Power Your Online Business

When I first started marketing online, I remember wanting to know the business of the business. What that meant to me was, what resources do people use to make it all work. Being a Canadian business that serves clients all over the world, sometimes it is not as simple to find the right resources as one might think.

Since 2010, I have tried a lot of different resources to figure out what works best. Some of these resources have stuck and some not so much. I am going to share those that have with you below.

Quick note – If you click on any of the links in this article, there may be an affiliate link associated with it. That means if you click on my link and decide to buy, the service provider may pay me a commission for referring you.

Why did I use affiliate links? I used affiliate links because these are all services I use and trust in my business. I could make a list of 100s of resources out there that I have not tried but instead, I focused on sharing the resources I use, what I use them for and why. I would encourage you to do the same when you get to a point in your business that others are asking you about the resources you use and recommend.

If you decide to buy any of these services via one of my links and have questions about it, feel free to reach out to me.

This is a list of what I use in my business, what I use it for, and why I use that particular resource:

Infusionsoft powers my business. I use it for all my email marketing, to set up sequences to deliver online programs and to nurture new potential clients who join my list. It delivers professional looking auto-responders when someone opts in, and their Customer Hub plugin allows me to have a membership area where my clients can access any and all training programs they have bought from me.

I use Infusionsoft because I find it is the most robust all in one resource I can find for my business. I use it because I can easily segment my list through tagging, I can rely on it as a shopping cart to talk to my merchant accounts and all the people I have connected with at Infusionsoft have always been great about supporting small business.

Freshbooks is my invoicing software. I use Freshbooks because I want to be able to invoice some of my coaching and consulting clients in Canadian funds plus the appropriate taxes or in US dollars. Freshbooks is an inexpensive tool that allows me to be able to invoice for services that I don’t find work as well with Infusionsoft.

Some of my clients still pay by cheque and prefer to have software they can log into to see their past purchasing and payment history. If I was only selling products online and didn’t need an invoicing system that allows me to create regular recurring invoices like I do with Freshbooks, I might just use Infusionsoft.

Optimize Press is the resource we use to build almost all of our sales pages and some of the landing pages we use for webinars, and or to give away freebies. The reason I like Optimize Press is because it gives us more flexibility to code and change things up the way we want opposed to some of the easier tools that are more plug and play.

LeadPages is one of those resources that is easy to use for landing pages but does not give the same flexibility as Optimize Press. It works great when we want to do something really quick and easy and I like that they have proven templates that have been tested and tried by other online marketers to choose from.

GoToWebinar is a tool I use with my consulting clients on a regular basis. It allows us to have multiple people join a meeting, to share our screen and record our meeting if we want. GoToWebinar is more professional to use in the Corporate Space and feels more private and secure than using Google Hangouts, which I love for webinars and even group coaching. Not everyone wants to use a hang out and be seen on camera.

GoToWebinar is a great resource that I have used for many years. They are reliable, affordable and unlike some other less expensive webinar resources out there that I have tried, GoToWebinar has never failed to work when I had a webinar scheduled.

Google Hangouts Live Events have become my go to video and video webinar resource tool. I love being able to use Hangouts to record a private strategy session with a client where we want to take advantage of video for writing on a flip chart or to see each other. It allows you to flip from screen sharing to video sharing easily and records both the video and the screen.

This is a free resource and one that I plan to use a lot more moving forward in conjunction with my next resource. I have even done a blog post that walks you through step-by-step how to use it for your business –> http://bit.ly/1DYlUJz

EasyWebinar is a great webinar replay option. The one downfall of Google Hangouts is it does not allow for more than 9 guests and if you are live streaming, your guests cannot easily chat with you.

EasyWebinar offers you the ability to automate webinar replays and to have chat function for everyone. It also allows you to set up different times that people can choose for a webinar. You can still broadcast live or you can set it up to auto play for you.

Dollar Photo Club and ShutterStock are both excellent resources for images. Photos are an important part of online marketing and I use both of these services to find photos for my business. I used to use iStock too until they changed their pricing structure. Now I prefer to be able to access affordable images via these two services.

And remember, regardless of where you get your images, only use images that you have purchased the rights to or that provide specific permission to do so through a site like Pixabay. Using images that are copyrighted without permission can be a very costly mistake.

Please note that as services change, new products become available and my business needs vary, this article will be updated with new information and links. Be sure and check back anytime you’re looking for just the right tool for powering your business.

And, if you want to keep up-to-date in real time with the latest tools and resources I’m using in my business, join me in the Profit Primer Facebook Group.