Creative Entrepreneurship, Uncategorized

15+ online tools to help your creative business thrive

Whether you are a maker, designer, or blogger, or any combination, it’s important to have the right tools to grow and maintain your small online business.

In my 7+ years jewelry designer / blogger / author, I’ve tried out many tools to stay organized, productive and grow my business.

(And despite being a creative type, productivity + organization are totally my jam. I’m weird like that.)

Here are 15 of my favorite tools that are perfect for online-based creative business owners to help everything run smoothly.

For your convenience many of the following are affiliate links. You can read my full disclosure here.

Top Tools to stay organized

Evernote

Evernote is basically a virtual notebook. I have multiple notebooks for various aspects of my business (and personal life), including one for blogging, jewelry designs, and The Busy Mom’s Guide to Creativity. I also have one that is a running to-do list. I use the Evernote Chrome extension to send e-mails and articles to my Evernote. While I love pen and paper, having a search function instead of having to manually look through a notebook is unbelievably handy.

Pomodroido App

This is a free app to help implement the Pomodoro technique, a straight-forward time management system. When I sit down to work, I set the app, which dings after 25 minutes. You then get a five-minute break (or you can opt to skip the break and continue working), with a longer break after four Pomodoro cycles. This app helps me to stay focused on work for a solid chunk of time.

Trello

If Evernote and Pinterest had a baby, you’d have Trello. It’s like a virtual bulletin board that allows you to visually organize and visualize your projects. I use it to organize everything from blog posts to product launches. It’s seriously my favorite tool by far. (I’m mildly obsessed with it.)

If you’re new to Trello, I highly recommend this FREE Trello Training.

Tools for Your Website

WordPress

I switched from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress in 2014 and I haven’t looked back since. It was a bit of an adjustment, but it’s quick to learn and I love that I can customize my website for my small online business in a way that I couldn’t with Blogger.

You don’t have to be particularly tech-savvy to use it, especially since there are so many incredible plugins that really allow you to customize it. As of fall 2016 I started using the WooCommerce plugin to begin selling my jewelry and jewelry-making kits directly on my website.

Restored316 Themes

If you want to create a gorgeous, professional website, Restored316 has a library of out-of-the-box themes that you can easily customize. I made the switch in fall 2016 and could not be any happier with how my website looks (I used the Darling theme). Many of them are set up if you plan on useing eCommerce on your WordPress site.

WooCommerce

I opened my Etsy shop in 2011, and in 2016 I started selling my jewelry on my website using the WooCommerce plugin (which is free!). It had a huge learning curve, but it was well worth being able to customize the look of my online shop. They have excellent documentation to help you figure out how to use the plugin.

Tools for creating and editing images

PicMonkey

I do some photo editing on Picassa, but I use PicMonkey to take it to the next level to add in text, overlays, and filters. You don’t need to know much about photo editing to use it. I use it to create graphics for my website, edit photos, and I even used it to make logos!

Depositphotos

Looking for stock photos for your small online business? Depositphotos is an immense bank of high-quality photos (as well as videos and vectors) at as little as $1.00 an image, and a limited number of ones for free. You can either buy individual photos, or they have monthly and yearly plans. I bought a special deal for them through AppSumo (which I’ll talk about below) that they do a couple times a year where I purchased credits for 100 photos for just $39. I use a lot of those photos for creating images for blog posts.

Unsplash

If you’re looking for free stock photos, Unsplash has a fairly substantial library. The only downside is after awhile you start to see some of the same images over and over, but you can’t beat free (though you can always make a donation if you feel so inclined).

Canva

Canva is both a photo editing tool as well as stock photos. It’s fantastic for pre-made social media posts optimized for each platform, and they make it easy to change the text and/or photos. It’s free to have an account, you just pay for any photos and certain images when you download your image. What I particularly like is any images you make are saved in your account and you can go back and edit them later.

marketing tools

Buffer

Buffer is awesome for scheduling social media. I’ve used it for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. See something you want to share on social media? Use the Buffer Chrome extension to write up your post, and it will schedule it out for ya! They have both free and paid versions, and I find the free version is perfect for my neds.

Tailwind

Tailwind is like Buffer, but exclusively for Pinterest. Just schedule out pins, from your own website and others, and you’re good to go! You can use it to schedule both original pins and repins, and they have a handy Chrome extension that makes it easy to schedule it right from individual pins. Plus you can check insights to see how your pins are doing.

CONVERTKIT

Your small business MUST have a newsletter so that you can remind people that your business exists. What I like most about ConvertKit is how simple it is to set up sales funnels and customizable sign-up forms. Plus, with their WordPress plugin, it’s incredibly easy to add in the forms with a line of code (and absolutely no coding experience needed). Unlike the previous newsletter program I used it isn’t free, but I find it to be affordable (plans starting at $29.99/month) and well worth the price.

Other tools for your business

Squareup

In this day and age, you need to be able to accept credit cards. Squareup links up with your bank account and deposits the money and charges as little as 2.75% on any sales you make through it. You can accept any credit card — including AmEx — with it.

AppSumo

I cannot sum it better than they do “AppSumo is a medley burrito of the greatest, geekiest products for entrepreneurs. We work tirelessly to find the most innovative, creative, and practical stuff out there and aim to bring them to you, directly and affordably.” Basically, they send you some incredible apps and products for your small online business at heavily discounted prices — and sometimes even free — for a limited amount of time. (It’s how I got my amazing deal on Deposit Photos!)

Creative Market

This platform is fantastic for all types of creative content, from original fonts to graphics to website themes, all made by independent creatives. I have used it to purchase overlays and fonts (including one of the fonts for The Busy Mom’s Guide to Creativity).

They send out free assetts, including overlays and fonts, in their weekly e-mail.

Shareasale

If you are considering doing affiliate marketing as a way to add to your revenue streams for your small online business, I highly recommend you check out Shareasale. They have thousands of affiliate programs to a lot of big-name companies, and it’s really easy to search sign up for their programs.

I recommend this course if you’re interested in learning more about affiliate marketing

What are some of your favorite tools for your small online business?