I have identified 40+blogging tools that are mostly low tech and easy to use. You may have your favorites, but it doesn’t hurt to find more ways to improve your website.
Good blogging tools are necessary If your starting a blog as a journal, hobby, or even to make money.
In this list I share my favorite apps, plugins, themes, and resources that I’ve used to run all my blogs.
The idea of starting a website/blog might sound expensive. You will need to invest in your business as you would with any other business startup.
The good news is that starting a website/blog you won’t need to spend a lot of money, however you should spend some money on a few specific things.
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40+Blogging Tools To Grow Your Blog And Business
On this list, you will find some great discounts on premium blogging tools, and a bunch of free ones to create your stunning website!
Enjoy and please leave a comment or email us, we love to hear from our readers
Free Courses For Bloggers
First of all, nothing beats free! Grab as much free stuff as you can and make the most of blogger mailing lists and promotions.
You would be surprised at the great information that you can get for free!
Start a Blog Free
Setting up your very own website has never been easier!
Don’t have a website or blog yet? No worries-you can enroll in our FREE go at your own pace course that will walk you step by step and help you create your very own stunning website!
Pinterest Primer
Pinterest Primer is one of the best FREE courses out there. This is one of the blogging tools designed to help you understand how to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your website/blog.
Blog Traffic Bonus Guide
Lena Gott is one of my favorite bloggers and she offers free products that are packed with useful information.
This free ebook is a bonus section of her course Traffic Transformation Guide and is full of tips on optimizing content and growing your blog traffic easily.
Paid Blogging Courses Worth Taking
Pinteresting Strategies
On my list for starters would be the Pinteresting Strategies course by Carly Campbell.
This has been one of the best most clear and easy courses for me when it comes to Pinterest.
I have revisited the course because of Pinterest updates and found the course was also updated.
If you are new to Pinterest or maybe struggling to increase your engagements you should take this course.
See Pinteresting Strategies here
Seaside Sunday’s Affiliate Action Plan
If your new to affiliate marketing or just not seeing much success this is a must have ebook. Grab your copy here
Pot Pie Girl Ebooks
Pot Pie Girl books are the best blogging resources money can buy in my opinion. Every so often she comes out with a quick ebook at a reasonable price and I always jump on them.
Here are my favorite PotPie Girl books that I feel are must-haves for bloggers:
This is an ebook that shows you how to write Pinterest descriptions to help you rank quickly in Pinterest search.
I love this ebook and read it every few months as it is packed with information for creating gift guides and affiliate posts that convert.
This is especially useful if you are an Amazon Associates affiliate and want to make money with Amazon links on your blog.
This book is dense. It is quite complicated but jam-packed with ways to measure which pins are bringing you traffic and how to promote your pins
Blogging Ebooks
The She Approach Blog Traffic Ebook
A great book filled with actionable steps to grow your blog traffic. Get your copy here.
Bloggingherway–Get Paid To Pin
The ebook-Get Paid To Pin is one of the best ebooks and blogging tools teaching how to make money with affiliate products.
Dale from bloggingherway.com takes you by the hand and walks you step by step with affiliate marketing. Learn how to use Pinterest and promote your affiliate products.
Making Pinterest Possible
Learn strategies to grow your blog using Pinterest. Ana from thesheapproach does a great job and sharing her successful techniques in Making Pinterest Possible.
Website Hosting Blogging Tools
There are several choices when it comes to web hosting. You will want to consider a a few things when making your choice of provider.
The hosting companies listed have been proven to be reliable and provide value with there services.
I have websites with both hosting companies. I have no complaints from either.
Customer service has been great for all issues. My preference would be SiteGround as they offer more speed optimization options.
If you are just getting started and looking for something more economical HostGator would be a good choice.
Siteground is a self hosting service with fast reliable website functions and web hosting security. They offer discount hosting plans which you can view here
Hostgator is a self hosting service that provides Free Domain Registration for 1 year, Easy one click WordPress installation, and discount hosting plans that you can view here
Domain Name Services
As an option you can get your Domain Name registered separately and not with your hosting company.
That’s actually how I started out. Why? Because that’s what I was taught. I see no Pro or Con to going this route it’s just your choice.
Godaddy and Namecheap are sites you can get your Domain Name registered
sites like these also have checker tools to see if your name is available
WordPress Themes
There are tons of free themes you can get choose from and make a really nice website/blog.
As your blog journey moves forward you may want to consider a paid theme which will give you more customization and the ability to brand your site.
I will list a few free and paid themes so you can learn more about themes.
Astra is a great theme to use starting out. I’m currently using Astra on two of my blogs.
It is lightweight and offers great looking FREE templates. You can have your website/blog launched in no time with this theme.
Astra fully customizable and free WordPress blog theme
Ribosome fully customizable and free WordPress blog theme
My number one pick for Feminine WordPress themes would be Bluchic.
Bluchic offers some of the best looking feminine WordPress themes. They have clean, classy, and elegant designs.
My favorite would be ISABELLE head over to Bluchic and have a look at there premium themes.
Themeisle
The first website I built 5 years ago used a theme from Themeisle. They have great looking designs both free and paid versions.
WordPress Plugins
Short Pixel is a must have plugin. This plugin comes with a limited free option and a paid subscription after you optimize your first 100 images.
Out of all the tools you will need for you website/blog, an image optimizer is a definite, absolute must have!
That was extra I know, but I’m sure you get the point.
Social Warfare
Social Warfare is a very popular social sharing plugin. It offers many features that will help you build your audience
Akismet Anti-Spam: Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from spam.
Your site is fully configured and being protected, even while you sleep.
UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore: This is a definite must have as well with a free option that works perfect for backing up your entire website.
This plugin will save you from the frustration of trying to recover your site in the event of an emergency.
I have been able to recover my site info after crashing one of my blogs. It was a definite life saver.
Take backups of your blog locally, or backup to Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace, (S)FTP, WebDAV & email, on automatic schedules.
SEO Solutions
Yoast SEO: The first true all-in-one SEO solution for WordPress, including on-page content analysis, XML sitemaps and much more.
Images are essential to your blog. Because an image helps you to engage with your blog readers and it reduces the bounce rate of your site. But high-quality images take a long time to load and also it slows down your site.
That’s why you need the Smush Image Compression and Optimization plugin. Smush allows you to compress and optimize your images automatically.
It has an option to bulk smush up to 50 images with one click. Smush uses lossless compression, which means it compresses your images without losing their quality.
This plugin is user-friendly and it lets you optimize unlimited images for free.
Wordfence Security plugin is super easy to set up. Its web application firewall identifies and blocks malicious traffic and whenever something unusual happens, the plugin will send you an email notification instantly.
Social Media and Blog Graphics
Picmonkey is a website that offers images that you can use on your website
Unsplash offers great images for your website at no cost
Canva is the best when it comes to designing a flyer for your website or social media post.
They have a free and paid service but the free service is packed with features and great for your website needs
Make+Save Money Apps
You can make money and save money all from your phone or computer with these popular online services
DROP- this app you’ll need to link your debit or credit card and Drop automatically helps you earn points.
Points can be redeemed for gift cards at stores like Walmart, Hotels.com, and Groupon
Ebates- get cash back from purchases you make online and in store. Shop at Macy’s, Kohl’s and EBay
Swag bucks- you can earn free gift cards when you shop online, take surveys and watch videos
Ibotta- you get cash back for shopping. They have 279 retailers such as Target, Walgreens, and Sephora. Join Ibotta and receive a $20 welcome bonus
Slicethepie- is an online site you get paid to do surveys, rate music, and watch videos
Affiliate Programs-Networks
Ready to monetize? These are just a few of the more popular companies that offer new affiliate sign ups, to begin earning referral fees
SHAREASALE is a network that gives affiliates a huge variety of products to offer.
Once approved with SHAREASALE you will sign up with individual companies to offer there products.
AMAZON ASSOCIATES probably the largest online affiliate program. Make sure to have a website before applying. This will increase your odds at being approved.
SITEGROUND is a hosting service that you can become an affiliate for and offer to your website visitors
ULTIMATE BUNDLES puts together bundles of digital products at huge discounts. As an affiliate you will find products to offer your website visitors.
Using INFOLINKS adds, you may want to work on increasing your traffic first to really see the benefits of adds on your website.
INFOLINKS places adds on your website that users can click thru if interested.
Google Adsense also places adds on your website. My recommendation is growing your traffic in order to see benefits of using any of the ad networks.
Email Services
Mailerlite offers a free option up to your first 1000 email subscribers. This is a good tool to use.
You have options to create landing pages, and email pop ups to start building your email list.
Productivity Blogging Tools
Tailwind is a huge time saver. With all the tasks you will have running your blog, when it comes to promoting you can use tailwind to automate your activity on Pinterest.
Tailwind offers a FREE 30 day trial after you can choose to stay on the limited free plan, or switch to a subscription plan at about $0.50 cents per day.
4 Responses
Thanks for sharing all these great plug-ins! My only issue sometimes I feel that somewhat slow the page upload speed. Thanks for sharing!
From a couple of trusted sources (developers) the major issue you run into is conflicts, so take caution when adding and verify if there are known conflicts. I do believe less is more tho. Thanks Beth
I’m going to try out PicMonkey today with their free trial. I have been a loyal Canva lover for years, but I’ve heard so many good things about PicMonkey. Which do you prefer or do you use both?
Hi Jen I now use both but I started with canva. I would say because I’m more familiar with canva I find myself still designing pins there. Kind of a tough habit to break