Attention Newbies: If you're just getting started -- then read this before scrolling! It will drastically simplify all the different tools you're about to see...
The first step in launching your business is choosing the right platform...
Your platform is the foundational infrastructure that runs your business. Platforms are a big reason why it's constantly becoming cheaper & easier for new entrepreneurs to find success. So picking the right one is important!
You've probably heard of many different platforms already: WordPress, Wix, SquareSpace, Shopify, BigCommerce - there's a ton of these things popping up. And it can be confusing when you're getting started...
So let me simplify. Here's the platform you'll want to use for your specific situation -
Amazon: Do you want to start selling on Amazon? Then Amazon will be your platform.
Shopify: Do you want to start your own ecommerce store? Then Shopify will be your platform.
WordPress: Starting any other business that needs a website? Then WordPress will be your platform.
While platforms like Wix & SquareSpace are easier to learn, you'll quickly become frustrated by the lack of power and flexibility as your business starts to grow. So stick with WordPress or Shopify -- or ignore both of them (for now) if you're starting an Amazon business...
Once you know the platform your business will launch on -- scroll down and find the best tools for the job!
Selling On Amazon
Product Research & Selection
Use these tools to identify profitable products you can source & launch on Amazon
The most accurate and data-rich Amazon Product Research tool -- used to quickly identify the most profitable or fastest growing products you can launch (among many other things).
Slightly cheaper alternative to Market Intelligence that provides you with similar data & insights. Perfect for newbies on a lower budget (but you should upgrade eventually).
Optimize your product to sell using the search terms & keywords your target customers are using to buy on Amazon. Best option for newbies launching their first product on a budget.
Use this suite of keyword research tools to expand your keyword research and find new opportunities. You can also reverse-engineer your competitor's current keyword ranking strategy.
The most accurate keyword research & rank tracking tool. Use this to track the actual search ranking for your products on Amazon, and also cross-reference keyword data from other tools.
Your main Amazon business intelligence tool. View real-time sales and profitability data for each of your products/variations inside a slick interactive dashboard. Gives you the ability to export accurate reports detailing profitability/ROI, fees. payouts, promos/sales, and much more.
Business intelligence tool similar to HelloProfit, but with some powerful upgrades for advanced sellers. Allows you to export & append customer data (giving you their email & mailing addresses), lets you send email blasts out to previous customers through the Amazon email system, and much more!
Boost your ranking with quick & effective product launch rebates & giveaways. Last Launch keeps your products more private (and drives better results) than most alternatives.
Another battle-tested platform for boosting Amazon sales & ranking through discount product giveaways. Great value, but does leave your products visible to other sellers.
Use this to optimize & automate your Amazon PPC (Sponsored Ads) Campaigns. Allows you to set simple ACoS/bid triggers/rules across campaigns, keeps track of changes you make over time, , and helps you scale up your paid ad campaigns easily & efficiently. Saves you a TON of time!
This new Amazon PPC Automation tool is quickly becoming my new favorite. It does everything Prestozon does, but also has some new features that could prove particularly powerful for more advanced sellers (such as dynamic bidding). Best for more advanced sellers (it can be expensive for newbies).
Create landing pages designed specifically to boost your organic sales & ranking. Automatically distributes one-time use coupon codes to customers in exchange for their email.
Another great Amazon landing page builder with slightly different design themes. Includes MWS integration & FB Custom Audience features more advanced sellers may find useful.
Whenever you're sending external traffic to your listings or landing pages, use this to pixel each visitor with your retargeting pixel. Not necessary for new sellers, but becomes important as you grow.
Filter hundreds of online store catalogs & find the arbitrage products that match your criteria. Use the code to get a 25% off on monthly subscription and 15% off on annual.
The best tool for all your domain registrations. It's cheap, easy, reliable, and they don't trick you with upsells. I personally buy & hold all my domain names through NameCheap.
The best web host for beginners. SiteGround is cheap, offers incredible customer support, and can handle traffic spikes once your site starts to grow (unlike BlueHost or HostGator).
My preferred web hosting service for all WordPress sites. Offers premium security & security, and ultra-high performance. Worth it for any money-making WordPress site.
Quick & easy platform to start selling your online courses fast. MUCH simpler than setting up LearnDash, Memberium, and payment processing systems / checkout pages.
Use this order processing system to sell your digital products. Gives you high-converting checkout pages and lots more (upsells, subscription management, etc). Lifetime license is a killer deal!
More powerful order processing system to sell digital products. Gives you beautiful checkout pages, a fully functioning affiliate program, and tons of flexibility (compared to alternatives).
Unbelievably simple platform to launch your ecommerce store. Gives you a beautiful functioning website, the ability to instantly accept payments like the big boys, and tons of useful integrations.
Landing page builder with native Shopify integration, enabling tons of high-converting marketing features you can't get with any other builder. Highly recommended for all Shopify stores.
You should probably just use Shopify, but BigCommerce is the only viable alternative. Sometimes necessary for more complex stores with huge catalogs. Check out Shopify first though!
Install this on every website you run to track essential data about who's visiting your site & what they're doing. It's free, easy to set up, and incredibly useful. Your main analytics tool.
Visual website analytics gives you creepy-accurate tracking to optimize & make more money. Includes heatmaps, funnel analysis, and even straight-up recordings of visitors using your site.
Next-level A/B Testing & Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Platform. Navigate to any page on your site & drag-and-drop to run proper split tests within minutes. Expensive, but awesome!
