Online business owners face a lot of challenges. One challenge is managing marketing and sales on top of everything else that needs to get done.
That’s why it’s great to have online resources for solopreneurs! We’ve compiled the list below so you can take a look at some of the best tools available online.
10 Online Tools for Solopreneurs
As a Solopreneur, you’ll definitely need contracts and legal forms. Rocket Lawyer helps you make legal documents quickly and easily.
Rocket Lawyer is an excellent tool for solopreneurs who need to make contracts, wills, or other legal documents on the fly! You can use their easy-to-find templates, explicitly tailored towards your needs as an entrepreneur.
>>> Similar Tools : Corporate Creations, LegalZoom, Healthy Consultants
Grammarly is a great tool for solopreneurs who want to appear more professional in their writing. Grammarly helps you find and fix mistakes that might otherwise go unnoticed, like missing words or incorrect punctuation! After installing it into browsers like Firefox or Chrome, one has a chance of checking the text while typing. Missing words or wrong punctuation marks might have gone unnoticed otherwise. The great thing about this app is the possibility of getting feedback straight away without having to wait.
>>> Similar Tools : ProWritingAid, Ginger, Sapling, WhiteSmoke, PaperRater, Reverso, SentenceCheckup, Hemingway App, LanguageTool, Slick Write
Stripe is an online payment processor used by many entrepreneurs. It’s an outstanding tool for those looking to start an online business. If you want to accept payments from customers without having any upfront costs or monthly fees like PayPal does (which can be expensive if you’re just starting on your own), Stripe is the right fit for you.
Stripe has been around since 2010, safe, secure, and easy to set up.
>>> Similar Tools : PayPal, Braitree, Square, Amazon Payments, Worldpay
Owning a business means outsourcing, and Upwork is one of the best platforms for that. Upwork allows you to find and hire individuals or teams of professionals for a wide range of work, such as accounting, customer service, design, marketing, and web development. It is the world’s largest online workplace, with over 12 million registered members from around 190 countries across different industries!
It offers you the opportunity to find talent in any part of the earth without having geographical limitations or restrictions.
>>> Similar Tools : Hubstaff Talent, Credo, Fiverr, Freelancer, Textbroker
QuickBooks accounting software provides tools to manage your customers, vendors, clients, inventory, and finances. It automates and simplifies many of the tasks involved in running a small business.
Using QuickBooks, you can:
- manage and run the payroll on the go
- create accurate paychecks in seconds
- pay workers by direct deposit
- get email reminders and notifications for payday and tax deadlines.
>>> Similar Tools : Xero, Sage, FreshBooks, Wave Accounting, Kashoo
ConvertKit is a full-featured email service provider (ESP) created by Nathan Barry. Thanks to its ease of use, automation, and other features, it’s one of the fastest-growing email marketing companies around. It’s designed for bloggers, podcasters, content creators who want to get more subscribers with less work!
There’s no credit card required to sign up for a ConvertKit free account. As long as you’re managing less than 1000 subscribers not using any of the features available in the Creator or Creator Pro plans, you can stay on the free schedule for as long as you like.
>>> Similar Tools : MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Campaign Monitor, GetResponse
Canva is another essential tool in a solopreneur journey. It is a free graphic design app that’s easy to use and has all the features you need. Whether it be for your blog, social media posts, or even business cards – Canva can do everything!
It offers over 500+ templates with layouts ranging from infographics to presentations. There are also thousands of free images available in its stock for you to use.
>>> Similar Tools : Stencil, Snappa, DesignBold, Crello
Dropbox is a great way to store your files and access them from anywhere. It is an essential tool for any solopreneur who has multiple projects going on at once or needs quick remote storage of important documents.
The Basic-Free plan of Dropbox includes up to 20 GBs of storage. Easy to use; just synchronize it with your laptop, and it will handle the rest.
>>> Similar Tools : Sync, pCloud, Zoho Docs, Google Drive, CloudUp, Mediafire
Slack is basically a messaging app on steroids.
