Best Blogging Tools And Resources
My Favourite Resources
Discover the blog tools and resources that have helped me build side-hustle into a profitable business!
Tools of the trade
Inside My Blogging And Business Toolkit
When starting a blog, there are some key investments you will need to make to scale up and monetize your site successfully. These are blogging tools and services I’ve reviewed or used. I recommend them for bloggers and online entrepreneurs looking to grow their sites!
Check out my best online coaching tools list if you’re thinking of starting your own coaching business.
Disclosure: This page contains sponsored content (noted as such) and affiliate links for products I’m using or have tried in the past and recommend. This means I may receive a commission should you purchase using my links, at no extra cost to you. For more information, visit my Disclaimer page.
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Free Starting A New Blog Courses & Resources
Get started, step-by-step with a self-hosted WordPress site. Includes tips on what to set up, and how to get started with key essentials for your site.
Tackle the daunting task of writing about what your blog is all about, and yourself! This workbook takes you through key elements of an effective About Me page.
Get started writing optimized blog posts that start ranking in Google searches. Learn the key essentials of SEO for your new blog.
Hosting Providers
NameHero
A fantastic option for bloggers who want to stay with one provider for the long-term. An independent hosting provider with excellent service and speed.
BigScoots
Premium fully managed webhosting service for WordPress sites.
Fast, better uptime and professional 24/7 customer service. BigScoots is for professional sites.
SiteGround
Another great option for a self-hosted site, with fast speeds and free extras. A choice for pro bloggers with the budget to afford a bit more.
GreenGeeks
If you’re seeking sustainable green webhosting options, GreenGeeks, based in Canada, is one of your best options.
Affordable, fast servers and eco-friendly, with great customer service.
Bluehost
An affordable option for starting a blog with a self-hosted WordPress site. This is good for budget-conscious bloggers.
Wordpress Themes
Kadence WP
Fast, light and extremely versatile, Kadence WP is an excellent theme for bloggers focused on SEO and building a fast-loading site.
Works well with page builders such as Elementor.
Upgrade to supercharge your customization opportunities: get access to powerful patterns, blocks, and features that will make customizing your theme to your specifications a breeze.
Pix & Hue
Gorgeous WordPress themes with feminine styling – perfect for bloggers, small business and solopreneurs.
Designed with the Elementor (free & Pro) builder, you can use these simple and premium themes to elevate your blog brand easily and quickly.
Bluchic
Shop for all Bluchic themes, add-ons, theme templates and social media templates that make your brand look professional and cohesive in design. All fully customizable with excellent customer service support and documentation.
Bluchic ChicSpark Theme
A Bluchic WordPress theme ideal for service-based solopreneurs and online businesses. Completely customizable with a fresh, modern layout and elements that elevate your brand to the next level.
Bluchic ChicSavvy Theme
Another of Bluchic’s customizable WordPress themes: ideal for coaches and consultants. A creative layout with modern design elements. Fully customizable for your own branding needs.
Bluchic ChicBoss Theme
Want to use the gorgeous theme I’m using? It’s Bluchic’s ChicBoss WordPress theme: easy to customize, with templates and add-ons that make it perfect for solopreneurs and coaches.
17th Avenue
Gorgeous feminine WordPress themes for blogs using the Genesis framework. From simple WordPress themes to premium themes with more features, including those geared toward businesses.
Check out 17th Avenue themes!
OceanWP.
OceanWP is a light parent theme with hundreds of customizable WordPress templates. Fast and easy to set up, it can be used for everything from a business site to blog.
Get the pro upgrade for additional features and access to more templates that will suit your blogging needs.
Envato Market: Themeforest
Envato Market has Themeforest – a repository of WordPress themes of all types for all budgets.
I use the CheerUp theme from Themeforest on my SuburbanTourist.ca blog.
Restored 316
If you’re using the Kadence theme (highly recommended), save yourself time with templates from Restored 316.
From gorgeous Kadence Child theme templates to web design services, this is the one of the best places to start for a fast, gorgeous WordPress theme. Includes options for sales funnels, callouts, and additional add-on templates.
Content Creation Tools
Reword
One of the best AI-generated blog post creation tools. Get support writing quality blog content, with prompts and information that will eliminate thin content.
Yeti Microphone
For course creators, podcasters and anybody running webinars – get quality sound with a Yeti microphone. Great quality sound at affordable pricepoint for new content creators.
Logitech C922 Pro Webcam
I use this webcam for all of my coaching calls and any time I record video for my blog and course content. It’s consistently good and at a fantastic pricepoint for new content creators and coaches.
