Thriving Solo: Tools and Tips to Run a Business on a Budget

For all those ready to start your own thing, here are the tools I use to run a business on a budget. I’d say the biggest two concerns with a startup are time and money (trust me, I know). But I’m here to show you that starting your online business doesn’t have to break the bank, or take up all of your time. In fact, with a bunch of awesome and affordable tools, you can kickstart your business journey on your own without emptying your pockets. So, take a look at this list and hopefully it will provide some insight on how you can save some money and be more efficient.

Those who have been following along with Schedule Your Strength know that this is a solo-entrepreneurial adventure for me. Whenever I find things that work here or that make this journey easier, I’m going to pass on what I can. Hopefully, I can add some value and motivation to any others who are interested in entrepreneurship. “Business on a budget” is a common content theme these days. I plan on giving straight answers in plain language and genuinely hope that it can help people.

Now, on to the list ↓

 

1. Google Workspace for a Business Hub ($6/month)

To begin, we have Google Workspace. You know Google (Docs, Sheets, etc.) It’s a free suite of apps that help you write, have spreadsheets, video calls email, etc. Additionally, you can pay for an upgraded plan which gives you your own email ex. @scheduleyourstrength.com instead of @gmail.com and also you get more drive storage. There are other features but these are the highlights for me.

I use drive to store all of my internal files, it’s my “team workspace” collaboration tool and everything. It just doesn’t need to be more complicated than this.

 

2. Social Media of Course (free)

Next up, we have social media. Social media is fun, sure, but for business its marketing. It’s great for telling people about your business and finding potential customers. The best part? It’s completely free! Not to mention organic reach (free stuff you create rather than pay for ads) seems to be weighted better for reach over paid ads. It’s worth your time.

 

3. Google Bard for Knowing all of the Things (free)

AI is the big thing these days. It’s really tough to stay in touch with all the new tools that come out every day and decide which ones are worth paying for. I use 2 main AI tools and they are both free.

The first is Google Bard

I use bard to find recent search trends, keywords, audience insights, etc. The main difference in the two AI tools for the common-person is that Bard’s search data is current where the next tool (ChatGPT)’s data is a couple of years old.

 

4. ChatGPT for Writing and Outlining (free)

ChatGPT is like having an assistant that can be creative for you. You can use it to make plans for your business, outline content, re-write things and more. Between Bard and ChatGPT, I find GPT is the better writer, so after using Bard to find my data, I use GPT to write and/or plan things out.

 

5. Canva for Making Graphics (free)

If you want to make things look awesome, Canva is your friend. Even if you’re not a graphic designer, you can still make amazing pictures, logos, social posts, and designs. It’s easy and free! Like all of these tools there is a paid version which offers more features but for starting out, the free version is great. Note on Canva: if you don’t want to pay monthly you can buy individual elements or designs for a one-time cost.

 

5. All in One SEO (AIOSEO): SEO (free)

Turns out, getting noticed on the internet is important, and AIOSEO can help. SEO is basically how people find you when they search. This is a big industry and you can pay tons of money for contractors to do this for you. AISEO however, is a plugin that you put onto your website and can do it yourself. Now people will say that it’s better to hire someone for this and true, you might get better results, but remember, we’re talking budget here. Also, the fact that I am able to this myself and actually get SOME SEO traffic to my site, speaks volumes to how useful this is.

 

6. Trello for Organization and Project Management (free)

Organizing stuff can be tricky, but Trello helps a lot. It’s like a big to-do list where you can keep track of all your tasks and projects. And guess what? It’s free too! You can use Trello to track projects, store documents, and share with other and watch their progress on how they are getting done. This is my go-to to-do list. Every idea I have or thing that comes up throughout the day goes into Trello to be tracked.

 

7. Woocommerce for an online store (free)

Want to sell things online? You have to have a store. Well not technically, I guess you could do it other ways, but this makes it easier. Woocommerce is a platform with a free plugin that you put onto your website to give visitors that “checkout portal” which helps people buy your stuff. Now, I don’t have much experience in this department yet but, what I know is that this plugin is easy for me to use and is free so…it goes on the list!

 

8. Stripe for Online Payments (free)

If you want people to buy things from you online, you need a way for them to pay you. Stripe helps with that. Sounds a lot like Woocommerce above right?

