ALL THE TOOLS I USE AS A FULL TIME CONTENT CREATOR
BTS OF INFLUENCER LIFE
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BTS OF INFLUENCER LIFE 📲
It’s me, hi! 🙋🏼♀️ I’ve officially been self employed for 4 years and I’ve learned a LOT along the way. Over the past two years I have doubled down on content creation in an effort to make influencing a sustainable, full time career.
Let me just get it out of the way - I cannot stand the word influencer. It’s cringe, makes me feel icky and is not a job title that makes me feel proud. I typically use the word content creator because I feel like it acknowledges my creativity and focuses less on “influencing others”. While I’m not oblivious to the fact that inherently social media content influences people, my overarching goal is to help others feel more confident and happy in life.
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk specifics. 🤪 If you’re new - I do my very best to gate keep as little as possible. I’ve never understood why transparency in the work force is lacking (especially for self employed people) so consider this me pulling back the curtain on the BTS of my business.
If you want to learn more about how I got here or how I make money as a content creator in 2024 - this blog would be a perfect place to start!
In this post I am laying out all the tools/programs/applications that I utilize almost every day as a content creator. I’ve experimented with countless programs, systems and processes and these are the ones that stuck! So without further ado, let’s get right into it. ⬇️
Monday is my lifeline. I simply could not function without Monday and I’m SO grateful for it. If you’re unfamiliar, Monday is a task management system that has endless capabilities. I consider it a “choose your own adventure” platform because you can keep it bare bones or get really fancy with it. Every aspect of my business lives within Monday and it’s what my team and I use all day, every day to keep track of all things Reagan Baylee.
Some things I use Monday for:
Collaborations - Tracking content delivery and payment dates, storing briefs + contracts
Outreach - Organizing who I have contacted, their information, last point of contact and status updates
Content - Track where, when and what content has been reposted and to what platforms
Finances - List my recurring business expenses to get a snapshot of my month
Podcast - Organize episodes, assets, content + show notes
SOP’s - Documents for standard operating procedures, training documents, employment tools
Time Tracking - Monday tracks how long my team members spend working
I recommend poking around when it comes to task management systems. I have tried several (Notion, Trello, Click Up) and I found Monday to be the one that resonated with me most. See a screenshot below of an example of one of my Monday boards that my team uses to repost my content to other platforms.
I previously hosted my website on Wix (back in the day) and have been using Squarespace for several years now. I find it to be extremely user friendly and due to it’s popularity it integrates with tons of applications/websites. I haven’t run into many limitations with Squarespace and they have added a lot of new enhancements to the customization features on their web pages which is a huge plus!
I do not use their email services, but I do enjoy the backend for the “shop” portion of my website. It is easy to organize my products and refund orders when necessary.
Need I say more? My team and I have a zillion channels on slack - we break down all of our different areas of focus into different chats to stay as organized as possible. While it’s possible for us to keep all communication within Monday I like the ability to have “on demand” conversations via Slack.
Another obvious one and arguably my most used across 4 years of being a content creator. I’m kind of confused how we functioned or designed literally anything before Canva? LOL microsoft word girlies rise!! I design pretty much everything you see from me in Canva.
Some examples include:
Pinterest Pins
Podcast Cover Art
Posts for Social Media
IG Highlight Covers
Media Kit
Email Signature
My favorite Canva feature is the Branding Kits. You can upload your brand logos, fonts and hex colors to make designing 10x easier and more cohesive. See some of the Swiftie School posts I’ve been working on below!
I recently made the switch to Stripe for generating my invoices. I was particularly sold when I saw how seamless the payment pages were for clients. I also use Stripe for collecting payments on my website so it felt like a natural migration from the platform I used before which was Harvest. See the image for an example of how the invoices payment pages appear for clients you may be invoicing. They are completely customizable and fool proof. Sold!
