One of the most difficult parts about being a solopreneur is figuring out the best services and products to use to build your business. When you're not totally sure about what you're doing, everything sounds good, everything looks good, and everything seems like a necessity. It gets really overwhelming trying to weed out what you don't need from what you really do need. You've probably experienced this overwhelm yourself. Maybe you still are.

 

When I started my business, I talked to a lot of solopreneurs and read about the ones I didn't know personally. I figured the fastest way to learn and to avoid making too many mistakes was to copy what successful solopreneurs were already doing. It wasn't always easy to get this information. Business owners I know personally were happy to tell me their secrets. And some business owners reveal their secrets on the websites or in their blogs. But often I had to do some creative digging to figure out who was doing what and what worked.

 

I want to make it easier for you to build your business quickly and effectively. So I'm going to tell you right here what products and services I personally use, as well as others that I've tried and still recommend. You see, there is no one single best web hosting service or email marketing service. So much of it is personal preference.

 

The following recommendations are my personal preferences. I hope you find them helpful.

 

Web hosting:
Bluehost. I host this website at Bluehost. For only $6.95 per month, you get unlimited domain hosting, unlimited GB transfer, unlimited emails, free domain name, and more. You can upload your own website via ftp, or you can use one of several different easy website builders, such as WordPress and Joomla. I upload my own website.
Bravehost and Viviti. I have used Bravehost in the past, and I currently use Viviti for my food blog. Bravehost offers a free hosting option that is ad-supported. To avoid having ads on you site, get a paid subscription. Depending on the length of your contract, you will pay $4.99 to $9.67 per month. For contracts of at least one year, you'll get a free domain name. You can host up to 10 domains on one account. Bravehost allows for ftp uploads, and they have a web builder. Viviti has a free plan that limits you to one website of 5 pages. Paid plans range from $10 to $30 per month and include hosting for up to 5 websites. Viviti has lots of templates that you edit easily online. In fact, I find their drag-and-drop editor to be one of the best services around.

 

Website design:
Adobe Dreamweaver CS5. If you're already able to design and code your own website from scratch, you probably already have Creative Suite and Dreamweave. If you don't, you're going to need them! There are some free and inexpensive html editors out there. I've tried a few while editing my site. But, honestly, I ran into problems—until I started using Dreamweaver. You can sign up for a free 30-day trial.
DreamTemplate. DreamTemplate does the web design for you. You pick from thousands of templates, download, edit, and voila! You've got a gorgeous customized website. My website is a DreamTemplate template. DreamTemplate is always having a sale. So the price can vary from $59.95 to $149.95. I paid $89 for a 13-month subscription. You get unlimited downloads of whichever templates you want. If you're a web designer, you can even use DreamTemplate for a limited number of clients. While editing an html template is definitely more work than editing an online site-builder template, I have found the extra time and effort (and expense) totally worth it. Since unveiling this website, I have received more inquiries, more clients, more sales, and more participants in my teleclasses. A beautiful website really does make a huge difference.

 

Email marketing:
iContact. I have tried a few different email marketing services. The one I currently use and love is iContact. If you are serious about building your business, you need an email marketing service. You just cannot do email marketing with an individual email client. With iContact, I can create different lists for different groups. For example, my newsletter list is one group, clients are another group, and each teleclass is a separate group. I can send emails to any or all of my lists. I can create autoresponders to send an email automatically when someone signs up for my newsletter or for a teleclass. I just can't tell you how much time iContact has saved me. My teleclass participants sign up online and receive within minutes an automatic email with details about the teleclass. I would NOT want to send individual emails to a hundred people who sign up for a class! You can get a free 14-day trial of iContact. Monthly fees start at $9.95 for up to 250 subscribers. As your list grows, you can upgrade at any time.
Constant Contact. While I have chosen to use iContact right now, I have used Constant Contact in the past. This is a case of personal preference. You may prefer the layout of one service over the other. You may prefer the message builder capabilities of one service over the other. I use iContact even for event marketing. But Constant Contact actually has distinct capabilities for event marketing, as well as online surveys. Constant Contact pricing starts at $15 per month for up to 500 subscribers.

 

Inspiration and Motivation
Infinite Possibilities and Notes from The Universe. I love Mike Dooley's work. If you go to his website tut.com, you can sign up for his daily motivational email Notes from the Universe. I love waking up every day to an encouraging, loving, and thought-provoking email from the Universe itself! For more in-depth inspiration and motivation on achieving your goals, get any of his books or audios: Infinite Possibilities, Manifesting Change, and Leveraging the Universe. I can't recommend them enough. By the way, Mike's brother Andy Dooley has his own wonderful inspirational audio programs and art work. You'll love it!
Write It Down, Make It Happen. For inspiration on how writing things down can facilitate achieving your goals, read this book by Henriette Klauser. Klauser gives specific writing tips and exercises, as well as wonderful personal stories that illustrate her point that writing it down can make it happen.

 

I hope that this short list of recommendations helps you build and grow your business. If you have any questions or would like one-on-one coaching on growing your business contact me to schedule a free 30-minute session.

 

Here's to your success!
Kelly