Blogging Resources & Tools


Recommended by LoudTechie

Blogging is full of choices and it’s always complicated to make the right decision.


I’ve been blogging for over 4 years. And I have experienced and reviewed so many tools, resources for my blogs. If you are into blogging you must be always on the hunt for the best blogging resources & tools.


Just to help you out with the decision making regarding which tools & resources to use for blogging. I’m listing out my recommended blogging tools and resources so that you can make your choice accordingly.

Recommended Blogging Resources & Tools

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Blogging Platforms

(What I use for my Blog)

Choose Your Blogging Platform

The very first choice to make when starting with blogging. My recommendation for blogging platform is WordPress.org (self-hosted) only and no other. It is my only choice from the start and using this only for all my blogs. If you want to start a blog as a profession and want to generate income out of it, a self-hosted blog should be your only choice.

Other blogging platforms to start with:

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    WordPress.com: It’s FREE blogging platform. It’s good if you are not looking to make income out of your blog.
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    Blogger: FREE blogging platform powered by Google.

Web Hosting

(What I use for my Blog)

InterServer web hosting

My current web hosting for my LoudTechie blog is Interserver web hosting.

Selecting a perfect web hosting service is crucial for your blog or business website.

Other recommended categorized Web Hostings:

Budget-friendly web hostings for Starters

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    SiteGround starts at $3.95/mo (Use this link to get a special discount), officially recommended web hosting by WordPress. Not only recommended by brands, it’s in the top 3 highly recommended web host by professional bloggers based on speed, uptime, and cost. With the high uptime of 99.98%. 24/7 Expert level support for every hosting solution.
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    Bluehost starts at $3.95/mo (Use this link to get a special discount), another officially recommended hosting by WordPress. Easy to manage tools and 1-click installation offers 1 free domain with all hosting plans including dedicated email, cPanel, FTP and much more. And not to forget its 27/7 expert support.

Powerful & affordable web hosting for more than avg traffic blog

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    InterServer starts at $5/mo (Use this link to get a special discount), I recommend Interserver hosting as I am using it for more than 1 year and I am totally satisfied with it. Top-notch performance, high uptime, affordable price and 24/7 expert level support. What else you need?

Things that I like about Interserver:

  • It is a privately owned company for more than 18 years.
  • Price locking guarantee: Oh yeah! it’s true…The price you sign up for will be your renewal price for the life of the account.

Premium web hosting for sites with High traffic

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    WP Engine starts at $29/mo (Use this link to get 4 months FREE), if your site is already well established and getting more than avg traffic count, WP Engine would be the perfect choice for your online business. Sure their cost is a bit expensive for any regular blogs or websites. But they are kind of a big deal and the best in business.

If you are done selecting the web hosting service for your blog go through my step by step guide to start a blog.


Domain Name Registration

(What I use for my Blog)

5 Best Cheap Web Hosting Services For New Bloggers

Won’t recommend it for web hosting solution but I really do use their services to buy new domains. They are the leading domain registration company in the world.

Other domain registrars I recommend:

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    NameCheap: One of the most recommended domain name registrar over the web. Easy interface and always up with best deals and discounts.

Still have doubt regarding domains? Here are some tips to choose the perfect domain name or you can use these domain name generator tools.


WordPress Themes

(What I use for my Blog)

Thrive-Themes

For better results and performance your blog design should be properly optimized. That’s why I believe Thrive Themes. Their themes are professionally optimized for all kind of devices. Ever since I started with affiliate marketing I switched to Thrive themes because they are conversion focused WordPress themes. Thrive themes comes with conversion effective categorized landing page layouts.

Few amazing products you’ll get with Thrive membership:

Always remember “pick your theme based on your blog monetization method."


If you monetize your blog using Ads networks like Adsense, media.net and more. Get started with Adsense optimized WordPress themes.


If you monetize your blog using affiliate marketing only, you should switch to affiliate optimized WordPress themes like (Thrive themes).

Other WordPress themes I like & recommend:

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    Genesis Framework by StudioPress Themes: If Thrive themes weren’t there Genesis framework would be my pick. This is not just a theme but a framework means Genesis will be the parent theme and you may need to install another child theme over it and that can be any WordPress theme by StudioPress. Whether you are a novice or a developer, you’ll love Genesis because of its advanced search engine optimization and security level. Its fast, clean and beautiful. Responsive design for all the devices and support HTML5. One of the best when you are looking for advanced customization with your WordPress theme. You can also get their Pro Plus All-Theme Package at an exciting discounted price.
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    Divi by Elegant Themes: Divi is another interesting and innovative WordPress theme by Elegant Themes. Quite similar to Thrive Themes it is a combination of WordPress Theme & visual page builder. They are famous for their Visual page builder with which you can do real-time designing within your WordPress editor. With its drag and drop feature, you can build any complex design to beautify your blog post or to make it more conversion focused. Divi is search engine optimized and responsive to all devices.