It’s meant for teams to be used across multiple devices and platforms. It is equipped with robust features that allow you to chat one-on-one with associates and in groups. Using Slack, you can upload and share files with your team, integrate other apps and services, and more.
>>> Similar Tools : Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Chanty
Trello is a project management tool based on the Kanban project management style.
If you don’t know what a Kanban board is, let me tell you briefly. Kanban is the Japanese word for “visual signal”. It’s a method that uses a pinboard-like structure of cards and columns to visually display how each aspect of a project moves through the various stages of the project.
Great way to make your work visual and keep everyone on the same page. It’s easy-to-use, beginner-friendly, and the free plan is quite generous.
>>> Similar Tools : wrike, Podio, asana, freedcamp, Basecamp
>>> Related : 10 Most Used Project Management Tools
TypeForm is a fantastic tool to create online surveys, forms, contact us pages, and more.
It’s easy to use and easy to get started, perfect for beginners and those who want something simple but powerful enough in the free plan.
>>> Similar Tools : Google Forms, SurveySparrow, Wufoo
What Makes A Successful Solopreneur?
Everybody wants to be a “successful entrepreneur”.
Hard work isn’t enough to reach your vision as a solopreneur; there are other ingredients to add to the success recipe. The qualities that define a successful entrepreneur can be listed as follows:
Determination
The world of business is full of obstacles. They will be thrown at you during your venture, and that’s why you need to be prepared to tackle each and everyone till the end.
Risk-taking
Without the will to explore the unknown, one cannot discover something unique. Risk-taking involves a lot of things.
It enables and encourages innovation, which can be an important product/service differentiator. Failed risks aren’t always negative. Sometimes, they provide the most valuable business lessons an entrepreneur can learn.
Planning and Organization
You need to know exactly the steps you’re going to take and their chronological order for two main reasons: the first is that acting randomly in a business can cost you a lot of money, and the second is that planning ahead of time will make some room for optimum use of your resources.
Passion
Passion is the fuel that entrepreneurs need to keep going. Research shows that passion is a crucial predictor of entrepreneurs’ creativity, persistence, and venture performance. In other words, the more passionate the entrepreneur, the more likely they are to succeed.
Passion acts as a driving force, with which you are motivated to strive for better. That’s why your work should be in a field that you love or interested in. Passion will be the work power generator you’ll need in those extra hours in the office.
Confidence
Confidence is a very important element in making an amazing and respected entrepreneur. Even if you have doubts sometimes (which is normal), act more confident than you feel and soon enough you’ll find yourself feeling it for real.
Patience
Having entrepreneurial patience means knowing the difference between wasting time and energy and investing time and energy. Success doesn’t happen overnight; it needs time to happen. You need to keep reminding yourself that your business will work and grow, no matter what.
This patience in waiting for the result will turn into a gratifying and satisfying feeling when you reach your goal.
Final thoughts – Can Anyone Be an Entrepreneur?
Here are the steps to follow in order to become an entrepreneur:
- Find the right business for you
- Determine if you should get an education
- Plan your business
- Find your target group/audience
- Network
- Sell your idea
- Market
Anyone can be an entrepreneur, but not everybody is going to have the same level of success.
The skillset of entrepreneurs has to be very rich due to the several roles he or she needs to fulfil during the venture of entrepreneurship.
Social skills are part of these skills. You can’t build a business alone; hiring, outsourcing, and looking for new opportunities are some of the missions that can’t be achieved unless you have strong social skills.
A solopreneur must be accepting, open-minded. He must be a person who is willing to learn, a person who is okay with making mistakes, a person who believes that trial and errors are essential in the learning curve of any entrepreneur and risk-taker journey.
Entrepreneurship takes a lot of experience, determination and sometimes education. There are no prerequisites to becoming an entrepreneur, though, and there are successful entrepreneurs from every demographic.