Websites

I use Wordpress and designed my website myself. I then purchased and use TidyCal for booking. I use Stripe for payments and invoicing. I’m lucky, I’ve designed websites on Wordpress before so I don’t find it difficult. But I do know some advocates that rely solely on their GNA profiles and still get clients. Having a website becomes important if you were planning on doing individual target marketing or you want to increase your reach via SEO or AEO. But you could do something really simple like just a one page website through WordPress and that would probably be the best economically. There are many videos on YouTube how to do this and so if you are technically savvy, you could probably do it yourself. If you are not, you could hire an individual through a service like UpWork or Fiverr to do it for you.

You also could consider working with a program like Umbra for billing, scheduling, setting prices, and a lot more. They are a membership program. Claire Pickering could tell you much more.

This ^^^^ I have a chronic illness myself and limited capacity. I prefer to use my energy on patient facing stuff instead of the business admin side of things and Umbra is fantastic! They got me connected to AnnMarie and I'm super excited to be part of this community now.

For my website, I built everything on WordPress using Elementor, hosted on Hostinger, and paired with Google Workspace for domain management (sonoranwayfinders.com). Elementor gives me complete control over my design without needing an expensive developer, while integrating directly with MailerLite so contact forms and email leads route into my system automatically. For billing, I created a custom spreadsheet tailored specifically to patient advocacy workflows that eliminates the need for expensive accounting software. I built it myself to handle automated time-tracking timers for different clients and automated invoice generation, all completely free without monthly subscription fees. It’s been such a game-changer for streamlining my practice that I’m actually thinking about packaging and selling it to help other advocates simplify their back office, too.

sounds very cool renea!

I purchased my domain name, build an HTML file website using Claude, and then uploaded it through Netlify. It sounds complicated, but it was actually pretty simple. My practice is new and I only have a handful of clients, so I'm only taking payment through Venmo and Zelle, and my business banking account also has a native invoice and payment tool.

I use Squarespace for my website. You can't bill perse but you can sell on the website. I bill through my ehr platform Ona Health. The backend is Stripe. If you are just looking to bill Stripe is great for this. You can invoice and create payment links.

Just a word of caution to all of those who use website content management systems, such as Wordpress: they have the ability to take down your site at any time, for any reason. And you'd lose everything that lives there. That lesson came from Trisha Torrey's own personal experience, as it happened to her.

An aside — if anyone wants the name of someone who has built incredible sites for multiple independent patient advocates, feel free to reach out to me. I know him personally and can vouch for his work.

That being said, kudos to all of you doing it on your own! Super impressive.