Email Marketing & List Building
Mailerlite
The email marketing platform I use to reach my newsletter subscribers! Create beautiful newsletter templates, and automations for your emails. Free for up to 1000 subscribers, and an affordable plan for more. The best option for beginners.
ConvertKit
One of the best alternatives to Mailerlite. If you’re looking to blog long-term with products and services to sell, ConvertKit may be your best solution. Free for up to 1000 subscribers.
Interact Quizzes
An easy way to build your email newsletter subscriber list with informative, engaging quizzes on your site.
Great for building your subscribers while also getting market research!
GroupLeads
Leverage your Facebook group to build your email list! Capture emails for your newsletter subscription list. Manage approvals and decline requests to join automatically. Saves you hours of manually approving and capturing email addresses.
Legal Pages
From my favourite lawyer turned full-time blogger and coach – Amira from A Self Guru – there are several easy-to-customize agreements, contracts and legal bundles to get you covered on all things blogging and business.
Legal Bundle Templates
Get three key legal pages every blog and online business needs: the Starter Legal Bundle from A Self Guru includes customizable templates for the Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Terms & Conditions. Options include a VIP and Premium bundle with additional templates required for any online business. Read this review post.
Sponsored Posts Contract Template
Ensure you are legally and financially covered when partnering with a brand for sponsored posts. Using this contract ensures brands are legally bound to pay you for the work you do for them.
Coaching Agreement Template
A customizable template for coaches of all kinds. I use this in my own blog coaching business to make sure that both myself and my clients are covered legally and financially. Protect your coaching business legally and financially.
Media Release Agreement Template
Planning to use a testimonial from a client, or adding a video interview with somebody on one of your blog posts? Whenever you reference somebody who is commenting on your work, or doing an interview that you air, you’ll need this form signed to have permission to use that content.
Guest Blogger Agreement Template
Planning to have guest bloggers on your site? This is the document you need guest writers to sign to ensure you retain control of the content they produce for you. Get the Guest Blogger Agreement now.
If you’re being brought on by a brand or other type of client to do specific jobs or activities on their behalf, it’s extremely important to have an agreement in place to have a scope of work and payment in writing (the right kind – a contract!).
Design Tools & Stock Photos
Haute Stock
Luxurious stock photography for lifestyle bloggers, business owners and creatives.
This is a beautifully styled and comprehensive stock photo membership with over 8,500 stock assets.
100% worth the investment if you’re rebranding your blog and looking for a consistent brand style.
Styled Stock Society
One of my favourite places for stock photos (I use them on my site) that are perfect for feminine blogs and business sites.
From desktops and work-themed images to lifestyle settings. These are stunning and beautifully photographed.
PixiStock
PixiStock is full of stunning feminine photos perfect for lifestyle blogs, and female-run online businesses.
Get access to thousands of beautifully styled photos and well-designed social media assets and templates that to help you run your online business.
Ivory Mix
My other favourite source for gorgeous, feminine stock photos is Ivory Mix.
From lifestyle shots for various niches to images perfect for online marketers, coaches and solopreneurs, there are over 10,000 photos and videos to choose from, and many more visual, creative resources!
Stocklane
Get access to gorgeous, luxurious stock photos or a curated “photo capsules” monthly package at a super affordable monthly price where you can download 30 photos. Ideal for lifestyle and business bloggers on a budget.
WordPress Plugins
WP Rocket
The best caching plugin you can buy to speed up your site.
It has more features than all other plugins out there, and is very easy to set up, even if you’re a beginner. A small investment to make your site run like a pro site from the start.
Elementor
Build your site with this easy drag and drop page builder. Make gorgeous pages and landing pages quickly and easily! Note: this site uses Elementor to create the key site pages.
Pretty Links
When you’re planning to heavily monetize with affiliate links, the pro version of the Pretty Links WordPress plugin helps you add them right.
From the site: “Pretty Links makes it simple for you to shrink, cloak, track, and share your links.”
AppSumo
An online shop for digital software including themes, plugins and apps for WordPress. A repository of tools that can help you scale up quickly!
ShortPixel
An image optimization and compression tool that greatly speeds up your site and improves your SEO. Get your images served in WebP for free!
Blog Traffic & SEO Growth
WP Tasty
Optimize your Pinterest pins with with WP Tasty. It lets you add a Pin title and description, as well as Re-Pin ID to create a Pinterest SEO-optimized pin when somebody pins from your site.
I love how this affordable WordPress plugin helps me save time from coding this info with HTML.
Tailwind
Tailwind continues to be a great tool to automate Pinterest pins, and Instagram posts (separate plans available).
With Tailwind Communities, Tailwind Create, SmartSchedule and extra analytics that help with your pinning and Instagram strategies. Read my Tailwind Review.
