The Ultimate Entrepreneur & Small Business Toolbox
These hundreds of links are the culmination of years spent on the web researching, reading, and saving the absolute best of the best resources for anyone looking to start or grow a business, whether that's freelancing, building an app, or selling a product/service.
The topics covered are as follows: Entrepreneurship, Small Business, Web Design, SEO, Social Media, Advertising, Analytics, WordPress, Data Visualization, Videos, Negotiation, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pitching, iPhone Development, PR, Blogging, Photoshop, Pricing, Icons, Usability, Email Campaign, Textures, Landing Page, User Interfaces, Web App Building, A/B Testing, Logo, and Internet Marketing.
I'm going to stop right here and tell you to start using Instapaper (on the web, your iPhone, and even your Kindle), and creating "subject" folders to manage all your intellectual capital. If you already have Instapaper, then it's as easy as following each of these links, then clicking the "Read Later" button you installed to your browser. Or, you could just bookmark this post!
UPDATE: if you don't have an instapaper account and are not logged in, y ou will not be able to use these links. If you want something super portable, here is my entire download-able account (an HTML file, which you can either follow the link to or right click and 'Save As'):
seanMeverett Ultimate Entrepreneurship & Small Business Toolbox
Twitter
I love twitter. Seriously. And the reason I love it is two-fold. First, you can steepen your learning curve on any subject faster than any other method, and second, because I love sharing interesting things with others (hence the reason this post is ridiculously long with links). If you're interested in keeping up with links like these, you should follow me on twitter here: @seanMeverettFacebook
Ah, the bane of my existence. Where Farmville and Mafia Wars updates continually spam my feed, and people who think they're sarcastically witty start their status updates with "Dear ___", followed by unoriginal dribble or upload risque pics like they're still on MySpace. I'm not mad at you though, just keep uploading pictures of your cats and we'll be kosher.LinkedIn
Yah, I know, not much content. I do have a few videos, however, that I can't share due to copyright constraints.
Web Design
Even if you're not a web designer, understanding the tiny details that separate good from great design can make all the difference in the world when it comes to increasing your sales. How often have you left a website because it was too confusing or how often have you stuck around on another website because it was visually appealing and did things you'd never seen before? When all it takes is a split second for someone to get distracted on the web, can you afford not to practice good design principles?- Designing for Visibility: Redirect URL Mapping | iCrossing Digital Marketing Blog, Search Engine Advertising Blog: iCrossing
- Forget About Photoshop: 5 More Ways to Stop Using Images in Your Designs - Cherrysave
- Say NO to boring sidebars! « CreativityDen
- Design Proposal Software | Web Design Proposal Software | Bidsketch
- Web forms design guidelines: an eyetracking study | cxpartners
- 25 Awesome Tools for Choosing a Website Color Scheme | Design Shack
- 20 (More) Daily Sources for Design and Dev News, Tips & Tricks | Inspired Magazine
- Convert PSD to Wordpress with Divine. Convert Photoshop to Wordpress theme
- 30-handy-blank-templates-for-designers
- Resources - Places to Sell Your Designs Online For Extra Income | Think Design
- 20+ Must have documents for Designers and Developers | Creative Repository
- Designing “Coming Soon” Pages - Smashing Magazine
- Applying Mathematics To Web Design - Smashing Magazine
- 50 Free UI and Web Design Wireframing Kits, Resources and Source Files - Smashing Magazine
- Free Apple iPad Icon Set for Your Website Designs
- 25 Color Combination Tools for Designers | Pro Blog Design
- Mockingbird | Wireframes on the fly
- MediaLoot Blog
- The Best of Error 404 Pages | Web Design Tutorials | Creating a Website | Learn Adobe Flash, Photoshop and Dreamweaver
- 90 Creative Coming Soon Page Designs and Resources | Showcases | instantShift
- Adding Depth with Pixel Perfect Line Work | Web Design Ledger
- Free vector logos | Logo Design Love
- 30 Amazing Web Design Interfaces From DeviantArt | Web Design Tutorials | Creating a Website | Learn Adobe Flash, Photoshop and Dreamweaver
- Interface Design Inspiration | 30 Impressive Ways to Design Sign-Up Page/Form | Dzine Blog
- 83 Crazy/Beautiful Letterhead and Logo Designs
- 50 Best Web Design Blog Posts In 2009 | Web Design Tutorials | Creating a Website | Learn Adobe Flash, Photoshop and Dreamweaver
- 50 Useful Tools and Generators for Easy CSS Development : Speckyboy Design Magazine
- 20 Design Features That Will Make Your Blog Stand Out From The Crowd! | Make Money Online
- The Most Important Design Real Estate on Your Site | Inspired Magazine
- Browser Size
- How to Design a Print-Ready Flier with Photoshop and Illustrator | Psdtuts+
- 60 Best Icon Sets From 2009 | Creative Nerds
- Breakdown of Great Web App Homepage Design - Inspect Element
- Why Your Next Website Should be Designed with Wireframes | Build Internet!
