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Last Updated on February 7, 2022 by Daniella
If you’ve been tired of dealing with the tech side of blogging and are on the hunt for blogging tools to make your life easier, you’ve stumbled on the perfect article.
From experience as a beginner blogger myself over 4 years ago, I’ve sifted through what works and what doesn’t. Finding what worked was harder than finding what doesn’t and I failed more time than I succeeded but that’s how I grew my blog, by putting myself out there and daring to fail.
Through all my failures and wins, I’ve narrowed down some of my favorite resources that helped me create and maintain a profitable blog myself. I would lose my mind without these tools and resources.
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Table of Contents
My Top Blogging Tools & Resources
These are all products, tools and resources I personally use (or have used) and recommend. Because I want you to have as much advantage as possible starting out on your blogging journey so you can see the same successes I have!
Bloggers are one big community, and we help our own.
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Hosting & Setup
Bluehost: When you are first starting your blog, you don’t want to spend a fortune on hosting and neither did I. Hosting your blog on Bluehost gives you a free domain, free site builders, free 1-click WordPress install, 24/7 support and all for only $2.95 a month.
Yes, I do also recommend using WordPress for your blog as it is the easiest open source platform to use from my experience. Don’t know how to use it? No problem, Bluehost will walk you through every step of the way as their support team is very helpful (isn’t that a relief). Or you can get started easily on your own with this step by step guide: How To Create A Self Hosted WordPress Blog.
Related: 155 Blog Niche Ideas and How to Choose One
Themes & Design
Creative Market: I love using Creative Market to find cute graphics, stock photos, fonts, plugins and themes to incorporate into my blog. I also love the weekly freebies they send straight to my inbox. There is something for everyone on Creative Market.
Elegant Themes: Elegant themes is the number one theme provider in premium WordPress themes, in my opinion. Their Divi theme is out of this world and completely changes the way we build and maintain blogs by making everything 100% easier. I love this site.
Canva: I use Canva to create all of the graphics on my blog, social media, printables, source stock photos, and more. I use to use Picmonkey which is another great option, but Canva just had more included in the tool (especially with Canva Pro). Check out this amazing jampacked post on how to create your own Canva templates for Pinterest and Instagram.
Unsplash: Unsplash is the best free stock photo website I have found and use for most of my featured images and pinnable images on my site (before I started using Canva Pro for their stock images instead).
Related posts: How To Create A Beautiful Blog Using Free WordPress Themes
How To Create Stunning Images For Your Blog In 5 Minutes
Writing, Editing & Communications
Grammarly: Without this tool, every other sentence you read on this blog would be completely butchered. Grammarly is an extension I installed onto my Chrome browser and automatically spell-checks and grammar-checks ANYTHING I type. I love it. Oh and did I mention, it is 100% free!
Convertkit: I use Convertkit for my email list and is the best email marketing platform I have worked with. Convertkit has made it very simple to manage my email list and keep an open on-going relationship with my readers. You can check it out for free until you get to 1,000 subscribers.
Coschedule Headline Analyzer: A good headline is what makes others want to click through and read what you have to say. A bad one can cost you traffic, shares and search results which is what you DO NOT want. This headline analyzer is great for coming up with the perfect headline so people will want to read your content.
HARO: HARO stands for ‘Help A Report Out’ and is a platform for both journalists and sources. I use HARO to communicate with both sources and journalists. As a journalist, I can put out requests to sources for expertise to include in my articles (giving them credit of course). As a source, I can respond to other HARO requests asking for my expertise. Because of HARO, I was featured on Time Money, Business Insider, Huffington Post, Skillcrush, and USA Today. If you want to get your name and your new blog out there, HARO is a must and it is completely free.
Grow (formerly Social Pug) : I use to love Social Warfare for my social sharing integration and social sharing buttons on my site until Mediavine acquired Social Pug, which is now called Grow. The buttons are just as sleek as Social Warfare, makes my website speed faster, and provides more flexibility with integration.
Related: 40 Blog Post Ideas When You Have Writer’s Block
Tailwind: I use Tailwind for scheduling all of my pins to Pinterest, managing my Pinterest and participating in Tailwind tribes. Tailwind is a great way to manage your Pinterest, monitor profile performance, see board and website insights, inspect pins and use tons of more features to help you be as successful as possible on Pinterest. When you use my link to sign up, you will get a free month of Tailwind to try it out!
