Category: Growth

Want to just get started? Click here to sign up for Incfile and register your side hustle as a business today. 

Side hustles are growing in popularity these days. The rising cost of living has forced many workers to pursue secondary and tertiary sources of income.

For others, a side hustle is a way to pursue their dreams and goals beyond a traditional career. Some want to create their own hours to travel, spend time with family and friends, or simply wake up whenever they want. Others want to escape the nine-to-five prison. And some just want to open up that online clothing boutique they’ve dreamt of since high school.

Creating a side hustle is hard, but it can also be very rewarding. When properly executed, a side hustle can help people achieve their dreams of doing work they’re passionate about, making some extra cash, or sleeping better at night knowing they have an alternate source of income.

But it’s important to get started on the right foot.

The Top Business Formation Services to Start a Side Hustle

Getting started on the right foot means registering your business as a legal entity. Whether it is an LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp, or sole proprietorship, you need to protect yourself and your business interests by registering with the state.

You can read our full list of reviews for each business formation service here.

5 Steps to Starting a Side Hustle

Now that you know the importance of registering your business, here are the next steps to take to get your side hustle up and running:

1. Create a good business plan.
2. Name and set up your business.
3. Create a brand for your business.
4. Start selling your products or services.
5. Continuously grow your business.

The Easy Parts of Starting a…

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Want to just get started? Click here to sign up for ZenBusiness and choose a business name today.

Choosing a name for your business requires more than just creative brainstorming.

A good name needs to match your brand identity, stand out from the competition, and align with your state’s legal guidelines.

Once you land on the right name for your business, you still need to file the appropriate paperwork to make it official.

This step-by-step guide will teach you how to choose a business name with ease so you can put this task behind you and start focusing on other important areas of running your company.

The Top Business Formation Services to Choose a Business Name

These business formation services provide tools and resources to streamline this process. They can also complete and file the appropriate paperwork on your behalf.

You can read the full reviews of each business formation service here. 

5 Steps to Choose a Business Name

Choosing a business name is easy. Just follow the five steps below to get started:

1. Review Your State’s Business Name Guidelines
2. Make Sure the Name is Available
3. Reserve a Business Name
4. Register Your Business
5. Get a DBA (Optional)

The Easy Parts of Choosing a Business Name

Many entrepreneurs are creative. Some of you might already have a name in mind to use for your new business. Others likely have a shortlist of three to five ideas.

If you don’t have any ideas right now, don’t worry.

While your business name is obviously important, brainstorming shouldn’t take you weeks or months. Some of the best businesses in the world have the simplest names—think Apple or Amazon. 

If you’re still having trouble coming up with an idea, there are plenty of online tools and business name generators that…

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Want to just get started? Click here to sign up for Rocket Lawyer and buy a business today.

Starting a business from scratch can be tough.

That’s why so many entrepreneurs opt to buy an existing business instead.

When you buy a business, there’s already an established brand name, customer base, and operational infrastructure. 

You’re just taking over everything instead of having to build it up from nothing.

This guide will teach how to buy a business the right way, so you can focus on making money instead of fixing problems.

The Top Business Formation Services to Buy a Business

Buying a business is easier with the right guidance and legal assistance. The companies below can help you file the appropriate paperwork and obtain the right legal contracts when you’re purchasing a business.

You can read the full reviews of each business formation service here. 

5 Steps to Buy a Business

Follow our proven step-by-step blueprint to buy a business:

1. Find a Business to Buy
2. Start the Negotiations
3. Do Your Due Diligence
4. Review the Financials
5. Draft the Initial Purchase Documents

The Easy Parts of Buying a Business

The easiest part about buying a new business is the fact that you’re not starting from zero. You won’t have to go out and secure a new building, office space, source inventory, or hire employees—everything is already in place.

This can save you a ton of time compared to starting from scratch. It can take months for a startup to become operational. But when you buy an existing business, you can start operating on your first day as the owner.

Another great part of buying an existing business is the information at your disposal. It’s less of a guessing game, as you’ll already have a good understanding of…

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Want to just get started? Click here to sign up for DreamHost and create your free business email today.

When you want to portray professionalism in your small business or organization’s digital footprint, having an email address that ends in Gmail.com is not the best way to do it.

Fortunately, when you already own a website domain, you have the ability to begin sending emails that come from JaneSmith@MyWidgetBusiness.com, rather than JaneSmith@Gmail.com.

Depending on the subscription tier you are using for your domain hosting, you perhaps can even create a business email address for free that uses your domain name.