These mentioned above are not any random themes you look around. All these themes are the best Conversion focused WordPress themes for any business.


Go & grab one TODAY!


Email Marketing Tools & Services

Email marketing plays a significant role if you have an online business no matter what your business is. It is the only old-school marketing trick that is still working to bring back your lost readers.

(What I use for my Blog)

MailChimp marketing tool black friday discount

Currently, I am using MailChimp for my email marketing automation. It also comes with Forever FREE account with up to 2000 subscriber limit and 12000 emails per month. Easy to create professional campaigns. Other then its free account it starts at $10/month.

To grow my email list by using Optin forms, I use MailChimp Forms by Optin Cat a free WordPress plugin.

Other email services & tools I recommend:

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    Drip: A powerful email automation tool for bloggers and businesses. It starts at $41/mo for its basic plan, get 2 months free when paid annually. It also has a free plan for starters with a limit of 100 subscribers and unlimited emails and users.
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    Constant Contact: If you are looking for an email automation service that charges based on your subscriber list then you can try Constant Contact starts at $20/mo price. Start your Free trial for first 60 days. No risk. No credit card required.
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    Aweber: Another promising tool for email marketing campaigns and automation. Starts at $19/mo for 0-500 subscribers.
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    Thrive Leads: One of the best tool I can recommend for advanced conversion based targeting. It is an all-in-one plugin to grow your email list faster than anything else. With Thrive leads the list of benefits is larger than you can imagine. Easy to customize and fast, A/B testing, landing pages and more. A single site license will cost you $67 for a lifetime. It can integrate with all email marketing campaigns.
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    OptinMonster: Another great tool to build your email list faster by creating landing pages, optin forms with high conversion, smart popups, unblockable slide-in optin boxes, easy integration with all email marketing campaigns. Starts at $9/mo plan.
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    SumoMe: This is a free tool I used for almost 1 year on LoudTechie blog. It is quite helpful to grow your email list. A free version of this tool is perfect for those just started their business. It supports almost all email marketing services. With SumoMe you’ll get beautiful popups, hello bars, welcome mats and other interesting tools.
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    Leadpages: Similar to Thrive leads, its easy drag and drop feature is all you need to create creative yet conversion effective landing pages. It has built-in payment feature to sell your digital products and services. Integrates with all email marketing services. Starts at $25/mo.

SEO Tools

(What I use for my Blog)

kwfinder

A keyword research tool I use to shortlist my LSI keywords & Long tail keywords. It helps me to know more about keywords difficulty and to find keywords with less difficulty to get ranked higher and faster on the search engine results. Starts at $29/mo, save up to 40% annually. Get free 5 lookups per 24 hours.

SEMrush Tool black friday discount

All time favorite tool recommended by many experts and industry leaders. I use it for keyword research and peeking my competitors. Here is a complete review of SEMrush tool.

Other SEO tools I use & recommend:

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    LongTail Pro: Another interesting tool for bloggers and SEO experts. It will ease your hard work by finding the best long tail keywords for you to rank better in the search engines. Find profitable long tail keywords with all the insight and details about them.
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    LSI Graph: With this free LSI keyword generator tool you can start generating Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Keywords for better SEO and you won't believe but this tools is actually available for free. I use it regularly and specially for my cornerstone articles.
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    AnswerThePublic: This interesting free visual keyword research tool will amaze you by providing you different content ideas for your searched keyword. All you need to do is type in your desired keyword and this tool will get you all possible questions related to that keyword. And adding those keywords in your content could be a great value.
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    UberSuggest: Another keyword research tool you can use for free is UberSuggest. Its better than Google Keyword planner and will find you more keywords for your searched keyword. It allows you check Google trends for a specific keyword and can also expand a keyword to get more expanded keywords suggestions.

Social Media Management tools

Social Media is the best platform to market your content and reach out to the new audience.

(What I use for my Blog)

Buffer

To easily schedule your posts across 6 social networks; Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn and Instagram. Free accounts available, the awesome plan starts at $10/mo.

Triberr

This social media platform is a perfect place for bloggers and influencers. Here online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS feeds and it gets shared across different social media platforms by your social connections. Read my review about Triberr to maximize your social reach.

ViralTag black friday discount

Viraltag is the tool I use for my Pinterest & Instagram marketing. Pinterest needs at least 10 pins schedule per day and with ViralTag you can set a bulk pin schedule with just a single click. You can add, schedule, design and edit your images within Viraltag only. It starts at $24/mo. Use the link to start your free trial and get $15 credit. Read my Viraltag review.

