Blogging Resources

My aim is to make this blogging resources page one of the best blogging resources page on the internet. This page identifies all the blogging tools you need (including the best monthly web hosting plans) to start a blog and optimize your website. For the 8 blogging resources that I think every blogger absolutely must have to start a successful blog, see my 8 Must-Have Blogging Tools to Start a Successful Blog.

Okay, so here you will find links to services, products and books that I truly believe can help you grow into the blogger you aspire to be.

Disclosure: The links you see below are affiliate links. This means that I will earn a commission if you decide to purchase the products and services I recommend. Please understand that I recommend the following products in my blogging resources page because I believe in these products and can stand behind them. I will not recommend a product or a seller that I do not believe in or trust.

1. Blogging Resource – Monthly Web Hosting Provider or “Host”

The first blogging resource is definitely going to be the hosting service with which you will host your blog.

When it comes to choosing a monthly web hosting provider, there is no one size that fits all. What works for one blog will not necessarily work for another.

With the increasing number of web hosting companies and services, it’s easy to get lost and not know which company to choose. For this reason, I have narrowed the hosting services to three. If you don’t want to read the details below, here are my recommendations.

• If you’re on a budget and you want start a personal blog, then go with Bluehost. They power more than 2 million websites. Here is a tutorial (with pictures) for how to host a website or blog with Bluehost.

• If your website’s speed is most important to you and you are willing to pay a little extra, then go with SiteGround.

• If you have small business and you are looking for the best web hosting for small business, then you need a host with WordPress experts. I recommend WP Engine.

Now unto a little more details.

1.1 Best Budget Hosting

• Bluehost

Bluehost is the host on which I run my personal blog (I have an upgraded plan with them). Their servers are fast and secure. I have never experienced any problems from using their service or communicating with their staff or tech support team.

Bluehost is best for those who are just starting out and want the best budget host they can get. I recommend this host to my friends and family members and, if you are a beginner, I recommend the same to you. There is simply no better place to start than with Bluehost.

1.2 Fast WordPress Hosting

• SiteGround

If you are looking for a faster host, and you are willing to pay a little bit extra, then I recommend SiteGround. It has one of the fastest loading servers for uptime and speed. This is for those who are looking to shave off as much time as they can from their page loading speed and rank for competitive keywords on google. I say this because, according to google developers, loading speed is an important SEO factor. Read what google developers have to say about this: Speed is now a landing page factor for Google Search and Ads.

So if you want to start a blog that has more images and visual content than writing, like a beauty blog or a fashion blog or a food blog or a blog with intensive marketing or promotional content, then SiteGround is the way to go.

If you are hosted with another web host and you want to migrate your site, SiteGround will help you migrate for free as long as you choose their GrowBig or GoGeek plans.

1.3 Best Web Hosting for Small Business

• WP Engine

WP Engine is for you if you want the best host for a small online business – both in terms of blazing speed and SEO. This is a robust platform that can handle the pressure of high incoming traffic (and a lot of clicks) extremely well.

Yup, they are known for being the best and most reliable hosting service for small (and large) business. They also have an amazing intern program for college students, they donate $100,000 to causes that their employees care about, and they were the first to sign the Equal Pay for Equal Work White House pledge. WP Engine has high ethical standards.

And even though they are the priciest of the three at $35/month, you get the follwing:

1. You get two months free if you pay for the entire year in advance.
2. You get access to their Genesis framework and Studio Press themes for FREE – for any plan you choose.
3. They will help migrate your website from another hosting provider for free.

So for $350 a year, you will receive between $1000 – $2000 in value.

I should also add that their technical support team is world class: they are known for being the MOST PHENOMENAL team of experts you can work with. In a nutshell, they will help you improve your business.

WP Engine has my strongest recommendation for performance and value.

2. Blogging Resource: Best WordPress Blog Themes and Designs

I advocate premium themes over free themes. I do so simply because free themes do not always get updated. They don’t look nice. And they are not fully optimized.

Free themes can also give your readers the feeling that you are not fully invested in your blog. This can sometimes lead to distrust and, over time, less traffic.

2.1 WordPress Free Themes

Here is what a generic free theme looks like:

And here are some reviews:

Here is another popular free theme that looks a little better, but has serious CSS problems.

As you can see from this quick overview, free themes can create a bad user experience (and a bad reader’s experience).

That’s not mention the trouble of moving from a free (and buggy) theme to a premium theme once you are fed up with the free theme. That’s why it is important to start right from the beginning and purchase a premium theme from day one.

I personally use and pay for the premium theme you see on this blog.

2.2 WordPress Premium Themes

Here are, in my opinion, the two best wordpress premium themes shops.

2.2.1 Elegant Themes

Elegant Themes is one of the most popular theme companies that exist today. They are most well-known for their Divi theme: this is the super multi-purpose theme that everyone wants to have. With Divi theme, you can build the design that best fits your needs.

What I personally like about Divi is their Divi leads tool. Using this tool, you can run A/B testing to determine what colors, layout, and design your visitors would best respond to and convert. It will give you exact numbers and statistics – like this:

For $89 a year (a very competitive price), you get access to all of their themes and plugins. For the best value option, you can go with their more expensive “Lifetime Access” plan where you get access to all of their future themes and all of their plugins for a one-time payment of $249. For this price, you can change your theme whenever you want at anytime you want in your blogging journey – whether now or 10 years from now. If you are in it for the long run, this is a great deal.

2.2.2 MyThemeShop

MyThemeShop is specialized in building light-weight themes that are SEO optimized and user-friendly.

