The setup we would rebuild from scratch tomorrow — in the order you actually need it, with the ones you can skip clearly marked.
Some links on this page earn us a commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. It never affects which tools make the list or what we say about them. Full disclosure
Before anything else: a site on a domain that is yours, so the work compounds instead of renting space on someone else’s platform.
From a few $ a month
Somewhere to put the site you own. Cheap enough that a first project does not need to justify itself, fast enough that you will not be migrating in six months.
~$10–15 a year
A website you control is the centre of your content and your clearest long-term asset. Pick a platform you can update without friction.
Traffic you do not convert is traffic you lose. These three cover being found, looking credible, and keeping the reader.
Free to 10k subscribers
An email platform built around newsletters, forms and landing pages. The list is the one audience nobody can take away from you.
Cheapest serious option
Keyword research without an enterprise price tag. Its job is to stop you writing guides nobody is looking for.
Free tier is enough to start
A practical place to make article graphics, social assets and simple lead magnets without a design degree.
Only once people are already reading. Both of these are overkill on day one and exactly right on day ninety.
Monthly, trial available
When the thing you are selling needs a real checkout, tax handling and a payment processor you do not have to maintain.
Flat monthly fee
Community, course and payments together. Worth it when people are already asking you questions and you keep answering the same ones.
The unglamorous layer that decides whether this is a business or a second job.
Free core plugin
Keeps every affiliate link in one place behind a tidy URL, so changing a partner later is one edit instead of fifty.
Free for personal use
A flexible workspace for collecting ideas, planning content, and keeping a small project visible.
Free CRM tier
A free CRM for when you are tracking actual people and deals — sponsors, clients, partnerships — rather than just subscribers.
Three situations, three next steps. Find yours and ignore the rest.
If you are starting. One promise, one audience, one email sign-up. Resist adding a complicated tech stack before you have readers.
If you have readers. Give people a useful reason to join, then send a consistent note that feels worth opening.
If you are growing. Create templates for research, article outlines, disclosures, and weekly review so you can spend more energy on useful ideas.
Some links on this page are affiliate links, and each one says so directly underneath it. If you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The links that pay us nothing are labelled too, so you can tell the difference at a glance.
What does not change: a tool only appears here if we can explain who it helps, where it falls short, and why it belongs on the list. We have never added one because of its commission, and where we say “we use this”, it is running on this site right now.