The Ultimate All-In-One SEO Tool. Use this to reverse engineer your competitors backlinks, find new opportunities to grow organic traffic, and get detailed SEO analytics.
SEMrush was superior at reverse engineering competitors backlinks, but Ahrefs recently released a better tool. SEMrush is still a better research tool when running Paid Search Ads.
Use this outreach platform to find influencers & content creators to drive various marketing campaigns (Guest Posts, Podcast Interviews, Link Building, Influencer Mktg, etc).
Best landing page & funnel builder for newbies, allowing you to build fully functioning sales funnels fast. Even gives you payment processing, digital product fulfillment, and much more!
Dedicated landing page builder with more polished designs than ClickFunnels or LeadPages, but a lot fewer overall features. For more advanced marketers. Worth checking out.
This was the original landing page builder, but has fallen behind over the past few years. They still have some unique templates that perform well, so worth checking out.
Use this to create & manage email optin forms, exit intent pop-ups, and tons of other lead-gen campaigns across all your different websites. Highly recommended for everybody with a website.
Inject small doses of social proof at optimal times to enhance credibility & increase conversion rates across your entire website. Easy ROI if your site is consistently making money.
Best conversational chatbot for your website, incredibly effective at pre-qualifying & driving leads. Search for the Startup Plan hidden on their pricing page for 93% off.
Allows you to create authentic urgency within your marketing with real deadlines & countdown timers synced to your email mktg CRM. Guaranteed to boost conversions when used properly.
Use this to take your best sales presentations and make them work for you 24/7 by turning them into automated webinars! Not great for live webinars however.
Use this platform to host & record live meetings and webinars. Zoom is a relative newcomer who quickly dominated the webinar scene. Highly recommended if you run webinars!
Ultimate social media management tool. Use this to schedule & automate your content posting schedule across all your different social media assets. A huge time saver!
Use this to engage & convert your audience with Facebook Messenger Chatbots. If your audience is primarily using Messenger, then this tool is essential! Free to start.
Use this to run Facebook ads at scale. Gives you a slick dashboard to quickly create hundreds of ad variants, run controlled multivariate tests, and micro-optimize to enhance ROI.
Use this to manage links & analyze traffic as you scale up your affiliate & inbound marketing efforts. Only useful for higher-traffic websites (start with ThirstyAffiliate or Pixelfy.me).
Want to start a podcast? Use this to host your podcast and get it listed in all major podcast directories. Includes the most advanced analytics possible for podcasters.
Use this to create viral marketing campaigns like contests & giveaways and drive your choice of countless results (YouTube views, social backlinks, email optins, etc).
Use this to create & manage all of your passwords across all of your devices. Not using LastPass today is like not using the internet - today. You can't function productively without this.
Use this lightweight app to grab screen captures & recordings then quickly share them with others. Every employee I've ever had gets Snagit on day one! Becomes more valuable as you grow.
Allows you to use Google apps to power the backend of your business (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, etc). Sign up when you need to create an email address under your domain name.
Best tool for internal team communication. Eliminate email chaos, instantly improve your company culture, and make your team more productive with limitless integrations.
Best project management tool for startups & new entrepreneurs. Extremely lightweight & easy to use. One of the most used tools in all my companies. And it's free!
Best shared email inbox system for startups & small teams. Great for both customer support & sales / engagement. All the perks of a help desk without the heavyweight ticketing system.
Launch contests and get world-class graphics from hundreds of premium designers, then only pay for what you keep. Great for logos, web design, packaging, and just about anything else!
Time tracking & productivity monitoring to keep your staff accountable. Great for all employees, but particularly useful for remote & part-time workers (it can automate their payouts).
You'll want a separate payroll system for full-time salaried employees you hire within the US. Gusto automates nearly everything -- running payroll, payroll tax filings, benefit management, and more.
You don't need bookkeeping when getting started, but every successful business needs clean accounting! Quickbooks is the only accounting system I'd recommend!
Centralizes all file storage for your business on the cloud, making it easy to upload & share files with anyone fast. Becomes even more valuable as your team grows.
Video storage & hosting gets crazy expensive as your viewers increase. Vimeo offers affordable video hosting that your audience will love. High-quality, fast, and unbelievably cheap.
Spreadsheets on steroids -- the perfect upgrade to Google Sheets. Keeps your team & data organized. Confused me at first, but has proven extremely valuable across all my companies.
Use this to build KPI & Business Intelligence Dashboards. We use this to build dashboards like this one. Highly recommended as your company grows and becomes hard to keep track of.
By far the best process & workflow management tool that exists. Use this as your 'human automation system' to systematize & proceduralize your business. Incredibly powerful & valuable.
Commission-free stock & options trading within a beautiful app. Use this to trade inside brokerage accounts (unfortunately no tax-advantaged accounts yet). And get a free share of stock for signing up!
Use this to integrate your tools together to automate your workflows and become more productive. Provides 3rd-party integrations between 1,000+ different apps. Extremely useful.
Use this credit card to get 3% bonus points on all your PPC ad spend, then transfer them to Chase Sapphire Reserve & turn them into 4.5% -- a massive advantage for your PPC campaigns.
Use this to track your personal finances & net worth. Unifies all your financial & investment accounts into one slick dashboard & analytics system. Helps you become wealthier, faster.
Use this chrome extension when shopping online to automatically use the best coupon & cash-back rebates. Highly recommended for anyone who likes money! Better than Honey.
Use this secondary marketplace for gift cards to save even more money. Useful for personal purchases (30%+ off movies & restaurants), but especially useful when sourcing arbitrage inventory.
