Blogger Resources: Software We Use

blogger resources

if you came here to see what we’re shooting with, check out our post all about that!

We started this blog almost four years ago, which is honestly completely wild because four years ago our lives were legit gay dumpster fires and I’ve got absolutely no clue how we managed to start or maintain a business. But we did! Yaaaas!

Early on, we did a lot of dumb things and wasted a lot of time and money trying to find our routine for blog work, and through it all we’ve learned a lot about what it means to have and maintain a blog. We’ve learned that our lives are actually kind of boring and we don’t love being on camera all that much (probably a surprise, but yeah). We’ve learned that you can expect to wait 60+ days for payment from a corporate partner, which took some getting used to and caused us a ton of stress at first. We’ve learned that there is legit blog-world dramaaaaa and it’s best to avoid it because lol duh.

And we also learned a lot of amazing things—like how it feels to be your own boss in your mid-twenties. And how otherworldly and fantastic it is when you meet someone in person who you only knew online, and they’re just as awesome as you already thought. And that the community of people who are active in this sphere of the internet are sweet and supportive and like, actually read the stuff you write, and listen to you and talk to you. This blog has become a hub for what feels like our community, here and on Instagram, and—wait hold on this isn’t supposed to be sappy Jesus Christ this post is about software.

We’ve also learned a couple things about which tools are the most useful for keeping our business running efficiently, and to our standards. So anyway here are some of the products, programs, and apps that we use on a daily or weekly basis, and we hope it helps you whether you’re new to blog stuff or not :)

Top Apps, Programs, and Services for Bloggers

Squarespace | web hosting, site design, online shop.

We use Squarespace for hosting our website, as well as for our weekly email newsletter. Squarespace makes building an attractive site so so easy, and their new email marketing does the same for newsletters. It’s intuitive, easy to use, and pretty customizable with approximately one million different template options, or something. We have the advanced business plan, which gives us a bunch of extra features including the ability to have a full online shop (-cough- coming soon) and comes out to something like $30/month. They’ve also got more basic plans that start as low as $12/month if you’re not ready to take the full plunge.

Adobe Creative Cloud | photo editing, video editing, mood board creation, contracts.

We have the full “all apps” Adobe Creative Cloud package which gives us access to all of the Adobe products, but most importantly Lightroom, Photoshop, Premiere, and the Adobe Acrobat PDF reader. We use Lightroom to edit all of our photos, Photoshop to put together interior design mood boards, Premiere for editing videos, and Adobe Acrobat (PDF reader) to download and read contracts, put together proposals and media kits, etc. The suite has apps that you can use on your phone, which is fantastic for on-the-go workers like us. Also, it’s very expensive, but we pay monthly which makes it less awful.

Inuit QuickBooks Online | accounting, invoicing.

Intuit QuickBooks Online is an invoicing and accounting system that connects to your business bank account. It helps track your expenses, send clients invoices, and keeps everything in check finance-wise for a business big or small. We have our accountant connected to our Quickbooks to help make sure everything is going smoothly. It’s really easy to mess up QuickBooks, so we really really recommend shelling out the $400 or so upfront for the QuickBooks web class. It will save you money and time later on.

Snapseed | photo editing app.

Snapseed is an easy-to-use app. While we typically use Lightroom, if you need to do a few quick edits like small spot corrections, exposure changes, or temperature adjustments, Snapseed is your best bet.

Unum | instagram post planning.

We use Unum to plan out our Instagram posts, to make sure that photos look good next to each other on our feed, and fit within our overall theme. It gives you a grid of your Instagram feed, and then you can add photos from your phone that you haven’t posted yet to make sure it fits, or to see if you need to edit it differently. We love this app.

Unfold | instagram story editing App.

We don’t put that much work into our Instagram stories, but whenever we take a trip or have a real linear story to tell, we use Unfold to organize it all. It has different layouts and lets you organize your story content into frames that you then save all at once to upload to your story. Loves it!

Hope you’ve found this helpful! And as always, we’re available to chit chat via e-mail at hey@probablythis.com <3

xoxo Beau & Matt


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