their ideas through educational videos, ads, and tutorials. The videos you create through Camtasia will look polished and engaging. The learning curve is small, and it is extremely intuitive. Videos templates, drag and drop editor, PowerPoint integration, tons of effects are some of the features you can expect from Camtasia. Try Camtasia: empirecrafter.com/ec/camtasia 4 4 EmpireCrafter.com
Filmora It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner, armature or professional video editor and content creator. Filmore’s simple interface and easy to use tools make it suitable for everyone. But do not get fooled by its simplicity. Filmora comes with sophisticated features such as high-res video editing, support for different audio and video formats, layering, special effects, green-screen effects, fast video rendering, online sharing, and many more. Try Filmora: empirecrafter.com/ec/filmora Emails Campaigns Email campaigns, leads, marketing automation, and everything in between is what these tools will do for you. ActiveCampaign ActiveCampaign bundles different aspects of business marketing and presents them all in a functional and intuitive platform. With this email marketing tool, you can create attractive and engaging emails with ease, know more about your existing contacts, utilize advanced automation, view lead scoring, and so much more. The competitive pricing makes it easier for small businesses to utilize such advanced features that would otherwise be unreachable. Try ActiveCampaign: empirecrafter.com/ec/activecampaign MailerLite This email marketing tool gets the job done effectively and is directed towards small and growing businesses. It comes with all the goodies needed to make it a powerful platform for users to get the most out of their email marketing campaign without breaking a sweat. It is easy to set up, comes with a drag and drop editor, and has a free plan with all the essential core features. even the paid plans are cheap compared to its competitors. Try MailerLite: empirecrafter.com/ec/mailerlite 5 5 EmpireCrafter.com
Drip Building an email campaign with Drip is interactive, and everything can be done visually. This cloud-based email marketing tool makes it easy for you to customize each element of your email campaigns and automate them. Automated workflows, targeted campaigns, performance tracking, lead scoring are only some of its highlighted features. The level of automation Drip provides worth highlighting. Try Drip: empirecrafter.com/ec/drip GetResponse GetResponse claims itself as the easiest marketing campaign tool, and I agree. Creating attractive and professional-looking emails with GetResponse is simple, and the editor that it comes with even lets you create effective landing pages. It helps you increase the impact your emails have on your contacts with the email intelligence feature’s help. The option to directly engage with the contacts through webinars is an interesting and essential little feature. Try GetResponse: empirecrafter.com/ec/getresponse Funnel Builder Simply put, funnels are what a customer goes through before purchasing anything. These funnels are layered into several steps – top, middle, and bottom. ClickFunnels This online sales funnel building tool is essential for any businesses that market, sale, and deliver their products online. ClickFunnels helps its user make money and makes the process easier. You can simply create an account, deploy the contents, and start making money. It’s that simple. Unlike traditional funneling, everything from hosting to landing pages to autoresponders is provided by this impressive tool. Try ClickFunnels: empirecrafter.com/ec/clickfunnels 6 6 EmpireCrafter.com
Funnel/ Course Builder Kajabi Kajabi is impressive when it comes to creating landing pages and sales funnels and converting viewers into paying customers. It comes will a good collection of tools designed to sell; the interface is intuitive, and it comes with templates for almost every niche. The built-in sales funnels let you create different types of marketing funnels to attract potential customers. And the best thing is everything is customizable. Try Kajabi: empirecrafter.com/ec/kajabi Invanto Invanto is a platform to sell courses, membership sites, and other digital products. Setting up and managing online courses is a piece of cake. Apart from that, it is an all-in-one solution for building our business efficiently. It comes with a simple yet powerful content editor, gives you useful insights, has tons of layout templates to choose from, and you can have unlimited projects. There are ready-to-use templates for different sites, such as membership sites or sites of selling online courses. Try Invanto: empirecrafter.com/ec/invanto Video Hosting Vimeo Vimeo is another popular online video streaming website that lets users upload, promote, customize, and optimize their videos. The customizations are unlike anything available on other video streaming sites. It has a free plan where 500MB is allocated weekly for uploads and with a total storage space of 5 GB. Vimeo supports up to 8K resolution and lets you password protect your videos. You’ll have to use Vimeo to see it shine. Try Vimeo: empirecrafter.com/ec/vimeo 7 7 EmpireCrafter.com
SEO Tools These tools help you identify keywords variations that you probably wouldn’t have thought about. They also let you monitor SEO health among a plethora of other things. KWFinder This plugin is arguably the best keyword research tool out there. KWFinder also makes it easier for you to find long-tail keywords, see the cost per click, change keyword language, and so much more from a beautiful and user- friendly UI. It also offers other additional SEO tools and even has a browser extension to make things easier for you. Try KWFinder: empirecrafter.com/ec/kwfinder SEMRush Simply put, SEMRush is a tool that helps you optimize your website to make it rank higher. This tool offers you a lot of information regarding your SEO health, which you can use to create content that attracts visitors, optimize elements on your site to make it rank higher, and so on. It lets you audit your website, give you SEO ideas, find competitions’ keywords, and more through its beautifully built interface. Try SemRush: empirecrafter.com/ec/semrush Ahrefs Ahrefs was initially built to check backlinks, but it has grown to do so much more over the past few years. It is now one of the popular and powerful SEO analysis tools. Keyword research, content research, backlink research, site auditing – you name it, Ahrefs does it. It is a professional-grade SEO tool, after all. It does have a bit of a learning curve, but experienced digital marketers will rejoice with this tool. Try ahrefs: empirecrafter.com/ec/ahrefs 8 8 EmpireCrafter.com
