My Biz Tools
Love finding new tools and gadgets for your online biz?
Mailchimp
Free forever account for your first 2000 subscribers, but most people prefer to sign up for a small starter account, to leverage workflows, automations and goals.
ActiveCampaign
Email Marketing with advanced targeting and site tracking, at super affordable rates
Mailerlite
Free helpdesk with knowledge base and pop up support options. Check out my support page, to see it in effect.
calendly
Calendly is great for scheduling, without worrying about time zones or needing to email back and forth. You can read my post about scheduling here.
G Suite
My email, cloud storage, calendar, hangouts, etc are all run from a free grandfathered account (from 2011).
Pdf Escape
When I create worksheets (in Word or Google Docs) I save as a pdf file, upload to pdfescape, and add in fields so that users can check off an item, or type into text fields. It’s free and relatively easy to use.
Screencast-o-matic
I can’t say enough good things about screencast-o-matic. It’s lightweight (doesn’t slow down my PC like camtasia does) and connects to all the video hosting platforms. I can easily edit, add intro/outro and anything else you would expect to use in a video editor. It’s $15/year or if you’re like me, save a bit more and purchase 3 years for $39
Teachable
Most of my courses are hosted on Teachable. Although, I’m also converting them to my WP site, so they can be accessed in both places.
Postplanner
Social media scheduling, recurring posts, etc
Asana
Free tool to manage projects and to-do lists. It’s my favorite when I have something big coming up, that’s complex. I can break things down into small, manageable pieces.
Microsoft Office
I mostly use Microsoft Word (for creating ebooks, or worksheets) but since it’s installed, I also use Excel and Outlook (great way to clean out a busy inbox – it syncs with my gmail account)
Divi: Elegant Themes
Divi is the theme I use here at LoraleeHutton.com, and is part of the Elegant Themes package. There’s a huge online community with avid users and great support. It’s an extremely flexible WordPress theme, and you can jump in for about $70
Godaddy
This is the company I’ve used for years – you can use this coupon and get 40% off
coupon: WOW3268
coupon: WOW3268
Hostgator
This is the hosting company I’ve used since 2008. Although this site is currently running on siteground, all of my other sites are still running on my hostgator account. If you need a lot of hands on customer support, this might not be the company for you, but I’m more of a DIY’er, and it’s perfect for me.
Pixlr
I use pixlr express for small edits (like resizing images so they’re web friendly) and the full version when I want to work on a bigger project, or create a transparent background.
Microsoft Paint.net
You’ll need to download both. Make sure to only download from the secure sites I’ve listed here & not to install anything extra they may recommend. This is freeware, and sometimes they’re ad supported. I use Paint.net to edit PSD files instead of buying Photoshop. It was much easier to learn than Gimp and runs faster on my PC
Typeform
Create forms and quizzes
ifttt.com
create “If this, then that” conditions for automation.
Join.me
Great for 1:1 meeting, especially when you need to take control of your users computer (for example, if you’re helping a client during a call)
Ecover Generator
create free covers with their design tools. It’s a paid service if you want to upload your own cover design – but honestly, the tool creates some pretty great designs on it’s own. There’s 4 free layouts (box, spiral, paperback, and open spiral)
Segment.io
Instead of hooking up google analytics, your newsletter tracking code, mixpanel, heap, chat tool, etc. You can set up one connection with segment, and they’ll feed in the info to the right service speed up your site performance too, by only having one javascript code.
Freshdesk
Free helpdesk with knowledge base and pop up support options. Check out my support page, to see it in effect.
GoogleDrive
Google Drive is certainly one of the most popular cloud storage devices, so I use tend to use it too. It makes it easy to work on projects with other people.
Box
I use box.com to backup all of my other storage items. I have a free 50GB account, so it’s the easiest one for me to backup too. It’s also really easy to use to sync directly to your desktop and mobile device.
lastpass
Don’t forget a password. Works on Windows, Mac, iPad, iPhone and Android.
Woocommerce
Woocommerce runs the store, and the ecommerce part of the membership of the portable biz club.
canva
Another, free application that works great to create banners, presentations, and other types of graphics for you to use across the web on your blog or social media. You’ll be asking yourself the entire time you’re using this, is it really free? Why, yes, yes it is free.
Shoeboxed
DIY plan is completely free. Take a quick snapshot of your receipts or forward PDF versions of your receipts to your Shoeboxed account and have everything ready long before tax time.
Zapier
Used to automate things like, “when a new subscriber joins your email list, also add them to your CRM tool”
Google Voice
I use this so that I can have a US phone number for various things (I include it when registering for software, and use it when I need to make business calls)
OneDrive
I use Microsoft Office for creating PDF’s and course content, and it comes with a large onedrive storage account. This is my primary storage, even though I also use google drive for some things.
For more great resources, be sure to
Or maybe you have a cool tool you'd like to share?
Loralee Hutton
While creating my portable biz on an incredibly lean budget (less than $30/mo) wasn't easy, it's the foundation piece I love to share with other solopreneurs. Creating your own passive & leveraged income doesn't need to be hard, or expensive.