Other social media management tools I recommend:

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    HootSuite: Similar to Buffer this is another great social media management tool. Free accounts available, the awesome plan starts at $10/mo.
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    SocialPilot: Another social scheduling tool which supports some extra social media networks (Tumblr, VK, Xing) than Buffer & Hootsuite. It also offers a free plan for starters and the basic paid plan starts at $8.33/mo get 20% off on annual buy.
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    TailWindApp: An alternative tool to Virtaltag. Before Viraltag I was using TailwindApp for my daily Pinterest marketing and I like their post queue shuffling feature which I really miss with Viraltag. Click the link to start your free trial & get $15 free credit. For bloggers and small businesses start your plus plan at $9/mo.

Tools for Graphics & Social Visuals

(What I use for my Blog)

Canva

Canva is my daily tool for blog graphics and social media visuals. Easy to use and create beautiful images within just a few minutes. Ready to use design templates with custom image sizes for different social media platforms.

Other tools I use & recommend for graphical work:

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    Adobe Photoshop: I’m not an expert in Photoshop but I use it for some of my image editing work. If you know how to properly use it you won’t need any other tool for graphical editing needs.
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    PicMonkey: Alternative to Canva. PickMonkey has some extra features for professional level designing. It is also very easy to use, you don’t have to be a pro designer to create graphics using Pickmonkey.

Affiliate Marketing Networks

Affiliate marketing is just one method out of so many ways to make money from your blog. In affiliate marketing, you have to build trust before selling out anything to your readers.

(What I use for my Blog)

ShareASale

My most of the affiliate programs are with ShareASale marketplace. Their new revamped dashboard is really amazing and its user interface is just amazing. With ShareASale, you don’t have to worry about payouts. They are listed among the quickest payouts marketplaces.

Commission Junction

With this huge variety of affiliate programs CJ is another biggest marketplace for affiliate marketers.

Other Affiliate Marketplaces I recommend:

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    Clickbank: You’ll find a large variety of categorized affiliate programs here on Clickbank. It is also known to be the best place where you can sell out your ebooks as an affiliate product.

Ads Networks

Here on LoudTechie we don’t use any ads networks. But there was a time when we were dependent on ads networks only. And at that time it was Google AdSense only.

Google Ad sense

It is a free & simple way to make money from your blog by showing targeted ads next to the blog content.

Other Ads Networks I recommend:

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    Media.net: Alternative to AdSense. It is owned by Yahoo and its known to be one of the best ads networks after AdSense.
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    BidVertiser: Another CPC ad network for bloggers. They have categorized their ads based on different niches. You can pick the most relevant ads category for your website. Easy to use and helps to identify your target audience.

Other Blogging Resources & Tools

(What I use for my Blog)

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    Yoast SEO: This single plugin is a lifesaver for bloggers. It’s an all-in-one tool for your On-Page optimizations. It has both free and paid membership which starts at $89 for a lifetime.
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    Google Analytics: Another most recommended product by Google. It’s for website insights and analyses. It is a free tool by Google which can be very profitable if you can use it properly.
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    Social Warfare Plugin: This is not an ordinary social media sharing plugin. With its premium membership, you’ll get so many social media solutions. Some of the features are share counts, analytics tracking, custom image option for different social media platforms (Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest) and one of most important feature for which I bought warfare membership it can recover social share counts after changing permalink or HTTPS migration.
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    Grammarly: If you are into content writing you should try this tool for errors free content. Having a tool like Grammarly is the best a blogger can invest in. Its free version is also available. It has an app, a browser extension and can be connected with your MS Word.
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    Revive Social: It will help you to share your old blog posts automatically on different social media networks.
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    ContentMart: I sometimes use it to find professional freelance content writers for my blog content.
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    Thrive Architect: Since I’ve changed my WordPress blog theme to Thrive Themes I have also started using their another product Thrive Architect. This WordPress editor comes with drag & drop visual page builder which makes it easy to create beautiful and conversion focused blog posts.
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    Prettylinks: It is an affiliate link cloaking plugin for WordPress. I use it to avoid long and unreadable affiliate links and transform them into an easy to read links.
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    Pomodoro App: This app is based on Pomodoro technique it has only one purpose to let you focus on just one task for given time lapse. It will help you to avoid distractions while working. Try it once.
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    Slack: It is a team collaboration tool with features like instant messaging, file sharing, links sharing, voice/video callings and more. You can create your own slack team for free.
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    Sticky Notes: Sticky notes by Microsoft. Helpful to keep notes, reminders and to do list.
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    Skype: My all-time favorite tool for instant messaging, file sharing, and video calling.

Affiliate Disclaimer: I've included certain products/services and affiliate links to those products/services on this page which means if you make a purchase using my affiliate links I will earn a small commission. It is not going to cost you any extra money in any way.

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