We’ll discuss the best ways to create a free business email address through an email hosting provider, using DreamHost as our example.

The Top Email Hosting Providers to Create a Free Business Email

When you subscribe to an email hosting provider with a monthly charge, you are paying for email hosting for your business. However, you also potentially can receive a free business email address as part of certain domain hosting subscriptions. DreamHost, for example, offers both domain hosting and WordPress hosting options that include free business email management.   

You can read our full reviews of each email hosting provider here.

3 Steps to Create a Free Business Email

Once you have your domain in place, creating your free business email address is a pretty easy process. We will be using a DreamHost account in our examples for building your free business email address, but you can use a number of different domain hosting clients to perform this process.

1. Sign Up for a Hosting Plan
2. Set Up Your Custom Business Email
3. Check Your Email

The Easy Parts of Creating a Free Business Email

The process of creating a free business email address itself doesn’t require…

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Want to just get started? Click here to sign up for DreamHost and start encrypting your email today.

As a small business, keeping your data secure is an ongoing battle, especially when you must send sensitive information via email.

When you want to make certain that an unintended person does not intercept this information, you can encrypt your email messages.

Use the following steps to encrypt your email, whether you are using an email hosting provider or you are sending messages from your hosting domain’s email address through Gmail.

The Top Email Hosting Providers to Encrypt Email

For small businesses and entrepreneurs, using an email hosting provider is a great way to create an email address with your own domain name in it. You may be able to encrypt the messages through your email host, or you can link your Gmail address to your email host and encrypt the messages through Gmail (if you are using Google Workspace).

You can read our full reviews of each email hosting provider here.

3 Steps to Encrypt Email

Even when using an email hosting provider, you can send messages through your Gmail account using your business domain’s email address by linking them together. We will focus on discussing how to encrypt email through Gmail for this reason, rather than explaining the encryption steps required for each individual email hosting provider.

The Easy Parts of Encrypting Email

We would not call the process of encrypting email particularly easy, as it requires multiple steps to make the process work. But it does offer quite a few benefits.

Assured protection: When you can send important information via an encrypted email, you can be certain that the information will not fall into the wrong hands. Once you work through the process of encrypting…

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Want to jump straight to the answer? The best VoIP phone systems for most small businesses are Nextiva or RingCentral.

Voice over internet protocol (VoIP) phone systems make calls over the internet instead of a traditional landline. It simplifies the phone system in a traditional office, and allows remote workers to make calls wherever they have internet access.

Top 10 Best VoIP Phone Systems in 2022

• Nextiva – Best overall (For a limited time get 25% off, plus a free phone, when you sign up using our link!)
• RingCentral – Best no-hardware solution
• Ooma – Easiest to set up for smaller businesses
• Phone.com – Most affordable VoIP system for simple needs
• Grasshopper – Best for using your personal device for business
• Vonage – Best VoIP service for specific needs
• 8×8 – Best for international calling
• GoToConnect (formerly Jive) – Best bang for your buck
• 1-VoIP – Best for switching VoIP providers to save money
• Mitel – Most scalable VoIP phone solution

Below you’ll find in-depth reviews of the services I recommend. After the reviews, there’s a buying guide that explains what I was looking for to rate the top products and the criteria you can use to assess what will work best for you.

Keep reading to find a VoIP solution that saves money and delivers a better experience for employees and clients alike.

Nextiva — Best Overall

• Starting at $14.95 per month
• Affordable to upgrade
• Unlimited calls
• Free local & toll-free number

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Want to just get started? Click here to sign up for Sprout Social and start using Instagram for business today.

Using Instagram for business today is a necessity. 

Influencers are building their brands on the platform, while small and big businesses are leveraging it to reach new audiences to get more sales.

But just like any other business, launching and managing a business on Instagram can be daunting.

Today, I’ll show you a step-by-step rundown of using the social media platform to launch and grow your business.

The Top Social Media Marketing Software to Use Instagram for Business

Want the easiest way to grow your business on Instagram? Use social media marketing software that helps you enhance your online presence and manage content on the platform.

• Sprout Social – Best for Learning Your True Brand Perception
• Hootsuite – Best All-in-One for Posting on Multiple Platforms
• Later – Best for Planning and Scheduling Features
• SocialPilot – Best for Small Teams Managing Multiple Accounts
• Agorapulse – Best for Streamlining Messaging

You can read our full reviews of each social media marketing software here.

