As web designers, we’re always looking for ways to streamline our businesses, increase productivity, and improve profitability. As such, we rely on a variety of plugins and apps to get the job done, and the list of tools can quickly become overwhelming. If the deals are not ‘lifetime’ then we run the risk of being dependent on an ever-increasing number of subscriptions, and those subscriptions continue to increase in cost (and in some cases, decrease in the number of licenses available). Yes, hello Shrinkflation.
The hard-to-face truth of this is that many of us will never fully utilise new plugins or apps, so they will never generate revenue, and they are not making us more productive. Often, they contribute to the noise and distraction we all face daily. And yet, we continue to renew the annual license, just in case we need it someday. Or, in all likelihood, we’ve used a plugin on a handful of websites, and now the overhead of changing to a different plugin is greater than the cost of keeping it renewed.
Like me, you may have even forgotten what licenses you have or get confused between similar tools.
When I finally realised things were getting out of hand, I (ironically) got a tool to track my subscriptions. However, I was too inconsistent in entering my subscriptions into the system, and I cancelled the service. I’ve now put myself on an ‘app diet’ and I avoid one website in particular.
Despite avoiding the LTD deal websites, I still experience some FOMO, fearing that I will miss a future deal and regret not being aware of it. I’m still annoyed about missing out on deals when I hear other web designers talking about a lifetime license they picked up years ago, only to find out that the tool is now highly prized and beneficial to their business.
Even now, with my ‘app diet,’ I’m still shocked at how many tools I’ve come to rely on to manage a one-person web design business. Some days it feels a bit overwhelming, and like I’m only in business to pay for these expensive subscriptions! I mean, do I really need Canva Pro if I have Photoshop? It’s these types of questions I keep asking myself. And for now, in case you’re interested, yes, I’ve decided I need both. Canva’s incredibly accurate BG Remover and BG Generator are reason enough.
Like a regular diet, it’s easy to slip up or give in to temptation. There will always be a new, shiny tool that we can’t resist adding to our collection.
Before you give in to the temptation of that new plugin or app, ask yourself the following:
- Will it make me more productive?
- Will it help me scale my business?
- Will it allow me to offer a new service that generates more sustainable revenue in an area where I’m confident I can deliver a high level of service?
- OR, will it simply lead me down a time-consuming and frustrating rabbit hole, where I give up in frustration (losing both time and money)?
Okay, so if you are a company of one, do you really need that new, shiny tool?
Probably not. Unless that tool is going to revolutionise your business (and those tools are pretty rare). I found such a tool back in 2015. A marketing company had asked me to find a way for them to build landing pages in-house. My research led me to Beaver Builder, which blew me away with its ease of use. Up until then, I’d been using short codes to create rows and columns and had created a very basic WordPress theme. I quickly switched to the BB theme, plugin, and themer, which significantly sped up my development and allowed me to offer more advanced layouts and functionality. I also gained a new level of confidence around what I could deliver to a client.
I’ve also purchased numerous items that I have since abandoned, or that were abandoned by their developers. Why did I buy it? Usually, because the deal was hard to resist, it looked exciting to use, and playing with it was a lot more interesting than what I was doing at that moment. I would lose an afternoon or an entire day, only to realise that I’m never going to offer social media videos to my clients and I need to stick to building websites.
Then, there’s the temptation to completely redo our development stack. Over the years, I’ve watched businesses like mine experience serious FOMO over plugins or apps that might be marginally better than what they’re currently using. Or perhaps the new tool just had better marketers. It can be hard to know for sure, as we are all so busy that it’s challenging to sit down and conduct a thorough comparison between products. Sure, you can watch countless video reviews and articles, but often, there is a lot of bias with that information, and you won’t really know until you start using the tool.
Vendors in the web design industry tend to leap-frog each other, and while competition is great for innovation, switching your development stack can be very counterproductive.
My personal philosophy is that it’s safer and more sustainable to support your vendors and think long-term about the security, reliability, and overall viability of where you invest your money, time, and ultimately, your business success. Those LTDs in particular look very attractive, but the chances are high that the business model won’t work long-term unless they acquire a large subscriber base paying monthly or annual fees, continue to innovate, and actually listen to their customers. Then we have to hope they don’t sell out to an equity firm.
So…. while it can be tempting to back the horse that looks like it’s winning the fancy features race, it can end up being a costly experiment. The ultimate goal of being a self-employed web professional is to be exceptionally skilled, highly knowledgeable, and very efficient and productive. And the only way you can consistently achieve this is by knowing your tools inside and out, investing in the ongoing success of the businesses that produce those tools, and resisting the urge to completely overhaul your workflow due to slick marketing, online chatter and a bad case of FOMO.
So be objective and hard-nosed about the tools you use. If the developers are reliable, the software is stable, and the tools are easy to use and allow you to do what you need to get done in the time you’ve said you’d do it, with the features and functionality you said it would have, then change is only necessary if things have gone downhill with the vendor.
Having said all that, there is a business case for having a plan B for your main development tool – so if you can pick up an LTD and are comfortable with potentially never putting it to use, I think it’s a valid exception. After all, we’ve probably all seen vendors and developers burn out or grow too fast (or sell out). Bugs creep in, service levels drop, and bam, it’s all going to hell. The downward spiral often begins with online chatter in forums and Facebook groups, which builds into a chorus of “that also happened to me”. And when it’s your business at risk, that’s when it’s time to move.
Good luck with resisting shiny tools. And may the ones you do buy end up as excellent investments.
