Starting a new online business seems quite challenging at first.
If you want to make sure that everything is running smoothly, you need to keep an eye on too many technical details. You also need to find ways to stand out from the crowd and make sure that business operations continue as usual. Not having enough competent employees when you’re just starting out can also put a brake on many operations.
Fortunately, there are a plethora of small business resources that can help you get your new business off the ground. Even if it’s just you and a couple of teammates, these resources will help you move in the right direction and avoid the pitfalls that could derail your success.
1. FirstSiteGuide
FirstSiteGuide offers tons of small business resources for starting, growing, and monetizing your blog. There are step-by-step guides on blogging, WordPress tutorials, and useful tool reviews for startups, bloggers, and webmasters.
There are also in-depth guides to making a website, choosing a blogging platform, making a logo, choosing a web hosting provider, using Google Analytics, advertising on Facebook, and much more.
You can access all the resources on FirstSiteGuide online or download the PDF for free.
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2. Moz
Moz is a leading brand with a host of popular SEO and digital marketing tools. It offers extensive guides to SEO, link building, competitor analysis, and keyword research. There’s also the Moz Academy with free training courses for SEO beginners.
Apart from advice and insights from experts, Moz also offers free SEO tools that you can use for keyword research, link building, analyzing social and webpage metrics, local search, and more.
3. Codecademy
If you want to learn the basics of coding, Codecademy is your way to go. It offers free code challenges that make programming incredibly easy and fun.
In just a matter of days, you can get the hang of website development (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), Python and SQL, if data is your cup of tea.
You can learn how to build your own website, create a WordPress theme with Bootstrap, and create lots of interesting and useful stuff. You can even learn how to fix bugs without having to hire a developer.
4. HubSpot
Apart from an abundance of small business resources on marketing, sales, and customer service, HubSpot also provides free online training courses for growing a business.
On HubSpot Academy, you can enroll in certification programs on SEO, social media, email marketing, content marketing, digital advertising, inbound sales, and much more.
In addition to the training, HubSpot also offers free CRM for staying in touch with your contacts and boosting lead generation and conversion.
5. edX
edX gives you free access to more than 2,500 online courses from 140 institutions, including Harvard, MIT, and Berkeley.
You can choose from a wide variety of subjects and different levels, programs and languages. The subjects range from data science, computer science, language, engineering, business, and management.
There’s even edX for Business if you want to customize an eLearning plan for your organization.
6. LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning offers more than 15,000 online training courses for honing business, creative, and technology skills. They’re led by industry experts with real-world experience, so you can be sure you’ll be getting the highest possible value from these courses.
7. YouTube Creator Academy
Videos have been the most popular type of content, especially when it comes to business promotion. They have the power to capture attention and influence purchasing decisions, so you should seriously consider creating a business channel on YouTube.
Don’t worry if you have no idea how to make interesting and compelling videos. YouTube Creator Academy courses can help you make the most of your YouTube channel. You’ll learn how to create attention-grabbing videos, get more subscribers, and ultimately maximize the potential of your YouTube channel.
8. TEDx
TEDx is a TED’s initiative for bringing innovative and inspiring ideas to local communities around the world. You can organize and attend TEDx events and dive into the huge library of TEDx talks to explore a whole new world of useful insights from local speakers.
9. Google Webmaster Guidelines
Google Webmaster is a great platform for learning how to optimize your website for Google and other search engines.
It provides you with guidelines so that you can help Google index and rank your site higher in search results. Similarly, the courses and guides help you make your site better search-friendly. There are also testing tools and support documentation for quickly fixing issues on your website.
10. Search Engine Journal
Search Engine Journal is rich with excellent small business resources. There are how-to articles and guides on digital marketing, SEO, PPC, social media, various tools, web development, and digital business. In addition, there are lots of webinars and eBooks on SEO, social media, PPC, and content marketing.
Don’t forget to tune into the Search Engine Journal Show, the official SEJ podcast that regularly brings in top industry experts to discuss trending techniques and topics.
11. Udemy
Udemy is a huge online learning marketplace that offers more than 100,000 online courses, a lot of which are completely free.
You can choose your own instructor (they’re all industry experts), explore a massive video library for better knowledge retention, and learn at your own pace. You can master a variety of skills in marketing, IT & software, development, and business.
If you need training courses for your team, Udemy for Business can hook you up with more than 4,000 courses.
12. MIT OpenCourseWare
Just as the name suggests, MIT OpenCourseWare gives you access to practically all content from MIT courses.
Under the “Find courses” tab, there’s even a dedicated page for entrepreneurship courses that are perfect for new business owners. Some courses you’ll find useful include “Building and Leading Effective Teams”, “Supply Chain Planning”, “New Enterprises”, “Entrepreneurial Sales” and “Listening to the Customer”.
13. Podcasts
Podcasts are some of the best small business resources you can benefit from. Industry experts host and present thousands of podcasts that provide excellent advice and tactics for growing your business.
Some of the best you should tune into are Entrepreneurs on Fire, As Told by Nomads, Mixergy, The Digital Entrepreneur, Smart Passive Income, and The Tim Ferriss Show.
Conclusion!
Sifting through an abundance of available information online can be overwhelming, especially when you have no idea where to start.
Luckily, this list of small business resources gives you a great starting point, so be sure to check out all of them. You’ll quickly get the hang of your new online business and become a successful entrepreneur before you know it. You can also check out our webinar featuring industry experts educating on the art of the online business pivot.
Disclaimer: This is a guest post contributed by Anja Skrba from FirstSiteGuide.
Mansoor Ahmed Khan
Been in content marketing since 2014, and I still get a kick out of creating stories that resonate with the target audience and drive results. At Cloudways by DigitalOcean (a leading cloud hosting company, btw!), I lead a dream team of content creators. Together, we brainstorm, write, and churn out awesome content across all the channels: blogs, social media, emails, you name it! You can reach out to me at [email protected].