- 20 Beautiful Website Design Tutorials
- Visual Hierarchy: How Well Does Your Design Communicate? | Van SEO Design
- 10 Social Bookmarking Websites for Non-Stop Visual Inspiration | Inspired Magazine
- Showcase of Excerpts in Blog Design | Vandelay Design Blog
- App Sites - Showcase of great iPhone & Mac app websites
- 35 Websites that use transparency effectively « CreativityDen
- 50 Beautiful Free Icon Sets For Your Next Design
- Styling HTML Lists with CSS: Techniques and Resources - Smashing Magazine
- A Collection of Useful Web Design Wireframing Resources : Speckyboy Design Magazine
- Design View / Andy Rutledge - Where Wireframes Are Concerned
- The Smashing Book Is Released: Buy Now!
- Tips For Designing An Awesome Site For Your iPhone Apps
- TechCrunch Homepage Design Gets Deconstructed By ZURB
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
If you read any of these links on SEO, you'll quickly realize that I'm definitely NOT performing best practice adding all these links to my website (which I'm not "no following"). Thus, I'm giving this website's "authority" to all these wonderful blogs and authors because I truly value their content. Not to mention the fact that Google and the other search engine's are probably going to flag my site as a "link farm". Oh well, it's not always about link building. Sometimes it's about giving credit where credit's due.- WordPress Tip: Remove nofollow Attributes from Post Content | Digging into WordPress
- Bing - Toolbox
- How Web Video SEO is Finally Coming of Age
- New Image SEO tool
- SEOmoz | Senior Marketers Need Greater Accountability
- Link building case study
- Meaningful SEO metrics and where to find them | Analytics Advice
- Code Snippets To Implement 301 Redirect – woorkup.com
- Wordpress SEO: The Only Guide You Need
- SEOmoz | 30 SEO Bookmarklets to Save You Time
- WordCamp Atlanta 2010 Advanced SEO for Wordpress
- Keyword research and mapping | SEO Chicks
- SEOmoz | Keyword Targeting: How to Employ Multiple Keywords for SEO & Conversions
- Get More Traffic: an SEO Guide for WordPress | WPblogger
- Microsoft SEO toolkit (and two other resources) â" Explicitly Me - Rishi Lakhani's Home on the Web
- Peer Review: SEO Best Practices for Duplicate Content
- 12 Ways to Improve PPC Landing Page Conversion Rates - by Christine Churchill
- SEO 101 Common Mistakes
- SEO 101: Everything You Need to Know About SEO (But Were Afraid to Ask) - Part 1 - Search Engine Guide Blog
- SEOmoz | Whiteboard Friday - Domain Authority & Page Authority Metrics
- 30 Black Hat SEO Techniques You Can Use Ethically | SEOptimise
- How to Build Links Fast: 101 Tips & Strategies | SEO Book.com
- SEOmoz | 11 Conversion Rate Optimization Lessons Learned in 2009 (and annual moz traffic stats)
- SEOmoz | Peer Review - SEO Best Practices; Title Tags, URLs and External Links
- SEOmoz | 7 Ways to Use the Web Developer Toolbar for SEO
- How to Use Feedburner for SEO
- Affordable Backlinking Packages and SEO Services CompeteSEO | ShoeMoney Marketplace
- Link Building Trends For 2010
- The Little Known Secret to Getting Page 1 Google Rankings : Marketing :: American Express OPEN Forum
- Blog - SEO Link Wheelers | Link wheel backlinks
- Google's Search-based Keyword Tool: Monetize The Long Tail of Search | Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik
- SEOmoz | The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet
- linkable-asset-inventory-a-starting-point-for-new-link-building-campaigns-31574
- Search-based keyword tool
- Seven sensational SEO tips for ecommerce sites | Blog | Econsultancy
- 20 of the Best SEO Plugins for WordPress
- Official Google Blog: The top ten ways to get your business ready for the holidays
- SEO is dead, long live SEO | Blog | Econsultancy
- Search Engine Optimization Services: Top 5 Reasons - Online Marketing Blog
