
If you’re starting a blog (or you already started one), you need to know about some of the best blogging resources available. These are the top plugins, blogging websites, and courses that'll help you grow traffic and make money as quickly as possible. So today I have a huge list of awesome blogging resources I’d like to share with you. These are some of the top blogging tools for beginners that helped make me into the successful blogger I am today.
Favorite Blogging Tools and Plugins
Here are some of my favorite plugins that will help keep site running smoothly, look great, plus make social sharing and email signups easy.
Most of these free blogging tools also have an option to upgrade to a paid version with more features and functionality. In most cases the free version is all you’ll need until your blog gets a significant amount of traffic.
Disqus Comment System (Free and Paid)- a great way to add a comment section to your blog. Works great and is one of the most widely used commenting systems for bloggers.
Shareaholic (Free and Paid)- Allows you to easily add social sharing icons anywhere on your blog so readers can conveniently share your content.
Tweetherder (Free)- Lets you add a “Tweet This” button anywhere in your content.
Updraft Plus (Free and Paid)- an easy to use plugin to automatically back up your blog. Very important so you don’t lose the content you worked so hard to produce!
Yoast SEO (Free and Paid)- an absolutely essential SEO plugin that helps you tweak your content so it looks better for the search engines. If there is one plugin that will help your blog rank better with search engines, this is it!
More Awesome Plugins
WP Rocket (Paid only)- Search engines like a blog that runs fast. This plugin helps your blog run faster and more efficiently as soon as you install it. WP Super Cache is another caching plugin that works great (and it’s free!)
Thrive Leads (Paid only)- Allows you to create popups, banners, slide-ins, ribbons and other eye-catching features to help you get email signups. It’s an awesome tool that really helps grow your email list quickly! I’ve been using this one for years and had great success with it.
Jetpack (Free and Paid)- Includes a ton of features to help your blog look better, run faster, be more secure, and collect valuable stats, among many other features. One of the top blogging resources for bloggers!
MaxButtons (Free and Paid)- Allows you to easily create professional looking buttons for your site.
Imagify(Free and Paid)- Helps your site run faster by optimizing all the images on your site so they load faster.
Top Blogging Courses
One thing that has really helped me develop my success as a blogger is taking courses. There are courses on practically anything you want to learn. Whether it’s learning to write better, grow your audience, or becoming a Pinterest master, online courses help you seriously accelerate how much traffic you get and how much money you make from your blog. Here are some of my favorites:
Earn Money Writing
Everything you read on the internet must be written by someone. Companies and corporate blogs pay big money to those who create concise, effective content.
The jobs are out there, but you have to know how to get them. In this tremendous resource from writing pro Holly Porter Johnson, she shows you every tip she used to master her craft and go from $0 to $225,000+ a year as a freelance writer, including:
- How to get the best, highest paying writing jobs.
- How to plan your work properly to maximize income potential- these tips alone will more than pay for the course!
- The exact emails she uses to land high paying writing jobs.
- Membership to the exclusive Earn More Writing Facebook group.
- Tips from real editors on how to make yourself stand out from the crowd.
- Personalized coaching from Holly.
Learn more about Holly’s Earn More Writing Course Here
Pinterest Presence
Pinterest is my #1 source of traffic after Google searches. I believe it is by far the best social media site for growing your presence and generating traffic to your blog.
My friend and fellow blogger Kristin Larsen shows you how to use Pinterest to explode your traffic and gain new followers that tend to be more affluent and spend more time and money than followers from other sources.
Kristin shows you how she went from 1,000 pageviews a month to over 233,000 pageviews every month using Pinterest strategies that just flat work.
Even if you don’t know much about Pinterest, she starts you out with the most basic concepts and shows you everything you need to know to succeed, including:
- Step by step instructions for creating awesome, engaging images and pin descriptions.
- The easy-to-use tools she personally uses to implement her Pinterest strategies.
- The exact pinning schedule she uses every day.
- How to save time and spend only an hour a week implementing your Pinterest strategy.
- How to monetize your most popular pins.
Find out more about Kristin’s Pinterest Presence course here.
Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing
Of all the ways of making money on your blog, affiliate marketing is probably the most lucrative. And Michelle Schroeder Gardner is one of the top experts!
In Michelle’s Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course, she shows you every strategy she used to start from $0 and now earn well over $50,000 every month in affiliate income. And you can do it without millions of visitors or selling your soul.
