When I started talking about digital products, I bought a lot – domains, website hosting, Google Workspace, podcast hosting and more.
After I let the project go, I wanted to keep the content up, but not keep paying for everything.
Here’s how I switched from paid products to (mostly) free products, in case you want to do something similar!
Domains. I kept my main domain, scenicroutedigital.com ($18.50/year), but am letting go of my short domain, yfdp.show ($47.98/year ?!?!?!). I updated all of my podcast show notes (on Spotify and YouTube) to go to scenicroutedigital.com.
Website Hosting. I have a server with multiple websites on it, so I was able to keep my existing WordPress site at no additional cost. If you don’t need a full website, though, check out Carrd. It’s $19/year (yes, per YEAR) for multiple one-page websites. (I’ve kind of been dying to try it but haven’t had a reason to yet.)
Google Workspace. Because I had all of my videos on YouTube, I didn’t want to get rid of the account completely, but didn’t want to keep paying $6/month. I downgraded to Google Cloud Identity Free following the info in this Reddit post. Later, I noticed that the links weren’t active on my YouTube videos, so I had to verify my identity and they started working again.
Email. After I downgraded to Google Cloud Identity Free, I set up email routing through Cloudflare so that I could still get emails sent to my old email address (now delivered to my existing email address) AND set up Gmail Send As so I could send from the old email address if I needed to.
Podcast Hosting. Instead of paying $12/month at Buzzsprout (which is actually an old plan; plans now start at $19/month), I switched to Spotify where you can host your podcast for free. It was super easy – enter your RSS feed URL to pull in your episodes, and then redirect the feed at your existing host. If you need to make any changes to your podcast (or add new episodes), you can do that with Spotify.
So, if I had to do it again, here’s what I’d do:
- One domain (.com, that’s not outrageously priced)
- Free email through Cloudflare
- Free podcast hosting through Spotify
- Website at Carrd
What about you? Do you have a project that you need to downsize or a new project that you’re just starting? Have any tips that you want to share?
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