Scheduling

• Later.com – comes highly recommended by my content strategy expert friend Rebecca Van Damm. Look for their Starter plan – it’s not on the storefront and is much cheaper than the Growth plan. And it should be waaay enoughfor a solopreneur running 1 Brand: https://app.later.com/plans/
• AppSumo.com – Now this is not a scheduling platform, but a platform where you can buy lifetime licences for startup products, and social media scheduling platforms often come up! You can get a access to upcoming but fully functioning platforms for 40-200$ onetime fee! not monthly!

Ads:

In my experience the best course on LinkedIn and Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) out there was created by my friend George Kao – Comes Highly recommended by me!

• LinkedIn Marketing and Ads for Solopreneurs – by George Kao
• Facebook Marketing and Ads – by George Kao

My Clients had positive experiences with the following ones too

coming soon… Feel free to add yours in the comments and I’ll add them here

More details soon but for the time being:

Easiest website platforms

• Squarespace.com – You can’t find anything simpler out there that looks also gorgeous. Even with 0 tech skills you can build great websites! This company used to su_k – And for example, getting a refund is still a tedious email process, BUT their new website editor is top of the industry! And you can get the basics for an affordable rate – less than what you would typically spend on a wordpress website!

Webhosts

• FastComet.com – My go to webhosting company I’ve been with for nearly 10 years now. They shine where others fail – transparent pricing, fast servers, and WORLD CLASS support – they are happy to solve problems for you that even generally should not be their work to do, without expecting you to understand tech jargon!
• NameSilo.com – I did not want to believe how cheap this host is – they have a quite outdated dashboard but the services they provide are fast! And you basically can’t beat their prices.
• SiteGround.com – this has the most user friendly dashboard.

Selfhosted Website Engines

IMPORTANT: I DO NOT RECOMMEND THESE TO TRUE SOLO BUSINESSES – LEARNING, PROBLEMSOLVING, BACKING UP, DESIGN ALTERING, UPDATING, HUNTING FOR PLUGINS, AND TWEAKING THESE WILL TAKE AWAY TOO MUCH OF YOUR PRECIOUS TIME – PLEASE CONSIDER SQUARESPACE!

 But if you really HAVE TO, here are my recommendations:

• SitePad – Annoyed by the fact that everything is a workaround in WordPress? SitePad takes what’s good in wordpress, leaves what’s awful combines it with more awesome drag and drop builder tools. Everything is in there that you’d need to build a website, and it’s easier and faster(!) than wordpress! This will run only on hosts that have Softaculous! Ask your hosting provider about it, or use FastComet.com they already have this pre-installed!
• WordPress visual builder themes I recommend:
  • Beaver Builder – I was unaware of this for a long time, but this is an awesome one! Sure it has some quirks, but it’s still faster and easier than Divi!
  • Divi – I used to love divi, now I’m less and less fan of it, but it is still the industry leading one with great features! Make sure you sign up for a divi-optimized host, otherwise it might run really slowly. Also you can get a lifetime license, which is rarely an option with other engines! I know first-hand that NamesPro.com has a plan where Divi is just blazing fast! And Divi’s website has some recommendations and their own offer for this solution!

My Clients had positive experiences with the following ones too

coming soon… Feel free to add yours in the comments and I’ll add them here

Other notes

Why it’s important to update your WordPress site:

I know it is annoying to update WordPress and its plugins all the time 😅 but not updating really provides vulnerability. Once when I started managing a WordPress website from a client who has not updated it for a looooong time, in a short time we realized it was hacked! after cleaning the server, and did the update the vulnerability went away.

My Social media scheduling and Ads Recommendation

Scheduling

• Later.com – comes highly recommended by my content strategy expert friend Rebecca Van Damm. Look for their Starter plan – it’s not on the storefront and is much cheaper than the Growth plan. And it should be waaay enoughfor a solopreneur running 1 Brand: https://app.later.com/plans/
• AppSumo.com – Now this is not a scheduling platform, but a platform where you can buy lifetime licences for startup products, and social media scheduling platforms often come up! You can get a access to upcoming but fully functioning platforms for 40-200$ onetime fee! not monthly!

Ads:

In my experience the best course on LinkedIn and Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) out there was created by my friend George Kao – Comes Highly recommended by me!

• LinkedIn Marketing and Ads for Solopreneurs – by George Kao
• Facebook Marketing and Ads – by George Kao

My Clients had positive experiences with the following ones too

coming soon… Feel free to add yours in the comments and I’ll add them here

Introwise.com – My favorite! For design and simplicity, and for also including video meetings, and client notes! The free plan is very generous! This is the one I use – although their paid plans – Yes it’s an affiliate link because I’m also friends with them 🙂

SimplyMeet.me – a bit complicated but the free version is so generous, you’ll probably never need more! (HIPAA compliance and some customizations might worth the monthly subscription too)

My opinion on other
 ferquently mentioned platforms

Coming soon… but here are some notes for the time…

Tidycal.com – Lifetime deal, no subscription – By AppSumo

WithMoxie.com – Awesome CRM and business management platform with built in scheduler!

Platforms that were really not created for solopreneurs:

My Clients had positive experiences with the following ones too

coming soon… Feel free to add yours in the comments and I’ll add them here

Coming soon…

My advice on video and audio creation

I’ve been a filmmaker for 15+ years and worked on some high-end shows (like the 2021 movie Dune) as well as creating my own projects. So I deeply know both high-end and low-budget media creation tools and best practices. (My IMDb link)

After spending a lot of time on using top-tier professional and consumer video editing products, I must say – there is no such thing as super-easy video editing.

