This website contains affiliate links. Some products are gifted by the brand. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. The content on this website was created with the help of AI.
While I share money-making strategies, nothing is "typical", and outcomes are based on each individual. There are no guarantees.
The tools I use to run my six-figure solopreneur business are not exotic or expensive. Most of them have free plans that are sufficient to get started. A few of them have paid plans that become necessary as the business scales. None of them require technical expertise to use. The investment in the right tools is not primarily financial. It is the time required to learn how each one works and build the workflows that connect them.
The complete tool stack with links to every app I use is included in my ebook Side Hustle to Six Figures: The Solopreneur’s Playbook for Turning Gig Work Into a Real Online Business, available at ballenpublishing.com for $27. Here is the breakdown of what each category of tools handles and why each one earns its place in the stack.
The Blog Infrastructure
The blog lives on WordPress.com on my own domain. WordPress is the industry standard for content-based businesses and the ecosystem of plugins, integrations, and tools built around it is unmatched by any other blogging platform. The investment in learning WordPress is a one-time cost that pays indefinitely because the platform does not change in ways that require relearning from scratch.
My affiliate links are managed through ThirstyAffiliates, which cloaks the links, tracks clicks, and allows me to update link destinations from a central dashboard without editing individual posts. When an affiliate program changes its link structure, which happens more often than you would expect, I update the link once in ThirstyAffiliates and every instance of that link across hundreds of posts updates automatically. Without link management, this maintenance would consume hours that are better spent creating new content.
Display advertising runs through a premium ad network. I do not run display advertising through Google AdSense directly because the RPM, or revenue per thousand visitors, from premium networks is significantly higher for the type of content I publish. Getting accepted into a premium network requires meeting minimum traffic thresholds, so this is not a day-one tool. It is a goal that becomes relevant once the blog has established consistent monthly traffic.
The Pinterest Tools
Pinterest keyword research starts with Pinclicks. Pinclicks is the tool that shows actual Pinterest search volume data, which Pinterest itself does not make available in usable form anywhere else. Every pin I create starts with a Pinclicks keyword check to confirm that the phrase I am targeting has real search traffic before I invest time in creating the pin. This one step separates pins that generate consistent traffic from pins that publish to an invisible audience.
Pin images are created in Canva. The Canva Pro subscription is worth the cost specifically for the brand kit, which saves my colors, fonts, and visual assets so I can apply them consistently across every pin without manual setup. I generate background images using Ideogram, an AI image generation tool that produces original lifestyle imagery from text prompts. Original images stand out in Pinterest search results where many accounts are using the same stock photo libraries.
Tailwind handles Pinterest scheduling. Tailwind is a Pinterest-approved scheduling tool that lets me batch-create pins in a single working session and distribute them automatically at optimized times throughout the following weeks. Between scheduling sessions, Pinterest is posting content without any active involvement from me. Consistent Pinterest activity is a strategic requirement for maintaining search distribution, and Tailwind is how I maintain it without daily manual effort.
The Email Tools
MailerLite is my email marketing platform. The free plan covers the first thousand subscribers and basic automation. The paid plan becomes necessary as the list grows and automation sequences become more complex. MailerLite has the right balance of functionality and usability for a solo creator managing email without a dedicated marketing team. The automation builder is visual and intuitive. The deliverability is reliable. The reporting gives me the data I need to understand what is working without requiring a data analyst to interpret it.
The email welcome sequence that runs automatically for every new subscriber is the most leveraged automation in the business. I set it up once. It runs for every subscriber who joins regardless of how they found me or when they subscribed. Each email in the sequence is doing ongoing work to introduce new subscribers to my content, my teaching philosophy, my digital products, and my coaching community. The sequence converts subscribers into buyers continuously without requiring me to write or send anything after the initial setup.
The Digital Product Tools
My ebooks are sold through ballenpublishing.com, which is built on Fourthwall. The platform handles payment processing, digital delivery, and product management without requiring any technical setup beyond the initial product upload and sales page configuration. When someone purchases an ebook, they receive download access immediately and automatically. I never touch the transaction. The platform handles it entirely.
Canva handles ebook design. The same subscription that covers Pinterest pin creation also covers ebook formatting. The master ebook template I built once in Canva is the starting point for every new ebook. The design decisions are already made. The colors, fonts, callout box styles, and chapter header formats are all built into the template. Creating a new ebook design takes a fraction of the time of the first because the structural decisions are inherited from the template rather than made from scratch.
The YouTube and Video Tools
YouTube itself is the primary video platform. I do not pay to host videos. The YouTube channel is free. Monetization through AdSense requires reaching the threshold for the YouTube Partner Program, which requires a minimum number of subscribers and watch hours before AdSense income is available. Working toward that threshold is one of the early goals in a YouTube-based income strategy.
Basic video editing handles everything I need for my content type. I do not use high-end professional editing software because my content is conversational and informational rather than highly produced. The quality that matters for the type of content I create is audio quality and lighting quality, not editing complexity. A decent microphone and natural window light produce professional enough results for a content-focused YouTube channel.
The Analytics and Tracking Tools
I review analytics across several platforms weekly. Google Search Console shows which keywords are driving organic search traffic to the blog and how each post is performing in Google search. Pinterest analytics shows which pins are driving clicks and which boards are performing best. MailerLite analytics shows open rates, click rates, and conversion rates for each email in the welcome sequence and each promotional send. The affiliate program dashboards for each program show clicks, conversions, and commission earnings by product and by time period.
The 30-minute weekly analytics review I do across all of these platforms is the highest-return hour in my week. It tells me exactly where to invest the following week’s content energy. The data removes the guesswork. It points directly to the highest-value activities and away from the lower-value ones. A business that ignores its analytics is a business that optimizes by instinct. A business that reviews its analytics weekly is a business that optimizes by evidence. The difference compounds over time in the same direction as every other compounding dynamic in this business model.
The Complete Tool Stack
The specific tools, the links to each one, the plans I use at each platform, and how they all connect to each other in the workflow I run every week are all documented in my ebook Side Hustle to Six Figures: The Solopreneur’s Playbook for Turning Gig Work Into a Real Online Business. It is $27 at ballenpublishing.com. The tools do not build the business. But having the right tools makes building the business significantly more efficient and significantly more sustainable without a team.