Later
Later is one of the best social media management tools that helps creators, bloggers and small business owners manage, publish and schedule content. It includes an Instagram link tool – Linkin.bio for profile links.
A powerhouse tools for Instagram users!
Link Whisper
If the idea of figuring out your interlinks is driving you nuts, this is the linking tool you need.
It speeds up the process by giving you linking suggestions – as you write! No more “orphan posts” – your old posts will get the link love they need to start ranking higher in search results.
One of the most powerful SEO tools for discovering the best keywords for your blog posts.
From writing optimized blog posts that will rank faster, to updating them smartly, Rank IQ is the tool for new and growing bloggers that want to jumpstart their organic blog traffic.
Social Warfare
This social sharing plugin makes sure your site visitors can easily share your content with their networks, boosting your blog traffic.
Social Warfare has a good free plugin, but the PRO version offers more customizations, placement opportunities and features that help boost your traffic.
SmarterQueue
Use SmarterQueue to schedule your social media posts, and automatically have your older blog posts re-post at your preferred schedule. Keep your old content alive – front and centre with your audience! A worthwhile investment for new bloggers who need to spend less time focusing on scheduling and more on creating fresh content.
Fathom Analytics
Make finding your analytics and stats much easier than working with messy Google Analytics 4. With an easy to read dashboard and super-easy set up, Fathom Analytics is your best option for stress-free analysis. Fathom is an ethical cookie-less, privacy-first analytics platform that works with GDPR and other privacy policies. Read my full Fathom Analytics review.
Course & Digital Selling Platforms
Podia
Podia is an all-in-one platform for selling digital products, memberships, coaching and creating and selling courses.
Its customizable platform makes it easy to brand and market your content. I use this for my Confident Blogger Academy!
Read my Podia review.
Teachable
Teachable is a course creation platform, that’s easy to set up and to connect with your blog/website.
Customize to your needs.
Try it out for free!
Shopify
With Shopify, you can open up your physical product AND digital product shop.
If you’re selling stock photos, videos, art – and even your services, you can do so with Shopify.
I’ve used Shopify for the Spruce and Heron dropship on demand shop my husband and I started. It’s very easy to use and has fantastic resources to get you up & running!
Sellfy
Sell your digital products or physical print-on-demand products on an ecommerce platform – all in one place. You can also sell videos on demand to subscriptions.
Thrivecart
A top digital selling platform that gives you the power to create sales pages and carts to sell digital products and services. Includes options for course building and running your own affiliate program.
Affiliate Marketing Tools & Programs
Pretty Links
When you’re planning to heavily monetize with affiliate links, the pro version of the Pretty Links WordPress plugin helps you add them right.
From the site: “Pretty Links makes it simple for you to shrink, cloak, track, and share your links.”
Lasso
Build beautiful product review features for your affiliate links. An affiliate link management service that takes affiliate marketing to the next level.
Airtable
A favourite tool for creating project checklists, social media content calendars and blog editorial calendars. It includes templates you can modify.
This free tool can upgrade for more “Workspaces” to organize all of your projects.
Excellent for keeping track of your affiliate marketing partnerships.
Ultimate Bundle
Join Ultimate Bundles and promote awesome content, courses and resources from other amazing bloggers and content creators. With bundles with various niches including parenting and blogging, this is one of the most lucrative affiliate programs for beginners.
Travelpayouts
(Sponsored Content)
For travel bloggers seeking to monetize their blog with affiliate marketing! This is an all-in-one travel monetization platform with some of the best-known travel brands. Make signing up to and managing travel brand affiliate links on quicker and easier. Best of all, earn commissions and get paid faster. Sign up for a free Travelpayouts account today.
Shareasale
One of the most popular affiliate marketing platforms for new and growing bloggers. Set up on Shareasale and apply to work with thousands of the top global, national and regional brands for a broad range of retail niches.
Business Tools
Freshbooks
Manage your income and expenses easily with Freshbooks. A lifesaver when you’re getting ready for tax season!
Paperbell
Book and manage your coaching clients easily with Paperbell. A all-in-one platform for booking, scheduling and managing your coaching clients.
Free Downloads
Grab Your Freebies
Get access to free tools and blogging resources to help you start and grow your blog!
Shop products
Courses and eBooks
Get started boosting your blog traffic and growing your site so that it’s ready to monetize! Check out the complete Confident Blogger Shop.
From setting up to pinning strategies so that you can drive more traffic from Pinterest.
Learn how to optimize your blog content so that it starts ranking in Google and search engine results – growing your blog traffic!
Discover the tips and tricks to creating a blog promotion strategy and finally seeing your blog traffic grow!
Bookmark this page on Pinterest for future reference.