These programs have too many features or too few, these apps break with your unsaved progress, your video files might not be compatible with them, or just they are too large to handle by simple programs. And I’m just scratching the surface there.

Now it IS possible to learn simpler tools but it will take you a lot of time and effort.

1. First think in creating your videos and podcasts without the need of editing. My friend George Kao has two awesome courses on that:
   1. Authentic Video Creation Course – by George Kao
   2. Simple Podcast Creation Course – by George Kao
2. If you have to do small edits, consider outsourcing the task. There are good editors on fiverr.com or you can hire me for both simple tasks or complex projects.
3. Only on as the third option should you think about editing your own videos. Resources to help you do that will come here below soon. 👇

Recommendations

More to come later but for now:

Recording: 

• Zoom Clips – Zoom has a feature now where you can record yourself through your webcan without having to launch a meeting to do that. The quality is good, but it’s in beta as of 08.23.2023 – here are some how-to notes on it
• Iriun or iVCam – these apps make your phone into a webcam. Our phones have sooo much better cameras than any webcam under $300 why would you spend that money if you can buy lifetime licenses for both of these apps for about $10-20?! Remember to use an USB cable and not wi-fi (actually turn off wifi or put your phone in plane-mode) and you’ll have a beautiful and stable webcam signal. I only recommend this to tech savvy people though! As things caaaan go wrong 😀 This is also a good use for your old phones! So it’s a super sustainable solution! =)

General note on cameras: You can spend on an expensive camera if you’d like to but phones and webcams today are quite good. Organizing your background and creating a nice lighting for both your face and your background is much more important than buying a camera for 1000s of $-s. I’ll have educational material up soon about the lighting and background topic.

Consumer editors:

Video:

• Descript – Editing by Text! If you don’t want to learn all the nuts and bolts of classic video editing, this app lets you edit the text transcript of your video, and the video editing is done for you by that. So you just “edit a text doc” and the video editing magically happens. It sure does have a learning curve, but the platform offers built in awesome tutorials!
• Kapwing – it’s a bit clunky, but it has simpler features and some good resizing and captioning features for a fair monthly subscription price.
• Filmora – If you are looking for a semi-professional perpetual licence (so no monthly fees) editor, this is the go-to editor for many creators.
• ShotCut – free and fairly easy to use, I’ll have educational material uploaded about this one soon.
• iMovie – if you own a mac, this built in app can do a lot for you. I’ll have educational material uploaded about this one.

Audio:

• Audacity – the go-to free audio editor. It’s not too visually appealing, but it has decent features. It has a some learning-curve.
• Garage Band – if you are on a Mac or iPad this can be waaay more than enough for a solopreneur’s creation needs
• iZotope RX Elements – Hard to beat – top of the industry audio repair standalone-app and plugins! The Essentials suite is around $120 for a lifetime licence, and they have ridiculous (above 50%) sales each black-friday if you want to save more! I bought mine at 70% off a few years ago and ever since I can’t publish video/audio without cleaning up the audio tracks with these first! Make sure to pick the essentials package! the professional suite is priced for studios! 🙂 It does have a learning curve, but it’s not too horrible if you have been playing with audio already. It comes with a standalone app and the same tools as plugins for your video editing tools! 

Professional editors:

• DaVinci Resolve – Free and hollywood grade editor, effect and colorgrading tool. Wow you might say – well… it comes with a skyscraper steep learning curve, but it sure is an amazing tool! I’ve been using it for 10 years, and I’m loving it. It’s getting better each year, and yes, a huge amount of hollywood movies you’ve seen used this app in their workflow.
• Premiere Pro – I’ve been using this sort-of industry standard tool for 15 years. And I must say… I hate it 😀 It’s good, but it is super buggy, and is just getting buggier as it’s getting more advanced – I also don’t like the subscription model Adobe the company behind it is using. You can only subscribe for a minimum of 1 year.

My Clients had positive experiences with the following ones too

coming soon… Feel free to add yours in the comments and I’ll add them here

Webhosts

• FastComet.com – My go to webhosting company I’ve been with for nearly 10 years now. They shine where others fail – transparent pricing, fast servers, and WORLD CLASS support – they are happy to solve problems for you that even generally should not be their work to do, without expecting you to understand tech jargon!
• NameSilo.com – I did not want to believe how cheap this host is – they have a quite outdated dashboard but the services they provide are fast! And you basically can’t beat their prices.
• SiteGround.com – this has the most user friendly dashboard.

Selfhosted Website Engines

• SitePad – Annoyed by the fact that everything is a workaround in WordPress? SitePad takes what’s good in wordpress, leaves what’s awful combines it with more awesome drag and drop builder tools. Everything is in there that you’d need to build a website, and it’s easier and faster(!) than wordpress! This will run only on hosts that have Softaculous! Ask your hosting provider about it, or use FastComet.com they already have this pre-installed!
• WordPress visual builder themes I recommend:
  • Beaver Builder – I was unaware of this for a long time, but this is an awesome one! Sure it has some quirks, but it’s still faster and easier than Divi!
  • Divi – I used to love divi, now I’m less and less fan of it, but it is still the industry leading one with great features! Make sure you sign up for a divi-optimized host, otherwise it might run really slowly. Also you can get a lifetime license, which is rarely an option with other engines! I know first-hand that NamesPro.com has a plan where Divi is just blazing fast! And Divi’s website has some recommendations and their own offer for this solution!

My Clients had positive experiences with the following ones too

coming soon… Feel free to add yours in the comments and I’ll add them here