Investing some time and money into your side hustle/blogging career? Here are three essential tools that will make your life much easier.
If you freelance full-time, you’ve probably got your sh*t down to a tee – but as someone who works full-time and freelances part-time, let me tell you, it’s damn hard managing my time! My main aim is to give myself a full day dedicated entirely to freelancing on a weekend and then check in throughout the week – but we all know life doesn’t work like that and plans often change!
Being that I often have to suddenly log online late at night or during a break at work to check or fix something, I knew there were easier ways to do things and tools to make the transitions much easier. After a lot of research and trial and error, I settled on a few tools I was willing to pay for and put money into – and I actually didn’t feel bad about it either because I knew I was investing in myself and my business!
I’m no expert, but here are three freelancing tools worth investing in -for anyone who balances a full-time job with a freelancing side hustle.
For Hosting/Resources
I use Lyrical Host for hosting of Formidable Joy but it’s so much more than just a web hosting service! Lyrical Host offers their own amazing little community that share tips and tricks, shine the light on members, help with growth..and generally just offer a space to chat to other bloggers. They also seem to genuinely care about my blog. If anything goes wrong, I can raise a ticket and have a response within the hour. The staff consistently go out of their way to help and they also offered so much unbiased and easy to understand advice with the whole Pipidig thing that went down when I was away on holiday! Lyrical Host honestly feel more like a blogging community than a service – but that being said, their prices are super fair and affordable too. They also have a Client Area with a Resource Library (which gets updated constantly) and they support tons of great causes: every birthday they plant trees through Trees For the Future! They’ve also got their very own Lyrical Courses area, with an awesome bumper-packed SEO course.
Please note, you can sign up to Lyrical Host with my affiliate link here and quote the code LOUISE23 to get a 10% discount!
For Social Media Scheduling
I’ve used a fair few different social media scheduling websites and I’ve even done the whole ‘I’ll use Hootsuite for my blog but Buffer for these two clients because it’s a limited amount of accounts oh and then UNUM can help my Instagram with this person’s instagram…’ yeah, no. This worked for all of a week before I got too stressed out and decided I need to bank on myself and take the whole thing seriously by investing into a proper account.
Buffer is the way to go. Buffer Pro allows you to juggle up to eight social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) on one simple interface. You can easily see all your content planned out in advance and can head over to the Analytics tab for a basic look at how well your previous posts have done. You can also choose to reshare these at a later date. Buffer also comes with an extension allowing you to ‘rebuffer’ or reshare any tweets or content you might see relevant when scrolling through a website (gone are the days where I’d bookmark or screenshot something I think would be great to share for a client and then never look at it again!), and can see all content on a day, week or monthly calendar. It’s super easy to set up a posting schedule and all posts will automatically fill those slots – but if you want to change anything, you can simply drag and drop posts too. For people with smaller side hustles, it’s affordable and offers just the right of helpful tools without overwhelming you. Plus the app is pretty nifty too, meaning you can edit posts on the go.
For Graphic Design
You don’t need design skills when you have Canva! This nifty online platform is just like Photoshop or Indesign. Not only can you edit photos but you can make Instagram Stories, Facebook Banners…the list is endless. There are pre-made templates for all sorts which are also great for inspiration and there are lots of ready-made elements that are really arty and not tacky. The upgraded version (which costs £11.03 ish) also allows you the chance to create a great brand kit: your favourite fonts and colour palette that will automatically be used whenever you make something new, plus there’s tons of great tutorials and resources – and a design school. I’ve created so many amazing things using Canva and since upgrading to Canva Pro, I’ve been finding more and more benefits.
So there you have it: three essential and affordable tools worth investing in. Sometimes it’s worth paying a little bit of money for something that is better quality and coincides with investing in yourself – and it took me a long time to realize that! I’ve been blogging for ten years and freelancing on/off for probably three years now, yet I’ve only just realized how much difference it makes to use the right tools to get the job done.
What do you think? Do you invest in any tools or stick to the free versions? Let me know!
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