kenrockwell.com - Ken Rockwell's photography tech review site is amazing. I don't know how Ken finds the time to do all these reviews, or how he maintains the energy and enthusiasm to do them, but I'm glad he does. Don't let the no-frills layout of his site put you off, the content is great.
dpreview.com is another page with in-depth gear reviews as well as industry news, advice articles, and lots more.
hubspot.com - Not only does hubspot offer a great CRM with a 'fremium' model, it has a massive array of helpful advice articles about building a website and online marketing.
pixieset.com - This is what I use for my online client galleries. It's very easy to use and basic plans are relatively inexpensive. It's a great way to start selling your photography services.
Whether you're just starting out or looking to cut costs without sacrificing quality, there are some surprisingly good pieces of software available that are free or low-cost.
Here are some options to explore.
The software that came with your camera
My camera is made by Nikon and the Nikon NX Studio software and other apps that Nikon provides for free are excellent. NX Studio processes raw files and has an array of advanced editing features, and you can also shoot tethered (with the camera plugged into a laptop for instant import) using NX Tether. I'm sure other brands also have good software too. Basically you've paid for that software when you purchased your camera so it's worth checking it out and seeing if it meets your needs.
Free and open-source software
Open source software can be just as good as the commercial options. I actually use an open-source image viewer for culling photos and it works great! It's called FastStone Image Viewer and it loads raw files super fast so I can quickly scroll through and select the ones I want to keep. For editing, some good options are Darktable and RawTherapee. Both process raw files, let you denoise grainy photos, and adjust the exposure and colours. Another 'free' option is Affinity by Canva - which gives you full functioning editing tools for free, but integrated AI tools via Canva are only available with a paid Canva subscription.
One-off payment software
If you don't want to be stuck paying ongoing subscription fees and just want software you buy once and own forever, then Luminar Neo offers very reasonable one-time pricing and does everything you could want in a photo editor, including AI powered editing tools that automate things like skin-smothing for portraits.