Venturing into the online business arena can sometimes be harsh without guidance as you could end up spending way over your budget with nothing to show for it at the end of the day.

Below are a few trusted resources  which I have used in the past or continue till use till date

WEB HOSTING

I’ve been with Hostgator for over 2 years now and I’m more than satisfied with their services and thus they remain my major recommendation to small, medium and large scale businesses. You can read my review of their services at Hostgator Unlimited Disk Space & Bandwidth Review.

Other web hosts worth looking you as well as follows: Netfirms and Syskay

DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION

Just like Hostgator, I’ve been a fan of Netfirms for quite a long time now. Their domain names are the cheapest around the web and they come complete with tons of features and even free server space .

You can read my review of Netfirms at Netfirms $7.99/year Domains Review.

FREE AND PREMIUM WORDPRESS THEMES

My sites ( StrictlyOnlineBiz, PatchworkOfTips and EzBlogSetup) were built using free wordpress themes but might look unique ’cause I’ve over-customized them. You can search Google for free wordpress themes or you can buy premium quality wordpress themes from the likes of Pliable Press and WooThemes.

NOTE: WordPress also has an excellent collection of free themes too .

FREE WORDPRESS WEBSITE AND  BLOG SETUP SERVICE

If you’re having difficulties setting up a wordpress blog on your server, you can download a few free reports at my Facebook Fan Page to guide you. If after reading them, you still can’t figure out the technicalities of wordpress, I’d be most happy to help you out with my wordpress services.

PAYMENT PROCESSOR

Need help accepting credit/debit card payments on your websites? Try 2CheckOut. The beauty of this company is that it makes it possible to accept PayPal payments without owning a PayPal account . Here’s my review of 2CheckOut: 2CheckOut: One Great Alternative To PayPal.

FREE MAILING LIST

By now you must have heard the ever popular phrase, the money is in the list. Well it so happens that having a mailing list is one proven way of generating income on your site as it is to this list that you can first sell your products before going viral with it.

Creating a mailing list now comes easy and best of all FREE with MailChimp. Simply sign up and when approved, you can proceed to setup your first mailing list with this guide: How To Setup A Free Mailing List With MailChimp (Guide).

FREE PDF EBOOK CREATORS

If you’re looking for a software to enable you create e-books which you could sell to your list or offer for free, then I highly recommend you take a look at these free softwares: OpenOffice & Microsoft Office SaveAsPDFandXPS. If you’d like to create a secure ebook which can not be tampered with by crooks, then go get NitroPDF Professional.

If you need further recommendations, feel free to contact me.