17essential tools and resources for your business

thenerdburgers.com

Convertkit is a sophisticated yet simple to use email marketing service, that allows you to better segment your audience and be able to send them more relevant content, I wholeheartedly recommend Convertkit. Sometimes it can be a bit scary to make the jump to a service that you pay for, but if you’re serious about your business, you should be serious about building your email list and you need a service that will grow with your business, not just a band aid solution!

Convertkit have recently introduced a free 14 day trial so it’s good to take advantage of it, to get a feel for the interface and to see if it’s a good fit for you and your business. Otherwise paid plans start from $29/month for up to 1000 subscribers, which if you calculate it, is less than $1 a day. Affordable right?

I’m a huge fan of Wordpress as a content management system and best of all, it’s FREE from wordpress.org. With this powerful blogging interface, you can customise your website exactly to your liking, SEO friendly, mobile responsive, secure and you can manage whilst on the go.

Installing Wordpress requires you to have your own domain and I particularly like Bluehost.com for their quick and helpful customer service, affordable plans and prices.

A lot of people incorrectly label Pinterest as a social media platform, but if we’re to define a social media platform as one, where one interacts with others, do you remember the last time you interacted with anyone on Pinterest? Exactly. Rather Pinterest can be thought of as a visual search engine and once you’ve got the right systems in place, it’s an awesome way that keeps sending you relevant traffic and helps you build your email list on auto-pilot. Sounds pretty great huh?

I spend barely an hour on Pinterest each week now and through using this service, it helps to grow my email list, even whilst I’m asleep. Boardbooster offers a free trial, otherwise you can start off pinning up to 500 pins a month for just $5. Their customer service is fast and efficient and better yet, they’re a bit lenient on their pinning quotas, so they don’t automatically bump you up to their next tier and charge you, if you’re just a tad over for the month!

For those that travel a fair bit and shift between using a laptop and desktop or need to share some documents with clients, Google drive is fabulous. Having your work saved onto cloud storage eliminates the need for USB sticks or external hard drives and there’s no more confusion as to what version you’re working on if you’re emailing yourself the files! Cloud storage means you can access it anywhere from a device of your choosing, just as long as you have the relevant cloud app downloaded.

Google drive provide a generous 15GB for free, allowing you to backup any email attachments, photos or other documents. An awesome plus, is that you can use Google docs, sheets and slides via the cloud, but download the document you’ve been working on as documents that are compatible with the Microsoft suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint).

Batch producing content and scheduling my Instagram content saves me soooo much time each month. This means that I spend a few hours creating a batch of content each month, upload and schedule all into Planoly and that’s it! I can spend my time actually engaging and interacting with my audience instead of worrying when the notification hits my phone to manually post it.

Not only does scheduling my Instagram content allow me to be more strategic in what I share, I can choose to cover specific themes or topics if I so wish and I can plan my feed, so it looks beautifully cohesive and I’m not stressed and struggling every single day just to post something up for the sake of posting. Planoly offer free plans with up to 30 uploads a month and several paid plans according to your needs.

I’ve got 2 shops on Etsy and have always been a massive fan. An easy and intuitive to use shop interface, Etsy is an established American online marketplace for makers, designers and creatives to sell their products.

Etsy has an audience of 29 million users, who are looking to buy. So it’s wonderful to set up shop on a platform that already has a built in audience who come to the platform with a buying mentality. Setting up your shop is easy as there’s a guided step by step process prompting you through each step and all it takes is $0.20USD to get started. Etsy succeeds when their sellers succeed (they take a 3.5% fee from each transaction), and are continually testing and implementing improvements, it’s in Etsy’s interest to help you succeed!

convertkit

bluehost & wordpress

boardbooster

google drive

planoly

etsy

Have you often struggled with SEO and spent hours in the Etsy forums and Facebook groups, trying to decipher just how to get seen in Etsy search? Fear no more! Marmalead is a wonderful service that gives you exclusive access to the exact keywords used by actual Etsy shoppers! You can give up on the guessing game, when you know exactly what terms shoppers are using, so you can use them too for your Etsy tags and SEO your listings like a champion so your listings to actually get seen and sold!

Marmalead have recently done a major overhaul of their user interface and givesyou even more relevant information now. If you’re serious about your Etsy shop and dedicated to growing it to a level where it can support you and your family, Marmalead is an invaluable tool.

As much as I’m all for the tech options such as Trello, Asana or similar, sometimes it’s just nice to put pen to paper and strike off stuff from your to-do list. The Productivity Planner is intui-tively designed and laid out, helping you to stay on track and productive because you know exactly what you’re supposed to be focusing on for the day. It’s got inspirational quotes embed-ded within, so if you’re feeling a bit flat, even just a casual flick through will give you the boost you need.

Similarly, the same company also produces a magical jour-nal called the 5 minute journal. It’s designed to be your secret weapon to help you focus on being mindful, present and grateful for all the blessings in your life. It helps you start and end the day with gratitude and the thousands of people who use it have seen increased levels of happiness, better relationships and more optimism.

It is not happy people who are thankful, it is thankful people who are happy. – Anon.

marmalead

productivity planner

5 minute journal

Whenever I jot down notes for conferences, webinars, working through content in e-courses etc, I love using MUJI notebooks. They’re made from recycled paper, manufactured in Japan, inexpensive, come in soft and hard covers or spiral bound. I’m particularly fond of the 184 page unruled MUJI Notebook (slight-ly smaller than A5) and unruled 84 page B5 black cover double spiral bound size. They’re the perfect size to put into your bag without hogging up too much room.

Get rich lucky bitch: A Guide for Exceptional Women to Create Outrageous Success: Denise Duffield Thomas teaches you practical tips and helps you transform your mindset to manifest anything your imagination can dream of! She manifested an all expenses round the world 6 month trip!

Unf*ck your finances: A practical guide by Melissa Browne, showing you step by step practical action steps to sort out your finances, basic investing, get yourself out of debt hell and more.

#GIRLBOSS: The incredible story of Sophia Amoruso and how she started building her empire on eBay in the early days and everything in between.

Goodbye, Things: On Minimalist Living: Follows the story of Fumio Sasaki and how he transformed from being a serial hoarder to a complete minimalist and 55 practical tips and tricks to help you say goodbye to your unnecessary possessions and lead a happier life.

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative: Nothing is truly original. A practical illustrated guide on how to borrow and steal like an artist, so embrace influence, collect ideas and remix to trail blaze your own way in the artistic world.

It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be: Top advertising guru, Paul Arden offers up his wisdom for creative problem solving, playing your cards right, and advice on how to win at life and business. Jam packed in an easy to read, bite sized portion, it offers quotes, motivation, wit and wisdom!

muji stationery

favourite books

For transparency, some of the links included are affiliate links. They're services and tools I wholeheartedly love and use as part of my businesses every single day. If you decide to purchase any of the ones I'm sharing with you through my links, it will be at no additional cost to you and any small commission I may earn will go towards to help with the costs of running The Nerd Burgers Handmade Community and maybe some ice cream.

Thank you!Monica

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