Updated: March 25, 2020 at 2:50 pm
Classes & Education
With some extra time on your hands, now is the perfect time to develop new skills to help promote and grow your business. Some of the courses below typically cost thousands of dollars, but are now free during the crisis:
Ahrefs Blogging for Business Course is our favorite blogging course, and is now available for free. Link: https://ahrefs.com/academy/blogging-for-business
Common Thread Collective has a highly-respected course on increasing e-commerce sales through digital ads. Their course is now available for free. Link: https://www.youradmission.co/
Digital Marketer Lab is now free and offers powerful marketing playbooks and ideas. Link: https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/why-we-opened-lab/
Facebook, is continuing to develop a small business resource center and has already created a series of helpful guides. Link: https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/resource
LinkedIn, is also offering a series of free digital classes. Link: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/remote-working-setting-yourself-and-your-teams-up-for-success
Moz has made their popular SEO courses available for free. There are multiple courses available for all skill levels. Just use the code “wegotthis”. Link: https://academy.moz.com/
Grants & Financing
Annuity.org has an excellent compilation of resources. Link: https://www.annuity.org/financial-literacy/covid-19-financial-guide/
The SBA is offering a variety of grants and loans for small businesses affected by the pandemic. Link: https://www.sba.gov/page/coronavirus-covid-19-small-business-guidance-loan-resources
Facebook is creating a grant program for businesses affected by COVID-19. Link: https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/grant#
Mainvest, is offering businesses affected by the crisis a $2,000 loan at 0% interest. Link: https://mainvest.com/main-street-initiative
Tools
A growing number of companies are offering their online tools for free. Here are the ones we have found:
Atlassia/Trello, offers productivity and collaboration tools. Their tool Trello is a great resource for keeping your projects organized. They have made their cloud products available for free for teams of up to 10 people. Link: https://www.atlassian.com/software/free
Box, a popular cloud-storage app is free for 90 days during the crisis to help you store and share your documents online. Link: https://account.box.com/signup/business?tl=oWgBWV
Kabbage is giving away free access to their online payments system so small businesses can easily send a link out to their customers to purchase gift cards. Link: any business can sign up to sell gift certificates online
OneDine is offering free access to their Tap & Pay Touchless Payment system to restaurants. They are offering free setup and waiving all transaction fees. The technology integrates with most current POS systems. (A restaurant would only be responsible for third party credit card fees.) Link: https://onedine.com/
Random
The US Chamber of Commerce has created a free coronavirus response toolkit. Link: https://www.uschamber.com/coronavirus-response-toolkit
