Want to start a blog?

Do you want to start a blog? More precisely: do you want to learn how to start blogging and make money?

I have created this page to help you!

Here I’m sharing a list of all the best blogging tools around.

I’ll give you an explanation of what they are and why they are important.

The following post contains affiliates, which means I’ll get a small commission if you decide to buy using the links provided. This will add NO EXTRA COST to you but it helps me to keep this blog up and running. Thank you. You can get more info by reading my Disclaimer page.

AFFILIATE LINKS / AFFILIATES FOR BLOGGERS

This page contains my affiliate links. Therefore, if you purchase any of the products here listed by following the links provided, I’ll earn a small commission.

Please remember that I only recommend the tools I actually use and love, so they are all tested and trusted by me.

As I’ll start using more tools, I’ll update this page.

HOW TO START A BLOG

If you are a new blogger, there’s so much information and skills to learn that it’s frankly quite intimidating.

At the very beginning of my blogging life I was simply overwhelmed and had no clue on where to start!

Thankfully I invested in courses and tools that made my life so much easier.

Here I’m going to give you a quick explanation of what I use daily.

HOW TO START BLOGGING AS A BEGINNER

Before you even buy your domain from a reputable hosting company, do some research and see if the name you had in mind is available, if something with a similar name is already being used, and if the name is being utilized on major social media platforms.

Once you are clear and sure on a domain name, then go ahead and buy it!

BEST HOSTING PROVIDER FOR WORDPRESS

In order for you to actually own a website that anybody can access from anywhere in the world, you need to buy a domain from a hosting company. This company essentially makes sure that your website is “online”. In other words, they provide you with a little bit of space on the world wide web.

The hosting provider I use is BLUEHOST. I find them very very good and reliable.

In the beginning, I had some questions and issues, and they were always extremely helpful. I was always able to solve my issues promptly and quickly.

They offer a 24/7 helpline, either via phone or chat.

H O W MUCH DOES BLUEHOST CHARGE FOR HOSTING?

Bluehost offers very competitive prices, and you can pay using different monthly or yearly plans, depending on your needs.

For more info, you can check their website.

WORDPRESS

Once you have acquired a domain from Bluehost, you can install your website on WordPress.

WordPress is without any doubt the best platform when it comes to blogging.

WordPress has two different types of websites: the .org and the .com ones.

There is a huge difference between the two.

WORDPRESS .ORG VS WORDPRESS .COM

A wordpress.org website is what you need when you buy a domain of your choice. It’s the type of website you need in order to start a professional blog that can be monetized in time.

A wordpress.com is simply the free version, where you can’t use your domain name. In that case, you only own a subdomain on the wordpress.com directory.

For example, if you own the domain “myhappywebsite.com”, once you have a wordpress.org website, people will find your blog by typing your full domain name.

If you only have a wordpress.com site, then your domain name will be “www.wordpress.com/myhappywebiste”….. not ideal, really!

If you buy a domain from Bluehost, you don’t need to pay for a wordpress.org website, as it is already included in the price.

HOW TO LEARN HOW TO BLOG

So, now you have a website.

Time to invest in good courses to learn how to blog!

When I first started blogging the simple mention of the word SEO gave me nightmares!

What is SEO anyway? Right?

I know exactly how it feels, trust me!

But then I discovered the amazing courses that Suzy Whitford offers at “Start a mom blog”.

THE “Start a mom blog” COURSES

I took several of those courses, and I can’t recommend them enough.

She teaches you exactly:

How to start a blog;
Come up with a good blog name;
Find your profitable niche;
Step by step set up guide on WordPress;
What theme to install to get you started for FREE;
The plugins you need;
The email provider you need to get in order to start an email list;
How to grow an email list from scratch;
You will learn how to write blog articles that are SEO ready;
Grow your audience;
Create printables and small products to sell;
etc.

I could go on and on…..

I have learned so much from her courses and I certainly urge you to sign up for any of them.

She explains things with such ease and knowledge that even beginners can follow without any problem.

And they are very very reasonably priced! When you are a new blogger it’s hard to invest money in your business when you don’t have any return yet, so Suzy’s courses are a good choice.

You can check her “learn how to blog courses” here.

HOW TO CREATE BEAUTIFUL AND CAPTIVATING IMAGES FOR YOUR BRAND NEW BLOG

There is no doubt that good images play an important role when it comes to growing your audience.

Nobody likes to look at dark, blurry and uninspiring pictures on their screen!

But if you, like me, have no photography skills?

Canva is the solution for you!

WHAT IS CANVA

Canva is an online platform that gives you total peace of mind to create images, videos, infographics and much much more, at the touch of a button, and with no previous graphic and photography skills.

I use Canva every single day, to create the blog posts featured images, the graphics for my social media accounts and of course Pinterest.

Canva has a free version, and that is a very good starting point.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CANVA AND CANVA PRO?

A few months ago I signed up for the pro version and I’m loving it.

The paid version not only gives you all the free features, but it also offers cool tools like:

the ability to create your brand folder (with your logo and your colour palette),
access to millions of free photos,
Canvas pro let’s you remove the background from any image,
the ability to resize an image to use it on different platforms (so you don’t have to recreate it from scratch).

