We’ve been running our business for nearly a decade now, and over the years the tech has advanced SO much.
These days, it’s really easy to start an online business and set up everything yourself – from a website through to emails, scheduling, and social media.
Parts of your business that would’ve been expensive to outsource back in the day – but which you had no option but to – are now virtually at your fingertips, and affordable.
For example, when we first started up nearly a decade ago, it was nearly impossible to create your own website without knowing how to write code.
And if you wanted a logo, you had to hire a designer.
WordPress and Canva have changed this world, meaning you can now do these things without external help.
It just takes a few video tutorials on Youtube and voila – you can create your own website and branding.
Don’t get me wrong – it definitely won’t be as good as if you hired a pro – but it’s certainly an excellent base to start with when you don’t have any capital behind you when launching your business.
Anyway, I thought I’d just share a few of the tools we use in our own business to make it run as smoothly as possible.
We use dozens of tools, so this is just a highlight of our few favourites.
We write all our social media posts into Trello, and upload the images we want to use directly into the platform. Our VA Carla then logs in and uses our information to schedule posts into Facebook Business Manager.
We can colour code the posts, sort them into different content pillars (columns) and then archive them once they’ve been posted.
We’re on the free Trello plan – and we also use it with various clients too.
ClickUp is our project management software which is also free to use.
It’s easy to create tasks, assign them, and then move them across into different columns as the work progresses.
We use it to collaborate with each other and our VA.
You can view projects in list view, or board view – and it’s so easy to keep tabs on what stage everyone is at when working on a project.
We use Squadcast to record all of our podcast interviews.
I would’ve thought to record on Zoom, but our business mentor Amanda Kendle put us onto Squadcast. The sound quality is much better than Zoom, because it records separately on both ends of the call – not just our end.
The software then mixes the two recordings into one to make a singular track.
Best of all – our podcast guests don’t need to download any software to use it, making it super simple to record with.
I think I paid about $150 for the year to use it (on sale).
Kajabi is hideously expensive at about $220 a month, but it’s hard to find other software that can compete.
We use Kajabi to host all of our course program content and also use it as a payment hub – although it connects to Stripe which takes a fee. David also hosts his podcast through the platform too.
The great thing about Kajabi is that it’s super simple to build out landing pages, sales pages and other web pages – in fact we could build a whole website on the platform if we wanted to.
It’s easy to send out announcements to members of the program, and you can use the software to manage 1-2-1 online bookings because it integrates with Zoom and Calendly.
Maybe in the future we’ll move to a more affordable platform but for the moment we’re just swallowing the cost because of its ease of use.
While Kajabi offers email marketing, it’s pretty basic, so we’re using ConvertKit for more features. ConvertKit integrates seamlessly with Kajabi so it’s a no-brainer for us.
ConvertKit is also easy to use and you can easily tag and sort audiences and create lead forms and pages to collect more leads.
It integrates with WordPress easily too which is great. We pay close to $50 a month.
Calendly has been a game changer for me and honestly saves me so much time each month.
Rather than going back and forth with clients and podcast guests about when we can organise a meeting, I simply send them a link to my Calendly and they can book in directly.
I pay about $15 a month to use it.
Honestly, I couldn’t live without Canva.
Pre-Canva, I used to do everything in Photoshop and it was so fiddly. Canva just makes design so easy – honestly, anyone can use it and make images look AMAZING.
I love using their templates for all the basis of my designs. Often the final image looks nothing like the template I started with, but it’s awesome to have something to guide me and provide inspiration for all my work.
At $18 a month for the pro version, it’s honestly a steal. I use it pretty much on a daily basis and also use it for personal stuff like designing the kids’ birthday invites.
We pay about $15 a month for Loom and it’s a great tool for recording videos. We use it frequently to record quick explainer videos for our clients when we’re teaching them simple things, such as how to upload a blog post into WordPress.
Dave also used it to record the modules for his program. It’s great because you can record a presentation (created in Canva), while also recording yourself in the corner too.
So it’s kind of like presenting on Zoom but you can record it as a video file to be used at a later date.
It’s also SO easy to share the videos, as you can send them a link straight to the Loom video. This means you don’t have to upload onto YouTube or send huge files to clients.
What’s your favourite online tool?
So there you have it – a quick summary of some of the tools we use in the day-to-day running of our copywriting business.
All up, we probably spend about $400 a month on software, but these are our main business expenses (aside from paying our VA). So in terms of running costs, it’s honestly not that much in the scheme of things.
So, please share! What are your favourite online tools?
Are there any we’ve missed in this post that you think are worth knowing about? Please let us know in the comments!
*Please note that these prices are in AUD!