Deals Finder AppSumo AppSumo provides you with lifetime deals for digital goods and services. You can browse the website to look for cheap and sometimes free products and services to help yourself. Try AppSumo: empirecrafter.com/ec/appsumo Flippa Flippa is an online market that helps you buy and sell websites, apps, domains, and other online assets. Sellers can create listings of the online assets that need to be sold. These listing can be put up for 30 days or marked as classified and choosing a minimum auction and asking price. It is like eBay but for your digital assets. Try Flippa: empirecrafter.com/ec/flippa BuySellEmpire BuySellEmpire is one of the top website brokers out there. Their website is simple and professional, and their brokering process is divided into 7 simple steps. BuySellEmpire helps online business entrepreneurs flourish and provide them with an exit strategy. They are not here just for the profit. Try BuySellEmpire: empirecrafter.com/ec/buysellempire 9 9 EmpireCrafter.com
For Self Hosted Sites – Best Hosting Providers I cannot stress enough how crucial choosing the right hosting service is. We have a few names that are best on what they do. Templ.io You will have no issues with uptime as Templ runs on Google Cloud Platform. Apart from that, there are additional goodies like WooCommerce hosting, Nginx, WordPress optimization, automatic SSL certificate, and some more. Try Temple.io: empirecrafter.com/ec/templ-io Cloudways Whether you’re a fairly established small or medium-sized business or your business is just taking its infant steps, Cloudways is a reliable choice. It offers an affordable cloud hosting service that is scalable to meet your growing demands. And since you only have to pay for the resources you use, it’ll save you a lot of money. It’s fast, easily manageable, and user friendly. Try Cloudways: empirecrafter.com/ec/cloudways Siteground Siteground is preferred by many for its speed, security, location-specific hosting, automatic updates, and tons of other beneficial features. If that doesn’t impress you, maybe freebies like daily backups, free domain, and free migration might. Try Siteground: empirecrafter.com/ec/siteground Namecheap You already know what this hosting service represents, don’t you? I’ll say it out loud just in case. Namecheap lets you choose your domain name, helps you create webpages without programming knowledge, and manages your overall WordPress website. It provides a cheap, reliable, and flexible hosting service. Try Namecheap: empirecrafter.com/ec/namecheap 10 10 EmpireCrafter.com
For Self Hosted Sites – WordPress Themes Not only are WordPress themes cheaper, but it is also faster than building a website from the ground up. You can customize every element just the way you want, usually without having programming knowledge. Kadence Kadence is relatively new but has been taking the market by storm. It is fast and comes with tons of customizable options to let you manipulate every element. Support for WooCommerce is good news for those who want to build an eCommerce website. You will have little to no issues while making changes. Kadence is beginner-friendly, and everything can be done with simple drag and drop. Try Kadence: empirecrafter.com/ec/kadencewp Themify Themify is a popular name in the market, and it is popular for a reason. It comes with a drag-and-drop front end and backend builder with helpful features like copying and pasting UI elements. Since no shortcodes are used for building the page layouts, all the elements remain intact even when the plugin is disabled. And the pre-made ready-to-use demos and templates mean you have a lot less work to do. Try Themify: empirecrafter.com/ec/themify ThriveArchitect ThriveThemes is perfect for those looking to build conversion-friendly sales funnels on top of a good-looking website. It is primarily aimed at marketers, but the tools and features it comes with are suitable for all types of websites. The whole suite works seamlessly to give you attractive pages that are not intrusive to the user experience. Try ThriveArchitect: empirecrafter.com/ec/thrive-architect 11 11 EmpireCrafter.com
For Self Hosted Sites – WordPress Plugins Plugins bring additional and important functions to your WordPress website. You can even call them the building blocks. RankMath RankMath is a complete SEO plugin in the block, earning a name for itself at a rapid pace. It is free and helps you optimize all your web site’s contents to make it rank higher. Try RankMath: empirecrafter.com/ec/rankmath WP-Optimize WP-Optimize is essential to keep your site running smoothly. How? It cleans your database, compresses large images and caches, enhances SEO, decreases bounce rate, and lets you do more with few resources. It automates most of the general things like cleaning spam, empty trash, and some more—all these in just a push of the button. Try WP-Optimize: wordpress.org/plugins/wp-optimize Thirsty Affiliates With Thirsty Affiliates, you get complete authority over all your affiliate links and give you easier options to cloak and tracks them. The plugin itself is free, but you can get additional addons for a price. The core features include cloaking, managing, and tracking your affiliate links, but opting for the pro version gives you advanced features like geolocation links, auto 404 checker, Google Analytics Events, and more. Try ThirstyAffiliates: wordpress.org/plugins/thirstyaffiliates AAWP For anyone who uses Amazon Affiliate Program to earn some revenue, AAWP or Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin is pure bliss. It is perfect for those on budget and wants to increase CRT on your website; AAWP is the tool for you. It is flexible and lets you design awesome looking tables, boxes, and widgets to lure your visitors into clicking more links and earning you commissions. Try AAWP: empirecrafter.com/ec/aawp 12 12 EmpireCrafter.com
Copyright & Disclaimer You are free to share this ebook with credits left intact. Many of the links are affiliate links, which means I may get a commission if you purchase. However, none of the fees of these resources have been increased to compensate me. In fact, many of the creators of these tools have given me special discounts that I get to extend to you! Regardless, I have only included products or services that I personally use and believe will add value to my readers. 13 13 EmpireCrafter.com