Business Tools & Resources
WHAT wE USE TO RUN OUR BUSINESS ON THE DAILY
We use a lot of tools here at Aunty Mar & Company.
To make things easier, we have put together a quick go-to resource for you to use. The links are listed under the relevant section, so you can easily see which ones will work together for specific purposes. Of course, some links on this page are affiliate links. That means we may earn a commission if you buy via our link. This in no way affects our suggestions. We only recommend products we know, love, and trust. Please read our disclaimer.
Resources for Fun Family Vacations
VACATION AUTOMATION
Has Planning Your Annual Family Getaway Become Too Costly, Stressful, and Overwhelming? Well Then, Good Friend You’re in Luck. Introducing “Vacation Automation.” In Just 7 Days, You’ll Learn the Secrets to “Living the Maximized Life,” Strengthening Family Bonds, Enhancing Family Vacations, and Setting Them On Autopilot!
FAMILY VACATIONS MADE EASY
This is the vacation guide you’ve been waiting for! It’s full of good, practical suggestions on how to get what you want out of life, particularly how to “Live Funner. Spend Less. Vacation More” all while creating more margin for those who matter most. You’ll find out how to make your family’s dreams come true and how to make your life easier.
Resources to Start Your Blog
WordPress.org is what you need for your site. There are many plugins you can use to optimize your users experience and track statistics. Avoid going for a blogspot, or a shared website as you want to stay in control of your website otherwise you could lose all your work without any warnings. So stick with self hosted (WordPress).
BLOG BY NUMBER
You can do this even if you don’t have the perfect idea yet, or you are busy, or you’re not techy! The Blog by Number video course from Start a Mom Blog is designed for moms who want to start a blog (but anybody can join). It contains step by step video tutorials that are quick and easy to follow. Sure, your time is limited, so the information is broken down into bite size lectures that can be quickly completed. The course goes through the steps from starting a blog, to choosing the right domain name, to setting up a free theme, getting traffic, to the exact steps showing you how to make money with your blog.
SITEGROUND
SiteGround – If you are serious about turning your blog into a business then we highly recommend self hosting your blog. An inexpensive way to get started with this is through SiteGround is the most affordable, robust, and user-friendly web hosting provider we’ve used so far. Web hosting is their craft. Latest speed technologies is their passion. Unique security solutions are their specialty. Amazing technical support is always provided. That is why they are trusted by the owners of more than 1,700,000 domains. So, if you want outstanding support and reliable hosting check out SiteGround.
GENESIS FRAMEWORK & STUDIOPRESS THEMES
BUSINESS PRO THEME – The Genesis Framework empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress. Whether you’re a novice or advanced developer, Genesis provides the secure and search-engine-optimized foundation that takes WordPress to places you never thought it could go. StudioPress provide the best WordPress themes for beginners, pros, and everyone in between. The themes all look great, are very easy to use, and very SEO friendly. We’ve been smiling ever since we switched.
ELEMENTOR
The #1 WordPress Page Builder: Elementor is the best WordPress themes for beginners, pros, and everyone in between. It is surely the most advanced front-end drag & drop page builder. You can create high-end, pixel perfect websites at record speeds. Any theme, any page, any design. The visual builder and premade layouts make it extremely easy to customize pages. When we discovered Elementor, it was simply a “no-brainer.” Join 1,000,000+ users Who enjoy the free & easy way to design WordPress websites.
DEPOSITPHOTOS
Using stock photos can really enhance your brand and give you a more professional aesthetic. This is where we purchase royalty-free images which are used on our sites. There’s never a shortage of really great images to choose from. Disable your reliance solely on free stock photo sites for your website and social media images. Depositphotos is also extremely affordable at about $1 per photo.
CANVA
Canva is a free online graphic design tool. The predesigned templates are a huge help when you’re feeling uninspired. There are free and paid templates or you can create customized templates. We highly recommend giving Canva a try! Most importantly, if we can create decent visuals for our website, then you already know that it’s extremely easy to use.
PICMONKEY
Using PicMonkey is a great way to edit your photos, add text, overlays ect. Their plans are $7.99/month or 3.99/month if you do their annual plan. This will really help your images pop!
FIVERR
Fiverr is great for cheap design work or other freelance services on demand. Fiverr is a great resource. Avoid writing, research, SEO or anything similar.
SMART MOCKUPS
The #1 tool for creating stunning marketing images 👉 Start your 7-day free trial and create unlimited mockups online ✌️ No Photoshop needed!
