If you’re done dealing with the tech side of blogging and you are searching for blogging tools to make your life easier, you’ve stumbled on the perfect blog!
Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning if you decide to purchase via my links, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. Please read my disclaimer for more info.
is blogging still profitable?
From experience as a beginner blogger myself 4 years ago, I’ve learned what works well and what doesn’t. Finding what worked was harder than finding what didn’t and I failed more times than I succeeded. But that’s how I grow my blog, by putting myself out there and daring to fail. It’s a fair part of the game, right?
Yes, blogging is still profitable! But a profitable blog doesn’t run itself and behind every successful blog are a handful of non-negotiable blogging tools that make it all work together. I’ve narrowed down some of my favorite resources that helped me create and maintain a profitable blog myself. I can’t work without these tools and resources!
how to start a profitable blog - Tools & Resources
These are all products, tools and resources I personally use (or have used) and recommend. I want you to have as much advantage as possible starting on your blogging journey so you can see the same successes I have! Bloggers are one big community, and we help our own.
how to make profit from a blog
First of all: start with the right hosting. When you are first starting your blog, you don’t want to spend a fortune on hosting, and neither did I. Hosting your blog on, for example, Bluehost gives you a free domain, free site builders, free 1-click WordPress install, 24/7 support and all for only $2.95 a month by using this discount link.
Yes, I also recommend using WordPress for your blog as it is the easiest open-source platform to use from my experience. And if you don’t know how to use it, you can get started easily with this step-by-step guide I wrote for you How To Create A Self-Hosted WordPress Blog.
Theme & Design
Secondly, slow-loading pages will affect the success of your blog, as readers won’t stick around if text and images take too much time to load. Optimizing your website is key! Therefore make sure to use a fast theme.
Astra: Elegant Themes is the number one theme provider in premium WordPress themes, in my opinion. This theme is out of this world and completely changes the way we build and maintain blogs by making everything 100% easier. I love it, and I think you will too 😉
Canva: I use Canva to create all of the graphics on my blog, social media, printable, source stock photos, and more. The paid Canva Pro has even more to offer. I use the free version to make Pins for my Pinterest account. Pinterest is where most of my readers come from, so this needs to look good!
Of course, you also need beautiful visuals for your blog. Never copy from Google! You can get in trouble with copyrights. There are FREE stock photos you can use from websites like Pexels and Unsplash.
Pexels.com: I love using Pexels to find cute stock photos and videos to incorporate into my blog. The best part: it’s free!! There is something for everyone on Pexels.
Unsplash.com: Unsplash is another great free stock photo website I have found and I use it for most of my featured images and Pinterest.
Like this image from Unsplash here:
Writing & Editing
Typos no more! Thirdly, every blogger needs Grammarly. Without this tool, every other sentence you read on this blog would be completely butchered. I’m Dutch and I’m writing in English, therefore I especially need the extra help! Grammarly is an extension I installed onto my Chrome browser and automatically spell-checks and grammar-checks ANYTHING I type. I love it. Oh and did I mention, it is 100% free!
profitable blog niches
Pinterest & Tailwind
Fourthly, I use Tailwind for scheduling all of my pins to Pinterest, managing my Pinterest, and participating in Tailwind tribes. Tailwind is the best way to manage your Pinterest, monitor your performance, see insights, inspect pins, and use tons of more features to help you be as successful as possible on Pinterest.
What I’m basically saying is, don’t forget to get started with Pinterest for your blog, to get more traffic to your blog. Pinterest is free to use! Using Tailwind along with Pinterest allows me to save hours of work every week. After all, you need to post 5-10 pins a day to see growth, therefore you need a tool like Tailwind. Tailwind has a free sign-up for a few posts a month, to get used to the platform without a paid subscription.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
Fifthly, you can have the most readable, informative, and visually appealing blog, but it won’t help anyone unless you can attract readers to your website. This is where SEO comes in. This is kind of a big deal, so please read this carefully and dig into this.
Google Trends is a fantastic free blogging tool that helps you find the right SEO keywords for your blog. You can see what questions people are asking, how trends fluctuate, and the highest searches in your niche. It’s not only an excellent way to choose what keywords to use in your blog, but it helps you work out what to plan next.