At 27 years old, Michelle is able to travel full time with her husband, chasing 70 degree weather wherever they can find it!
With this in-depth course, you’ll learn:
- What affiliate marketing is and how it works
- How to build trust without losing followers
- How to use Pinterest to make your affiliate marketing even more effective
- Why affiliate marketing is such a great source of income for your blog
- How to pick the right affiliate products to promote
- How to increase conversions
- Different strategies you can use to promote your affiliate products
- The exact steps she took to earn over $300,000 from a single blog post
- And lots more!
I personally learned a ton of great strategies from this incredible blogging resource that I’ve put into action on my blog with great success. If you want to make money blogging, I can’t say it enough- You need this course!
Find out more about Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing here.
Elite Blog Academy
Learning what you need to do to have a successful blog can be a difficult proposition. Ruth Soukup’s Elite Blog Academy is one of the top online courses that’ll take you from beginner to pro in the shortest time possible.
I haven’t actually taken this course yet (been busy taking several others) but will be soon. However, I do know several successful bloggers who have taken the course, and they attribute much of their success to what they learned there.
Starting a blog is easy. Making it successful? Not so much.
Here’s what Ruth has to say about this awesome blogging resource :
“So whether you’ve only just started or are already established and ready to grow, Elite Blog Academy will give you all the tools you need to refine your message, grow your traffic, monetize your platform, and build your business, and break it down into an easy-to-follow, methodical process that gets results.”
I know of no other course that successful bloggers recommend more highly!
Enrollment for Elite Blog Academy only opens up a couple of times a year.
However, you can go here to join the waiting list and they’ll let you know next time the course is available.
In the meantime,
- You can take Ruth’s free assessment here to see if you really have what it takes to be a successful blogger.
- Also, you can get the free Blog Structure Blueprint. It’s a simple template for setting up an organized blog.
- Get the free Goal Setting Workbook for Bloggers to help clarify your purpose and prioritize what’s really important.
Favorite Blogging Websites
Some of my favorite blogging resources are websites. There are literally thousands of websites available teaching every aspect of blogging imaginable. Some are totally awesome, some not so hot.
Here are a few of the top blogging websites I recommend (and have used myself) that will get you on the right track:
Smart Passive Income
SmartPassiveIncome.com is put together by Pat Flynn. Pat is one of the most incredible bloggers anywhere, and one of the most humble people you’ll ever meet.
Pat kind of stumbled into blogging when he lost his job as an architect during the recession. But over time he built an ultra-successful blog where he earns well over $150,000 every month!
Pat shows you in detail what works, what doesn’t, and how you can build a successful business that you can be proud of. Highly recommended!
Problogger
Darren Rowse is an Aussie who has been blogging since 2004, which is ancient in blogging years. With over 300,000 followers and 8,000 posts under his belt, Darren covers every aspect of how to turn your blog into a thriving business.
Problogger is one of my go-to resources when I need to learn some of the finer aspects of building a blogging business, how to create great content, and monetize my blog efficiently.
Darren also has the Problogger podcast, which is one of my favorite podcasts to listen to when I’m in the car.
Yoast
Yoast.com is a wordplay on the name of the website’s founder, Joost de Valk. In addition to the awesome SEO plugin I mentioned above, you’ll find a treasure trove of information at Yoast.com.
Yoast is more geared to the technical aspects of running a blog such as basic SEO (search engine optimization), interpreting analytics, and copywriting.
You’ll find a ton of resources there including courses, videos, ebooks, plugins, and even blog consulting services. It’s everything you need for the technical aspects of running your blog.
WP Beginner
Wp beginner is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a website for the beginning WordPress blogger to help you get up and running with your new blog.
You’ll find everything from a beginner’s guide for WordPress to videos, recommended plugins, and best practices. A great place to go for the beginning WordPress blogger.
Top Blogging Resources
Investing in these excellent blogging resources is one of the best things you can do to grow your traffic, become an influencer in your niche, and monetize your blog to become a moneymaking machine!
I hope you find these top blogging resources helpful. They’ve helped me tremendously over the years to reach my blogging goals, and I know they’ll help you too!
This post is part of my How to Start a Blog email free email course. If you're interested in blogging and would like to take the course you can sign up here or use the form below.
Many thanks for this important information. Thanks for putting effort to gather and build this great list for us to refer resources. Keep posting!