Marketing, business & productivity courses, platforms, tools & resources
I’ve compiled favorite tools, Courses, WordPress plugins and Google extensions that make marketing easier for less. Many are freemium models with a free plan, but sometimes companies discontinue those or offer a free trial instead. I’ll keep up the list as I learn of changes, including those that merge or are discontinued. I indicate where I may get a small fee or credit for a referral (aff. link), but at no extra cost to you.
Check out my free Marketing Glossary too.
Freebies
Entrepreneurs get up to speed fast with a truckload of free courses taught by experts I admire. I have learned so much from many of these and will continue to get inspiration, strategic and tactical lessons to use and share. Enjoy!
Courses
Free Marketing Courses*If you are interested in it, sign up for the Content Traffic Kickstarters course right away, as it may be available for free for a limited time only! (No pressure, but it’s a great course.)
Free Images
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
| Adobe | Free stock assets |
| Burst | Free stock photos |
| Canva (aff. link) | Graphics design platform with photos, illustrations, templates |
| Clip Art | Free clipart files in AI, SVG, PSD, EPS |
| Creative Commons | 500 million free images |
| Creative Fabrica | Fonts, graphics, crafts freebies |
| Creative Market | Free goods: Fonts, graphics, themes, photos, templates |
| DepositPhotos | Free image files |
| Flaticon | Free vector icons and stickers |
| Flickr | No known copyright restrictions (license dropdown) |
| Fotor | Online photo editor and design creator |
| Free Images | 300K free images |
| Free Pik | Free vectors, stock photos & PSD downloads |
| Freestocks | Free stock photos |
| Giphy | GIFs and animated stickers |
| GoArt Fotor | Fotor's photo to art effects |
| Google Images | Advanced search; license |
| Google Free Fonts | Free fonts |
| Gratisography | Quirky collection of free stock photos & images |
| Imgflip | Memes, gifts, funny images & meme generator |
| Kaboompics | Free images for lifestyle & interior design |
| Library of Congress | Free to Use digital collections |
| Life of Pix | Free photos |
| Lumen5 | Online video creator |
| Microsoft Clip Art | Free clip art |
| Mind Meister | Free online mind mapping |
| Morgue File | Free photos |
| Negative Space | Free stock photos |
| Pexels | Free stock photos and videos |
| Picjumbo | Free stock photos by weekly email |
| Picspree | Free stock images, illustrations, vectors & icons |
| Picture Mosaics | Free photo mosaic tool |
| Pixabay | Free images and stock photos |
| Pixlr | Free image editing |
| Pond5 | Free stock videos, photos, music |
| Portwiture | Your Twitter status in Flickr photos |
| Qr Code Monkey | Create free QR codes w/logo |
| Raw Pixel | Free stock images, vectors & PSD mockups |
| Reshot | Free icons, illustrations & photos |
| Skitterphoto | Public domain photos |
| Snappa | Graphic design tool with templates |
| Stencil | Online graphic design tool |
| Stocksnap | Free stock images |
| Stockvault | Free stock photos and images |
| Stokpic | Free stock photos |
| The Hungry Jpeg | Free graphic design resource & downloads |
| Unsplash | free images and photos |
| Word Cloud | Free onlne word cloud generator |
| Word Puzzle Generator | Create a free word search puzzle |
| XMind | Free mind-mapping & brainstorming tool |
WordPress Plugins
| WordPress Plugin | Plugin Description |
| Akismet Anti-Spam | Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from spam. Your site is fully configured and being protected, even while you sleep. |
| Better Click to Tweet | Add Click to Tweet boxes simply and elegantly to your posts or pages. All the features of a premium plugin, for FREE! |
| Cyfe | This plugin lets you see your WordPress data inside your Cyfe all-in-one dashboard. |
| Easy Digital Downloads | Sell your digital products the simple way. Easily build an online store complete with a cart system, checkout forms, reports, coupons, and more! |
| Easy Twitter Feed Widget | Add twitter feeds on your WordPress site by using the Easy Twitter Feed Widget plugin. |
| EWWW Image Optimizer | Reduce file sizes for images within WordPress including NextGEN Gallery and GRAND FlAGallery. Uses jpegtran, optipng/pngout, and gifsicle. |
| HubSpot All-in-One Marketing | Connect forms to HubSpot CRM and email service. HubSpot’s official WordPress plugin allows you to add forms, popups, and live chat to your website and integrate with the best WordPress CRM. |
| Login LockDown | Limits the number of login attempts from a given IP range within a certain time period. |
| Really Simple SSL | Lightweight plugin without any setup to make your site SSL proof (recommended by my hosting company). |
| Social Warfare | A 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 more. I like the way I can have my Twitter handle automatically added to any shares with this tool. |
| Sucuri | The Sucuri plugin provides the website owner the best Activity Auditing, SiteCheck Remote Malware Scanning, Effective Security Hardening and Post-Hack features. SiteCheck will check for malware, spam, blacklisting and other security issues like .htaccess redirects, hidden eval code, etc. The best thing about it is it's completely free. |
| TablePress | Embed beautiful and feature-rich tables into your posts and pages, without having to write code (recommended by my WP theme's creator). |
| Unsplash | Source for free images uploaded into pages & posts with attribution (and nofollow link). Sweet! |
| Updraft Plus | Backup and restore: take backups locally, or backup to Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace, (S)FTP, WebDAV & email, on automatic schedules. |
| W3 Total Cache | The highest rated and most complete WordPress performance plugin. Dramatically improve the speed and user experience of your site. Add browser, page, object and database caching as well as minify and content delivery network (CDN) to WordPress. |
| Yoast | The first true all-in-one SEO solution for WordPress, including on-page content analysis, XML sitemaps and much more. |
Google Extensions
| Google Extensions | Description |
|---|---|
| Auto Text Expander | Create shortcuts for frequent formfills and responses, such as your guest post pitch. |
| Bublup | Collect content to share with one link, such as an Instagram bio link. Great for portfolios! |
| Click to Tweet | Create Click To Tweet shareable links to promote, share & track your content on Twitter. |
| Google Keep | Save things to Keep with detailed notes and labels for retrieval, synced across all of the platforms that you use — including web, Android, iOS, and Wear. |
| Keyword Surfer from Surfer SEO | See search volumes directly in Google search results. |
| Loom | Record your screen, voice, and face to create an instantly shareable video. |
| MightyText | Send & receive text messages on your PC or Mac from Android. |
| Mix | Discover, save, and share interesting things you find on the internet (formerly Stumbleupon). |
| MozBar | SEO toolbar for Page & Domain Authority, keywords, identify link types & export to CSV. |
| Noisli | Listen to your own personal sound environment to relieve stress |
| Pinterest save button | Save what you find into searchable pins & boards. |
| Polls for LinkedIn | Enables polls in LinkedIn to capture professional insights, opinions, and sentiments |
| RetailMeNot | Automatically apply coupon codes & cash back offers to get the biggest savings at checkout. |
| Similar Web | See website traffic and key metrics for any website, including engagement rate, traffic ranking, keyword ranking and traffic source. |
| Twitter Screenshots | Easily capture beautiful, high-resolution screenshot images of Tweets right inside the Twitter website |
| WebRank SEO | Provides Alexa Rank, Website Security, Server Location, Whois Lookup, Pages Indexed and Backlinks in Google & Bing. |
For more free tips, check out Dmcenter.com/category/freebies