Technology Tools for Your Solo Venture
The technology and tools listed below are ideal for creators and solopreneurs who need powerful capabilities that are free or at a reasonable cost. Every business is unique, so what worked for me may not be the case for you. I share technology I have personal experience with and recommend based on the cost, value, and ease of use.
I value tech independence to reduce lock-in and the autonomy to move to another tool or service at any time.
Ads Monetization
Earn a passive income from ads delivered on your engagement channels.
Amazon Associates - Amazon Associates enables you to earn commissions when a person engages with a product advertisement on your site and makes a purchase on Amazon.com. I use this program to provide value to my audience with products that I have used and recommended. 🆓
Amazon Influencer - The Amazon Influencer Program extends the Amazon Associates program specifically designed for social media influencers. If you qualify based on engagement metrics across your channels, you get your own Amazon page URL to showcase your product recommendations. 🆓
Google Adsense - Adsense offers a free method to earn income from displaying ads on your website. The income expectations are low when compared to other forms of monetization. 🆓
Analytics
Use insights to grow and optimize your business.
Google Analytics - is the standard for analyzing the traffic that comes to your website. It enables you to segment users across many dimensions to learn more about your audience. Insights on users' acquisition, behavior, and conversion help optimize content and the experience I offer. 🆓
Google PageSpeed Insights - analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster. Optimizing page rending is essential for improving your Google search rankings and a positive online experience for your audience. 🆓
Google Search Console - provides tools and reports to help you measure search traffic to your site, fix issues, and optimize content for search. For example, you can see which queries bring users to your site. The console helps you monitor and improve how your content shows as rich snippets on Google Search. 🆓
Automation
Streamline and automate manual tasks to give back time to serving customers.
Zapier - a no-code automation platform that enables you to easily integrate and automate workflows across 5,000+ apps. 🆓 💰
Collaboration
Interact with people via email, video, and chat.
Google Workspace - business solutions seamlessly integrate everything you and your team need to get anything done, all-in-one place. Includes all the collaboration apps such as mail, online meetings, storage, and chat. 💰
Microsoft 365 - Office productivity apps, online storage, and live meetings with Microsoft Teams. 💰
Slack - is an easy-to-use collaboration platform that is highly effective for remote teams and communication among people inside and outside the organization. I use it to collaborate with people in organizations I do business with. 🆓 💰
Zoom - a platform of collaboration tools: including video meetings, team chat, VoIP phone, webinars, whiteboard, and contact center. 💰
Digital Marketing
Engage, grow, and convert your audience through digital channels.
ConvertKit - a marketing hub for creators that helps you easily grow and monetize your audience. Free up to 1,000 subscribers! 🆓 💰
Google Business Profile - turn people who find you on Google Search and Maps into new customers with a free Business Profile for your storefront or service area. 🆓
Event Management
Schedule events and sell tickets.
Eventbrite - ticketing platform for free and paid events. 🆓 💰
Graphic Design and Photos
Canva - makes it easy to create professional designs and share or print them. This is a great tool and free for most use cases. 🆓 💰
Unsplash - Beautiful, free images and photos that you can download and use for any project. Better than any royalty-free or stock photos. 💰
Internet
DNS Checker - checks the propagation of DNS configuration across the internet.
Online Courses
Teachable - an online course platform for creators to author and sell digital products, including courses and coaching services. I have used Teachable for an online course, and I find it easy to use and with fantastic customer support. 🆓 💰
Productivity Tools
Airtable - a low-code platform for building collaborative apps and storing data. Customize your workflow, collaborate, and achieve ambitious outcomes. I love Airtable! 🆓 💰
Calendly - enables customers and stakeholders to schedule meetings on your calendar easily. 🆓 💰
Notion - is a collaborative workspace that combines documents and databases. I use it as my single glass pane for managing work, personal tasks, and documents. I also share pages with customers to simplify our collaboration and improve productivity. 🆓 💰
Pocket - easily and quickly save any web content for viewing later and put it in Pocket. This helps your productivity by not getting randomized to read content at the moment and saving for consumption later. 🆓 💰
Podcasting
Simplecast - podcast publishing, distribution, analytics, and sharing tools with a website to host your content. 💰
Sales (E-Commerce)
Shopify - is a user-friendly e-commerce platform that helps small businesses build an online store and sell online through one streamlined dashboard. Shopify merchants can build a modern online store and sell on social media sites, seller marketplaces, other blogs, websites, via email, text, and chat. 💰
Search
Google Rich Results Test - for testing your structured data to see which Google-rich results can be generated by the structured data on your page. You can also preview how rich results can look in Google Search. 🆓
Google Schema Markup Validator - Validate all Schema.org-based structured data embedded in web pages without Google feature-specific warnings. 🆓
Google Search Central - developer tools and documentation for SEO (search engine optimization) to improve the discoverability of your website content for Google Search. 🆓
Yoast - the #1 WordPress plugin for search engine optimization. 🆓 💰
Security
Stay safe and secure while running your business.
LastPass - creating, managing, and accessing passwords across all my devices is solved with LastPass. I used the free plan for many years and recently upgraded to LastPass for Families so that my family can manage their password and provide them with easy, secure access to mine in the case of an emergency.
Social Networks
Meta Facebook ecosystem
Facebook Ads - run ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. 💰
Facebook Pages - Build an online business profile and get discovered by fans and customers with a Facebook Page. 🆓
Facebook Shops - create an online storefront where people can browse, explore and purchase your products directly on Facebook and Instagram. 💰
Instagram - photo and video-sharing social networking service. 🆓
Twitter ecosystem
Twitter for Creators - tools, and resources to tweet, speak, monitor, and monetize your content. 🆓 💰
Twitter for Business - advertising capabilities to reach and monetize your audience. 💰
Other Ecosystems
LinkedIn - business and employment-focused social media platform. 🆓
TikTok - a short-form (3 seconds to 10 minutes) video hosting service. 🆓
Storage
File and data backup services and products to ensure there is storage redundancy. I highly recommend using a physical storage device in addition to cloud storage services.
Apple iCloud - cloud storage integrated into the Apple ecosystem.
Google Drive - cloud storage for Google users.
Microsoft OneDrive - cloud storage for Microsoft users - integrated with Microsoft 365 subscription.
Video
Restream - allows you to stream live to 30+ social platforms at once to increase the reach and engagement with your audience. 💰
YouTube - global online video sharing and social media platform. 🆓
Websites and Hosting
Cloudflare - offers a portfolio of networking products, including a global Content Delivery Network (CDN) that protects and distributes your content to optimize performance. They offer a free plan for individuals for projects that aren’t business-critical. It’s easy to use and configure services regardless of where you host your domains and content. 🆓 💰
Dead Link Checker - a free tool that crawls through your website, identifying broken links for you to fix. This resolves broken links that affect your website’s usability and rankings. 🆓
Dreamhost - web hosting provider and domain name registrar. I use Dreamhost to host my WordPress website and find it easy to use, cost-effective, and with good customer support. 💰
Elegant Themes - a WordPress theme that is easy to use and powerful. The content creation and configuration experience are fantastic. The theme customization options are endless. I have found the customer support team super responsive. I love Elegant Themes and highly recommend it for WordPress sites. 💰
Squarespace - website building and hosting allows users to use pre-built website templates and drag-and-drop elements to create and modify webpages. 💰
Wordpress.com - the hosted version of WordPress to easily create websites. Recommended for non-technical people who want to use WordPress. 💰