The Pinterest Social Media Planning Guide: Use this ultimate guide to get started with Pinterest for your blog including a pinning strategy to get more traffic and template pack.
Related posts: How To Make Money With Pinterest
How to Use Pinterest for Business
Top 10 Blogging Mistakes And How To Avoid Them
Want to start a blog as a business? Check out my Launch Your Side Hustle course that goes over everything that is in this post in much more in-depth + how to legally cover your side hustle, taxes, create services and products, how to sell to your audience, and much more!
Facebook Groups
Facebook blogging groups and mastermind groups have become so helpful for me not only in the beginning stage of my blogging journey but especially as I grow my blog and network. There is no other helpful blogging for beginners resource than these groups. Mastermind groups and blogging groups are where you can get in touch with other bloggers and discuss strategies, ideas, collaborations, and so much more.
Here are a couple of my favorite blogging groups and mastermind groups:
- Boost Your Blog from Helene In Between (one of my favorite travel bloggers and fellow former Ursuline Academy Alumni).
- Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Group from Michelle at Making Sense of Cents. This is one of the most helpful groups I am a member of and the only way to gain access is if you purchase her Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course which is 100% worth it and discussed in more detail below in the monetization section.
If you want to build your own community, check out this resource for the best free and paid forum software.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
Google Webmaster Tools: When you first get started with your blog, have an organized site structure with some content added and have all your branding in place with a site that is ready to go, then go to Google Webmaster Tools to submit your sitemap. This tells google to crawl your site so you can be found via the search console. Check back periodically for any errors you may need to correct in the search console as well as monitor your site’s Google search performance.
Moz: Moz is the SEO head honcho. It is their algorithm that controls your Domain Authority or DA and your Page Authority or PA of your blog. These DA and PA metrics say how likely it is you will rank in search engines on a scale of 0 – 100 based on a a variety of factors. Their site provides tons of resources for learning SEO, tools for researching keywords and keyword recommendations, shows you how much search volume there is for a given keywords and how easy or hard it is to rank for that keyword, shows you what keywords your competitors are trying to rank for and seriously, tons more tools.
Semrush: Semrush has completely changed the way I create content. Semrush is like an SEO miracle software sent from above. This online software does in depth domain analytics, keyword analytics, performs gap analysis, has a writing assistant, topic research tool and lead generation tool. It shows you who your competitors are, what they are ranking for and gives you templates for how you can out rank them. They also have a keyword magic tool I am obsessed with and the best site audit tools I have come across. You can sign up for their free trial here and see for yourself.
YoastSEO: YoastSEO is one of the best blogging tools and resources and the perfect blogging for beginners WordPress plugin. It is kind of like an ‘SEO for Dummies’ guide plugin that shows you how your posts are doing in both readability and SEO coverage. This plugin also shows you recommendations on how to improve your readability and SEO on the post or page you are on.
Keywords Everywhere: A chrome plugin to see keyword traffic stats and research hep on a variety of search engines like Google, YouTube, Pinterest, and Etsy.
Related posts: Idiot Proof SEO: How To Improve Your Google Rank
3 Quick & Actionable SEO Tips That Are HUGE
Monitoring
Google Analytics: Link your site up immediately with Google Analytics as soon as you want to start measuring your site traffic, interaction, engagement, audience, etc. The easiest way to do this is by first adding your site to Google Analytics and then installing the Google Analytics for WP Dashboard plugin. It is completely free, of course. If you need more of a step by step explanation, check out Google Analytics For Newbies.
Google Alerts: Google Alerts is great for getting notified when your domain or name is mentioned on the internet. You can get alerted for any phrase really. You just create a new alert for whatever phrase or word you would like to get alerted for (I have one for my site name, one for my domain name and another for my full name). This is great for finding out when or if you have been featured on any big sites or just to see what other content you are being linked in.
PageSpeed Insights: This tool is super easy to use, all you do is enter your domain name and Google tells you the speed and performance of your site and what exactly would need to change in order to improve. Your blog’s loading speed and usability is especially important because having a faster blog will lower your bounce rate and provide a better user experience.