I don’t feel like PayPal needs much explaining, but I use it! I find SO many brands send payment for collaborations via PayPal so a lot of my payment are sent that way. It gets the job done!
Another one that is new to me but I’m already obsessed! I recently migrated my podcast from Buzzsprout to Spotify for Podcasters. One of the main drivers of this was that if or when you host your podcast directly on Spotify you have the ability to upload videos directly to Spotify. I already upload them to YouTube but I figured this would be one less click for my audience.
Secondly, I heard from several other creators that there are monetization opportunities available via the platform that I was curious to test out. The no brainer is that nearly 70% of my audience streams my podcast via Spotify so it felt like an easy decision.
A feature I really enjoy is the ability to make your episodes interactive with Q&A and Polls on episode pages within Spotify. I included an image showing you what that looks like on my back end below!
Collecting tax on my merch sales gives me anxiety but I found this plug-in that has made life so much easier! It automatically calculates and collects sales tax on the necessary transactions. I haven’t used it for a full year yet but it’s my understanding that it will also generate a report I can simply send over to my accountant for tax season. It seamlessly integrates with Squarespace and was super easy to set up!
I use Fiverr in two ways - both very different. The first is for personal use, where I have my own listing for UGC content where potential customers can reach out and hire me to create content for them. I made over $10K doing UGC for clients off of Fiverr in 2023 - big score!
On the flip side, I also use Fiverr to hire people to assist with tasks I need completed. I have found some really incredible people through Fiverr and now one of those people do around 20 hours a week for me!!
I included a screenshot of a conversation I had with someone recently who hired me to make a 15 second UGC video for them. My biggest tip for Fiverr: be extremely responsive and wait 2-4 months for any real traction to pick up!
I wasn’t sure what to call it, but I use so many of the tools offered through the Google Workspace. While I could store all of my files within Monday, I find it easier to deliver content to brands via Google Drive. I also use Google Domains for purchasing my website domain as well as customizing my gmail - for example hello@reaganbaylee.com. I find the minimal storage in Google Drive to be annoying, but what are you going to do.
I resisted the urge to create a Patreon for a while as I was hesistant to add another platform to my plate. To my surprise, my audience was really receptive and I have been really enjoying the simplicity and ease of use. I offer three membership tiers and am excited to utilize the annual membership feature once I hit 3 months of using the platform. Below I have included an image of the tiers I currently am able to offer through Patreon.
Maybe I should stop calling everything in this post my lifeline because I genuinely could not make content without CapCut. I film and edit EVERY SINGLE VIDEO within the app (with the exception of sometimes adding text overlays within IG/TT). I love their green screen feature and find quality is never compromised when filming or exporting. It has made editing a breeze!
I don’t want to spend a ton of time creating newsletters and after using Mailchimp for a client I felt like it was a great fit for me. If you’re looking for expanded capabilities when it comes to custom coding/design or massive subscriber lists I would recommend Klaviyo, but Mailchimp gets the job done for me. I find the analytics + reporting to be really easily digestible and that’s enough for me!
I included an image of the editor tools below!
If you’re an aspiring podcaster, Riverside is the BEST. I record all of my episodes on here and when I tell you it could not be more seamless, I mean it. I can simply invite guests to my “studio” and it also has a ton of AI tools such as generating clips for social media, creating an episode transcript etc.
I personally don’t use the Riverside editing tools, but I have played around with them and they seem like a beginner friendly way to edit your episodes! All of my episodes are stored within Riverside and it’s super simple for my editor to pull the audio/video files. Below I included an image of what the episode storage looks like on my end.
I know that may seem like a lot, but I’ve really been able to scale back on the number of apps and subscriptions thanks to using Monday (not sponsored but I wouldn’t mind if it was 🤣). I would love to hear your favorite tools or any questions you may have in the comments section below. I’m an open book!
As always, thanks for being here. Wishing you a fantastic day - you deserve it!
XOXOX
Reagan Baylee 🩷
