*This post contains affiliate links meaning that if you make a purchase after using them, I earn a small commission, which helps support this blog at no additional cost to you. Keep in mind that I only link to quality products that I use myself and feel would be beneficial for my readers. Read my full affiliate disclosure for more information.

Getting Started

• SiteGround Hosting for WordPress: The platform I use to host all of my blogs. It has lightning speed, a user-friendly interface, and outstanding customer support… all for the right price.
• How to Start a WordPress Blog for Dirt Cheap: Step-by-step technical guide on how to set up a self-hosted WordPress blog on SiteGround.
• 10 Crucial Steps to Take When Setting Up WordPress: Find out what steps to take as soon as your blog is up.

Top-notch Themes

• GeneratePress: The theme I use for all my blogs. It’s extremely lightweight, responsive, customizable, fast, secure, and completely optimized for search engines.
• Bluchic: Super cute feminine WordPress themes for female entrepreneurs.
• Twenty Twenty Two: Arguably the best free option out there.

When browsing themes, look for the following qualities:

💡 TIP: A high-quality theme is worth investing in. Free themes are easily exploited by hackers and slow down your site.

WordPress Plugins

✓ WP-Rocket: The best plugin to speed up your website. It’s super easy to set up, optimizes your blog for speed, offers caching, and works well with other plugins.

✓ Yoast SEO: Optimize your posts for the keywords you want to rank in Google. The free version works great for most bloggers.

✓ Pretty Links: Make your affiliate links look cleaner while making it easy to track and modify them across your whole site.

✓ Grow Social Pro: Add social media buttons to your posts, “pin it” buttons to your images, and optimize your posts for people to share them.

✓ Antispam Bee: As people start to notice your blog, so do the spammers. This plugin helps you avoid the unwanted spam and is much faster than Jetpack.

✓ Wordfence: Likewise, hackers will also notice your site. Protect it with a web application firewall (WAF) and unrivaled security scans.

✓ WP YouTube Lyte: “Lazy load” embedded Youtube videos so that they’re only called when clicked on. This can drastically speed up posts with multiple videos.

✓ ShortPixel: Optimize and compress your images to further speed up your website.

✓ Insert Headers and Footers: This allows you to add code to the headers and footers of your site. Useful for setting up things like Google Analytics without adding another plugin.

💡TIP: Only use necessary plugins; too many will slow down your site. Look for lightweight options that are continually being worked on and have positive customer reviews.

Marketing Must-Haves

• The Template Lounge: Premade customizable Canva templates will make your life so much easier.
• ConvertKit: My favorite platform to streamline your e-mail marketing campaigns. Easy to use, customizable, and highly functional.
• Tailwind: Make your life so much easier by automating your Pinterest and Instagram accounts. This is non-negotiable if you want traffic from Pinterest.
• Buffer: A more affordable yet less customizable option for social media automation. Great alternative for beginners.

Graphic Design Tools

• Canva: Free image editing software for your phone or computer. This is what I use to make most of my graphics.
• Adobe Creative Cloud: Get access to Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, and more for a monthly cost.
• Creative Market: My favorite place to buy unique fonts, premade graphics, and anything else you need to stand out from the crowd.
• Depositphotos: Super affordable, high-quality stock photos. They regularly offer discount packages with images costing less than $1.

Keyword Research

• SEMRush: Although a bit pricey, this is easily one of the best SEO tools available. I couldn’t function without it.
• Keysearch: A much more affordable alternative for begginners. Use the code: KSDISC to get 20% off today!
• UberSuggest: FREE website developed by Neil Patel for basic keyword research.

💡TIP: Keyword research is one of the most overlooked aspects of blogging. This is where you find less-competitive search terms you can rank for on Google. Once you find the right keywords, you can optimize your content around them and start getting organic traffic to your site.

education

Even if you feel like you know it all, it’s important to remember that the blogging game is always evolving. Here are some of my favorite blogging resources to keep up with the trends:

✓ CreateAndGo: Alex Nerney and Lauren McManus are two young entrepreneurs that make a ton of money from blogging. They have some pretty legit (yet affordable) courses about starting a profitable blog, search engine optimization, and my favorite, the Pinterest Traffic Avalanche course. It teaches you the ins and outs of Pinterest, and I’m not even kidding – it completely changed the Pinterest game for me.

✓ BossGirlBloggers: I’m also a huge fan of EllDuclos’s courses, including Pinterest With Ell. Her products are cost-effective for newer bloggers, but they’ll really help you step up your game. She also has a Facebook group called Boss Girl Bloggers, where thousands of women work together each day to grow their blogs.

✓ Ruth Soukup: This lady is one of the absolute best educators out there. Not only does she have a ton of amazing resources for getting your life together, but she also runs one of the most notable blogging courses on the market, The Elite Blog Academy. While this is my favorite course of all time, it can be pretty hard to get into…

…which is why I highly recommend her book, How To Blog For Profit Without Selling Your Soul. This book teaches the same foundations of EBA for a fraction of the cost.

✓ The Blogging Millionaire Podcast: Brandon Gaille explains things in a way that is so easy to understand. His podcast teaches you the exact techniques he uses to get millions of blog visitors each month.

✓ Mediavine On Air: This is another great Podcast to help you create kick-ass content and optimize your blog for traffic. Even though it comes from Mediavine (the best ad network ever), it was designed to help all content creators succeed across the web.

✓ Simple Pin Podcast: Kate Ahl of Simple Pin Media seems to know Pinterest better than anyone on the planet. Her free podcast is incredibly helpful… especially if you’re just starting out. This is where she spills all her exclusive tips for optimizing your Pinterest account so you can start getting blog traffic today.

✓ Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing: The go-to affiliate marketing course for all big-time bloggers. Michelle Schroeder goes into detail about how she makes several thousands of dollars per month with affiliate marketing. Her motto is, “if you aren’t utilizing affiliate marketing, you’re leaving money on the table.”

Extra Credit

• DSLR Camera: In our visual world, high-quality images are a must. If you do your own photography, a DSLR camera is worth the splurge (although most smartphones work just fine).
• Neewer Ring Light: Take your photos to the next level with clean lighting.
• Hotjar: Free tool that shows you “heatmaps” of your site. Great for improving user experience and click-through rates.
• Skimlinks: Turns non-affiliate links into money-making affiliate links when applicable.