Social Media
The most over-used term in 2009 is back for more in 2010. Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumble, Reddit, FriendFeed, and...the...list...keeps...going. Fortunately, these links represent those posts that have risen to the top of the over-written and reported pile.- 7 Ways Posterous Improves Your Social Media Presence | Social Media Examiner
- Social Media Today | Max Your Brand With 4 Social Media Optimization Tips
- Practical Social Media Measurement: Awareness, Attention, Reach | Brand Elevation Through Social Media and Social Business | Altitude Branding
- Article:: New Chart: What Social Metrics are Organizations Monitoring and Measuring?
- Laying Out A Framework for Social Media Strategy « Social Media Musings by Tom Humbarger
- What’s Working for Social Media Marketers?
- 20 Amazing social media blogs that you may not have heard of
- Social Media Power Profiles: Is Google In Your Mix?
- Social Media Secrets and Resources Revealed - ReadWriteStart
- How to: Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic
- Great video showing ROI on social media
- The Maturation of Social Media ROI
- How To Measure Social Media ROI | DreamGrow Social Media
- MarketingProfs Store: The State of Social Media Marketing
- The Medium Is No Longer The Message, . . . You Are
- 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
- Showing CPGs How to Socialize
- Mashable’s Social Media Guide for Small Businesses
- Fluent: The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report Fluent: The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report
Online Advertising
Sometimes you have to spend money to make money. It's called arbitrage.- MIT Study Debunks Online Ad Advantages
- Bad news for creatives: Ad quality does not dictate sales | Blog | Econsultancy
- Are Microsoft Users More Gullible When It Comes To Online Advertising?
- Ad Avoidance Up
Analytics
A subject close to my heart. The more numbers the better. The problem lies in mis-interpreting the data or over-analyzing to the point of creating optimization bias. We're also building an analytics web app that's going to finally bridge the gap between on-site and off-site analytics, something never done before. Read a bit more about it at Evolyte Analytics.- Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics – Guest Post by Eric Ries
- ClickHeat | Clicks heatmap
- A First Look at Some Metrics Numbers
- DAYTUM
- The Google Analytics Cheatsheet | Internet Marketing Strategy: Conversation Marketing
- Free Web Analytics Books: Web Analytics Demystified and The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators | Web Analytics Demystified
- Social media analytics
- Bringing Enterprise Analytics to WordPress
- Defining A Web Analytics Strategy: A Manifesto | John Lovett at Web Analytics Demystified
- HOW TO: Track Social Media Analytics
- Social Media Metrics Superlist: Measurement, ROI, & Key Statistics Resources
- SEOmoz | How To Get Past Last-Touch Attribution With Google Analytics
- Track Social Media Engagement for Any Website With PostRank
- µStat - Website value calculator, SEO and traffic estimator
- Ad.ly Launches Analytics For Sponsored Tweets
- ClickTale | Web Analytics by ClickTale | Visitor Movies, Heatmaps & Form Analytics
- Eureqa | Cornell Computational Synthesis Laboratory
- Machine Learning with Quantum Algorithms
WordPress
Easy to use and infinitely customizable. This site is built on it, you should probably have a couple built on it too.- 15 Resources for Setting Up an E-Commerce Site with WordPress – DesignM.ag
- 10-new-wordpress-wanted-hacks-and-powerful-techniques.html
- The 15 Best Wordpress Plugins to Use in 2010
- 7 Superb Social Plugins for WordPress
- Theme switch and preview plugin
