As I was working on my Q2 VAT return I was wondering what I would post about today – I was using excel, textedit, MySQL, phpmyadmin and cpanel to create the documents I needed to send off to our accountancy firm and thought, well, what are the essential components of a successful online business?
One of the things that immediately struck me was that aside from a wide skillset, which is the IP we work from, everything we use is either open source / free or priced at a marginal cost to the business. In other words, for anyone to set up an online business, all they need are the skills and the time, the rest is readily available if they have connectivity and a computer or even a tablet.
My second thought was that actually we do have some software which we have had to purchase, mostly the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign … ) but there are open source alternatives freely available.
I’ve listed everything below. Some of it is generic, some is specific – like the hosting solutions we use – how we knit it all together to create a market-leading business like Dunans Castle Limited, is another matter 😉
Foundation for online presence:
- Open Source software – Linux / Apache / MySQL* / PHP*
- Domain registrars: Bluehost.com (Top Level Domains) and 123-reg (UK domains)
- Hosting solution: Mediatemple (US) and UnitedHosting (UK)
Maintaining online presence:
- WordPress* including:
- WP-ecommerce (instinct)
- Jetpack
- Cpanel* (maintaining the server)
- phpmyadmin*
- for website health
- for customer metrics
- for essential metadata
Communications & Marketing:
- Gmail
- Helpscout – great customer service webapp.
- Mailchimp – for subscriber collection and small newsletters
- Elastic Email – for sending large newsletters
- Google Adwords
Spreadsheet / Word Processor
- Excel for detailed cashflow analysis
- Google spreadsheets for shared information
- Word for compatibility
- TextEdit or Textmate for csv, text & sql manipulation
Shared Information
- Dropbox – for shared proprietory documents eg. .ai, .psd, .pdf, .jpg
- Google Drive – for shared non-proprietory docs eg. simple spreadsheets and collaborative how-tos
- Google Calendar for scheduling
Proprietory Software
- Illustrator
- Photoshop
- Microsoft Office
* skills or competencies which can take several years to acquire.