Ever had to worry about managing your business without breaking the bank?
Viola, you’re in the right place!
As a new business owner, building your business can make you run out of money especially having people recommend a bunch of stuff that you don’t ever need. No matter how small or big, starting your own business can be very expensive if you are uninformed or misinformed
This can crash your business before it even take off.
Fortunately for you, I have dug out 40+ free resources for business growth and success with little budget.
You wouldn’t want to underestimate these free tools, platforms, and resources to grow your business. Even though some of them have a higher premium version, you might have no need for them when you are just starting out.
Contents
Free resources for business
1. Business templates
Writing a business plan could be overwhelming at times. No one would want anything lesser than 100% in the planning process. A business template could ease this process guiding you through the plan, proposal, start-up checklist, and every other thing pertaining to the business.
Here are some great resources:
SCORE – Business planning, finance, marketing and management templates.
Bplans – Business plans, proposal and more
Ryan-Robinson – Free freelance proposal template
2. Marketing platforms and tools
Every business should possibly be using one or two free marketing platforms to develop and promote it’s product/service and still remain within budget. That aside, using these platforms means saving time for other tasks and also maintaining sanity.
With over a hundred ways to showcase your business, not all will work for your business for sure. However, try as many as possible and settle for what works best for you.
Here is a list of valuable platforms and tools:
Facebook – Free social media marketing platform (pages, groups)
Instagram – Free photo sharing platform.
Ever wondered how you could promote your business on Instagram? Check this!
Pinterest – Visual marketing platform (I adopt this as a search engine)
Twitter – Free social media marketing platform
LinkedIn – Professional social networking website.
MailChimp – Free email marketing. Allows up to 2000 contacts for free.
Send in blue – Free email marketing platform with unlimited email contacts and let’s you send up to 300 emails daily.
Survey Monkey – Free survey platform that allows you gather feedback and analyze your survey results.
Tailwind – Scheduler for Instagram and Pinterest
Mix – Social media bookmarking website.
Craigslist – Free online advertising platform.
Clearstream – Free SMS marketing (25 free SMS monthly).
Linktr.ee – Helps navigate Instagram followers to your site or blog. It allows you to create a URL to include in your bio. When clicked, it brings a list to where ever you want.
3. Website
The best thing you can do for your business in this century is to have a website. It helps gain leads and audience which could be converted to paying clients. If you can afford to build one for your business, don’t think twice about it. With $2.95 a month, you can own a WordPress website. However, if you can’t afford one at the moment, there are free options to try out.
4. Finance tools
These professional tools saves you the stress of budgeting, accounting, invoicing and bookkeeping.
5. Project and content management
How do you deal with multiple clients and projects? A satisfied client will always come back some other time. These project and content management systems will keep you organized and also stay on top of the game.
Wrike – Task and project management platform.
Asana – Visual project management platform.
Airtable – Spreadsheet and data table management tool.
Trello – Collaboration and management tool
6. Administrative toolsa
Google Docs – Word d processing, spreadsheet, slides and more
Open office – Word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and more.
Cute PDF – PDF conversion tool
Teachable – Online course platform.
You might also like to read:
How to start your business from scratch
What successful business owners do
7. Design and stock images
As a business owner or entrepreneur, there are always many roles to play, one of which is designing your stuffs. Even if you can afford to pay a graphic designer for every bit of design, you can also try playing around some for 100% satisfaction.
Take a look at these free tools as they are easy to use and no graphics experience is needed.
Canva – The most easiest design tool I know. It has hundreds an hundreds of free stock photos and templates (for Facebook post, Instagram story, Pinterest pin among many more). You can never go wrong using this tool.
Wix logo maker – Free logo maker.
Burst – Free stock photos.
Pexel – Free stock photos.
Pixabay – 500,000+ free images and videos.
OpenShot – Free video editing tool.
FontsSquirrel – Free commercial fonts
Screenspresso – Edit, add texts, blur words or add graphics to a screenshot with this tool. It also let’s you record your screen.
8. Productivity tools
Google calendar – Online calendar.
ClickBook – Free online appointment scheduling.
RescueTime – Time tracker.
To-do-list – Task manager.
Google forms – Online form
9. Storage tools
Google Drive – Free cloud storage up to 15gGB
Dropbox – Storage up to 2GB
OneDrive – Storage up to 5GB
These free resources for business can help you go a long way until you can get the premium packs.
If you find this post helpful, please do well to share, pin and also drop comments.
Thanks for this list! Some amazing resources in this post 🙂
Thanks Stephanie. Am honoured 🙂
I really needed this list as I have just started my blog site. Wil definately be coming back to this blog to help better my website and content.
Glad it’s helpful to you. You can also subscribe to get notified on posts like this. Cheers
Thanks for compiling this list of free tools for small businesses and content creators! I’ve used many of these myself and continue to do so because why pay for something if you can use it for free, right?
🙂 Yeah, you’re right. Until one can afford the paid versions, these are really helpful.
These are absolutely amazing, thanks for this list all in one place! Definitely pinned for future reference.
This is awesome. Thanks for putting this together.
You’re welcome Natalie
Many thanks for the tips Omofoma.
🙂 You’re welcome Irene. Always happy to help
This is so helpful, I find so many paid resources but free is a must when you’re starting out.
Absolutely! Helps beginners alot