If you believe it or not: I’ve been blogging on and off since 2012. That is an insanely long time to learn new things and test services and products. Throughout the years I slowly figured out what worked and what didn’t. So why not share?
PSSST, don’t forget that there is an entire freebie library full of blogging, self care and personal development tips waiting for you, if you’re a member of my newsletter squad. Not part of the newsletter squad yet? Join HERE.
*This page contains affiliate links
Website Hosting
KnownHost or NixiHost
While I currently have no affiliate code for either of them, the are both highly recommended by people who host a ton of websites. A bunch of the big hosting services have gotten super bad with customer support and that cannot be said for these two. Knownhost is very comparable to the pricing of some of the highly marketed hosting services but has way better support and they migrate your existing page over for free if it takes under an hour (which is the case for most blogs). NixiHost is cool because they have a pricing that’s staying the same essentially forever. Many hosts are cheaper in the first few years and then go up in price, but Nixi is consistently the same monthly price which reduces any surprises. For transparency’s sake: I’m currently using KnownHost since they are a bit cheaper in the first three years compared to NixiHost, but Nixi admittedly has some cooler features for people with a bigger website.
Theme/Design
Hello You Designs
For the designs on this page you’ll need the Genesis Framework, but it’s absolutely worth it. Their designs are fully customizable and beautiful for any feminine and minimally branded business. They are perfect for every blogger that is trying to build a mailing list and still wants to look futuristic. The designs would work great for bloggers in niches with women as their target audience and especially bloggers that plan to coach as a side income. Some of their designs are also shop compatible in case you want to start up a shop with your blog.
Creative Market
Fonts, decorative graphics, stock photos, social media templates,… This site has it all and that’s why I love it. I use Creative Market almost weekly and just love how many different things you can get there. If you are still in your blog planning phase you should totally take them into consideration on your branding mood board. My favorite blog designs on there are: Blush, Blog Boss & Akay. You can also sign up for a Creative Market Pro Membership which is perfect for business owners and longtime bloggers.
WordPress Plugins
Yoast SEO
If you follow me a bit longer you will know how much I always mention in my blogging related posts that SEO is important. But even I can suck at it sometimes and this plugin makes it so much easier to just put in some keywords and a meta description into a post. This plugin is the reason why I’m being found on Google (alongside other things, but this is the main key). It also checks how well your posts are written and will tell you if it needs changes.
jQuery Pin It Button for Images
If you are a blogger you wanna be pinnable to get more traffic from Pinterest. Pinterest is one of the main traffic sources for pretty much every blogger. This is the plugin for you because it automatically puts a pin button on your blog post pictures if the reader hovers over it with their mouse. Make it easier for people to share your content!
Contact form 7
You want to be easy to reach by your readers and potential sponsors? This plugin is one of the most downloaded ones for a reason. Easy, minimal and does what it needs to do. It can be a little complicated to understand in the beginning but after a bit of trying it’s actually really fun to use if you need a questionnaire somewhere on your blog (definitely great for freelancers to ask questions before taking on a project!)
Smush Image Compression
Your website shouldn’t load for ten seconds after pressing enter or clicking a pin. Big pictures make your website slower and this tool compresses them into smaller files without losing quality. They also recently added the function to make your content load only when it’s on the screen. This makes loading time of your website slower and keeps people on your page for longer. Time is money and this plugin saves a lot of time in the long run.
Jetpack
Safety is important and this plugin is the best at doing that. The Premium plan of Jetpack will give you the best safety for the beginning in my opinion. I’m definitely not the first one you should ask about perfect website security but this tool makes me feel safer. This is a topic I will dive into deeper in the future blog posts to give you an entire security section on this recommendation page.
Mailmunch
If you want to build an email list with any of the big providers but their sign-up forms don’t look good, you should definitely use MailMunch. Their sign-up forms look so much better and with the paid plans they are super customizable. More on email services and other helpful tools further down the page.
Editing
Canva
This is a free online tool to create graphics. I personally use it for my mini ebooks and other freebies from time to time, but also for creating my Instagram carousels and drafting all sorts of creative projects. I personally have free access to the pro version through the nonprofit I co-founded and can tell you: If you create a lot the pro version is absolutely worth it! You can even make mini-websites with it and let a domain you already own link to it. Even after years I’m still learning new things I can do in Canva and they keep adding new stuff all the time.
Lightroom
I edit almost all of my pictures with this (especially since the vsco app essentially went to sh*t). This is one the best $100 investments I’ve ever made and I still learn new things about Lightroom. It’s easy to learn with a lot of videos available on Youtube. It takes a few videos to get into but then you won’t want to leave it again. I open it on my desktop and you don’t see me for at least 1-2 hours.
Affinity Suite V2 & Affinity by Canva
I cannot believe I ever recommended Adobe products beyond the standalone Lightroom on here. Affinity Suite V2 is a one-time-purchase! It has the equivalents for Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign which, let’s be honest, is what most people need. The more niche Adobe products also have alternatives by now that you can find through this neat Github page. More recently Canva, who have owned Affinity for a while, have released “Affinity” which is an all in one program that covers the most important bases for FREE. And they have outlined how, while there are AI features available on it if you have a Canva Pro subscription, nothing you put into the program is used for AI purposes. I respect them for putting that out there instead of keeping it vague. I personally wanted to scream (positively) when I finally found the feature that let me make a cut out in the layer below my current one in the shape of the current one. Y’all, as someone that makes a lot of typographical edits that is a godsent!
Cameras
Canon G7x Mark II
This camera is small, fits in every bag and makes great pictures. I personally use it not only for my blog but also for my social media pictures. It’s a good allrounder camera and worth its price…although I personally have some problems with the filming mode. It’s a good one to start with and maybe grow out of if your goal is to also film with it. If you only need a camera for pictures this one is perfect and I use it for my Instagram pictures ALL the time. The WiFi function also sends pictures straight to your phone.
