Our Comments

When I began to get serious about doing a side hustle, I knew I had to make some changes. And web hosting was one of the first ones to make.

I did a study of speed, performance, customer service, uptime and cost. When you look at the reviews, Bluehost won hands down.

So, I have moved most of my domains and sites here. They have the tools you need and ultimately the price is tough to beat. I am a fan 🙂

Let’s face it, there are a lot of email marketing software available. Every business should be building an email list!  

If you are well along your side hustle journey and into online marketing, you may need something more robust. But if you are just starting out, ConvertKit just works. It isn’t so simple that you will soon outgrow it. And it isn’t so technical that the average side hustler won’t know what to do with it. You won’t be paying until you actually have a viable list. I have used this on other sites I have.

For a long while, bit.ly has been the gold standard for URL shortners. Bit.ly will help you maximize the impact of every link you put out. It has a great dashboard to manage your links and plan campaigns around

They provide a comprehensive solution to help make a solid connection between your content and your audience more powerful.

All you have to do is go to TinyURL.com and follow the instructions to quickly make a custom link that will be shorter and more memorable.

The challenge you may have with bit.ly and TinyURL is that they have been too popular and getting something memorable may already be taken.

If you are using WordPress, Pretty Links if the way to go! Pretty Links is a plug in on your site that enables you to shorten links using your own domain name (as opposed to using tinyurl.com, bit.ly, or any other link shrinking service)!

In addition to creating clean links, Pretty Links tracks each hit on your URL and provides a full, detailed report of where the hit came from, the browser, os and host.

IMHO, forget about Microsoft’s Snipping Tool!

Snagit has it beat hands down. Besides letting you quickly capture a particular region on your screen, or to record a video of what you are seeing, it also will scroll down and capture an entire page.

More importantly, you can tag images and retrieve them easily. It also creates a library that you can go back in time. They have both a Free and purchase version if you want to try it out.

If you aren’t a graphic designer and need a simple application (and it doesn’t get much easier than drag and drop), Canva is something you should look at.

I have used this tool in previous endeavors as my main InstaGram design tool. When you combine the capabilities and the price (as little as $.00), it is tough to beat in creating graphics for your social media, blog posts and even a logo.

If you are going to be a Virtual Assistant, being an expert on Canva definitely has value.

If creating graphics is not your cup of tea, freepik might be a better alternative. It is a mixture of pictures and graphics that you can use for a blog post or your website (if you have a side hustle, you need a website…even a minimal one).

You can get almost all of the graphic pics/clips you need here and it also priced right (free as long as you credit the website on each graphic you use). Currently, the paid version is only $12.00a month if you don’t want to credit freepik. Either way, you are getting graphics to make your business, blog post or other design stand out.

Use Adobe Express as an alternative to Canva when you are wanting to design graphics on your mobile device.

One difference is that you are not limited to create just social graphics and web pages…you can also do short videos! It is free and they have a different set of templates than Canva does.  

What more needs to be said?  Stunning stock photos that are perfect for blogs and websites…all free for commercial use!

For the end-user, Unsplash is a great resource with millions of free images. This vast library of photos is easy to search, browse, download, and use for free, in most cases, even if it’s used to make money from using the images.

There are high quality photos for everyone.They make it easy to both download photos by category, but to also attribute who was so gracious to provide them.

When you need high-end, corporate shots to reflect your skills, you can do a lot worse than NegativeSpace.

You might see some duplicates from other sites (which can be a good thing so you find the right site for you and stick with it as a primary source)

Having the right tool at the right time can make your life significantly easier and more profitable!  Make sure that StockSnap is in your toolbelt.

Hundreds of high resolution images added weekly that are free from copyright restrictions.

This is just what it says…stock video.  So, finding what you need to fit your objective may be a challenge.  But I have found things that were amazing for what I needed, so there you go.

It may not be my first choice, but it may have just what you want or need.

They do their best to make great videos accessible to anyone! Not everything on the site is free, but there should be something in there to get you where you need to be.

They were recently acquired by Fiverr (which you may already be familiar with)

This site offers free stock videos and graphics for use in any project free of charge. They also have music and sounds.

That being said, not everything is free (which is cool…we all want to make money, right?)

* NOTE!

Whether you are creating a presentation or posting on social, you want to make a statement. 

Whether it is a brochure to describe your services, a lead magnet, powerpoint presentation or a website (which really is something you need if not for anything but credibility), you need to come to grips with content alone is not going to set you apart.

People need graphics to “cement your story”. These are currently all free (although some may ask for you to credit the contributor).  Don’t begrudge attributions if you can’t afford to pay at the moment.

Not a bad list…but don’t think this is it!

It’s a comprehensive collection of tools and resource for Virtual Assistants to be sure.  However, keep in mind that we live in a constantly evolving world, especially when it come to the internet.

That’s why it is crucial to revisit this page frequently as we continously test and sicvoer new additions to include here.

Moreover, there might be some tools or resources that you are already using, and if that’s the case, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected]