Ciera Design Studio

EXPLORE MY BUSINESS TOOLKIT

I am always looking for better ways to improve with designing, blogging and running my business. I’m asked about what tools I use all the time, so I’ve put together a list of my favorites here. I’m an affiliate of some of these services, I may receive a fee if you purchase but this is done at no cost to the customer and all of these products are things I use or have used and recommend! Enjoy! – Ciera Holzenthal

FEATURED RESOURCES

Legalize your business in 5 minutes with a tailored contract template. Perfect for graphic designers, creative entrepreneurs, course creators, coaches and wedding professionals.

The smartest way to do social media. Save hours every week and increase your engagement up to 10x with zero effort. Get a 30-day free trial through the link below.

The ultimate client management system. From capturing leads on your website, to automatically sending them a proposal that will make them eager to select those big ticket packages, Dubsado has you covered. Get 20% off your first month or year through the link below.

MY FAVORITE BOOKS

SOCIAL MEDIA

Later – My favorite Instagram scheduler – including web uploading, scheduling for later and supports multiple accounts. Get 10 free posts by using this link

Tailwind – My favorite Pinterest scheduler – Get a free month of TailwindPro when you sign up using this link

SmarterQueue – recycle social media posts so you don’t have to keep scheduling the same content over and over again. Get a 30 day free trial when you sign up using this link.

E-COMMERCE

Etsy – Buy and sell handmade or vintage items, art and supplies on the world’s most vibrant handmade marketplace – get 40 free listing by using this link

Shopify – Everything you need to sell. Build your online store with ecommerce software and easily sell in person with the iPad POS. Start a free trial today!

Creative Market – Buy and sell design content like vector patterns, icons, photoshop brushes, fonts and more.

Sellfy – Allows you to sell digital goods via Twitter, Facebook or your own website. You simply upload your product, set the price and can start selling.

STOCK IMAGERY & FONTS

Creative Market
Font Bundles
MyFonts

DESIGN

Adobe Creative Cloud (including InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator)
MyFonts
Pantone Guides

PRINTING

Overnight Prints
Moo
StickerMule

PHOTOGRAPHY

Lightroom
Photoshop
Panasonic Lumix Camera
Fuji X-70 Camera
Fujifilm Instax Mini

BIZ

Google Apps – Get email (with custom URL), cloud storage, collaboration tools and other business apps. Email me for a 20% off coupon code.

ConvertKit – the best money you can spend to grow your audience (flexible opt-in forms, easy landing pages, email series and more)

WD My Cloud – external hard drive

Streak -This is a CRM inside of Gmail and is how I keep my emails, leads and projects organized both for Ciera Design and VenturePOP. I can automatically turn emails into projects and track them down a pipeline as I work on them. I’ll never forget to follow up on a proposal again. But I think my favorite feature is snoozing an email. If you are not ready to act on an email yet but don’t want to leave it just sitting as an unread email, you simply snooze it for as long as you’d like and it gets sent back at the date and time you select.

LastPass – remembers your passwords so that you can focus on the more important things in life

Backblaze Online Backups – secure, offsite and unlimited data backup for your Mac or PC

ACCOUNTING/MONEY

Freshbooks – Small business accounting software, invoicing, time-tracking and more!

Chase Ink Credit Card – the card I use and recommend for my business

WORDPRESS

Genesis Framework – Empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress.

Pretty Darn Cute Designs – The best feminine WordPress themes you ever did see, backed by a stellar support team and recommended by thousands of happy customers.

LEARNING

CreativeLive (watch free courses)
Skillshare
Modern Thrive Workshops
Lynda (get 10 days of free unlimited access)
Blogging With Intention Ebook

INSPIRATION

For Print Only
The Dieline
Typostrate
Interaction Design Foundation