As a creative entrepreneur on a budget, I’ve had to scour the Internet for affordable and professional-looking resources. I got it wrong several times before I found a path to brand building I could actually afford and maintain. I tried hiring expensive graphic and web designers, I took the courses I kept seeing advertisements for online, joined all the Facebook groups, and bought nearly every discounted branding and training package I came across.

I spent entirely too much money for assets that weren’t unique, modifiable, or even fitting of my brand.

I’m not a photographer, definitely not a graphic designer (dropped that class in college—regretting it now.), and I’m certainly not particularly savvy when it comes to saving a buck. However, as I find myself at a crossroads in my publishing career—I’m also a full-time high school English teacher, so it’s make or break time—I’ve learned a handful of tips and tricks for DIYers in a similar position as myself.

Whether you’re on a tight budget or just determined to learn for yourself, there are many resources (some free and others that won’t break the bank) available if you know where to find them. In order to save you the headache, let’s be honest, the MIGRAINE, of army crawling through the sticky world wide web, I’ve included all of the valuable information I’ve gathered thus far on my creative journey.

Here goes. Get ready to bookmark some websites or open your notes app to copy and paste.

If your business is something OTHER than graphic or web design and you can afford to hire a professional graphics/web designer/photographer, do it. As long as you do your research (check with their former and current clients, always look through their portfolios, and never, ever pay in full up front), it will be worth the time saved that you can work on creating your actual product. As a writer who is currently unable to afford these services, I have to be conservative about how I split my time and funds between building my online brand presence and writing/producing actual books. I have done some research, though, for when the day comes that I can contract this out and here are my recs:

WEB DESIGN: Hello You, Carrie Loves Design —> Her resources page is FANTASTIC. I only link the ones I’ve actually used, but she has a much more extensive list for images, color schemes, fonts, and more. Check it out HERE. Currently I use Squarespace for my website and it’s $32/monthly for a site with a commerce shop.

GRAPHICS/STYLED STOCK PHOTOS: There are multiple levels of stock photography available online. Free, Standard, and Premium. Even if your budget is small, plan to include a few premium photos in your feed. Not ready to pay for a membership? CreativeMarket sells premium photos in bundles and individually.

HauteStock.co ($99/quarterly or $299/annually), The Image Apothecary (Regina Wamba’s styled stock mock-ups and model photos are GORGEOUS and unparalleled), StyledStockSociety.com ($75/quarterly, $250/annulally, or $495 for a lifetime membership).

Define the parameters of your brand BEFORE you purchase anything, Your brand is a billboard for your business so make it pretty and make it cohesive across social media platforms. Design a mission statement and stick to it. With each aspect you create, ask yourself if it adheres to your mission. Elements to decide on before you go spending your hard earned cash and posting all willy nilly all over the place:

*Mission Statement: What is your purpose? What do you offer your clients/customers?

Here is mine for example: Caisey Quinn: where HEAT and HEART meet. Angst-filled, emotionally charged love stories for the romantic with a dirty mind…

*Color Palette: Design Seeds is great and Pinterest has a ton of color palette pins as well.

*Fonts: Looking for freebies? Check Adobe’s font kit and Google fonts! CreativeMarket is a great place to find unique and affordable fonts, but ALWAYS check the creator’s website for freebies or discounts before paying just in case! Every little bit helps!

High resolution professional quality graphics do not have to cost a fortune. I currently pay $29/month for 10 images from Shutterstock, but if your budget is a little higher, BigStock has a $99/month unlimited package as well. In addition to the aforementioned sites, here are a few other places where you can find free and/or reasonably priced graphics:

Her Creative Studio $127/bi-annually or $227/annually

Girl Boss Stock So many gorgeous feminine flat lays to choose from! But beyond that, they have a ton of influencer-style images to choose from and the best part? Affordable scene creator packages so you can make your own unique flat lays!

