It seems like just about every tool that you come across these days costs $9.99 a month. When you're just starting your small business or side hustle, all those costs stack up quickly, especially if you're just getting started and haven't made a profit yet. In this post, I'm going to talk about the tools and services I'm using as a small Etsy shop to help my business grow. 

For background, I have an Etsy shop where I sell digital downloads in addition to creating content for this website. 

Novo

Novo is a bank specifically for business owners and, honestly, it was one of the first things to come up when I searched “bank for business owners.” 

It's an online-only bank that doesn't have any fees and is really easy to set up. As an Etsy seller, their planned app integration with Etsy is what made me pick them over other brands (like Chime Bank, for example). 

As someone with UX design experience, I love the design of Novo. It’s an extremely user-friendly interface and I've had nothing but good experiences with them so far. It's also uniquely tailored to businesses and it has fun little features like inspirational quotes when you open it up. 

They also make it really easy to find what you need (account numbers, digital debit card, etc) and is very well organized.  It's funny because the design of my business bank account is much better than the bank I use for my primary checking and savings for my non-business expenses. For some reason, a lot of banks have horrible user experience design but Novo has it figured out!

If you sign up through my referral link you can get $40 in a new account if you maintain a balance of at least $100 for the first 30 days. Not bad! It doesn't sound like a lot but makes a big difference when you're just getting started. As a disclosure, the above link is an affiliate link so feel free to use it or not use it but wanted to share the $40 bonus! 

Tailwind

Tailwind is one of the most commonly referred to Pinterest tools by successful creators and for good reason. It's very reputable, has a large group of users, and also has a ton of smart features.

If you’re unfamiliar with Tailwind, there are a few standout features, including smart scheduling time slots, a Chrome extension for scheduling pins, and the ability to bulk import. They also have a “Communities” section which is great if you’re just getting started on Pinterest and don’t have a following yet. The “Communities” feature allows you to join groups and the members of the group reshare each other’s pins. 

I'm currently only using the free version of Tailwind, which allows you to auto-publish 20 pins a month. The reason why I’m not using the paid version yet is that when I look at my Etsy stats I'm getting a lot more sales through advertising and organic search traffic so I'm prioritizing creating new Etsy listings vs. creating pins.

E-Rank

E-Rank is a tool specifically for Etsy sellers to research keywords for search engine optimization on Etsy. It costs $5.99 a month for the basic package and I do believe that a tool like this is worth the investment for a new Etsy seller. They also have a free version that works well too if you don’t have many listings to research for or just want to give it a spin.

Without a keyword research tool it’s likely going to be difficult to stand out on Etsy with how strong the competition has gotten. I’ve tried various tactics to get around paying for a tool for keyword research but have found it to be worth the investment. Free tools like Google keyword planner just aren’t as easy to use.

Marmalead is the more popular and reputable tool than E-rank because it's using current data whereas E-Rank is using data from the past. However, Marmalead is much more expensive at $20 a month. I'm considering upgrading just to give it a try now that I know a little bit more about search engine optimization but as of right now E-Rank is working for me. 

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