Top tools for making, branding, marketing and selling your creative work
Say goodbye to tech confusion, overwhelm and uncertainty once and for all.
Creative work is a lot of things. It’s rewarding. It’s fulfilling. It’s meaningful. It’s valuable. And it’s hard.
Still, our culture has somehow pulled off the incredible feat of romanticizing and devaluing creative work at the same time, contributing to the starving-artist myth and the expectation that all creativity should be free.
My work is dedicated to uplifting, inspiring and centering the creative class — especially its unsung heroes (women, people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community) so they feel empowered to make, brand, market and sell their creative work.
And starting November 11, my business newsletter This Should Help will realize that vision four days a week by reporting on the business, tech and culture stories that impact and influence how we work and live in the new economy.
In the meantime, I know you’ve probably got a few big ideas simmering in that brilliant brain of yours. But if you’re like the creators I’m blessed to talk to on the daily, then you probably feel stuck when it comes to choosing the perfect technology to execute them.
That confusion, overwhelm and uncertainty ends today. Because I’ve rounded up the top tools so you can focus on turning the insights you gain from the newsletter into tangible deliverables for the people who want and need your creativity the most.
Click or tap each link to learn more about the tool or create an account. And as a special bonus: At the bottom of this post, I shared the tech stack that makes producing This Should Help possible in case you’re interested in building your own digital media business or just curious about the inner workings of mine.
Disclaimer: This section includes affiliate links, which means This Should Help may receive a commission if you subscribe to the service. However, you won’t pay any extra costs. Tools are only recommended if I have first-hand experience with and/or a relationship with the folks behind them.
Canva or InDesign
What to use it for: Web and print design
It’s worthwhile to invest ample resources in creating professionally branded and beautifully designed media for your products and promotional materials.
InDesign is the gold standard for graphic designers — but it can feel like a steep learning curve for inexperienced creators. However, Canva is an awesome free alternative for non-designers or penny pinchers.
Printful
What to use it for: Dropshipping
If you want to sell physical products on an e-commerce storefront, but would prefer to outsource inventory and fulfillment, then a drop-shipping service like Printful is a godsend.
Getting started is actually easier than you think: Connect your store to Printful and fill it with your branded products. When a customer completes a purchase, the order is automatically sent to Printful, who prints, packs and ships the item straight to your customer’s doorstep on demand.
Podia
What to use it for: Digital product sales and fulfillment
Online courses and digital downloads allow you to transition from client services to digital products so you can stop trading time for money. Podia provides professional creators with everything they need to develop and sell courses and downloads, including multiple file formats, product bundles, payment plans.
Mighty Networks
What to use it for: Membership subscriptions
We work and live in a world where you can rent or subscribe to virtually everything — housing, groceries, transportation, wardrobe, education, entertainment (my newsletter!) — on-demand and at low costs. Mighty Networks unlocks your ability to sell experiences, relationships and expertise in one place through memberships that include communities and groups, exclusive content, online courses, events and rewards.
Calendly
What to use it for: Appointment scheduling
Imagine all the time you’d get back if you minimized your “work about work” (aka the tasks that keep you busy and make you feel productive without really adding meaningful value to you or your dream customers and superfans).
Appointment scheduling falls into the work about work category. And Calendly helps you schedule meetings and calls without the back-and-forth emails. The app integrates with your calendar and sends reminders emails or texts to invitees so everyone’s on the same page. (If you provide client services, Calendly allows invitees to pay for coaching calls and consultations with a credit card or PayPal.)
Honorable mention: Acuity Scheduling
Stripe / PayPal / Apple Pay / Google Pay
What they’re for: Payment processing
These platforms integrate with several of the aforementioned platforms to make sure
you get paid for the brilliance you bring to the world.
Honorable mention: Venmo, Cash App
Typeform
What to use it for: Data Collection
Typeform lets you create rich surveys, quizzes, event invitations and more with a simple user interface that’s fun to build from so you can design and deliver personalized experiences that make your dream customers and true fans feel seen, heard, acknowledged, surprised and delighted.
Squarespace
What to use it for: Landing pages
Landing pages are where the magic happens on your website. They help you collect contact information on your own platform so you can follow-up with contacts when you have something valuable to share. They help you request and receive feedback so you can gain insights on how to improve your products and marketing. And they help you drive your dream customers to your products and services so they can solve their problems and move forward at work and in life.
There are a ton of landing page builders out there, but This Should Help prefers the simplicity and elegance of Squarespace.
With Squarespace, you don’t have to be a designer to have a site running minutes after you purchase the domain. Speaking of, with Squarespace you can get your domain, website and branded email (michael@bymichaeljones.com, for example) all at once.
And their templates are sleek and come ready-made. All you have to do is plug in your content with the drag-and-drop content editor and you’re good to go. The platform’s Style Editor allows you to easily change colors and typography too.
ConvertKit
What to use it for: Email marketing
The question new professional creators often ask is, “How do I fast-track growth for my small business or side project?” The answer: Prioritize email marketing.
More than four out of every 10 email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email. And for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you’ll earn $43. (In other words, a $100 investment in email marketing will return $4,300.)
Email allows you to bypass the ever-evolving algorithms that tilt the scales in favor of marketers, entrepreneurs and brands who pay for advertising to promote their content and offers. So instead of interrupting them with ads or resorting to gimmicks to stand out in a newsfeed, you can go straight to your tribe when you have something valuable to share.
ConvertKit offers all the features you need to get noticed and paid with your big ideas — including easy-to-embed opt-in forms to collect email addresses on your landing pages, automated emails that help you send the right message to the right person at the right time, and powerful segmentation technology to organize your subscribers by interests, customer journey, purchase history, location, and other data points.
