11 free tools to make your first business venture a success

There is nothing better than something free—well, maybe if it’s free and makes your life so much easier. If you are newer to the website game, these free tools and resources will be game changers. Starting from the most basic step of choosing your domain to track your website traffic, these tools will help you with almost every aspect of your site.

Domain Generator

First things first. It can be tricky to find the perfect domain. The options are endless. You may have chosen the perfect domain, but it’s gone. It was such a great idea that someone snagged it first. If you are stuck, don’t worry. There is a free generator that will help you find the perfect domain for you.

WordPress

WordPress is a free website and blogging platform. It offers over 2600 free themes and over a whopping 30,000 plugins. Besides the fact that it is free, it is user-friendly. WordPress has a great community which will help you through obstacles you may run into.

Google Docs

This lets you create AND share your documents online. Creating your doc is easy because it includes spell check and grammar errors. It also has an auto-save function, which updates every couple of seconds. How many times have you been writing and then your computer dies? Ugh! We’ve all been there.  

Your doc is always at the tip of your fingers. Imagine you’re riding the subway when the most amazing blog idea hits you. Sign in with your mobile device and get writing. You can take this with you between devices. With this, you won’t have to worry about not having access to it just because your laptop is at home.

Bonus- You can share this with others and they, too, can work on your doc.

Dropbox

This is similar to Google docs, but you can store all of your files including videos and images. Dropbox will share all of your files to all of your devices. The best feature is that it allows you to work offline too.

If you’ve ever tried to send a large image or video just to get the “the file is too large” message, you know how frustrating that can be. Dropbox fixes that. You can send large videos and images instantly.

Pixabay

It can be tricky finding images for your website. It would take a really long time to capture every photo that you want to add to your website. As you know, stealing is never a good idea. Luckily, Pixabay gives you free images AND videos for you to download. There are images and videos from a flying wasp to an oil rig. There are thousands of choices. There are other images and videos available for purchase too.

Dafont

This is the go-to place to find fonts. There are thousands of choices—for free! There are many categories ranging from fancy, script, gothic, Christmas to Halloween. You can download these free fonts for personal use. You can also donate to the author, but that is optional.

Canva

Canva is going to be your best friend. You can create a logo from a template. Just change out the text and colors and you’re done. If you want a more customized logo, there are hundreds of options for images, colors, fonts, and backgrounds. Canva isn’t just for logos. You can create Facebook posts, social media posts, blog titles, graphics, blog banners, and so much more. There are pre-made templates or you can start with a clean slate. There are a ton of images to choose from and they do offer other images for an upcharge of $1.00 each.

MailChimp

MailChimp is a marketing automation tool. It is free for business with up to 2,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 emails per month. This tool will allow you to build email campaigns and schedule them to be sent to specific people at specific times. It will greatly help you stay focused on other tasks because your emails are planned and being sent at the right time.

Google Analytics

You’ve worked your butt off, but how do you know if what you’re doing is working? Google Analytics tracks and reports the traffic your website gets. You will be able to see how well your site is doing or where you need to make a change. This will give you real-time data. There are tons of features built in.

These tools will not only save you money but also time. Starting a blog or website is very time intensive and can be overwhelming. Hopefully, these tools will help you stayed focused and allow your site to be everything you hoped it would be.