6 Steps to Use Instagram for Business

Here’s how you can use Instagram for business:

1. Create an Instagram Business Account
2. Develop an Effective Instagram Strategy for Your Business
3. Optimize Your Instagram Profile
4. Share High-Quality Content
5. Engage and Grow Your Audience
6. Measure Success to Make Adjustments

The Easy Parts of Using Instagram for Business

With the right strategy, you can take your business to a whole new level on Instagram.

It’s a low-cost and highly effective medium to increase brand awareness, thanks to its 1 billion-strong user base. Plus, the visual-centric nature of the platform creates familiarity with your brand‘s presence, imprinting it on the mind of…

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Want to jump straight to the answer? The best content management system for most people is WordPress or Wix.

Content management systems (CMS) make it possible to manage and publish content on the web. Without a content management system, you’d need to learn how to code in order to build a website and publish content online.

But most CMS platforms enable users to create a website without writing code. There are plenty of content management systems on the market for people of varying technical skill levels—and we’ll review all of them below.

The Top 10 Best Content Management Systems

I’ve been managing web content for more than a decade. After extensive research and first-hand experience using every CMS under the sun, I’ve narrowed down the top ten content management systems for various use cases.

WordPress— Best Overall Content Management System

• Free CMS platform
• 55,000+ plugins
• Fully customizable
• Perfect for content-heavy sites

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More than one-third of the entire Internet is powered by WordPress. This platform is the most popular content management system in the world. It’s trusted by 60+ million people across the globe.

For beginners and experienced users alike, WordPress has all of the tools you need to create, edit, manage, and publish content on the web.

As a free and open-source CMS, WordPress can be customized to meet the needs of any type of website. Just browse from 55,000+ plugins to add functionality to your site.

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Want to jump straight to the answer? The best inbound call center services for most people are RingCentral or Nextiva. 

Call center services are essential if you receive a high volume of inbound calls from customers and are worried you won’t get back to everyone. Utilizing a call center service is the easiest and most cost-effective solution for managing all incoming calls.

The Top 5 Best Inbound Call Center Services 

• RingCentral – Best all-in-one call center solution
• Nextiva – Best call center service for performance analytics 
• Go Answer – Best service for high-volume calls
• TeleDirect – Best customizable call center solution
• SAS – Best call center for outsourcing tech support

After reviewing dozens of inbound call center services on the market today, we narrowed it down to the top five best call center services for improved communication management. Continue reading to learn more about which option is right for you.

RingCentral – Best All-in-One Call Center Solution

• Omnichannel routing
• Gamification for productivity
• Comprehensive reporting
• Integrates with popular CRM

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RingCentral is an excellent call center service that provides immediate and helpful customer support from anywhere. With its exclusive omnichannel feature, RingCentral can help you speed up your service and keep your agents productive through an all-in-one platform. 

RingCentral offers advanced omnichannel routing that allows you to speed up your calling service through smoother operations. With omnichannel routing, you can reroute inbound calls based on capacity, availability, and custom rules you define—and connect your agents with customers on their channels of choice. Rerouting helps optimize your productivity, as RingCentral allows you…

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Want to jump straight to the answer? The best ecommerce fulfillment service for most people is ShipBob or Red Stag Fulfillment. 

Warehousing, packaging, and shipping orders to customers on your own is tough to manage at scale. Ecommerce fulfillment services solve this problem by handling these tasks on your behalf. 

Outsourcing ecommerce fulfillment ensures that orders get to your customers quickly and efficiently—saving you time and money. This gives you an opportunity to focus on other areas of your ecommerce business that will set you up for exponential growth.

The Top 5 Best Ecommerce Fulfillment Services

Whether you’re starting a new ecommerce site or you’ve been selling online for years, this guide will help you find the best ecommerce fulfillment services for your unique needs. 

ShipBob — Best Ecommerce Fulfillment Platform

• Two-day shipping
• D2C and B2B fulfillment
• Omnichannel support
• International fulfillment

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ShipBob is an omnichannel ecommerce solution that’s trusted by over 7,000+ online businesses. They boast a 99.95% fulfillment accuracy rate and make it easy for brands to scale operations.

As an end-to-end fulfillment provider, ShipBob helps distribute your inventory across its network of fulfillment centers to ensure products are shipped faster and at a lower cost to you. They have global supply chain and fulfillment solutions across the US, Canada, UK, EU, and Australia.

In addition to its exceptional fulfillment services, ShipBob’s web-based fulfillment platform makes it stand out from the crowd. This easy-to-use portal has everything you need to manage your fulfillment needs from a single source of truth.

You can use the platform to track real-time inventory levels from any location and get…

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