Note: ConvertKit also features a landing page builder if you do not own or prefer not to use a website.
Textiful
What to use it for: Text marketing
If you host or attend a ton of events, what if you could invite someone to opt-in to your email list instead of giving someone your business card or sending them to your Instagram?
You can with Textiful, a tool that allows you to set customized messages and collect contact information from people using texts so you can grow your email list.
And since Textiful syncs with most email service providers — including ConvertKit — you can trigger a campaign to introduce yourself, share your most valuable content or offer a flash promotion to your new contacts without doing any extra work.
Textiful is This Should Help’s secret marketing weapon.
Vimeo
What to use it for: Video marketing
If you’re new to the video-marketing game, then Vimeo is where it’s at. The advanced analytics enable you to track how viewers interact with your videos. Plus calls to action and autoplay help increase engagement. And you’ll love all the ways you can customize your player so your branding is consistent across platforms.
Honorable mention: Wistia
Transistor
What to use it for: Audio marketing
Did you know iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and Stitcher aren’t hosting platforms? They’re podcast players that feature podcast directories. But if you want a podcast to create a meaningful impact, you’ll need to purchase your own hosting for your MP3 files, to generate a valid RSS feed, and show notes.
Honorable mention: Substack
Growsurf
What to use it for: Referral marketing
Referral programs harness the power of word of mouth and turn dream customers and true fans into your own on-the-ground sales force. Growsurf offers unlimited participants and referrals, flexible rewards and branded referral links so you can create compelling refer-a-friend campaigns. Plus, the software is easy to install, mobile friendly and is available with a free plan.
Crowdcast
What to use it for: Webinar marketing
Webinars are an excellent channel to showcase your expertise, create a feeling a community and promote your offerings to the most engaged people in your tribe.
Crowdcast’s webinar platform streams in HD with no delays and features interactive Q&A, chat and polls to spark conversations in real time. And you can extend your webinar’s reach by broadcasting to platforms like Facebook Live, Periscope and YouTube Live.
Honorable mention: Demio
Asana
What to use it for: Work management
Asana helps you get organized, stay on track and hit deadlines so you can turn your creative ideas into products and experiences people pay attention to and pay for.
Zapier
What to use it for: Task automation
There’s nothing more mind-numbing than completing the same ol’ repetitive tasks day in and out. Enter Zapier: a brilliant tool that allows you to intuitively connect the web apps you already use to automate the boring and tedious parts of your job, which frees you up to spend more of your time creating and delivering value to your tribe.
Evernote
What to use it for: Digital note-taking
Evernote allows you to capture and prioritize your ideas, notes, files, photos and voice memos in one place. Digital notebooks are also an awesome place to store research to refer to when you’re developing your products and campaigns.
Bonus! The tools I use to produce This Should Help
For me, less is more when it comes to reporting, writing, editing and publishing a daily newsletter.
Substack
What I use it for: Newsletter publishing and subscription management
I’ve been super skeptical about the sustainability of digital media businesses since I was laid off from my dream magazine job four years ago. The ad-supported revenue model is unviable and building a subscription media business required integrating a suite of tools that weren’t made to play with each other. It was all a headache for me until I discovered Substack.
The platform is was purpose-built to serve professional writers who are serious about publishing paid newsletters and provides me with the following tools:
A native Stripe integration to manage payments and receive money in my bank account
A website built with mobile in mind that looks great and loads fast on any device and in any browser
Analytics that show open rates, website pageviews and subscriber counts
Access to a growing knowledge base of best practices for running a new media business
Substack is ad-free and enables writers to own their contact lists and content, which guarantees and promotes editorial independence and user privacy.
Raindrop
What I use it for: Bookmarking news and research
A big part of my job is to be a sponge for stuff that’s happening in the world. So my workday starts with me reading, watching or listening to as much news as possible. The goal isn’t to cover everything every day — it’s to know what’s going on, process the info and make sense of it.
As I sweep the news, I bookmark and tag any articles, videos or podcasts that interest you or inspires a distinct point of view in Raindrop for future reference when it’s time to select which topics to cover in the newsletter.
It’s fast, unfussy and gives all the links a secure home so I can finally break my terrible tab-hoarding habit.
Simplenote
What I use it for: Digital note-taking
I get story ideas for the newsletter from everywhere — when I’m journaling, exploring the city, talking to friends, sweeping the news — and it’s a fool’s errand for me to attempt to memorize them. So I document them in Simplenote, a minimalist distraction-free plain-text app that meets my low-maintenance note-taking needs.
G Suite
What I use it for: Scheduling, business email and cloud storage
The convenience of having a one-stop-shop with everything I need to run my business is G Suite’s main attraction
Inbox When Ready
What I use it for: Email workflow
Even though email is vital to how we communicate, it isn’t valuable enough to dictate control over your focus and attention.
My default behavior is to ignore any emails that make it hard to generate a reasonable response, are uninteresting or are neutral (nothing favorable or unfavorable would happen if I replied).
Obviously, there are exceptions to this practice. But if you’re honest, most emails generate more emails and/or cause stress. This approach places the responsibility on the sender to convince you that a reply is worthwhile.
I lock my inbox with this Chrome extension when I’m writing the newsletter’s Daily Reader or working on a project that requires uninterrupted concentration. (I can still search for and send emails in Gmail if my inbox is locked).
Freedom
What I use it for: Blocking internet distractions
It’s tempting to browse the Internet when I’m bored, frustrated or exhausted. But those quick checks often turn into long stretches of mindless surfing. Freedom enables me to block distractions across my devices so I can work on what matters to me.
If you have any questions about how to apply the tool to your big idea or how I use the tools in my business, post a comment below or hit me at michael@bymichaeljones.com.