There is an overwhelming choice of domain registration companies out there and prices can wildly vary...

Look out for the ones that lure you in with a free or cheap domain for a year and then put the price up in year 2.

However - it is very easy to move your domain so if you're being over-charged you are not stuck with that provider, you can easily move somewhere cheaper. Drop us an email if you want some advice about this!

I recommend Purely Website* because they are a UK company, their support is good and their prices are definitely on the lower side. For example: a .co.uk or .uk domain is £5+VAT for a year and .com is £13+VAT. Their renewal price is the same so there are no nasty surprises.

It is strongly recommended to have a business email (e.g. [email protected]).

Sometimes you can get an email address with your domain, depending on where your website is hosted you may also get a free email address with your hosting.

But what if you haven't yet got a website but want to start email marketing?

If you are a Microsoft kind of person then you might want to get your email via Office 365 (this is often an add-on when you buy your domain from places such as Go Daddy).

Personally, I am a Google kind of girl - so I always recommend getting an email address from Google Workspace*. One of the things I love about Google is you can set up alias email addreses (e.g. my main email address is [email protected] but I also have hello@ info@ and many others - all of which come into my main inbox!)

*I have a 10% discount code which provides 10% off the first year of either the Google Workspace Business Starter plan or the Google Workspace Business Standard plan. Drop me an email if you'd like the code.

Unless you are using a system with an integrated email system, you will need an Email Marketing system. There are lots to choose from that you may have heard of such as MailChimp or Active Campaign but my go to recommendation for getting started if all you want is email marketing is:

MailerLite* - this is a great way to get started for free and you only start to pay as your subscriber numbers/numbers of emails sent increases and integrates well with other systems. You can create landing pages and forms and set up workflows as well as send email campaigns.

If you think you will soon want to start selling products, then i would consider starting out with a system that can also do this - such as Donato where you can set up a shop, sales funnels/cart pages and sell courses and memberships.

The systems I have most experience with are Kartra, New Zenler* and Go High Level systems - including my own platform Donato (see all-in-one systems for more info). I also have experience of working with the ThriveCart* Learn platform plus I have worked with clients who use Membervault,

In addition, there are a number of different options out there to host your course, including Kajabi, Teachable, Thinkific, Podia. If you use WordPress for your website, you can use paid plugins to build your course platform - two popular and well known ones are LearnDash or MemberPress.

Whatever system you use, you will need to use a payment processer. The most well known ones are PayPal or Stripe.

Many systems will enable you to take payment using either a Stripe or PayPal integration (or both).

A really good stand alone cart system is ThriveCart*. I really rate this system – it is easy to use and it is more than just a checkout – and it does more complex things such as Bump Offers and Upsells really well (these can also be done in many other systems, including Donato).  ThriveCart also has a really good Affiliate option which is easy to set up

I use Canva Pro* to create graphics and to create professional branded documents, for example a “freebie” or an e-book.

You don’t need the Pro version as there is a lot you can do on the free version – however upgrading to the Pro version has definitely been one of my best investments. This is a tool I could not run my business without!

If you need to record a video presentation, some good options to consider are Zoom and Canva.  On Zoom you can screenshare and deliver a session live to real life people and record the session, or just deliver the session with no participants and record.  Canva is a great way to create a presentation – and then you can also Present and Record from inside Canva to create a video.

I also really like Clideo.com as a way to edit videos. Anything video is really not my zone of genius and I find this system makes it really easy.

Quiz funnels and quizzes as a lead magnet can be incredibly powerful and are an engaging way to get people to sign up to your list qhile also collecting more information about them so you can then tailor what you send them.

For fairly simple quizzes, you don't need necessarily the quiz systems with all the bells and whistles. However - if you want to create more advanced quizzes and produce slick results pages and PDFs then you might want to try systems like ScoreApp or TryInteract. I like Involve.me* and I find it a really easy to use system.All of these you can get started for free so you can try them out and see which you prefer!

You can also create quizzes in Donato - there is a quiz function but this isn't as sophisticated (yet) as some of the above systems, but if you are less bothered about the flashy results page/PDFs then it can work really well for both scored quizzes or quizzes using conditional logic to direct people to different outcomes.

When not building websites on Donato (like this one!) I primarily work in WordPress using the Elementor page builder and host sites on SiteGround*. I also have experience of the Divi page builder on Wordpress, plus I am also reasonably experienced with Wix and support a few clients with Wix sites.

My new favourite tool is Kirmada* which does time tracking/timesheets but also so much more!

If you juggle lots of different clients or projects and use lots of web based applications and - like I used to - suffer from brower tab hell, this system is game changing!

You can create a workspace for each client/project and each time you open a workspace it automatically starts logging time against that client or project. It has a free plan for up to 2 workspaces so you can try it out. Within an hour I had upgraded as I knew how useful having unlimited workspaces would be for me! It is a gamechanger!

I do l0ve a good widget! If I want to something whizzy and clever, my first port of call is to go to my Elfisight Apps* account. I have a subscription all the apps - but if you just want one widget you can do that for free!

Exampes of some of the widgets I have used ElfsightApps widgets for:

The pricing table on my pricing page

The Donato pricing calculator tool

The Announcement bar at the top of my website home page (desktop)

The logo showcase and Google Reviews feed on my home page

The Testimonial block on my testimonial page

To name but a few...!

Ther are absolutely loads of other widgets I have usd - too many to mention! They are all really easy to use and customise and then you can just embed them on your website.

SpreadSimple* is another really fun tool that I have used to create directories, recipies, even a shop! It comes with lots of great templates to start with, you just choose the one that most closely matches what you want to do, then connect it to your own Google Sheet for the data and publish!

I can't currently give any examples of ones I have created as the directories created are all part of paid content (e.g. within a membership) - but you can get an idea of what is possible on the Templates page.

You can get started for free - if you want to be able to connect a custom domain or embed it on your own website, you need to upgrade. It is a really great east to use tool!