B
eing in business online in
this day and age is abso-
lutely incredible. Spend
enough time on blogs and train-
ings and you can become an
expert in pretty much anything
you want -- and then turn that
expertise into a business.
What’s more, there’s a whole
industry trying to create software
and tools to help you automate,
analyze, optimize and sell. And
they all want you to test drive
their offering for free. This opens
up a TON of opportunity for the
small business owner or solo-
preneur to use top-tier tech and
programs at the free level.
In no particular order, I’ve com-
piled my go-to list of fantastic
free shit you can use to propel
your business forward, help you
make strategic decisions, create
content, and make things look
pretty. Enjoy!
PushCrew
https://pushcrew.com
PushCrew is a really cool, su-
per-targeted tool to help you
bring traffic to your site.
Once you embed the code on
your site (or have someone do it
for you!), your visitors will have
the option to opt-in to receive
browser notifications.
cool that your fans just cannot
miss, send them a Push notifica-
tion and they’ll get an alert right
in their bro wser. If you’re really
in to analytics, you can use UTM
links with your notifications.
It’s free up to 500 subscribers,
AND PushCrew recently updat-
ed what they consider “dead”
subscribers. So if you have 350
subscribers, but 50 of them have
never clicked on or interacted
with you via PushCrew, those
ones ARE NOT counted against
you! You still have room for 200
more.
#pushcrewisbae
MailChimp
https://mailchimp.com
Mail Chimp seems to be every-
body’s starting point when they
start list building, simply be-
cause of its free option.
And it’s free-ness just got better
-- they added automation.
Automation use to be a $10 per
month feature, but it’s freeeeeee
and wonderful for you to use
now. This is fantastic because
you can set and forget a wel-
come/indoctrination series, cre-
ate campaigns based on activity,
integrate an e-commerce plat-
form… it’s just great.
This is fucking cool because your
raving, rabid fans self-select
themselves! There’s less chance
of “list” burn out here (unless
you pummel the shit out of them
with notifications). If your business goals include
growing your list and monetizing
it, adding automation to your
email client is crucial -- and you
can do it fo free!
So anytime you have a new blog
post, a new offer, anything super Amazon AWS S3 Cloud Stor-
age
https://s3.amazonaws.com
Amazon’s cloud storage provides
a fantastic, professional storage
solution for any free or paid de-
liverables you’re offering online.
Just upload, set your permis-
sions, and share your link!
It’s bucket-like organization
system makes it easy to navigate,
and you can get your first year
free (up to 5g).
Pixabay (and Creative Market
freebies)
http://pixabay.com
http://creativemarket.com
I scream about Pixabay all the
time. It’s the best one-stop for
$Free.99 stock photos and vec-
tors, and it serves almost like
a syndication site for freebies.
There are lots of free stock photo
sites out there, but Pixabay fea-
tures almost all of them. You may
need to do some digging, but it’s
a fun graphic rabbit hole to fall
down. I know I’ve hoarded tons
of vectors for future projects that
haven’t happened yet!
Another fantastic resource for
free graphic design elements is
Creative Market. Every Monday
they release 6 new free packages
for download (standard license).
It’s absolutely worth making an
account and checking in once a
week to see what you can snag.
HotJar
www.hotjar.com
Sometimes using Google Ana-
lytics’ real-time view of who’s on
your site and where they are in
the world makes me feel like “the
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