Ivory Mix: So so many wonderful images and advice here! Signing up for the newsletter gets you access to 500 free images, and yes, they’re gorgeous, on trend, and professional AF.

Kate Max Stock: A pay-per-photo shop as well as monthly free photos if you sign up for her mailing list. You can find her work on CreativeMarket as well.

Stocksy: A highly curated collection of royalty-free stock photography and video footage that is beautiful, distinctive, and highly usable.

Unsplash: Unsplash offers FREE photos for you to download that have been gifted by a generous community of talented photographers.

Kaboom Pics: Another FREE stock photography site full of gorgeous graphics.

Pretty much everything you can buy, you can create. After seeing the cost of pre-made Instagram puzzles, I made my own. Seriously. If I can do it, anyone can. Juniper Oats has a fantastic FREE template for creating Instagram puzzles on Adobe Illustrator. Speaking of Ai, for $29/month you can get access to Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, and all of the Adobe CC applications. Totally worth it. You have to grab it on sale or have a student email account, otherwise it will be $99/month, but sales are often and well-advertised. I’ll try to post anytime I see one come around! Not ready to spend the $$ or tackle learning the basics of Photoshop, Canva is free, had tons of free and affordable images, templates, fonts, and most templates available for PS are available on Canva!

Put your name/handle/logo/watermark or whatever identifying element you choose on EVERYTHING—even if it’s just a simple little Word Swag quote. Trust me. It was only after I saw things I’d made getting shared all over Instagram that I realized the vast number of opportunities I’d missed by not having my @ or website address on them. Don’t be like me. Be smart. Speaking of…

Work smarter, not harder. Sounds simple enough but no one ever explains in depth WTF this actually means. So I’ll tell you. It means, in literal terms, recycle your resources. Buy images in bulk and edit each one for multiple platform uses. The image I created with my scene designer kit (much cheaper in the long-run than purchasing one or two flat lays), can be modified to be a blog post cover, a Pinterest Pin, an Instagram post, a FB post, as well as both IG and FB story items. Not only that, but you can re-crop, rearrange, and re-use.

My favorite scheduling/planning apps to help you with your IG feed and social media posting:

Planoly

Preview

Peak social posting times are really a thing. Nothing will piss you off more than working for hours to create the perfect promo post only for it to get two likes. Then you’ll post a random meme on impulse and get 167 likes. What the actual hell, right? It’s very likely an issue with the timing of your post as well as your own engagement with it. Always respond to anyone who comments. Always. And not just with an emoji, my friend. If you don’t engage, no one else will either. Oberlo has an awesome cheat sheet with infographics and specific times. I can’t attest to them all, but I’ve seen definite improvement on IG since posting during peak times.

It’s a learning process—neither Rome nor Michael Kors’ website were built in a day. Pace yourself. Decide how much actual time per week you’re going to spend on this aspect of brand building. This time allotment should be directly correlated with your income earnings. For instance, my website doesn’t see a ton of traffic, so it only gets about a fourth of my time on average. If that picks up as I improve my online store and Pinterest links, I’ll increase accordingly.

Do not, I repeat, do not, let yourself get sucked into the black hole of perusing random fonts, images, etc without setting some type of timer as a cut off! It happens to the best of us, but remember, time is money.

And lastly, but definitely not least…

Your brand should look like you. A consistent aesthetic is the most valuable thing you can do for your business. Meaning, I should see something of yours and recognize it as YOUR brand immediately on sight. Your IG feed, your stories, your Twitter header, your Pinterest boards, ALL of it, should look like YOU. Not like Kylie Jenner, Chrissy Teigen, or whoever else. Should you be aware of what the trendsetters in your niche are doing? Yes. Of course. But attempting to copy them will only make you look like a cheap knock-off. You don’t want to be a poor man’s Pioneer Woman. You want to be driving the trend bus, not chasing after it.

*Have a suggestion or fabulous resource to share? Message me on the Contact page and I’ll add to our list and give you a shout out to thank you for your contribution!