Blogging Resources
and Tools You Need

Blogging is an adventure and like any adventure, you need to have the right tools and resources to make it successful and fun!

To build a successful blog and business, you need great resources. There are so many tools and services available out there and it’s hard to know which is the right tools or services you need.

Over years of building websites and blogs, I have tried many tools and learned a lot through the journey. I’ve compiled a list of the tools and websites that I use and recommend to help you build your blog and your business.

Don’t have your own blog yet? Check out this complete guide on how you can start your own blog.

At TypeEighty, we provide WordPress blog setup service for free when you sign up for a web hosting through any of our hosting partners.

Note: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning if you choose to buy them, I will earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Please know that I have experience with all of the following resources and I recommend them because they are great.

Blog Platforms

WordPress: This is the most popular Content Management System that I am using for TypeEighty and highly recommend. WordPress provides tons of customization that can fit any business needs you have.

Blogger: If you’re new to blogging and looking for an easy-to-use platform, you’re looking at Blogger. Blogger is a popular choice for new bloggers that are just starting up. However, you might start hitting a few roadblock once your blog has grown big.

SquareSpace: If you’re looking for an alternative to WordPress, give SquareSpace a try. SquareSpace is the all-in-one solution for anyone looking to create a beautiful website. SquareSpace excels with its award-winning templates that guarantee to make your website looks professional.

Blog Hostings

Bluehost: Bluehost is the best place to get started for new bloggers. I highly recommend Bluehost for your WordPress site. Why? Bluehost makes it super easy to set up with its one-click WordPress installation. You could get started now at $3.95/month and it also comes with FREE domain, email, FTP and more.

Siteground: Famous for its great customer support, Siteground is another web hosting that I would recommend for new or established bloggers. Siteground has excellent built-in caching services that make your WordPress site load faster. And they will migrate your site from another web host for free. So just sit back and let them handle everything for you. You could get started now from $3.95/month.

WPEngine: WPEngine is the first and the best Managed WordPress Hosting. Their hosting infrastructure is highly optimised for WordPress. It makes your WordPress site fast, scalable and secure. I recommend WPEngine for bloggers looking for high-quality hosting.

Blogging Courses / eBooks

Boosting Your Blog Traffic: If you’re struggling to grow your blog’s traffic, you shouldn’t miss this eBook from The She Approach. Ana, the growth strategist behind The She Approach, shares her proven strategies to boost your blog traffic even if you’re brand new.

Zero to Superhero Affiliate Marketing Training Bundle: If you want to make money from blogging but having a hard time making your first sale, this training bundle will make it possible for you. You’ll get a collection of resources and tutorials that you can use to create a winning affiliate marketing strategy for your blog. This bundle includes more than 300+ handpicked affiliate programmes for you to choose from.

WordPress Plugins

WP Rocket: The best caching plugins for WordPress with an extensive list of features. It made caching easy even for beginners. I’ve used WP Rocket on multiple websites and I shared the configuration I used to improve my page load by 50%. Looking for alternatives? Check out this post.

Rank Math: It’s the swiss army knife of WordPress SEO. Probably the best WordPress SEO plugin. It has tons of features that I find it missing in Yoast SEO. It has an SEO analysis tool that will assess your website based on 40 SEO factors. There are few nice features coming soon: Google Webmaster and Google trends integration. Try it now, it’s free.

Yoast SEO: One of the most widely popular WordPress plugins around and it’s easy to understand why. Whether you’re running a personal blog or you’re an SEO professional managing a website for a client, Yoast is a powerful tool that can help you make your site as search engine-friendly as possible.

Social Warfare Pro: A lightning-fast social sharing plugin that doesn’t slow down your website at all. This is the best social sharing plugin that comes with tons of features to supercharge your social sharing. It also includes security feature to protect your content from being hijacked.

Pretty Links Pro: The most important plugin for affiliate marketers. Pretty Links Pro is easy to use plugin that lets you manage and cloak your affiliate links all in one place. Adding and managing your affiliate links can be time-consuming, Pretty Links Pro can help you automate some of these processes. I could specify some keywords and Pretty Links Pro will analyze my content and replace these keywords with links. It saves me some time to manually add links to my content.