They have a list of ready-made themes that you can purchase and start using right away – without having to “build” anything.

So if you’re the kind of person who does not like to spend time tweaking and playing around with the design of your template, then MyThemeShop is the best choice. (MyThemeShop gives you the option to choose the layout you like and thus have your own personal touch, but without the hassle of having to build everything from scratch.)

Here is one of the premium themes that I like. It’s called the “reader” theme:

I like this theme because it has nice and light colors; colors which are easy on the eyes. This allows your blog readers to spend hours on your blog without strain or discomfort.

Another thing that’s critical for a blogging theme is speed. MyThemeShop has focused on speed for a long time. Below are the Pingdom and GTmerix results (tools that analyze the theme’s speed performance) for the “reader” theme.

The results are impressive if you ask me.

3. Blogging Resource: Speed Optimization

The loading speed of your pages plays a very important role in your ranking. There are a few plugins you can use to increase the speed of your site. I suggest you start with WP Rocket.

• WP Rocket

WP Rocket works great with Bluehost, SiteGround and WP Engine. You can expect significantly improved loading times across your posts and pages which, in turn, will help you with your google ranking.

4. Blogging Resource: Keyword Research Tool

If you want to increase incoming traffic to your blog (who doesn’t want that?), then you need to target high traffic keywords. This means that you first need to identify those keywords and know how competitive they are.

PLEASE don’t use random keywords in your articles. Don’t just write. You will honestly regret it. The most important thing about blogging is to be found. If no one can find you using google search (and you’re not making an effort to rank), then you won’t see the results you’re after.

Here are two popular keyword research tools.

• KWFinder

I use and pay for KWFinder. I think it’s a phenomenal keyword research tool.

For the sake of example, I picked “astrology” for my keyword search. KWFinder will give you everything you need to know about this keyword, and here is how it looks:

This is tool is a must-have if you want your blog to rank and be found. I personally use it everyday.

• SEMRush

SEMRush is another great keyword research finder tool. It is a powerful alternative to KWFinder and a little more expensive. See a success story here. If you go for their annual as opposed to their monthly plan, you will pay $83/month as opposed to $99/month.

SEMRush is for you if you are a little more advanced, you have plans to create an online business and grow its traffic, want on-page SEO checker to help you with keyword density and related SEO phrases that you can add to your content, and you need extensive reports and analyses.

Here you can try SEMRush 7 days for free.

Here’s what they offer for all of their plans:

Combo Recommendation: If you are small online business with plans on growing, then the combo I recommend is WP Engine and SEMRush.

5. Blogging Resource: Google Webmaster tools

These are a number of blogging resources and tools that Google offers to help you track the performance of your blog.

• Google Keyword Planner

You can use Google Keyword Planner for free to see a rough estimate of how many searches are made monthly for a specific keyword. However, I don’t recommend relying on it. Google Keyword Planner is specifically designed for google AdWords and not for search engine optimization.

• Google Trends

If you are curious about the popularity of certain search queries, Google Trends will show you just that. This is a helpful tool if you are doing dropshipping. (I rarely use it, but it can help you if you have an online store.)

• Google Search Console

In this blogging resource, google allows you to monitor your website’s performance and troubleshoot any problems your site might be having – from crawling issues to sitemaps to links.

This is also the place where you get to verify your website with google. This adds credibility to your website and may help you with ranking.

• Google Analytics

This is Google’s free tracking tool that help you see how many visitor’s you get a month, which links they clicked on, and how much time they spent on your site. You can use this data to optimize your site and increase traffic. If you have visitor’s coming to your site from the EU, then you need to have a cookie policy on your site. I use this free plugin: GDPR Cookie Consent.

The easiest and the one I use is the Gutenberg plus plugin. Download it and start using it. It works like a charm.

6. Blogging Resource: Email-Marketing

I have two recommendations for a good and reliable email collecting tool. This needs to be in your toolkit if you are serious about blogging. To make it easy on you to pick what best suits your needs, here are what I take to be the most distinctive features of each service.

• ConvertKit

ConvertKit offers a simple and really clean template for emails. This is one of the most popular services on the market today.

• Aweber

Aweber offers a lot of nice designs and templates. This is for you if you like to have more visual content in your emails. They’re super reliable.

7. Blogging Resource: Images/Graphic Design

• Pixabay

this is a great blogging resource for images. You can download the images you want from their website and use them on your blog.

• Canva

This is a free blogging resource (there is also a pro version) for graphic design. It’s easy to use and it can help you make beautiful banners.

8. Blogging Resource: Create Online Courses

• Teachable

One of the ways to monetize your blog is by creating courses. Teachable is an amazing online platform that helps you set up your own online courses and scale up your business.

9. Books

Disclosure: I am participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an amazon associate, I earn a commission if you make a purchase using the links below.

Starting a blog requires you to have the right blogging resources, but also the right mindset. I have benefitted from these books in my blogging journey and they may be of help to you.

• The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment.

This is a spiritual/philosophical work on living in the now. Regardless of your views and orientations, this book can help you overcome depression, self-doubt, anxiety, and more. It’s one of my favorites.

• How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships.

If you’re looking for effective communication tips and tricks, this book contains 92 of them. Everyone who aspires to improve his/her social skills and better connect with their audience, this book is a great one.

• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.

If you want to know what are the habits that govern your work ethic, attitude, and how to replace a bad habit with a good one, this book is of value.

For more on blogging, see my post on how to become a blogger.