Well not quite, if Woocommerce is your store, then Stripe is how your customers money gets from your store to your bank account. They are similar but you have to have them both. Stripe is a huge payment processor used by lots of the big players. Its secure, and approved by most banks.

 

9. Google Domains for Domain Register ($1/month)

When creating a website, you have to have a domain name i.e. Scheduleyourstrength.com. To get one of these that works it has to be registered. Google Domains is a registrar that does this for you. There are lots of these out there but since I have other Google accounts (above) doing this through Google was an easy add-on. Basic domains are billed annually for various amounts but some (like this one) are around $12/year.

As I write this, I’ve just seen the news that Google domains has been sold, don’t know at this point if I’ll switch to another registrar or not but this is where I started…

 

10. FastComet for Web Hosting ($21/month)

A “web host” gives your website access the internet. This is the actual service that lets your site be available for other to visit. So if your site was a brick and mortar store, the host is like a road for people to get there. It costs a little bit/ my plan is about $21/month but you have to have it. Some plans are cheaper than this but for Schedule Your Strength, I had to upgrade.

Fastcomet is a great solution for me. It has great speed and lots of features that make creating your website easier. It also has in-house email providers, SEO tools and more which make it a one-stop shop for a lot of things if you are starting from scratch. Customer service has been great for me as well. I’m sure that someone more familiar with networks, and development could make better use of it. But like I said earlier, that someone as simple as me can use this with success is a huge selling point for their user-friendliness.

 

12. AnswerThePublic for Keywords (free)

AnswerthePublic is a really handy tool that I didn’t even know that I needed. When you are creating content, like blogs, or social posts, or even the actual words you use on your site, it matters what words you use. “Keywords” as they are called are what search engines use to come up with results. So if you are not using the right keywords, you found be found.

This was new to me but this is how the internet works. Answer the Public goes and finds those keywords for you so that you can use them in your content. There is a free version where you get a few searches a day for no cost. Definitely good for a business on a budget and worth trying out.

 

13. Zapier for automation (free/pr $20/Month)

Zapier is another tool I didn’t know that I needed. It is an amazing tool that I haven’t even scratched the surface of but I’m finding very useful. Zapier is like a robot employee that does repeated things automatically. So, you can tell things like, every time someone fills out a form on your site, you send them an email. Or whenever you create a new row in a spreadsheet, it creates a trello project to track.

There are tons of use cases where Zapier can save you time by doing things automatically. There is even a limited free version. I was able to create the Schedule Your Strength function absolutely free using Zapier before I ever had a website! I’ve since upgraded my needs to where I pay about $20/month.

 

14. WordPress and Elementor to build your site (free)

To have an online business, you have to have an actual website. With WordPress you can create your own website for free even if you’ve never done it before or don’t know how to code. Elementor is a plugin that makes it even easier. With this combo, you can just use your mouse to drag and drop pieces to create and customize your site from scratch or use one of many themes they have already built in. This might be the most surprising free tool on the list, I can’t believe what you can do with it.

*Disclaimer* now I have paid a developer to create Schedule Your Strength for me. Mostly because I am not a technical person. Since then, I have used the above-combo to create another site on my own so I can vouch that it is totally doable. For anyone creating a blog, a coaching site, an ebook store, etc. This free combo is absolutely sufficient.

 

16. Ubersuggest to Tell How You’ve Done

Remember when I talked about SEO above? If you do things yourself, you still might need some help. That is where Ubersuggest comes in. Once you’ve attempted to make your site flow for SEO, you can log in to Ubersuggest (for free with limits) to see how you’ve done. This tool will analyze your site and tell you where you can make improvements. It also has keyword services, an AI writer and more. In fact it seems like every time I log in, there is something new. I’m sure I will use this more as it gets better and better.

 

So there you go. This is how one non-technical, non-coding, never before online business owner (me) can operate (if you call it that) an online business on a budget. As I said before, if I can use these tools to do it, ANYBODY can, and probably do it better.  All it takes is a little time to try things out and just a little bit of money and you will be on your way to your own online business.  There are some cases where I’m spending money that you may not have to or you may want to spend places where I don’t. The bottom line, is that running an online business/website can be done for around $50/month!

 

I hope this inspires you to give it a try!

 

Jordan

Founder/CEO

Schedule Your Strength