Resources for Building Your Coffee Business

Logos and Services

Fiverr- High quality, on time, under budget Do you like the intro of the podcast? It was done by an artist on Fiverr. Do you need a translation, logo, voice over, video, music or hire fake Arnold Schwarzenegger to prank your friend? Fiverr is a good place to start and will cost you only $5.

Get Response – My favorite tool to create and manage email list.

99 designs – do you have hard time to find a designer? Create logo or packaging design contests and select the best design.

DOMAIN NAMES

Every online business needs a domain name. This will be your home, your brand, your digital storefront. Make it count. Visit NameCheap to start researching different cool-sounding domain names. When I come up with a free one, I buy it. Don’t spend too much time thinking it over, because next time you check it might be gone.

NameCheap – I started to use NameCheap when I got really annoyed with the “biggest” domain company and since then I never looked back.NameCheap has great and transparent prices on domains and SSL certificates and supports the right causes (f.e. net neutrality) I am very happy customer and I can highly recommend them.

HOSTING

This is the pace where your website will live. It is very important that you pick a reliable hosting service with great support. You want to focus on selling your products and services, not dealing with the technical difficulties of managing a server. Here are my favorite hosts.

A2 Hosting – fast, affordable, ton’s of features. Servers available in USA, EUROPE and ASIA. My no. 1 choice for WordPress and Woocommerce.
SiteGround – amazing features and speed for newbies, the best choice for starting online stores and businesses. “Go Geek” plan has free SSL and PCI compliance (for accepting credit cards)
Blue Host – good first time experience for newbies
WP Engine – the “Jaguar” of WordPress Hosting. Unbelievable speed and security but be aware of the list of forbidden plugins.

EMAIL MARKETING

One of the most important …. you re going to have is your email list of existing and potential customers. Start collecting emails NOW!

GetResponse

Is my favorite tool to create email lists, landing pages and surveys. I really like their apps and their autoresponders let’s you do marketing magic. Did I mention that they have the best prices? Do not believe me? Try their free 30 day trial. Make sure you signup to their Email Marketing Course (free).

Mailchimp

Mailchimp lets you build list of 2000 prospects and send 12.000 emails per month for free. Gives you no excuse to start to build your list right away.

THEMES AND PLUGINS

Themes are clothes for your WordPress site. They are a very easy way to look professional from the moment you start your business.

Themeforest

I love Themeforest. I spend a fortune in this amazing marketplace and most of the time I get really good value. In the beginning, I did get burned once, because I did not do my homework. I want to make sure that you get the most out of Themeforest. Click here to read “How to Avoid Lemons on Themeforest“.

E-COMMERCE

I build all my websites on WordPress. WordPress will give you freedom to use very powerful plugins some of them free! Here are my favorites e-commerce plugins.

WooCommerce – the most powerful eCommerce plugin for WordPress

Receiptful – extremely powerful plugin to create beautiful invoices with upsells. Integrates with WooCommerce. Has a free plan.

Shareasale.com Drive more traffic to your online store using performance based marketing.

INVOICING AND ACCOUNTING

Very recent discovery. I used Hiveage (cloud invoicing system) for invoicing, but after an unpleasant experience I started to look for something else. I found Wave and instantly fall in love with it. It offers so much more than the competition including accounting, mobile apps, reports all free. Yes. FREE!

Wave Apps – FREE!!!