Resources to Grow Your Blog
10K BLOG TRAFFIC CHALLENGE
What is the 10k Traffic Challenge? This challenge is about increasing traffic to your blog. The goal for this challenge is to provide you the tips and tools for you to increase your traffic to over 10,000 page views a month in the very near future. You’ll Enjoy 10 Days of Learning and Tasks to Quickly Grow Your Blog’s Traffic.
LIST LOVE MASTER COURSE
Discover how to REALLY build your mailing list, nurture your subscribers, and catapult your blog to success! Jennifer cracked the code on turning visitors into subscribers to build her mailing list from 0-10,000 subscribers in under 6 months on a new blog. This allowed her to earn a full-time income only nine months after she started her mailing list, which she further grew to over 26,000 subscribers within 16 months. So, we’re taking a bite out of this fruit.
G-SUITE
G-Suite is the perfect solution for small business owners to get email, calendar, cloud storage, and google Docs, Sheets, and Slides for their business. Here’s a great article with 12 reasons to use G-Suite. The basic $5/month plan is all you need to get started.
CONVERTKIT
ConvertKit is our number one recommendation for email list management. ConvertKit makes managing your email list and setting up autoresponders so easy and user-friendly. Segmenting email subscribers into groups so that they get content specific to their individual needs has never been more simple. It’s also quite easy to create landing pages and embeddable opt-in forms. You won’t be disappointed!
PIN TO PROFITS
Stumped on how to drive traffic to your blog? We’ll share the secret…it’s Pinterest. McKinzie used Pinterest to help take her brand new blog from 0-20,000 monthly page views in three months. Plus, passively profit nearly $2,000 in her blogs first 90 days. These were results we felt we could emulate so we joined the bandwagon.
PINTEREST TRAFFIC TRIFECTA
Sign up for Angie’s free masterclass and learn how to explode your traffic with Pinterest. You’ll learn the 3 strategies that create the Pinterest Traffic Trifecta, why these strategies work so well, and how to implement the strategies for optimal results. Plus, you’ll learn 5 Pinterest myths that are hurting your business.
TAILWIND
Tailwind is the Pinterest & Instagram Marketing tool of choice around the globe. More popular as a Pinterest scheduler and analytics tool, we believe that it should be one of the first investments you make for your. You’ll be amazed how the Tribes feature alone can help yield a traffic explosion to your brand-spanking new blog.
SOCIAL WARFARE – PRO
Social Warfare is a social sharing plugin for WordPress. Employ this plugin to maximize social shares and drive more traffic using the fastest and most intelligent share buttons on the market, calls to action via in-post click-to-tweets, popular posts widgets based on share popularity, link-shortening, Google Analytics and much, much more!
THRIVE LEADS
Thrive Leads, a lead generation plugin for WordPress, is what we use to create eye-catching and visually appealing, high converting opt-in forms. That sentence is not wrong, but it barely scratches the surface of what this plugin is about. First and foremost, Thrive Leads is the list building solution that’s created by a team of people who are obsessed with conversion optimization. Using Thrive Leads is like having your very own list-building and conversion expert – baked right into a powerful piece of software. Their drag and drop program is super easy to use! So, if generating leads from your blog is crucial to your success, make sure you have eye-catching forms that compel your readers to take action!
SMARTERQUEUE
SmarterQueue saves you hours when scheduling your social updates, and makes sure your posts get noticed, helping you grow your business the easy way
THE PRODUCTIVE SOLOPRENEUR
Your step-by-step guide to processes + systems. Take the stress out of managing your blog + biz! You;ll learn systems, processes, and productivity tips to help you: 1) Create and publish blog content consistently, 2) Promote on multiple social media platforms, 3) Avoid email overwhelm, 4) Segment your list 3 ways with ConvertKit, 5) Automate + organize projects, meetings, products, and clients, 6) Plan your weeks, months, and year…and then some!
EMAIL LISTS SIMPLIFIED
Discover The Easiest Way to Explode Your List, Turn Them into Loyal Followers & Seduce Them to Purchase From You Using the 5-Step Activation Process. You’ll Quickly Learn How To Grow A Targeted List, Write Show-Stopping Sequences & Turn Your Email List Into A revenue Generator (even if it’s embarrassingly tiny!)
FAST TRACK LAB
Are you regularly overwhelmed by all there is to do to get a profitable blog off the ground? Do you find that in spite of your best efforts, you just can’t seem to grow your blog traffic and subscribers? Is the constant stream of information and technology paralyzing you from moving forward even one step? It’s Time to Eliminate the Overwhelm. Reduce the Wasted Time, Money and Effort. Here’s How…Let’s Get You On the Fast Track…