Google Webmaster Tools: This is how to get your website on Google Search! When you first get started with your blog, have an organized site structure with some content added and have all your branding in place with a site that is ready to go, then go to Google Webmaster Tools to submit your sitemap. This tells Google to crawl your site so you can be found via the search console. Check back periodically for any errors you may need to correct in the search console as well as monitor your site’s Google search performance.
Moz will help you discover quality keywords, optimize content, and track rankings. Check how likely it is you will rank in search engines. Their site provides tons of resources for learning SEO, tools for researching keywords and keyword recommendations, shows you how much search volume there is for given keywords and how easy or hard it is to rank for that keyword.
YoastSEO is one of the best blogging tools. This WordPress plugin is perfect to use for beginner bloggers. It is kind of like an ‘SEO for Dummies’ guide plugin that shows you how your posts are doing in both readability and SEO coverage. This plugin also shows you recommendations on how to improve your readability and SEO on the post or page you are on. I can’t blog without this tool!
Keywords Everywhere: A Chrome plugin to see keyword traffic stats and research help on a variety of search engines like Google, YouTube, Etsy, and Pinterest.
Mangools is the best SEO blogging tool of choice! This also works on a traffic light system (like Yoast), showing which keywords and phrases rank best for our blog. It helps with site profiling, showing where you stand against other industry competitors. This is a great way to explore what you need to work on in the future.
Blogging for profit start with Monitoring
The sixth topic to talk about: monitoring your blog to see what’s going on.
Google Analytics. The best thing to do right away is to link your site immediately with Google Analytics. This way you can start measuring your site traffic, interaction, engagement, audience, etc. The easiest way to do this is by first adding your site to Google Analytics and then installing the Google Analytics for WP Dashboard plugin. This plugin is free!
Google Alerts: The second best thing to do is Google Alerts. It’s great to get notified when your domain or name is mentioned on the internet. You can get alerted for any phrase really. You just create a new alert for whatever phrase or word you would like to get alerted for (I have one for my site name, one for my domain name, and another for my full name). This is great for finding out when or if you have been featured on any big sites or just to see what other content you are being linked in.
PageSpeed Insights: Lastly, you need this tool! This is super easy to use, all you do is enter your domain name and Google tells you the speed and performance of your site and what exactly would need to change in order to improve. Your blog’s loading speed and usability are especially important because having a faster blog will lower your bounce rate and provide a better user experience.
Newsletter & email marketing
Seventh, but very important: start building your email list as soon as possible! Every blogger needs a promotion for their blog. Earlier I mentioned Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog, and in addition, I want to mention email marketing. A newsletter. Brevo helps you create incredible email campaigns to engage your readers and keep them returning for more. You can use this platform to send your newsletter every month or weekly updates. Brevo has paid options but also a (forever) free option that is pretty good!
Also, Systeme.io is a good option, also for free. Systeme.io offers good landing pages if you want to sell your own products via your blog.
How to make profit from a blog
Lastly, the best way to make money from your blog! The two best and easiest ways to make money blogging is to work with Affiliate Marketing and Ads. For Affiliate Marketing you can use affiliate links in your blog, and if someone clicks on the link and purchases something, you may earn a commission.
Affiliate links can be used in new blogs. When your blog is growing you can also choose to use ads to make money blogging. Ads are a way to earn money from ads that are displayed on your website, and every view it gets makes you a little money. Let me show you a few examples.
Monetization via Ads
First, there is Ezoic. Monetization and optimization for bloggers and site owners. They also accept bloggers who have less than 10,000 sessions a month for blog traffic. The good news is, they pay more than Google Adsense, however they do make you complete a course and pass a test to get set up for monetization with ads.
Then there is Mediavine. To start with ads, you need to apply to Mediavine and get accepted. They want your website to have 100,000 views a month to get accepted. This is not for beginners unless you manage to be extremely good at blogging 😉 Mediavine is not an ad network. Instead, it is a group of publishers who joined forces to work directly with ad exchanges and advertisers to get the most money for their ad inventory. This can double your ad income when you switch from Google Adsense to Mediavine.
Affiliate Marketing
A lot of bloggers use Affiliate Window to promote affiliate links in their blogs. Affiliate Window (or AWIN) is a great and easy-to-use affiliate network to help boost your blog earnings. Along with access to hundreds of affiliates through the platform (in all niches), they also have an amazing referral program of their own. Once you get access to the platform and refer any new signups, you get $30.
A couple of other affiliate marketing platforms you can use, are:
