TOP BLOGGING TOOLS AND RESOURCES

Simply click the links below to access the resources.

Training:

Honest Bloggers Academy – I turned this into a full course (from a bundle) because I keep adding to it all the time. There’s so much I want to teach you, so much I want to share, so much I want to give you, to change your life like blogging has changed mine.

So if you’re tired of not moving, if you’ve spent money on other courses that promise growth but leave you completely flat, you are FINALLY, FINALLY my friend, in the right place!

This is not a course like any other. OH, I promise you that. Ask ANYONE who’s gone through it! This stuff is LIFE-CHANGING.

It will challenge EVERYTHING you think, EVERYTHING you believe, EVERYTHING you’ve been taught.

MOST bloggers who I talk to that go through this course, within TWO MONTHS after they are done with the material and have implemented things, triple their income!

Fonts:

Creative Market – this site is one of my FAVORITE sites. From fonts to logos to specialty stock photos, this site has it ALL. Once I found it, I became quickly hooked and never looked back!

Hosting:

Bluehost – hands down, the best, most cost-effective blogging host around. Rated #1 by WordPress, this host is top notch!

Theme (parent):

Genesis – used by most top bloggers, Genesis is simply THE best when it comes to themes. The SEO is fantastic (which gets you more traffic!) and it’s so much easier to use than other themes I’ve tried.

Theme (child):

You need BOTH parent theme AND one child theme.

Restored 316 – my current theme is through this company. I like that they have modern themes to choose from. Prices are a little spendy, but it’s worth it to have a pretty theme that’s completely functional.

StudioPress – This company has a lot of great themes to choose from. I’ve bought so many from them over the years. Take a look at what they have to offer. I’m sure there’s something you’ll love.

Store:

Shopify – I have Shopify and absolutely LOVE them. There’s so much you can do with this as your shop, and the income is great too. My first month of opening my Shopify store, I made more than $50k that month. Just a few months later, I hit 7-figures in the store alone. I think everyone should have their own store!

Email Services:

ConvertKit – with ConvertKit, I have successfully began adding 10,000+ monthly subscribers to my email list (from 1,732/month). ‘Nuff said! I cannot recommend them more!

Mail Tester – this allows you to run tests on your emails to make sure they don’t hit your email recipients spam filters. Simply send your test email to the link they give you (it changes each time) and correct errors until you hit at least a 9/10 score.

Paperback Book Creation:

Blurb – this is a great site to turn your book into a magazine, hardback, or paperback book to sell or give as a gift. You can sell your books right on their platform (they make it and ship it when you sell!) They even have an affiliate program to earn $10 per referral. You can sign up for their affiliate program through Share A Sale here (I love Share A Sale by the way!)

eBook Promotion:

Book Bub – this site allows you to let them know when you have a free eBook you are giving away. It’ll get you a lot of new traffic to your book. I’ve tried it and have been very happy with the results.

Place It – if you are looking for quality mock ups for your products, this is the place for you!

Stock Photos:

Sarah Titus Photos – I have a killer deal going on right now, 50+ stock photos for only $17! You can’t beat that deal for gorgeous and unique photography!

Ingimage – a great source for stock photos. Their plans are extremely inexpensive compared to others, they require no attribution, and have a great selection of photos to choose from.

Stats Tracking:

Jetpack – This is a free plug-in to add to your site. I love this in-house stats tracker. It’s definitely one of those tools I can’t live without; it just does so much. My favorite thing it does is to quickly gauge my traffic levels through out the day. This helps me know if I’m on track or not, traffic-wise, and adjust my daily blogging plan accordingly.

Spelling/Grammar:

Grammarly – this Chrome extension makes sure everything you type is spelling and grammar proofed. It also checks against plagiarism.

*Please note that I choose to write exactly how I talk, so the grammar part isn’t something I personally worry about for any of my writings on the blog. For other projects as well as for plagiarism, this is wonderful!

Pagespeed sites:

PageSpeed Insights – fantastic site that analyzes your data and makes recommendations to help you speed up your page

Webpagetest – what I love about this site is that it will tell you exactly how many seconds your page takes to load. Then you can pull other blogs and see how your site stacks up against other bloggers in your niche.

Pingdom – this is another great site to test your website speed, and with this site, you can choose the location nearest or farthest from you to determine what your readers are experiencing from different locations!

Check out this post for more information on how to increase your pagespeed.

Optimize and condense pictures:

Compressor – choose lossy for biggest compression (less quality pictures), choose lossless for smallest compression (better quality pictures)

*Pictures on your site that you’ve downloaded previously and are not currently using, do not affect the pagespeed of your site.

Online storage tools:

Drop Box – this is a great site for sharing and collaborating files, pictures, and documents with others and it’s free!

Google Docs – I use this for everything from creating polls to spreadsheets my assistant can help me pull stats and save them on (so we can both see them). It’s super simple to use, but it does save with every change you make, so be careful to learn where that undo button is! 🙂

Is your site Google friendly:

Mobile-friendly – test to see if your mobile site is mobile-friendly for Google

Recipes plugin:

Easy Recipes Plus – this is my favorite recipes plug in. You can search it in plug ins in your WordPress dashboard. It creates beautiful recipe cards and surprisingly, it is free!

Amazon plugin for your site:

Amazon Simple Admin – I’ve used this plug in, in the past and it has worked great.

Pop Up newsletter:

Popup Ally – I have used this plug in and really loved it (now I use Seva). You can insert the newsletter box within your posts, have it to pop up on your site, or both! At the same time! It’s really cool.

Misc things you need:

Google Copyright Removal DMCA Form – if someone steals your content, here’s how to have Google take a look at it and have it removed. Before you contact Google, I’d encourage you to contact the site owner directly. More than likely, when you do, they will take it down for you.

DealSeekingMom Coupon Database – if you’re looking to add a coupon database to your site, here’s a great resource for you.

Invoicely – create free, unlimited invoices…’nuff said!

Social Media Helpers:

Tweet Eraser – need to delete your old Twitter tweets, but don’t want to delete one by one manually? This is a great site to help you delete a bunch at a time.

Pin Groupie – this is THE best site to help you get on Pinterest group boards. You can search the titles and see how many followers each board has and then request to be added on the group board. When I first started on Pinterest, I emailed many of these group boards to get added and slowly, I was added and grew my Pinterest account to what it is today, just under 200,000 followers. 🙂

Hootsuite – this is the site I use to schedule out my tweets on. It’s a fantastic (and easy to use) social media scheduler, and best of all, it’s FREE!

Grum – I use this to schedule my Instagram posts and LOVE it!

Promotions:

Drop My Link – if you are looking to leave QUALITY comments on other blogs to gain exposure and traffic, this is it’s own search engine that lets you filter by different kinds of comment feeds. Back when I was building traffic to my blog, this tool was incredibly helpful to me to find blogs in my niche and those with great comment systems I could utilize in a non-spammy, organic way.

Contracts:

Generic VA contract – do you need a VA contract? This site has you covered. Use their stock forms or use the ideas in them to draft up your own. They also have a Confidentiality agreement as well that is very helpful and many other forms.