Are you new to blogging? And not sure what you need to help grow and monetize your blog?
These programs, tools, and sites I recommend keep me focused on the right things to do for growing my blog. All of these resources I’ve personally used and will benefit you as well!
A curated list of the tools and resources I strongly recommend for building and optimizing your business.
I have tested or used every recommendation on this page. Many of the resources listed here are crucial to running my blog.
Before digging into the list of awesome resources, an important disclosure:
Many of these links below are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a small commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you.
Website Hosting & Domain Registrars
BLUEHOST
For those just starting out with a new blog or website, Bluehost is my first choice for web hosting. Why? Because they make it incredibly easy to get a new site up and running with their one-click automatic WordPress Blog installation. Tech Girl Help Desk is hosted on Bluehost’s easy-to-use and extremely affordable hosting platform.
You can use your Bluehost account to host multiple domains so there is no need to pay more for hosting when you’re ready to start another website. Also, I have found they’re customer service to be outstanding compared to other hosting companies I have used!
SiteGround
SiteGround is another fantastic hosting option with very competitive pricing. There’s been a lot of buzz lately about their amazing customer support and some high-end WordPress hosting features at a really good price. SiteGround is impressive.
SiteGround is a really solid choice for WordPress hosting for both new and more established blogs. It’s slightly more expensive than Bluehost, but they have a lot of nice options include free backups and some WordPress specific caching (faster site!) with their Grow Big and higher plans.
Whether you need a custom enterprise solution or you just need managed WordPress hosting to get started, they have a plan that’s right for you. An excellent option for hosting if you would like to start with a more premium hosting service right out of the gate would be to go with WPEngine and
NAMECHEAP
Namecheap.com is my go-to source for registering domain names. Namecheap is one of the cheapest places to register a domain name and they offer great support and nice extras like one free year of Whois Privacy Protection. A trustworthy domain registration service that has been hassle free, affordable and with great customer service too.
Are you thinking of starting an online blog or business with WordPress, but WordPress intimidates you? This is the course for you! WordPress 101 is a course from Melissa at Blog Clarity. Learn the very basics of WordPress that you need to get started with your blogging.
BUILDING A FRAMEWORK
Building a Framework was originally an ebook (that has been updated each year with valuable resources and is now a full-fledged course, but it’s still perfect for those who are just starting out on their blogging journey). It teaches you how to set up your blog, build an email list, drive traffic to your site, grow your social media channels, work with brands, make money, and more! Developed by Abby Lawson at Just a Girl and Her Blog and her husband Donnie, she shares the tools and methods that have turned her blogging hobby into a six-figure income. If you’re serious about starting a blog, this will walk you through all of the detailed steps to get started. (PSST, sign up for Abby’s free webinar to learn how to ChooseYour Perfect Niche by clicking here.)
Grow your traffic and audience with the magical powers of Pinterest with the Pinning Perfect course by Blog Clarity. It is an awesome course filled with so much information!! The course is updated twice a year so the content is always current with Pinterest’s ever-changing platform. A must if you are looking to up your Pinterest game!
Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers is Tasha Agruso’s course on affiliate marketing. Discover how to earn passive income with the blog traffic you already have. Sponsored posts and ad revenue can be a great way to earn money on your blog, but affiliate marketing is the BEST way. Why?
“You can spend hours and hours working on a sponsored post for a single flat rate. You can spend endless time trying to grow your traffic so that you can increase your ad revenue, which is limited by how many page views you have.
Or you can spend 5 minutes including affiliate links in a blog post that will live forever and those links can earn you passive income month after month, year after year. I have earned over $12,000.00 in affiliate sales from writing ONE post on how we painted our kitchen cabinets, and the sales are still rolling in month after month.” –Tasha Agruso
This comprehensive and powerful course was just FULLY UPDATED for 2018 and includes a copy of the 3rd edition of her eBook and 35+ video lessons designed to get you results in much less time and with far less frustration than if you tried to figure it out on your own.
It covers the basics of everything beginners need to know about how affiliate marketing work and why it is so important for bloggers.
More resources
Awin Affiliate Program
ShareASale Affiliate Program
ShareASale is an Affiliate Marketing Network. They have been in business for 18 years and receive accolades for speed, efficiency, and accuracy – and their reputation as a fair and honest business is well known within the industry.
Skimlinks
Skimlinks is a content monetization platform for online publishers (including editorial sites, forums, bloggers, social networks, and app developers) that specializes in in-text, contextual advertising. It is a service that turns any business mentions or product link in a blog post, comment, or forum post into an affiliate link. Skimlinks provides a great way to monetize links posted by commenters or forum members, and it’s also a nice way to make sure no product link goes un-cashed-in-upon.
Social Warfare Plugin
To easily share your blog content with all your social media channels, try the Social Warfare plugin.
Social Warfare – Pro’s most popular features include:
Display Settings: Choose the networks you want to show (13 social networks to choose from), activate Twitter Cards, reorder networks by preference or dynamically by shares
Visual Options: Button Shape (6 Shapes Supported), Color Sets (10 Color Sets Supported), Individual Hover Color Set (10 Hover Color Sets Supported), Other Buttons Hover Color Set (10 Other Hover Color Sets Supported), Button Size (8 Sizes Supported)
Display Locations: Above, Below, Above and Below, None/Manual Placement per Post, Page, Sitewide, and all your custom post types.
Floating Buttons: Show or hide, float position options include Bottom, Top, Left of Page
Click To Tweet: Visual Themes— 6 Themes Supported plus the ability to create your own style via your theme’s CSS
Social Identity: Activate Facebook Publisher Tags (Page + App Support), Mentions in tweets (authors or publishers), Mentions in Pins (Pinterest Username)
Link Shortening: Activate Bit.Ly link shortening
Analytics: Activate UTM Tracking, and Google Analytics Event Tracking for button clicks
Frame Buster: Disable frame shares from apps like Sniply and Start A Fire
Share Recovery: Recover share counts from previous permalink structures, when moving to/from a subdomain or when switching to SSL
Popular Posts Widget: Showcase your most popular blog posts by how many social shares they’ve recieved
Tailwind
Tailwind is a Pinterest approved scheduler that helps to maintain a more consistent presence with Pinterest. Scheduling content to be pinned regularly is easy with Tailwind.
ConvertKit – In my quest to find an email service provider as I have been setting up my blog, so far the only one that seems to cooperate ‘straight out of the box’ has been ConvertKit.
When just starting out I was really hesitant to want to shell out money before I was making any. However, after trying out a bunch of providers, I decided to stay with ConvertKit. It is simple to use and easy for new bloggers to create beautiful landing pages and opt-in forms for their blog.
PicMonkey
PicMonkey – PicMonkey allows you to quickly, and easily create, and edit graphics and images. Effects that take time to create in Photoshop, can be done with the click of a button in PicMonkey
PicMonkey is my absolute go-to for photo editing and creating images for my website! I have been using PicMonkey for years!
Canva
Canva – I have just recently started using Canva (cause all the cool kids are doin’ it) to make pinnable images for my site. In the beginning, it wasn’t quite as intuitive as PicMonkey. But now that I have been playing around with it for a while, I am enjoying it more and more.
Stock Photos
Beautiful stock photos to use on your blog and in your photo creations.
Check back often as I will continue to add resources and tools that I find in my blogging journey!
I would love to hear about your favorite blogging tools and resources. Which tools help you to succeed in your blogging journey? Feel free to share them in the comments below!
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