My Tools: Essential tools for making money online
My essential tools for making money online
I love hearing about the tools, software and courses that others use. When I first started out I pretty much used free tools, but as soon as I started earning some income in invested that into tools that made my work easier and more efficient. Today I use a mixture of paid and free tools.
Tools For Low Content Publishing
CANVA – I use Canva to create all my book covers, printables and templates that I sell on Etsy. I couldn’t manage without it. They have a free account which is great when you are just starting, but a Canva Pro account was the first thing I invested in once I started earning.
CREATIVE FABRICA– Creative Fabrica is a marketplace where designers sell clip art, illustrations, and fonts and everything comes with a commercial use or POD licence. You can buy individual pieces but I have a monthly subscription which works out brilliant value.
TANGENT TEMPLATES – Tangent Templates is another tool I use every day. Designed specifically for KDP low content publishing- there are book interior templates and lots of tools designed to make your KDP publishing easier. My favourite is the Google Chrome plugin listing helper. You can read my full review of Tangent Templates here
Tools for KDP keyword research
PUBLISHER ROCKET- I use Publisher Rocket as part of my keyword research. This is another tool created specifically for low content publishing and one that I invested in early in my publishing career. Publisher Rocket is great value because it is a one off fee and not a subscription.
SELF PUBLISHING TITANS – Google Chrome plugin for keyword research which works within Amazon. I also have the AMZ Suggestion Expander installed. Both are completely free.
Marketing tools
THE FLEXIPRENEUR A+ CONTENT TEMPLATES – Bit of a cheeky one because these are my templates. A+ content is absolutely essential for selling your KDP books. I was spending way too long making A+ content- or worse, putting it off, so I made templates to make my life easier, and they are so good I decided to offer them for sale too 🙂 You can buy them on etsy and Gumroad.
PLACE-IT- PlaceIt is a mock-ups website which is great for pictures of people holding books for use in your A+ Content and social media.
TAILWIND – I use Tailwind for scheduling my Pinterest pins and I see it as essential for running my business. Because it allows me to schedule pins at intervals it means that I can schedule all my pins once a month rather than setting time aside to pin every day.
Etsy Tools
EVERBEE- I credit Everbee with my etsy success. This is a fantastic Chrome plugin which lets you analyse etsy listings and see what is selling on etsy. As someone who has lots of ideas and not enough hours in the day it has saved me from making a load of products that wouldn’t sell and made me focus on what will sell. I so wish there was a similar tool for KDP!
ERANK- Excellent tool for keyword and tag research on etsy. I started with the free plan and quickly upgraded. My favourite feature is the tool to audit your own listings and improve SEO to rank in the etsy algorithm.
FREE LISTINGS- If you are thinking of starting an Etsy shop you can get 40 free listings by using this link.
Website and Email Marketing
BLUEHOST– I use Bluehost for super affordable web hosting and domain names. Prices start at $2.95/ month for hosting and you can get a free domain name too. I have found starting a WordPress website with Bluehost very easy and if you get stuck the customer service has been great too
WEEBLY– In the past I have created blogs and websites with Weebly. The drag and drop editor is very easy to use and you can create a decent looking website very quickly and prices start at $4/month.
MAILERLITE- Start building an email list as soon as you can. MailerLite has a great starter plan which is free up to 1000 subscribers and you can set up a mailing list either with or without a website using their built in landing page templates.
