Starting out on your own can be a costly venture. Even more costly when you invest into Apps you hope will help you make your business more productive, make you look more professional and bring you more clients and they are too complicated to use of simply don’t work. So before you invest in Apps that don’t work or are too hard to use have a look at my favs.

In this post I am going to share with you my favorite Apps that have added value to my business and made my life so much easier. The Apps that I am going to share all have amazing free versions, although you can upgrade to the paid versions believe me, the free versions are all you really need.

Monday

Monday is a great Project Management App that helps you take large goals and break it down into smaller projects and color prioritize them This App is one of my favorites! It comes with a number of great features that make it easy to stay on track to complete your tasks. The developers of this App also added the feature to have the app send you notifications when you are reaching a deadline.

Monday also allows for group delegation of tasks making git easy for a team to work on a project and keeping everyone in the loop.

Jotform

With JotForm you can create professional looking forms such as order Forms, E:mail, or Invoices with their online form builder. You can also collect payments through the forms that you build. JotForms are easy to share through any online resource that you use for advertising or accepting orders or bookings.

JotForms allows you to personalize your forms to add your own personal touch or use their vast library of templates. And the form options are limitless!

PayPal

PayPal is universally known and trusted form of payments for your customers. When you add a free PayPal Business account button to your methods of payment that is quick and easy for your customers to purchase your services through PayPal balance, bank account, credit card or Visa Debit card.

#DivaHack Tip. I add this option to invoices that require a deposit for services. When sealing in a date customers will use this option to pay their deposits to secure their dates. The remaining balance can be paid on their members side or at pick up.

Square

If you are looking for mobile convenience for pop-up shops or Markets Square is a great option for that has limitless options for you to collect payments. If you plan on having a stationed space or participate in markets or fairs or even if you are a mobile service this convenient little box is easy to pack in your purse and allow your customers to make payments on the go. If you currently have or plan to have a website you can also add the Square Plugin to your website to add the same convince to your customers.

Canva

Creating your own ads and advertising can be daunting especially with all the technology or trying to learn to use new software like Photoshop. But a great alternative when your starting out is Canva. Canva gives you the ability to make to use its graphic design platform to create engaging social media posts create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content. 

Canva’s easy to use platform is the reason that I also provide my templates in Canva as well. Although there is also a paid version the free version is all you will need.

PicsArt

Canva gives you a great platform to for graphic designs editing your images can be tricky. If you have an image that you need to edit or clean up is PicsArt. PicsArt enables users to take and edit pictures, draw with layers, and share their images with social networks like Facebook and Instagram, Once you have edited your images you will be able to download your image and use it in other apps like Canva

During one of my many branding “Do Overs I used Canva to change the background on my images to what I thought my new look was going to be. I can’t express enough how important it is to take the time to decide on what your brand style should be. You will spend more time trying to update your look later when you realize it not exactly what your wanted. Keep it clean & Keep it simple until your sure. You will save money and you will save time.

MagicEraser

Changing the background of images can be tricky especially if you don;t have PhotoShop or one of the other photo editing programs. But with Magic Eraser changing the background is just a click. Once you have removed the background you you will be able to add, or save it with a transparent background to be used in various applications. This App is amazingly useful if you are changing your color scheme or to give a clean background to images/

OneNote

If your a creative that is always scribbling notes on napkins or a scrap piece of paper or you have a great idea but likely to forget it before you can find a scrap piece of paper OneNote is going to save and organize your ideas. As an added bonus you can also collaborate with other team members or clients to share your ideas.

OneNote allows you to make your notes by voice, finger or Stylus Pen and it will convert it into text later. One of my favorite features is that you can mix media. While taking notes you can record audio notes, insert online videos, and add files. Which comes in handy when you are trying to arrange a new idea with multiple media inputs or if you had the information stored in different media file types.

Powder tart tiramisu sugar plum. Tootsie roll pastry muffin macaroon marzipan biscuit. Chocolate soufflé muffin soufflé fruitcake sugar plum sugar plum chocolate bar gingerbread. Sugar plum soufflé jelly-o.

Marshmallow cake cake powder sesame snaps bonbon pudding topping bear claw. Pie tart candy sweet candy canes sugar plum soufflé lollipop. Marshmallow apple pie tootsie roll.

Powder marzipan halvah. Chocolate bar tootsie roll bonbon carrot cake candy canes. Icing icing marshmallow.

Well. That’s my list of favorites, I hope that these Apps make your life easier and help you add that professional look to your business, There are a lot of paid add on services, but these Apps are amazing in their free form and great for saving costs and getting work done. If you come across other apps that you would like to try out make sure to try out everything that it advertises that it uses, if it doesn’t live up to its expectations or is to hard to figure out it not you its the App. And it;s time to break up with the App.

If you like this post and have a website or thinking about building one be sure to check out my post on Must Have Plugins But in the meantime, have fun Bossin’ Up Divas!