Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Every Tool I Pay For to Run My Online Business Solo
14
items There's no team here, so every subscription has to justify itself against my actual time and revenue. This is the current stack (publishing, selling, design, analytics) plus honest notes on where I think the money isn't worth it. Written for other so...
Sections
4
Publishing and Building an Audience
Selling and Getting Paid
Making the Work Go Faster
Knowing What's Actually Working
Publishing and Building an Audience
Where the work lives and how people come back to it. The email list is the only asset no algorithm can take from me, and I started mine far too late.
Built for creators selling their own products rather than for e-commerce stores, and the difference shows in how tagging and automation work. I find it far more intuitive than the general-purpose alternatives I tried first. My honest advice: start th...
Kit
Stronger than Kit on growth mechanics — built-in referral programs and an ad network that can monetize a list before you have a product of your own. Weaker on selling your own things. But they are constantly improving and this is the reason why I hav...
beehiiv — The newsletter platform built for growth
This is a platform where I publish almost daily. It pays you for reads and it is also great traffic source for my newsletters. To fully benefit from Medium, you have to be in the membership plan which costs around 10 dollars per month.
Medium
This pick is quite complicated to share. I love the platform and have a newsletter on Substack, but with the latest changes that make it more like a social platform, I have stopped publishing here. However, if you want to start a new newsletter and w...
Substack
Selling and Getting Paid
Turning an audience into revenue without building a store.
This is what I'd use to get a first product live this week and find out whether anyone will actually pay for it. No site build, no setup project, no excuse to keep delaying. Fees are higher, which is what you're paying for the speed. Migrate once you...
Gumroad
Sits underneath most of the above, and I keep it directly for custom checkout links, retainers, and subscriptions. Payment links let me invoice in under two minutes. Nearly everything integrates with it, which makes it the safe foundation.
Stripe
Standard path for me. I have two shops on Etsy, and focusing on selling digital products here. If you want buyer traffic for your products, then Etsy is a good place to start.
Etsy
Making the Work Go Faster
Judged strictly on hours saved per euro, because that's the only budget that matters when you're solo.
Because I have multiple YT channels, and horrible English, then I started to use ElevenLabs to create voiceovers for my videos. What I love is that it gives me ability to clone my own voice, and I can then voice over the script with this voice that i...
ElevenLabs
Handles blog graphics, product mockups, lead magnets, and social templates without design skills I don't have. The brand kit is what actually justifies the paid tier for me — visual consistency across everything, with no decisions to make each time. ...
Canva Pro | Your all-in-one design solution
Content calendar, drafts, product pipeline, and client notes in one workspace, with database views a notes app can't match. The free personal tier has been enough for me indefinitely. One warning from experience: resist building an elaborate system b...
Notion
From the AI coworkers and chatbots I have used, Claude is clear winner. It is better then ChatGPT and Gemini and helps me work faster and more precise.
Claude.ai
Knowing What's Actually Working
In numbers rather than vibes. I ran on vibes for a year and it cost me.
Free, and the only honest source for which queries actually bring people to my work. The report showing impressions without clicks is effectively a ready-made list of posts to rewrite. Set it up on day one, I didn't, and I regret the lost year of dat...
Google Search Console
The free tier gives backlink data and site audits for domains you own, which is enough to find broken links and see who's linking to you. I'd only upgrade to the full suite once keyword research becomes a genuine bottleneck. Until then, this plus Sea...
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: Free SEO Tools to Grow Your Site
If you want to know, what people are looking for on Etsy, Google, YT or Amazon, try this free tool. Good enough for basic research.
Keyword Tool ⚠️ Google Keyword Planner【Search FREE】