IS IT WORTH PAYING FOR CANVA?

To me, it is definitively worth it. Whatever I’m looking for in terms of images or templates for an ebook or any infographic, I know I can find it on Canva pro.

Canva pro has a free trial period as well, so I’d go check it if I were you.

Get Canva Pro here.

THE BEST KEYWORDS SEARCH TOOL

Keywords research is vital to a successful blog. No one is going to find and read your content, no matter how good it is, if you don’t use the right keywords.

That’s where a good keywords search tool comes in handy!

There are a lot of services out there, and all equally expensive, unfortunately.

RANK IQ on the other hand, is very affordable and by far the best around.

YOAST SEO

When I first started blogging I had absolutely no idea how to master SEO in order to rank on Google.

Of course, I had installed Yoast SEO on my blog and I naively thought that as long as I got the 2 green dots on my post, I’d surely rank on google, right?

WRONG!

Yoast tells you only and exclusively HOW to write a post, but not what to write about!

So, how do we know what topic to cover in our next blog post? The key is to find “LOW COMPETITION KEYWORDS” that also have a high search volume (cause you don’t want to write about something nobody is interested in reading!).

KEYWORDS RESEARCH EXAMPLE

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say you want to write a post about sourdough bread and baking.

If you choose the keywords “how to bake sourdough bread”, the competition is so high that you probably won’t get a chance to rank, especially with a new blog.

If you choose the keywords “how long does sourdough last?” instead, the search volume is still high, but the competition is low. Therefore, you will actually have a chance to outrank other blogs.

HOW TO FIND GOOD KEYWORDS

So, how do you find the right keywords to use (low competition but high search volume)?

You have two alternatives:

Do it manually, using a tool like Keywords finder or Ubersuggest: this is extremely time consuming and it requires a lot of patience!
Pay for a service that will do it for you.

On the market there are a few of those services, such as AHREFS and SEMRUSH.

AHREFS is $99 per month; SEMRUSH is $119.95 per month.

And those are their cheapest plans!

RANK IQ

Thankfully the blogging genius Brandon Gaille of the “The Blog Millionaire” has come up with a better and cheaper alternative, called “Rank IQ”.

It’s only $49 per month and it is the best tool out there.

Even beginners bloggers can afford it.

With RANK IQ all the hard work has already been done for us.

This tools gives you exactly the low competition keywords with a high search volume, divided by niche!

No more spending hours researching what to blog about next week!

You save so much time that you can use it to focus on writing the best content possible in order to rank fast.

RANK IQ FEATURES

Not only that.

Rank IQ shows you:

what are the blogs that rank for those keywords so that you can check them for inspiration;
the word count needed to outrank them;
exactly what words to include in your text in order to rank;
how long it takes to rank for specific keywords (Average, Fast, Ultra fast, etc.);
Rank Iq also comes with a built in text editor.

HOW TO GET RANK IQ

I have been using it for a few months now, and I love it. Most importantly, I don’t have to guess or think about what my next post will be about and spend time researching the best low-competition keywords for the topic.

I just go through the list provided by Rank IQ.

As a result, I find that I have more time to write better content now.

I can’t honestly recommend it enough.

You can get RANK IQ here.

WHAT IS TAILWIND?

If you are using Pinterest to promote your blog (and if you are not, you really should!), you know that in order to be seen, you need to pin every single day. Several times a day.

And, who has that time?

That’s why you need to use Tailwind.

IS TAILWIND WORTH IT?

Yes. Tailwind is a scheduler tool for Pinterest and Instagram. You can save the images you want to pin in your scheduler, and Tailwind will just publish those pins when you want.

You can batch schedule your content once a week and let Tailwind do the hard work for you.

Not only that. Tailwind also offers a great opportunity for your content to be seen by a larger audience thanks to the “tribes”. When you sign up for tailwind, you can join a few tribes (they are like a Pinterest board) and share your pins in those groups. This will give you a better chance to reach a wide variety of Pinterest users.

You can check Tailwind here.

FOR YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

If you also have or are thinking of starting a YouTube channel, there are a few tools I can recommend.

HOW DOES TUBEBUDDY WORK?

Tubebuddy is a tool for keywords research for YouTube.

It helps you find good keywords for your videos, with good search volume and low competition. It also provides you with good suggestions in terms of videos to watch for that same topic, to see what the completion is doing and how you can outrank them.

HOW MUCH DOES TUBEBUDDY COST?

Tube buddy has a free version, but that offers limited features.

I’d recommend you invest in the paid version, to unlock all the features this tool can offer. It is anyway very affordable.

You can get Tubebuddy here.

EPIDEMIC SOUND

Any good YouTube video comes with a good soundtrack.

If you are worried about copyrights, there’s a simple solution.

Epidemic sound is an online platform that offers you millions of songs that are free for you to use in your videos and on your social media platforms.

You simply choose the track you like, and use it in your content.

Very simple to use, and gives you peace of mind.

Epidemic sound offers a free trial period. After that, it becomes a paid service, but at super affordable monthly prices.

You can get Epidemic Sound here.