The Homeschool Trade Association, one of my side projects, is a professional network of business and nonprofit leaders who serve the homeschool community.
Below are some of the tools and resources we have used to manage and grow a homeschool curriculum publishing business. Some of these are affiliate links, which means that our company will receive payment if you make a purchase from the recommended company.
Web Hosting
EMWD has provided web hosting for our business website for many years. It is a smaller company, and I like the personal attention.
This site was built with SquareSpace. It provides attractive templates and a cloud-based development interface.
Computer Tools
LogMeIn allows me to connect wherever I am to another company computer wherever it is and use it as if I was sitting in front of it. This is great for troubleshooting and sharing work.
EditPad Pro is a text editor with amazing search and replace features and lots of other bells and whistles. It is great for coding and other everyday text-based tasks.
Ecommerce/Marketing
Our ecommerce site runs on BigCommerce.
I use LeadPages to create responsive landing pages for specific promotions (i.e., running Facebook ads that invite people to sign up for our email newsletter).
ActiveCampaign hosts my company email lists. I use MailChimp for the Homeschool Trade Association because it has a generous free plan. MadMimi is another email service I have used in the past. It is simple to use, but not quite as versatile.
Professional Development
My favorite business podcasts are How I Built This, Marketing Your Business, and Business Wars.
Books by Jim Collins provide fascinating case studies about how businesses succeed and why they fail.
The Grasshopper Blog has short and simple articles about small business.
I've attended Leadercast several times. It provides an interesting lineup of speakers plus opportunities to meet other people at the host site.