Thirsty Affiliate Pro: Similar too with Pretty Links Pro. You can automatically add affiliate links to your content with the Pro version.

WPForms: A visual drag-and-drop form builder. You could easily build your contact form without any technical knowledge required.

WordPress Themes

StudioPress: I’ve used StudioPress themes in a couple of projects and can’t be happier with the result. StudioPress themes are powered by Genesis framework, the leading industry design framework powering over 500,000 WordPress sites.

StudioPress themes are search engine optimised, airtight secured and highly customizable. Did I also mention mobile responsive? StudioPress themes are mobile responsive means your WordPress site will be mobile-friendly out of the box. I highly recommend you to check out StudioPress themes that are perfect for your site.

Elegant Themes: If you’re looking for a cheaper alternative to StudioPress, getting a package from Elegant Themes is a great option. Starting from $89/year, you’ll have access to a dozen of themes including Divi, the most popular premium WordPress theme in the world.

ThemeForest: ThemeForest is the world’s most popular WordPress theme marketplace. Themes on ThemeForest are properly tagged and organized, it makes it easy to find the right theme for your website.

Graphic Design

Canva: The most popular online graphic tool. Canva is a great tool to design beautiful images for your blog and social media super easy. It’s great for creating graphics for social media.

PicMonkey: Another great online photo editing tool. It’s like having Photoshop in your browser.

Design Wizard: Design Wizard is an excellent graphic design tool for social media marketers and business owners. You can edit high-quality images and videos with this tool.

Snapseed: The app I am using frequently on my mobile phone. It is a professional photo editor application for iPhone or Android. Get the Android version here.

99designs: If you don’t have the time and skills to create your own graphic, 99designs is the number #1 graphic design marketplace to find professional designers to work with.

Stock Photos

Pexels: The first website I would check for stock photos for my website. It has a great collection of free stock photos and videos taken by professionals. You could specify the photo’s dimension before download.

Unsplash: The categories on Unsplash make it easy for you to find high-quality photos you need. Even better, you could browse their collections and discover beautiful photos. Hubspot has a collection on Unsplash too.

Pixabay: Another great website to search for free stock photos and videos for your blog.

Negative Space: You could get free stock photos sent directly to your email every week. Negative Space has a growing collection of images. You could find any photos from architecture, landscape to technology.

StockSnap: Another collection of high-quality photos. If you always find yourself looking for a specific photo, you gonna love Stocksnap’s tag-based category system. Try searching “child in snow”.

Video Tools

Veed: A simple free to use online video editing platform, screen recorder, and webcam recorder for creating social media video or any video content. Cut, trim, crop, auto add subtitles, progress bars, transcribe, soundwaves, and more.

Social Media Tools

Open Graph: A free tool to check and preview how social media sites and search engines display your website and improve your social traffic.

Buffer: At TypeEighty, we are using Buffer to schedule our social media posts. Buffer makes it easy to schedule posts to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

Hootsuite: A social media management platform for your team to manage all your social media accounts in one place. Hootsuite makes it easy to find and schedule content as you browse.

CoSchedule: A great alternative to Hootsuite. You can schedule your social media directly on your calendar. With its WordPress plugin, you can schedule and optimise your blog post directly from your site.

Tailwind: A Pinterest and Instagram scheduling tool. Its smart scheduler lets you to post or pin at the right time to maximize your reach.

Email Marketing

ConvertKit: I’ve been using ConvertKit on other niche sites and always recommend ConvertKit if you want to increase your conversion rate. ConvertKit makes marketing automation easy even for beginners.

MailChimp: A super easy to use email marketing tool and free for the first 2,000 subscribers. It’s ideal for new bloggers and one of the most popular email services.

Drip: A powerful and easy to use email marketing tools. Its free plan is limited to 100 subscribers but it gives you more features compared to MailChimp.

AWeber: A good alternative for MailChimp. You’ll have access to every features even with its lowest plan.

Sumo: An easy to use tool to build your email list through pop-ups, smart bars, scroll box, welcome mats and more. Use the free plan and grow your email list to 500 subscribers.

OptinMonster: Similar to Sumo, OptinMonster is a powerful tool to convert your visitors into subscribers. You can create unlimited custom designed forms and do A/B testing for maximum result. Find out how you could build your email list fast with OptinMonster.