This list is made up of the tools and courses that I’ve used in my journey as a blogger, and have been extremely helpful to me.

After spending several months researching, trying out different methods/courses and spending quite abit of money (some TOTALLY worth it, some not so), I’ve come up with a list of blogging tools and courses that would be ideal for you – especially if you are just starting off as a blogger.

But some of these can also be used if you are further along in your blogging journey. The recommended tools cover almost everything you would need as a blogger.

Full Disclosure: *This post contains affiliate links, which means that I may make a small commission on products purchased through links clicked on this site at no extra cost to you. This helps keep this site running, so thanks for your support in this way!*

**Scroll down for my recommended Courses

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Tools –

WordPress

Hands-down my favourite website content management (CMS) system. There are tons of features, themes, plugins and everything else to ensure a smooth blogging experience. I personally like that, due to its popularity, there are lots of WordPress tutorials around, making it easy to navigate your way around it. Also, surprisingly, for a CMS sytem with so many users, the support is surprisingly good. While it may take up to a week (or more) to have your question answered – it always gets answered in the end, something I can’t really say about other sites/systems that are just as large and/or popular. There are 2 types of WordPress sites: WordPress.com is the free ‘version’ whilst WordPress.org is for those who would like to handle their own hosting, webpages, servers etc.

Siteground

The absolute BEST in web hosting. You need two critical things when deciding which web host to go with. 1) Speedy customer service that solves your problems almost immediately 2) Stability – the last thing you need is your website crashing all the time, or having certain pages refuse to load cause there are frequent problems with your web host. Siteground does these two things wonderfully, and until I find an even better web host, I’m sticking with them for a long time.

Tailwind

Pinterest has been the single, most effective tool I’ve been using to market my blog posts. To drive traffic to your site, you’d need to be on it frequently pinning stuff. That requires alot of time and effort and all of us are busy people. This is where Tailwind comes in – it helps you schedule pins ahead of time, provides critical analytics on your pins/boards, suggest It does require quite abit of a learning curve at the start to familiarise yourself with its features. But no worries, there are lots of tutorials available and the creators are constantly working on improving the site. Click on my link above or the icon on the left to get your first month free!

BoardBooster

Board Booster, together with Tailwind, has been a wonderful tool in my Pinterest marketing strategy. I love that BoardBooster complements Tailwind, and my favourite features are its Campaign and Looping tools. Their Scheduler tool also allows you to pin pins in advance with the help of secret boards. Sign up for a free trial here and get your first 500 pins free!

Grammarly

You will be writing a lot as a blogger, and you would definitely want to put out pieces that look like they have been proofread, with near-perfect grammar and punctuation. As someone quite obsessed with editing and proof-reading, I’ve been using Grammarly for awhile now and it has been great. You can add it to Chrome with just a click and the best part is – it’s free!

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Shareaholic

I’ve tried different content marketing and web sharing platforms before and those have been cumbersome with Dashboards that aren’t very intuitive. Shareaholic has been the easiest to navigate for me so far, and I just love that you customize pretty much any type of sharing button that you’d like – according to your brand colors and site.

Ivorymix

IvoryMix is one of my favourite stock photo site and is one of the most affordable I’ve seen. They have alot of free stock photos of high quality and their stock photo shop is also full of gems, with different photo bundles to cater to different needs. Membership comes at a cost of only $10/month and comes with 75+ new additions each month – a steal!

Styled Stock Society

This is another one of my favourite stock photo sites. The photos are very feminine, beautifully taken, with gorgeous colours that just pop off your screen. I use photos from here very frequently. Memberships are available monthly, quarterly and annually. If you do not want to commit to anything, then individual photo bundles might be your thing.

Courses and Ebooks –

Billionaire Blog Club

Paul Scrivs is the main creator of these panel of courses which include plenty of lessons on Pinterest, Content Creation, Affiliate Marketing and many more. It’s just plenty of courses any blogger needs – all neatly packed into one site. Membership also grants you automatic access to fellow BBC members. It’s a lovely community, where members can talk about blog-related issues or just anything else. What I love about the program and community is that Paul always actively participates in discussions and gives alot of advice – for free.

How to create your first opt-in freebie affiliate

This PDF/online course is AMAZING and is a must-read for anyone of you looking to capitalise on building email lists using opt-ins. Angela guides you through every step of the way, from creating your opt-ins to setting up your emails. You won’t get much of this information out there – not in one place with guided instructions, anyway.

How to make your first affiliate sale in 24 hours ebook

Elise is extremely knowledgeable about sales tactics and she parlays that knowledge into this ebook. No matter where you are in your blogging journey – this ebook introduces techniques that will help speed up your sales and traffic.

Flawless Funnels

Another area where Elise is an expert in – sales funnels. She imparts all of her knowledge in a friendly way and her methods are easy to follow. This works great if you are planning to sell a product or already have a product to sell, and would like to know more about capitalizing on emails, landing pages and funnels to sell more.

Blog Traffic Ebook

I bought this ebook very early on in my blogging journey as I was extremely stressed out about blog traffic. Ana is one of my favourite bloggers and she lays out in great detail the different methods you could go about attracting traffic to your site. Extremely useful even if you are a little further along your blogging journey.

Affiliate Marketing Guide

Ana’s guide was also one of the first ebooks I picked up when I didn’t have a clue what Affiliate Marketing was all about. She gives clear instructions on how to make affiliate marketing work for your blog and offers a comprehensive list of affiliate programs you could join.

Affiliate Acceleration

Kayla has put together a very comprehensive course which outlines every single thing you need to know about affiliate marketing and what channels are the best ways to promote your products. She also talks about how to choose a good affiliate program (very important) and which affiliate programs are great to be a part of. You can grab your course at a discount if you purchase it as a bundle with the “Must have guide to blogging e-book”.

Must have guide to blogging e-book

In her ebook, Kayla outlines her tips and strategies to help bloggers get things off to a quick start. Learn methods on how to grow your audience and making a profit.

Ultimate Bundles

This is another amazing resource for bloggers. It offers several bundles at different points in the year on various topics – decluttering, health and the fav of many bloggers – the Genius Bloggers’ Bundle. Are you looking to declutter, learn more about your health and feel inspired to work at home? Ultimate Bundles are offering these bundles:

Conquer Your Clutter Super Bundle (Original Price: $658, NOW: $47; including planners, ebooks & e-courses)
Gut Health Super Bundle (Original Price: $695, NOW: $47; including 800+ recipes, videos, ebooks & e-courses)
Work at home Super Bundle (Original Price: $1500, NOW: $47; including ebooks, printables, e-courses & audiobooks )

There are tons of resources, ebooks, videos and all sorts of amazing stuff in each bundle. These products individually may cost alot, but you get it at a steal. So don’t miss these offers!