Canon 750d
This is the new equivalent to the Canon 600d (that I had as my first DSLR camera) and it is obviously better and compatible with lenses that came out more recently. If you want a camera that you can use for years and years and you can’t invest a lot at the moment you should go with this one. It still has a big price tag but it’s by far not as big as most cameras used by big bloggers.
Canon 70d
If you can invest in a camera you should absolutely buy the Canon 70d (or 80d). I use my 80d for all indoor pictures, filming my occasional videos for youtube & for a lot of my more professional looking pictures. The 70d is equally as good and a little bit cheaper, that’s why I recommend this one to you. It works great with lenses that came out in the last years and I can’t wait to try more lenses out with it.
50mm 1.8 lens
If you only buy one lens apart from the kit lens, buy the Nifty Fifty. It’s a cheap, easy and light lens that takes bright pictures with wonderful blurry backgrounds. It is good for product and portrait photography. A blogger must have. You’ll see the giant difference this lens makes compared to your standard lense. I’m having the updated version (linked above) on my wishlist for a while now and can’t wait to try it out with the better automatic focus.
More Blogging Resources
Ellipsus
If you’re big on using Google products less, this is the one for you. Many Google Services still are way above their competitors but this one is *chef’s kiss* because even though they don’t have an app yet their browser version saved to the homescreen makes you not even need one. I’ve had a major sync issue with them once that was caused by the browser I was using and their support went above and beyond for me. The only recommendation I’ll give about Ellipsus is that you should ideally use it with a browser that doesn’t have super hardcore privacy settings because that can interfere with their sync. On the go I often still jot down my writings in Google Keep and tranfer them later, but on desktop Ellipsus is the only reason I use Edge because it really does run THAT good on that browser.
Tailwind
Pinterest is the number one spot for bloggers and this is the best tool to grow on there and also grow your website traffic. You schedule your pins on there, join groups that fit your niche and share content of others that works well with your own. You can loop your pins to let them be shared to board in an interval AND you can check all your Pinterest analytics right on their dashboard. I’m just in love with the concept of having everything in one place. I wrote an honest review on it after one year of using it and also shed lights on things that can still be improved about the platform. You can check it out HERE.
Notion
Yeah, I’m one of those girlies. Listen, I love a bunch of the Notion alternatives as well and I wish there was a way more intuitive app experience of Notion, but it truly is THAT girl. The only thing that has been irking my about it is that you cannot fully turn off their AI features (moments where I’m happy the European Union exists that might make that illegal). If you’re someone that LOVES a good Kanban board like me but finds Trello and Asana too inflexible: Notion is your thing. If you exclusively work on desktop and never on your phone I will say Obsidian kann go a long way, but for the majority of people Notion is versatile.
Kit (previously Convertkit)
Listen, I’ve been with Mailchimp a majority of my blogging journey for their free starter plan. The one that doesn’t seem to exist anymore? Yeah. Kit is it. They still have a free tier and if you declutter your email list frequently you’ll stay under the threshold for the next higher plan for a good while. And by that I mean, by the time you hit that ceiling that email list already makes you money so you can pay for that higher tier easily. I’m still worming my way into using it but I must say, as someone that’s been on THEIR email list for years, they drop gold all the damn time.
The Contract Shop
Legal paperwork, words that make you shudder, right? This shop helps you with contracts that you might need for selling products, services or collaborations. They also have good workbooks for the newbies in this big online world. This is definitely a go-to store if your website is for your business (i.e. Freelancer, Coach, Podcaster, etc.) or if your blog has reached a size where you need to get better workflows going (contract templates are definitely a part of that). They also have templates for sponsorships that I’d suggest to every blogger and a bundle for all the common legal pages for a website/shop.
Other resources I love
Ultimate Bundles
This is a service I really love and hold near and dear to my heart. They curate digital products (ebooks, courses, workbooks, etc.) on different topics carefully and put them into bundles, so you can buy them for a much cheaper price. Some of their bundles literally have the product value of over a thousand dollars and cost less than 60 bucks. They don’t only have bundles around the topics of blogging and productivity, but also about money management, food and photography. Check out what they currently have on sale!
Redbubble
This is not really related to blogging or personal development, but to self care and creativity. I love rewarding myself with cool little things and Redbubble is a great way to do that. The sell shirts, stickers (get 50% off 6 stickers HERE), home decor and stationery (get 15% off 2 notebooks HERE). I even have my OWN shop on there with positivity and pop music designs. I’ll definitely upload more on there as time goes on. Highly recommend the shirts, the notebooks and the stickers. Don’t forget to use the coupon codes I linked to save some money!
Courses & ebooks
How to get your life together workbook guide
We all need our reset in life every now and then. What better time to get into goal setting today and figure out what you want to change in your life. This workbook guide goes through everything you could ever think about when it comes to getting rid of your old life and welcoming a new you.
Mind, Body & Soul eBook
Self care can be difficult terrain to get into when you’re a workaholic or an absolute couch potato. That’s why I wrote an entire eBook about anything self care. It’s a great resource for everyone that is new to building a self care habit or anyone that wants to get deeper into the topic.
Blogging Bossbabe course
I made a whole course on how to start a successful blog and monetize it quickly. It’s called Blogging Bossbabe and is constantly updated with new content. It currently has 7 video modules, even more written course modules, tons of free resources like ebooks, workbooks and templates & it’s priced affordably for beginners. Check out all the topics I teach in there and decide if you want to jumpstart your blog.
Unsure about trying it? You can get a free start into the course by signing up for my free “Blogger Starter Kit” email course filled with almost all the tools on this page being put into practice. You can join for free here:
