In the world of digital marketing, it’s hard to ignore the fact that visual content has become a powerful tool for brands in running successful marketing campaigns.

Considering that 65 percent of people are visual learners and articles with images get 94 percent more views compared to those without, it makes perfect sense to create compelling images in all areas of your digital marketing efforts.

However, hiring a professional graphic designer to give you high-quality images for your blog posts is expensive.

So how do other marketers edit their images without hiring a pro?

The solution is to DIY it!

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Social Media Image Maker Tools

Fortunately, there are some truly magical image editing tools designed for the technically challenged, and many of them are free to use or have low-cost plans.

Here are 5 Places to DIY your Images

Piktochart

Piktochart is one of the most popular online tools that allow you to create graphics, presentations and even infographics.

Their mantra, ‘Take your visual communication to the next level without hiring a graphic designer” is true to its nature, since they’ve helped a lot of marketers in create outstanding infographics over the years.

With Piktochart, all you need to do is to enter your data and choose a template and it automatically does the work for you.

MakeaMeme

MakeaMeme or MAM is a completely free online tool you can use to make your own meme. It includes a library of images you can simply slap on a caption and download after registering. However, the site does not specify if the images are under copyright, so using them may land you in legal trouble if you use it for your business, especially if your post goes viral. It is far safer to use the meme generator, where you can upload your own image or a stock photo for commercial use.

Here’s one using an image from Pixabay, an equally magical site for free stock photos, illustrations, and videos:

Other sites where you can find free and royalty-free images that require no attribution are MorgueFile and Public Domain Pictures.

Stencil

This is an online tool for easily creating images. It has its own library of thousands of royalty-free images that you can simply drag and drop to the work space, manipulate, filter, and a host of other stuff. The tool also provides social media icons, quotes, and templates.

You can’t simply copy and paste the image you’ve made, however. You have to save it on Stencil and download it, which takes a while. At any rate, it is easy to use and the free version allows you to create up to 10 images a month, so it’s all good.

PlaceIt

A blog is a useful marketing tool, more so if you can actively promote your brand through your visual content. A great tool for brand placement is PlaceIt, which lets you drag and drop your website’s URL or any landing page for a product in any of the stock photos or videos it has in its library. Here’s a sample using an image mockup:

It is free to use if you only need a small image (400×300 px) like the one above, but if you want high-res images, you have to pay per piece (from $8 up). You can also get 9 images a month for $29 or 31 images for $99.

You can also make demo videos, but there is no free version. You either pay per video ($29 or so) or pay $199 a month for unlimited videos and nine images.

Canva

Canva is a nifty image-editing tool, which makes it easy to make professional-looking graphics without having any graphic design chops.

You can choose from pre-set templates, or create your own. Aside from photos, you can also create infographics. All you have to do is choose among the many design options and start playing! Some photos and layouts carry a small price tag, but there are many of free ones as well. They have over 1 million pre-existing images and graphics to choose from.

And there you have it, the 5 places to DIY your images!

While these tools don’t really replace a good graphic designer, it’s nice to consider that there are amazing alternatives to help you kickstart your visual content strategy. Play around with these tools and decide which one best suits you image creation needs.

Do you have other image editing tools that you love? Let us know by leaving a comment!

Despite the fact that it seems like every store has an ecommerce component these days, there is still a market for many types of businesses to begin selling their products online. In fact, only 17 percent of small businesses have attempted to create an online ecommerce store. This presents a tremendous opportunity for small businesses to expand their reach, especially when you consider that by 2019, it is estimated that there will be 224 million digital shoppers in the United States.

If you are thinking about adding an online store to expand your retail experience, this list of tools will help you find what you need to get your online store up and running quickly and cost effectively.

Domain Name Tools

The first step for most online stores is finding the right domain name. A good domain name should support your brand, be as short as possible, and be easy to remember. You have lots of options when it comes to picking a domain name — you can use your existing business website domain, a variation of that domain, or start with something completely new. The tools below will give you some ideas as you start to figure out your domain strategy.

1. Bust A Name: A tool to help you find domains that are available and manage the domains you own.

2. Domainr: This tool helps you find the perfect domain name by exploring the entire domain name space, including domains beyond .com, .net, and .org.

3. Dot-o-Mator: An easy-to-use tool that creates domain name suggestions based on keywords you enter into the tool.

4. Name Mesh: This service provides domain name suggestions using synonyms, suffixes, prefixes, and more.

Ecommerce Platforms

When ecommerce was in its infancy, online retailers had to use many different services to piece together their digital shopping experience, including product gallery tools, shopping carts, payment processors, and more.

Today, there are many platforms that provide all of the elements that are important to have in your online store. This next list is a collection of some of these tools.

5. BigCommerce: Customize your site with easy-to-use templates, manage shipping and payments, and list your products on Amazon, eBay, and Facebook.

6. E-junkie: A shopping cart platform that helps you sell both digital downloads and tangible goods with PayPal, 2Checkout, & Authorize.Net.

7. GoCentral Online Store: Part of GoDaddy's suite of services, this platform will help you with everything from inventory management to payment processing.

8. Gumroad: A great tool for digital creators who are looking to build a simple, small store that helps you build your audience.

9. Magneto: An open source ecommerce platform that provide comprehensive online selling solutions, a extensions marketplace and an open global ecosystem.

10. Shopify: An ecommerce platform that has everything you need to sell online, on social media, or in person, providing a platform for online stores as well as retail point-of-sale systems.

11. Squarespace Online Stores: An all-in-one platform for selling online, whether you’re just getting started or are an established brand.

12. Volusion: An ecommerce website builder with professionally designed themes and customization ability that helps you sell more products online.

13. Weebly: A drag-and-drop website builder that makes it easy to create a high-quality website, blog or online store.

14. Wix: Another drag-and-drop online store builder that helps you create a unique, personalized website with product galleries and flexible design.

15. Woo Commerce: A customizable ecommerce platform built into WordPress that helps you sell physical and digital products easily.

Email Marketing

An important part of growing your business through ecommerce is having a way to communicate with your customers. This is where email marketing comes in. You need a platform that helps you build a database and send transactional email messages, customer service follow-ups, and special marketing promotions and notifications.

Explore the tools below -- and this list of more email marketing platforms -- to see which may be the best fit for you.

16. AWeber: An email marketing platform with more than 700 mobile responsive email templates to automate your email marketing.

17. ConstantContact: Create email marketing campaigns with drag-and-drop customizable templates that you can personalize, send to your contacts, and track the response.

18. MailChimp: A tool for marketing automation for product follow-ups and other types of messaging that targets customers based on behavior, preferences, and previous sales.

19. VerticalResponse: A platform that helps small businesses send email marketing messages, online surveys and direct mail for campaigns that drive interest in your online products.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is essential for all business, but particularly those that focus on selling online. You can certainly manually manage your social accounts through each separate platform, but it is much more efficient to use a social media marketing platform like of the tools listed below.

20. Buffer: An intuitive social media management platform used by all types of businesses to help drive social media results.

21. Hootsuite: A social media management tool that helps you quickly find and schedule social content, then measure its impact.

22. Sprout Social: Helps all types of organizations extract real business value out of social media through effective engagement, publishing, and analytics.

Support Tools/Help Desk

Have you considered how you will handle product issues, track customer requests, or communicate with your customers while improving your customer service processes? A support and help desk tool can be a great asset to any online retailer. Explore the list below to see if one of them is a good fit for your needs.

23. ClickDesk: Live chat and support software allows you to customize your chat widget interact with visitors in real time and answer customers to boost conversions.

24. Freshdesk: Help desk software for retail ecommerce businesses that includes multi-channel support, ticketing, and product support features that will help you run your online store.

25. Get Satisfaction: A customer engagement platform that helps companies build better relationships with their customers and prospects.

26. HelpSpot: Help desk and customer service software that is easy to set up and helps you improve customer satisfaction.

27. Zendesk: Support products that allow businesses to improve communication and make sense of massive amounts of data from their customers.

Metrics and Analytics

All online businesses should be monitoring their metrics and analytics in order to improve their products and online stores, give their customers more of what they want, and gain an understanding of how customers are finding and navigating through their site. The tools below provide different types of monitoring and analyses of data that can be invaluable to an online store owner.

28. Clicky: A tool that includes real-time monitoring capability so you can monitor, analyze, and react to your traffic in quickly.

29. Crazy Egg: Provides heat map and scroll map reports you can get an understanding of how your visitors engage with your website so you can boost your conversion rates.

30. Google Analytics: A digital analytics tool to measure your advertising ROI and performance of your web properties, as well as track your videos and social networking sites.

31. KISSmetrics: A behavioral analytics and engagement platform to help you understand what people are doing on your website and products, then deliver behavior-based emails to engage them.

32. Mixpanel: A business analytics service and company. It tracks user interactions with web and mobile applications and provides tools for targeted communication with them.

As you build your online store, you will also want to make sure you are setting it up to get as much traffic as possible. This guide to ecommerce SEO provides a great starting point.

Have a killer business idea? A killer business plan can help you turn it into a successful business. Creating a well-crafted business plan is no easy task, however. You'll need to not only flesh out your idea, make some educated guesses and have a deep understanding of the different aspects of running a business — before you even start one. 