- Digital Goodies Shopping Guide #2 – 25 New Wordpress Themes, Under Construction Templates & Domain Names | Inspired Magazine
- 55+ Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks
- best-wordpress-themes-2009
- How to Speed up Wordpress
- 31 Rare Wordpress Themes | TutZone
- Sneak Peek at Soon to be Released Social Life Wordpress Theme | Lifestream Blog
- 29 Free Wordpress Themes That Kick Ass « Beyond Random
- Press75.com | Professional WordPress Themes by Jason Schuller
- For Your Clients: How to Use Wordpress
- 8 Great Blogs All About WordPress « The Communications Strategist
- Free WordPress Themes and WordPress Tutorials at Theme Lab
- Do it yourself: 12 Wordpress Solutions Without Using Plugins- WebAnthology.net
- WordPress 2.9 Upgrade And Simple Tags Solution
- Best WordPress Tutorials of 2009
- My 45 must have WordPress plugins. Any to add to the list? â" A View from the Isle
- Add Chat and Drag & Drop Sharing to Your Site With Meebo Bar
- 10 Outstanding Corporate Wordpress Themes for Freelancers and Small Business Owners | Inspired Magazine
- Use WordPress to Create Amazing Sites - Wordpress Arena
- Extravagant Wordpress Themes & Under Construction Templates Out in September | Inspired Magazine
- 10 Absolutely New & Stunning Portfolio Wordpress Themes for Non-Designers | Inspired Magazine
- 30 Fresh & Priceless Wordpress Themes Out in Octomber | Inspired Magazine
- Socialize, Connect, Share and Promote using Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Yahoo and Open ID
- 100 Premium Like But Free, Fresh Wordpress Themes: Year 2009 | Graphic and Web Design Blog -Resources And Tutorials
- 10 Ways to Make WordPress More Useful : Marketing :: American Express OPEN Forum
Data Visualization
A picture is worth a thousand words.- Cool Infographics - Cool Infographics - 16 Infographic Resumes, A Visual Trend
- 15 Awesome Free JavaScript Charts / JavaScripts / SPLASHnology - Web Design & Web Technology Community
- 28 Rich Data Visualization Tools - InsideRIA
- An In-Depth Look At Pivot, Microsoft’s Newest Data Visualization Tool
- 20 Essential Infographics & Data Visualization Blogs | Inspired Magazine
- Tableau Public Brings Your Boring Data to Life - Charts - Lifehacker
Videos
YouTube didn't blow up for nothin' and it takes significantly less backlinks to get a better page 1 Google PageRank (i.e., SEO) than text.- animoto - the end of slideshows
- TubeMogul.com | In-Depth Tracking, Analytics for Online Video | Web Video Syndication
- 10 Youtube URL Tricks You Should Know About
- 9 Secrets of A Successful Online Video Social Media Marketing Strategy « Jeffbullas’s Blog
- Best Screencasting Tool: CamStudio [Hive Five Followup]
- Five Tips for Producing a Demo Video for Your iPhone App
Negotiation
You negotiate every day, whether you realize it or not, with your significant other, your friends, at the workplace, even with your family. Why not get a little better? The secret, in one phrase, is care...but not too much.Entrepreneurship
This is what it's all about. Follow your dreams and change the world in a big way. Believe it or not, networking is probably the most under-appreciated yet most important aspect of entrepreneurship.- Perfection By Subtraction – The Minimum Feature Set « Steve Blank
- The Ultimate List: 40 Social Networking Sites Specifically for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, and Startups
- The Essential Startup Reader: 10 Lessons In Entrepreneurship
- » Blog Archive » Calculate This! 100 Financial Calculators Every Entrepreneur Needs
- A VC’s tips on securing seed and series A financing
- Top Ten VC Firm Websites By Traffic
- The Venture Hacks StartupList Helps Fledgling Startups Pitch Top Angel Investors
- Platforms and Networks: A Compilation of the Web's Best Advice for Entrepreneurs