Monetization – Ads & Affiliate Marketing
Ezoic: Monetization and optimization for bloggers and site owners. They also accept folks who have less than 10,000 sessions a month for blog traffic. They pay more than Google Adsense but they do make you complete a course and pass a text to get set up for monetization with ads.
Mediavine: For ads, when I finally reached 25,000 sessions at the beginning of 2018, I applied to Mediavine and was accepted. If you are not familiar with Mediavine, it is not an ad network. Instead, it is a group of publishers who joined forces to work directly with ad exchanges and advertisers to get the most money for their ad inventory. This change has more than doubled my ad income since switching from Google Adsense.
Making Sense Of Affiliate Marketing Course: When I first started this blog I was confused with how people made money on their blogs, scratching my head wondering why money wasn’t piling into my Amazon affiliate account. Then I found this course that helped me put together my affiliate marketing strategy. This course has tons of step by step guides, lists of affiliate programs to join, how to join them, how to market affiliate links effectively so you actually make money and so much more including free perks like additional lessons to boost your affiliate marketing strategy and grow your blog effectively. It also includes lifetime access to the course and free Facebook mastermind group. Without this course I truly believe I wouldn’t be making almost $2000 a month, and my blog is just over 1 year old. (Update March 2019: I’ve now surpassed $3,000 a month with my blog.) If you invest in any courses for your blog, this is the one to invest in!
Affiliate Window: A number of the affiliates I promote throughout my blog come through Affiliate Window or AWIN. Affiliate Window is a great and easy to use affiliate network to help boost your blog earnings. Along with access to hundreds of affiliates through the platform (in all niches), they also have an amazing referral program of their own. Once you get access to the platform and refer any new signups, you get $30.
If you need help getting started with affiliate marketing or don’t even know what it is, read my The Fail-Proof Guide To Get Started With Affiliate Links.
A couple of other affiliate marketing platforms I use, but are not limited to, are:
What are some blogging resources you recommend for blogging for beginners? We would love to hear from you in the comments below!
Related posts:
10 Ways To Make Money Blogging
Blog Income Streams: 13 Bloggers Share Their Different Income Streams & How to Build Them
The Top 28 Sites That Pay You To Blog
How to Build a Blog with the Goal of Selling It
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Daniella is the creator and author of iliketodabble.com. When their wife Alexandra and them aren’t globetrotting or playing with their 7+ animals, they are dabbling and working towards a future of financial freedom.
Browsing your site! Things definitely look new and improved around here:) Congrats!!!
I love this article btw. I don’t have time to take action on all of the advice right now, but I will bookmark it and look into it (especially the SEO advice)…. since I’m just throwing words at a fan right now (ha ha ha).
Thanks! I probably could update this post a little but all the resources still hold true (besides a slight hiccup I had last year with Social Warfare but they have since resolved it and haven’t had any issues since). I have a “mid year blog checkup” kind of post coming up next week that I am super excited about that will piggy back off of this post sorta 🙂
Pingback: How to drive traffic to a new blog for beginners: 18 experts share!
Hey Daniella,
great list!
I agree with you that Bluehost is cheap and right for beginner bloggers; but also reliable and quality host. And really, new blogs don’t get traffic so they don’t need ultra fast hosts.
As for using HARO for link and mentions, your list of publications is inspiring. So far I had moderate success with HARO, but I was able to land a mention at Fit Small Business, which is an extremely strong website. That one homepage link visibly pushed rankings for all my keywords.
Exciting times…
Cheers:)
Yes, I LOVE HARO! It completely changed the game for me when I found it.
Rocking list of resources here Daniella. Thanks for sharing with us.
Glad to be of help 🙂
This is chock full of information. Compared to some other bloggers promising to provide instruction, it doesn’t give the impression that it’s a self-serving post. Because I use some of the resources you listed, it made me feel that those with which I’m not yet familiar warrant my investigation. Thanks for all the great tips!
Anytime! Let us know in the comments if you end up using any of these and if they helped you at all!
Hey Daniella! What a great list this is, and thanks so much for the shoutout! We’re so glad you’re a Mediavine publisher and are proud to play a small part in your success. If you ever have questions about revenue, optimization, etc., please reach out to us at publishers@mediavine.com
— Susannah at Mediavine
Thanks, Susannah!