Blogging Resources
A curated list of services and resources you can use to help you build your blogging business.Whether you are starting a blog for the first time or looking to enhance the performance of your blog, having trusted resources is essential. No matter if you have interest to create a blog as a hobby or a business, here is a list of services, vendors, and resources that may be of use to you. This list reflects a sample of tools used in the building of this blog website, Curvy Points.
Please note that the links below include Affiliate Links. This means that some links provide me a Commission should you choose to make a purchase. However, there is no cost to you for using these links.
Learning the Blogging Business
Create and Go: Launch a Blog Biz
Before embarking on the blogging journey, it is important to understand exactly what you are getting yourself into AND how to set yourself up for success from the beginning. Create and Go, Launch a Blog Biz course provides a comprehensive overview of all elements of the blogging business and key components for setting up your blog with a solid foundation.
Start a Mom Blog: Printables By Number
Your blogging audience will look to you for content, but will follow you for the tools and resources that you can provide them to support their personal journey. Printables by Number provides a step-by-step, easily understood and immediately applicable means to create incentives provided in exchange for customer contact information, otherwise called lead magnets, as well as digital products to be used for subscriber incentive or for commercial sale. These items can be particularly important when attempting to solidify key components of your blogging business such as building an email subscriber database or generating revenue through your own products (versus advertising and selling other business’s products).
By Sophia Lee: Perfecting Pinterest
Without a marketing strategy, your blog can easily be invisible amongst the sea of other blogs across the web. Perfecting Pinterest demonstrates how to use Pinterest (the most popular marketing vehicle for bloggers) in an effective, adaptable way from the start to build readership, page views, and visible presence on the web. Sophia Lee has years of experience within the blogging profession and has grown a blogging business that has permitted her to expand into other business ventures. She offers transparent and straight forward advice that has personally helped me to understand the entire marketing process so much better and expanded my ideas around audience relationship building in the blogging field.
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing
To transition your blog from a hobby to a business, you need to determine your strategy for generating income. Affiliate marketing is one method for earning income using your blog as a means to drive traffic towards products and services while earning a commission. This course provides a clear understanding of the process and helps you build a strategy that compliments your specific blogging niche.
Blog Website Set-up Basics
Siteground
Any website requires a host that your website can call home, providing well-guarded security, reliable sustainability, and access to tools that support fast loading speeds and smooth navigation. Siteground provides all of these services and more.
Elegant Themes: Divi Theme
First, as reference, the theme of a website is its basic look and feel. The layout of your images and text, your menu design, and the navigation from one page to another. The Divi theme is a step above the plug-and-play themes available as it permits a higher level of customization without in depth knowledge of coding and other technical skills. Be clear, with Divi you still will have a few things to learn, but the end result is tons of customization opportunity with minimal cost.
A Self Guru: Legal Services
Typically a subject not considered when starting a blog. A Self Guru provides access to basic legal page content such as Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, and Disclaimers and so much more for a reasonable price. Based on your intended blog content, research to determine what legal exposure you may have and consider this or other legal advice and services to help avoid any unintended legal exposure.
Blogging Content Resources
Keywords Everywhere
A term often heard in the blogging world: KEYWORDS. Blog content is found based on the search terms or keywords that your audience uses to find it. Before expending tons of time and energy writing thousands of words of content that no one looks for, use Keywords Everywhere to trial terms and see if your writing subjects are information truly in demand by your intended audience.
UberSuggest
A comprehensive tool that supports keyword research and SEO content strategy building, UberSuggest offers a low-cost, informative product in comparison to other similar services on the market. Learn where your site currently stands in its ranking, SEO compliance, what keywords are worth building more content around based on your past performance, and see your competition keyword ranking status as well. With this tool you can also measure your performance over time and have visibility to what is working and what isn’t as you diversify your content strategy over time.
Blogging Marketing and Graphic Design Resources
Canva
Every blogger knows about Canva and if you don’t, you should. This all-in-one amazing tool provides a free and membership platform for creating subscriber incentives, social media marketing tools for platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook, and means to create commercial products as well. This is only a small fraction of the endless amount of creation and design applications that Canva provides.
Tailwind
Tailwind is an awesome compliment to any blogger’s marketing strategy. With this platform you are able to schedule your marketing designs such as Pinterest Pins and Instagram stories days, weeks, and months in advance. You can also use Tailwind to assist with creating designs if you are less familiar with graphic design. A highly recommended tool in the blogging world, Tailwind provides tons of timesaving opportunity in support of your marketing strategy execution.