- Bizmore Adds A Blog Network To Go After The Small Business Reader
- Rails Template: Create a Twitter Application in Seconds - Intridea Company Blog
- This Weeks Twitter Design News Roundup N.20 - Speckyboy Design Magazine
- The Best of Twitter 2009: Graphic Design Edition
- 15 Free Services to Schedule Tweets on Twitter
- HOW TO: Create Custom Backgrounds for Twitter, YouTube, & MySpace
- Twitter Cheat Sheet.pdf on iPaper By Scribd - powered by Box.net
- 12 best tools to raise your Twitter profile | News | TechRadar UK
- How to Place the TweetMeme Button Directly Into Your WordPress Blog | Anthony Licari
- New Twitter Client for Mac Packs a Powerful Punch
- Twitter Comes To Pearltrees, The Visual Social System
- Follow the Tweets - Business Insight - Wall Street Journal / MIT Sloan - MIT Sloan Management Review
- 35 Web Analytics & Internet Marketing Experts You Should Be Following (on Twitter)
- How @Flipbooks Hit 80,000 RTs : TruAction Flipbooks – marketing, event and tradeshow promotion
- HOW TO: Start and Run a Successful Twitter Chat
- New Study Reveals Facebook Better Than Twitter for Marketers | Social Media Examiner
- How To Create An Incentive For Visitors To Fan Your Facebook Page (Day 17) - Social media and inbound marketing for non-profits
- NutshellMail Lets Users Create Simple Email Newsletters For Facebook Fan Pages
- Facebook Fan Pages « ShoeMoney System
- Facebook Marketing: Everything You Need to Know | Social Media Examiner
- Facebook Guide Book: Mashable Launches Hub for Facebook Resources
- Ten Steps for Creating a FANtastic Facebook Fan Page : MarketingProfs
- How To Develop A Facebook Page That Attracts Millions of Fans
- The 4 Types of Branded Facebook Campaigns
- What Do Seniors Do Online? Visit Facebook and YouTube, of Course [STATS]
- Apple Brings iTunes Gift Cards To Its Facebook Fans, With Help From GroupCard
Pitching
If you've never given a presentation, or if you plan to ask a VC or Angel Investor for a bit of cash flow, then you should take a look at the link below. I'd also recommend searching for Dragon's Den on YouTube, which is somewhat similar to the American Idle concept, but replaces singers with entrepreneurs and Simon, Paula, and Randy with VCs.- A VC’s Advice On How To Pitch VCs
- 17 Awesome PowerPoint & Keynote Presentation Templates – WorkAwesome
iPhone & iPad Development
Self explanatory.Blogging & PR
If you don't know what a blog is, you should probably just call it a day.Photoshop
This is a graphic designer's greatest tool. I don't pretend to be anything of the sort, but I have been known to hack around with it from time to time.- Photoshop Cheatsheets & Our Must Know Shortcuts - slodive
- Tutorial9 | Photoshop Tutorials, Photography Tuts, and Resources
- Free PSD: Facebook Fanpage Template | Fuel Your Creativity
- Free PSD Twitter Background Template | Fuel Your Creativity
- Create a Slick and Minimalist Web Layout in Photoshop
- 40 Free PSD Website Templates - slodive
- 27-must-have-starter-kits-for-web-designers
- Design an Ecommerce Website in Photoshop
Pricing
This is one of those art-and-a-science sort of things. It's the single "easiest" way to impact your revenue (positively or negatively). Pricing is hard, especially dynamic pricing where you charge the highest price possible for each unique customer. Fortunately, a few of the guides below will help you in your quest.- dontjustrollthedice.pdf (application/pdf Object) (eBook)
- Creately Blog » How much to charge for your Web App?
- How to Price Your App - Learning from Basecamp
- What We Can Learn About Pricing From Menu Engineers – GigaOM
- Pricing Strategy, Monetization and Value Marketing Solutions for Profit & Growth - PricingWire - PricingWire - Understanding Freemium - How to Create and Grow Paying Customers
- Customers are always right, except when they are wrong
