Big List of Useful Sites And Tools To Help Run Your eBusiness
Chances are, you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on software, services, and employees to get your small eBusiness up and running. You know you have the ability to do much of the work yourself, if you only had all the right tools, without all the expense. That’s what this list is for. Most of the tools and resources I’ve listed are either free or cheap, easy to use, or all of the above. Once you’ve saved enough time and/or money, you’ve got lots left over for any outsourcing work you need to do (for those things you just can’t manage to do yourself). For those problems, I’ve included an outsourcing list at the bottom that is made up of folks I’ve had the pleasure to get to know online.
eBusiness Coaching
Ok, that would be me. But you already knew that. 
Business Planning
SCORE templates for business plans, cash flow and sales forecasts
Domain Names
Use NameBoy or DomainsBot to find the perfect domain name, and then register it at GoDaddy.
Hosting
HostGator is the only hosting company that I recommend these days.
Blog / CMS Site Creation Tools
Blog - WordPress - no better choice.
CMS - CMS Made Simple - easiest content management system.
Themes
Open Source Web Design (OSWD) for free web design templates.
See this post for more premium theme design choices.
Logo Design
LogoYes is a DIY logo design service.
Or use Logoworks or Logo Design Guru to get a custom logo designed for you.
Royalty Free Images
Fotolia has the best deals on stock photos, as low as $1.
eCommerce
e-junkie is the easiest shopping cart to integrate into your site that I’ve ever tried.
Near-Time lets you create a space in which members pay for your knowledge and expertise.
Marketing (Flyers, Postcards, Business Cards)
Next Day Flyers or Vista Print to design your own business cards, postcards and flyers. Vista Print even has free business cards, which will do in a pinch.
If you can’t wait for processing times, or you just want to print some business cards now, then your best bet is to use a business card program, so you can print them out right after you design them.
Time Tracking
Freelancers, especially, need to keep track of how much time they spend on each project, so they can bill accordingly. toggl is a great little free time tracking tool that you can use either online or on your desktop. Perfect.
Finances: Accounting / Billing / Invoicing / Taxes
Invoices Made Easy designed for small service-oriented businesses like freelancers.
Small Business Accounting software for basic accounting without all the extra stuff you never use.
TurboTax because everyone has to do taxes, so it might as well be easy.
Legal: Contracts, Forms, Business Letters
Get almost any sample contract, form, or business letter from docstoc or Forms Guru.
Time Management / Scheduling
Sandy is your virtual assistant (non-human) to help you remember everything. (Sandy is like my brain’s memory chip).
Google calendar (Sandy can integrate with your Google calendar as well)
Collaborating / Meeting / Networking / Office Apps
Zoho has everything you need to collaborate and share with others including a word processor, spreadsheet, note taker, wiki, organizer/planner, email, web conferencing, database app, and more.
Backup / File Storage
Mozy or Carbonite both do a great job of easily backing up your files. Backup is so important. Don’t put it off!
Gmail is the only email service I recommend. It’s free. It has fabulous spam control, and you can always search for old emails (because you never need to throw them away).
Aweber is the best subscription email, newsletter, and opt-in autoresponder service out there.
Bartering
U-Exchange lets you trade services and goods with others for free. This is a great way to market your services too.
Learning
Video Professor now offers a customer help center if you need help with any of their computer learning cd-roms or online learning products. These can be a great way to brush up on one or two of the skills you may need but don’t have (like Photoshop, for example).
Outsourcing
The following include a few folks that I’ve met online over the years, so if you are looking to outsource some projects, you might want to consider these people.
Retta for your all-around virtual assistant needs.
Joanna Young is an awesome freelance writer.
Express It Write (Shari Voigt), for professional copywriting services.
Patricia Skinner is an SEO copywriter who stands out from the crowd.
studioJMC for web site design and development.
Keystrokes Design & Marketing for web and print design services of all types.
Steve “Feydakin” Gerencser for programming work (or jewelry design).
JBS Partners (Jim Spencer) to design, build, optimize and promote web sites.
Lyndsay Walker for SEO services.
Subliminal Pixelsfor PPC, SEO, and online marketing.
Dave Winget (Wingnut) for search and social media marketing.
BlogWell for business blog setup, copywriting, structure and design.
And if neither I nor any of the resources listed above can help you accomplish some goal, then you can always turn to Elance to find professional freelancers in almost any area (web/programming, design/multimedia, writing/translation, admin support, sales/marketing, finance, legal, etc).
Thanks for putting together this very useful list Donna! Glad I was twittering today!
Thanks for the link, Donna. You’ve put together a wonderful list here. I’ve just checked out all of these resources and downloaded the cash flow worksheet from SCORE.
I’ve never heard of Toggl - will have to check it out - thanks!
Huge thanks for including me too
Terrific list, Donna - with several resources here that are new to me: as Lid says, Toggl looks like one to check out! The big benefit, however, lies in knowing that you don’t link lightly; that you have tested the tools that you recommend. Thanks for being such a reliable guide to the business of doing eBusiness!