Figuring out how to do this correctly is hard enough, but there are several tools available to make this arduous task a little bit easier for would-be entrepreneurs. Instead of starting from scratch, here are a collection of business plan templates, software, apps and services to help you start a business the right way with a professional business plan.

Business plan templates

Business plan templates show you exactly what a business plan is supposed to look like and what goes in each section. You can find them as downloadable sample business plans that you can copy and modify to fit your business, or as fill-in-the-blank or question-and-answer forms. There are also different types of business plans: simple business plans that cover the essentials, comprehensive ones that cover every aspect of a business, and those designed for a specific purpose, such as to raise funding or find business partners. Here are some business plan templates worth considering.

The $100 Startup One-Page Business Plan. One-page business plans take the fuss out creating a business plan by getting down to the basics of what your business is about and how you intend to meet its goals. Think of it like writing down your business on a napkin, but with a purpose. The $100 Startup's One-Page Business Plan is one such business plan template. Simply answer a few questions like "What will you sell?" "What will you charge?" and "How will customers learn about your business?" in a couple sentences and you're good to go.

SCORE Business Plan Templates. Small business resource SCORE has a collection of free PDF and Word business plan templates for startups, established businesses and even nonprofits. The organization also offers additional types of business planning resources and templates, such as financial projections, market research, sales forecasts, SWOT analysis and more. Once your business plan is finished, you can meet with a SCORE mentor for feedback and guidance.

Bplans.com. Looking for free sample business plans? Bplans.com offers a wide range of them for all types of businesses, including retailers, online businesses, service providers, restaurants and more. These sample templates come complete with a table of contents and sections like executive summary, company summary, products and services, financial planning, market analysis and other standard business plan sections. Bplans.com offers more than 500 sample business plans that can be downloaded as Word, PDF and other file formats. 

Rocket Lawyer. If you need to make your business plan a legal document, check out Rocket Lawyer. Rocket Lawyer lets you create your own legal documents and provides access to various legal services. Its business plans section lets you create business plans in three steps: build, save and sign. You can also print and share your business plans for easy access. Rocket Lawyer business plans come with standard parts of a business plan, as well as sections for funding requests and appendix for supporting documents.

Find more using our list of free business plan templates for small businesses.

Business plan apps

You don't have to be glued to your desk to create a business plan. There are several business plan mobile apps that will let you write a business plan anytime, anywhere right on your smartphone or tablet. Here are two worth checking out.

StartPad. Recognized by Entrepreneur and Forbes, StartPad is one of the top business plan apps available for the iPad. This app offers a wide range of business planning resources, such as strategic business planning tutorials, professionally made sample business plans, financial projections and other reports. Business plans created on StartPad can also be exported as high-resolution PDFs or printed out. The basic version of StartPad is free to download and use, but requires in-app purchases for additional features. Get StartPad from the Apple App Store.

Business Plan & Start Startup. Are you an Android user? Business Plan & Start Startup is the app for you. This app isn't just for creating a business plan, however. It also aims to do three things for entrepreneurs: help start a business the right way with a well-crafted business plan; keep them motivated and on track; and provide a community of fellow entrepreneurs, small business owners and experts to help guide users in creating their business plan and running their businesses. Business Plan & Start Startup can be downloaded from the Google Play marketplace

Business plan services

Don't want to use any of the above? Try an online business plan service, which guides you throughout the business plan writing process. The services offer similar tools as business plan software — such as document collections and chart generators — with the difference being that they typically offer business and legal specialists who can help you better understand complex aspects of your business and business plan. Two online business plan services to consider are LivePlan and the SBA Business Plan Tool.

Bizplan.com. Need funding? Check out startup.co's business plan service, bizplan.com. This web-based business plan comes with a step-by-step guide to help you build your business plan and optimize it for investors. Business plans can also be completely tailored to your business with logos, graphics, layouts and custom designs to fit your brand. After building your business plan, you can share and publish it on startup.co's crowdfunding site, fundable.com, where you can connect with investors and add elements like photos and videos to highlight your business.

LivePlan. LivePlan is a cloud-based business plan service that offers everything from document generation to planning tools, financial calculators, guidance resources and more. The service guides you through each component of the business plan and provides step-by-step instructions and advice based on the objective of your business plan (starting a business, business development, funding, etc.)

SBA Business Plan Tool. The U.S. Small Business Administration's (SBA) Business Plan Tool covers everything from executive summary and company description to market research, product line, marketing and sales, and financial projections in detail. You can also personalize your business plan with your company logo, as well as save, print and update your business plan as needed.

Editor's note: If you're looking for information to help you with business plan services, use the questionnaire below to have our sister site provide you with information from a variety of vendors for free.

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