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Starting a blog can be a bit confusing. Especially with all of the decisions and choices you have to make when customizing your blog in the beginning. I often found myself saying,
“I WISH SOMEONE COULD JUST TELL ME WHICH HOST AND THEME TO USE.”
or
“HOW DO I KNOW IF THIS COURSE IS WORTH THE MONEY?”
I was definitely one of those people. I asked and reached out to a ton of different experienced bloggers to ask them what products they recommended and loved. Honestly, that is one of the best ways to find a great product.
Of course, the creators of the product are going to talk it up like they reinvented the wheel, but a blogger who has used the product is going to tell you what they honestly think. That is how they build trust with their readers.
Since I wondered which blogging tools and resources were the best, I decided to put together a list of my all-time favorite resources for blogging and beyond so you don’t have to search all over the web.
*If you don’t already have a blog here is my step-by-step tutorial on how to start your mommy blog.
Blog by Number – Suzi Whitford demonstrates and walks you through every step of starting a blog and making it a success with her Blog By Number Ebook. From starting a blog and then growing your audience, Suzi is right there with you as a helpful guide.
If you are looking to start a website or blog I recommend choosing SiteGround as your web hosting company. Not only do they have very good customer service, but they also have amazing prices and the fastest and safest service available.
After using several Free WordPress themes and having my site running super slow and not performing, I finally broke down and decided to purchase a theme for my blog. And I am so happy that I fell in love with the first one that I tried which is the absolutely amazing Divi theme by Elegant Themes. They have both a Yearly Acess and a Lifetime Access option that allows you to use any of their awesome themes as well as their Plugins. They also have Theme Updates, Premium Support, Unlimited Website Usage, and more.
Here is more about how to choose the perfect blog theme.
Canva – I use Canva to edit all of my pictures before posting them on my blog. It is an easy tool that can be used to edit your pictures in so many ways. Canva also has several ready-to-use templates within a drag-and-drop, design software that’s completely online. And did I mention it is FREE?
Are you ready to start a blog but not sure what to write about? This is where choosing the right niche comes in to play. A niche is just the type of content you want to write about such as parenting, beauty, travel, and etc. However, if you are not sure what to write about here is a course dedicated to picking the niche for your blog. It’s called – Niche by Number
Email Bundle eBook – Suzi Whitford teaches you exactly how built an email list and made over $17,000/month.
Ready Set Blog for Traffic – Elna Cain is a blogger and freelance writer who has grown her online businesses to an all-time reach. She teaches you all about how to find the right type of blog traffic and how to convert that traffic into subscribers and loyal customers.
You cannot have a successful blog without an audience and that’s why so many bloggers are constantly trying to keep their audience coming back to their blog. Here is a course that specifically outlines how to keep your audience coming back for more. It’s called – Engaging Your Audience
Tailwind allows you to schedule your Pinterest pins automatically. It also saves me so much time and has helped me grow my blog without having to be on Pinterest all day. Since I have had Tailwind my Page views have quadrupled. GET YOUR FIRST MONTH FREE!!!
After using the tips and tricks described in Carly’s course – Pinterest Strategies, I have more than tripled my blog traffic. Carly breaks her Pinterest ebook into easy to read sections and also pictures. She talks a lot about how to use manual pinning to increase your blog traffic. I have learned so much just from reading this ebook and I also wrote a review of her ebook HERE.
Make Money Blogging at any Level – Making money blogging can happen at any level. Whether you have 1,000 page views or 1 million. You can make money. After several failed attempts at making an income through blogging, Victoria Pruett finally figured out how to make an income without having millions of page views.
Amazon Affiliate: How to Make Money as an Amazon Affiliate – Amazon is one of the easiest companies to become affiliates for but making money is a little bit harder. Since Amazon changed its payment policy and has reduced how much you can make per sale, it can be challenging to earn money. However, Carolina shows how she made over $1,000/month with a small blog through Amazon affiliates.
Post by Number – This course by Suzi Whitford (yes she is on here a lot. She is just plain awesome) shows how to write amazing blog posts quickly. But also how to create content–rich blog posts that will benefit your readers.
Write Your Way to Your First $1k – Learn how to start making a full-time income from home from Elna Cain. Elna teaches you how to become a freelance writer with this amazing course. It covers how to find clients to build your own business.
Are you a blogger who’s looking to create your own course to sell? Creating a course is definitely not easy but Suzi Whitford outlines exactly how to create, launch, and make money from a course in Course by Number
And just like with creating a course, creating an ebook just got easier with Suzi’s course Ebook by Number
Grammarly – Grammarly is an automatic grammar checker. It eliminates grammar mistakes, checks for plagiarism, and improves your words and style. My writing has become so much better just from having Grammarly on my computer. Oh and I forgot to mention there is a FREE version. I use it and love it.
MORE BLOGGING RESOURCES
- How to Backup & Restore WordPress
- 5 Reasons Why You Should Start a Mommy Blog!
- 9 Inspiring Mom Blogs You Should be Following
- How to Make Money Blogging with Affiliate Marketing
- 15 Essential Blogging Resources for a Money Making Blog!
- 17 Insanely Free Blogging Tools that I Use Every day to Grow My Mom Blog
- 21 Silly Blogging Mistakes I Made that Hurt My Mom Blog
- 8 Ways Moms Can Make Money Blogging
- How I Earned $1,012 Last Month from My Mom Blog – I Make Money Doing What I Love
- How to Get Paid to Write Sponsored Blog Posts
Use Your Blog to Share Your Other Business
*Did I miss any helpful tools to build and monetize your blog? What are your favorites? TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS. I ALWAYS LOVE TO HEAR FROM MY READERS!
Great list, thank you for putting everything together! I just bookmarked this page to come back to it again ? I’m going to use shareaholic on my blog now.
These a wonderful blogging resources. Thanks for this!
Great resources! Thanks for putting them all in one place!
I switched to SiteGround last year and LOVE IT!
These are such great sources!! I use canva and love it! Thanks for the tips <3
Great list of resources! I’ve used a few and definitely have a few others on my to buy list.
some really good advice here!
Thank you for such a great pile of resources! I definitely will be checking out a few of the ones that you mentioned. I am struggling to make money from blog and increase pageviews. I could use all of the help that I can get.
-xo, Makaela
http://www.uniquelymickie.com
I have been through the same struggles. Honestly, for me, it was a matter of finding just the right strategy that worked for my blog. I wish you good luck.
Thi is such a useful post. I’m going to check some of the listed resources out.
This is a very helpful list especially to new bloggers, thanks for sharing.
Love it. I use almost all of these except I use MailChimp for email. I also LOVE Evernote, CoSchedule and Buffer. Tailwind is the best ever! Plus keeping good ‘ol pen and paper everywhere to jot down ideas when they strike 😉