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Here is a list of blogging resources that will help you on your blogging journey.
(Updated for 2024)
Analytics
Since Google forced everyone to migrate to GA4, it has been a huge learning curve to to use the new version. There is always a better alternative. We have switched to Fathom Analytics*. They provide an easy to use dashboard and installation is via a plugin, no need to mess with code. They offer a 30 free trial* so you can see how their graphical dashboard can help you monitor your site traffic.
Moving Your Blog from Blogger or WordPress.com to your own domain and WordPress.org
You will need to buy a domain name and to get your blog hosted somewhere. Below are some places that we recommend for these services.
Register Domain Name
To register your domain names, we use this company as they are one of the largest domain registration companies and they are reliable. If you pick a domain registration company by price, these are sometimes resellers and if they go out of business, you will lose your domain, your website and your business along with that.
https://www.ladiesinblogging.com/go/domain-registration/
Website Hosting
You will then need a reliable hosting company to host your website. In the last few months, we have heard horror stories of bloggers losing their sites that were hosted on Bluehost. Just know that this is the one most people recommend as they pay the highest commission rates. Here are some other hosting options that we have used, who take daily backups and are reliable.
BigScoots Hosting* has some reasonably priced shared hosting plans that start at USD$6.95 a month. They will migrate your site for you from your current hosts too, great for those of us who are not that tech savvy. If you have a site with much larger traffic volumes, you can opt for their higher end WordPress hosting. Check out all their hosting plans here.
Siteground Hosting – This is another company that offers fast hosting with great support. Check out their hosting packages here. (for a limited time, they are offering their packages at 70% off).
Free Site Setup
If you do sign up for hosting with these companies and buy through the links above, we can help you install WordPresss on your new domain. Just drop us an email when you do and we can sort you out.
Premium WordPress Themes
If you are using self hosted wordpress, one of the best features is the ability to change your blog theme with the click of a button. You can upload your own theme or use of the premium themes like on this blog.
We really like the Kadence themes as they are built in accordance the WordPress’ best practices, are lightweight in code, are super fast loading (which will help your Google rankings) and are very easy to customise. We switched all the sites over from Studiopress themes as WordPress is changing and using a drag-and-drop page builder like Kadence makes it easier to create a modern and fast loading website.
The Kadence theme comes with a lot of starter templates that will shortcut your design process. You can pick and choose the type of block you want to use and save them as reusable blocks to deploy across different pages and posts. It really is super versatile.
Did we say it is really lightweight and fast loading too?
Feel free to ask any questions about premium themes by leaving a comment below.
Business Cards
I have been using Vistaprint for business cards for years. They always have a deal on which makes it very easy to get cards at a discount. The Vistaprint coupon code for Oct 2017 is
Click here for 50% off business cards.
Easy Video Editing Tools
These are apps on your phone that make editing social media videos a breeze
- Capcut
- Inshot
- iMovie
Video Creation Tool
This is a great online tool for making videos very quickly by just uploading your photos and adding some text and music-Animoto
The software allows you to upload directly to your Youtube account too.
Social Media Sites
All blogs need to have a presence on social media. Whethere you have time to post on them or not, you should claim your account on all of these as they will give you a backlink and if you ever wanted to sell your blog, this is added value. These are the main social media sites that you should have accounts on.
Keyword Research
This is a free tool to do Keyword Research from Google but you need to sign in with a Google ID and create an adwords account. You don’t need to buy any ads to use it. Google External Keyword tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Email Marketing
One of the foolproof ways to get more traffic to your blog is by using email marketing. You need to be able to collect emails of all your visitors and contact them when you have new blog posts, videos and other content to share. This has been shown to increase regular blog traffic by quite a lot.
I highly recommend using ConvertKit as an email service provider. It is also an autoresponder so you can use it to queue up a series of content for your readers and it will get sent out in the frequency that you decide. I love the ability to segment audiences in ConvertKit as this usually gets you much better open rates and conversions. If you send the right message with a relevant headline to each segment of your list, your success with email marketing will be much better.
If you use any other great tech solutions for your blog, please share in the comments below.
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