Let’s Talk About the Free Tools You’ll Use in Your Business
This is probably where you’re expecting to get hit with a reality check on paying for tools and services to make this career lucrative, but put your wallet away – there are no start-up costs associated with what you’re about to learn.
Artificial intelligence is going to be your #1 tool of choice. Get signed up with OpenAI so you can use the free version of ChatGPT. Later, if you want to upgrade, you’ll have that opportunity and you can get the Plus version and even make your own personalized GPTs.
You also want to sign up to use Google’s Gemini. These two in conjunction can work well to elevate your online business to something competitive and endeared to consumers.
You’re going to find that you have a personal preference for how you use these for the output that you want. For example, Gemini is fond of lists and bulletpoints, while ChatGPT is more prone to paragraphs.
Both have the potential to brainstorm and outline, and Gemini is better at tapping into real time news and trends for research, competitive or data analysis and other tasks where it needs to access the Internet.
Canva is another free tool you might be using. It’s great at the free level (and you can pair this with free stock images from a variety of sites). You can also use AI in conjunction with Canva by having AI create images to use in Canva.
With Canva, you’ll be able to create images and videos using their built in templates or by designing something from scratch. It has templates built in for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and more.
CamStudio is a freeware video recording and editing tool that can come in handy if you want to make presentations where you’re screen recording and can’t afford the Camtasia paid version.
Free level list builders all usually have a paid upgrade version. Typically, an email autoresponder system has an enticing beginner plan allowing you up to 500 subscribers or a set period of time that you can build your list at no cost.
You’ll want to sign up for one that you eventually want to use with the paid version, so shop around for features carefully so you don’t have to export and import your list later to another platform.
Social media platforms are also going to benefit you as free tools to help you generate a six figure income with the help of AI. You’ll want to get signed up wherever you feel your target audience is active.
That may mean you do some investigations by conducting searches on each platform to see if your niche topic is active there. You can also ask AI for help here. Simply prompt it with something like this: “I’m in the gardening niche and I want to use social media to educate my audience and promote products. What are all of the social media platforms where this niche topic would be a good fit?”
Each of the AI tools that you use will give you different types of results. For example, here is a result from Google’s Gemini:
Pinterest: Great for sharing gardening tutorials, plant guides, and inspirational garden designs. Create boards for different gardening topics and use relevant keywords to get discovered.
And here is what ChatGPT has to say about that same platform:
- Visual Discovery: Pins of gardening ideas, DIY projects, and plant care tips.
- Boards: Curate themed collections (e.g., seasonal gardening, urban gardening).
- Linking: Drive traffic to blog posts or product pages.
Some things, you may not even know about yet. For example, Gemini tells us that we should sign up on a social media platform designed just for gardeners, called Garden Savvy.
If you go look this platform up, you'll find that it even has an affiliate program built into it so that you can not only participate in the community there, but also drive traffic from other platforms there and earn money when people get a subscription to their Hortisketch program.
So it always pays to ask for AI to help you identify the best platforms for you to immerse yourself in because you never know what it will uncover that you may not have known inherently on your own.
