Blogging Resources for beginner bloggers
Oh hi there! How are you today? I’m so happy you’ve stopped by! If you are new here, my name is Victoria and can’t wait to chat a little about all of the Blogging resources that took my blog to the next level. This is the longest post I’ve ever written, and it’s super helpful. So grab a snack and stay a while.
*this post contains affiliate links
I’ve been blogging for three years…the first two years I was shooting myself in the foot.
Yep. I started blogging back in December 2017 and I really wanted to make an impact and I also wanted to make money.
At the beginning of my blogging journey, blogger was where I started, wrote about whatever I wanted, used other people’s images, other people’s videos, and thought I was doing a great job.
I was not doing a great job.
A year later I was still not getting very much traffic to my blog, and I definitely wasn’t marking any money. I wanted to give up but I didn’t.
I kept working, wasted another year, and then came 2020…The year I finally started figuring it all out.
I started making money. Sometimes I even made money while I sleep. That’s my favorite!
Looking back, I can definitely say that anyone can be a blogger. If I can do it, absolutely anyone can. All you need is the right Blogging resources and you will set yourself up for success.
I really wanted to keep track of what was working and what wasn’t working to make money, this way I could create a sustainable income system for myself and hopefully teach others how to do the same. I wouldn’t want anyone to waste two whole years blogging with no results like I did.
If you are trying to start, grow, and monetize a blog, then this post is going to rock your world. In fact, I recommend you bookmark it for future reference because it’s a lot to take in.
Some important things to know before we go deep:
It is not an overnight success:
I know you hear this from every other blogger but
I’m going to back them up. Blogging takes time. It takes time to grow an engaged audience of people who know, like, and trust you.
It takes time to position yourself as an expert in your field and be the go to person for whatever your blog is about.
There will also be a lot of experimenting going on. Finding out what type of products, and content your audience needs and what leads them to buy from you.
If you want to be serious about blogging, you will have to invest your time and energy. You have to treat it like a job.
You will have to invest in your blog.
Yep. One thing I absolutely refused to do at first was spend too much money on my blog. I was afraid to spend money blogging because I wasn’t earning money yet. Most of these blogging resources i’m going to mention are paid, but trust me, they pay off.
Guess what? I didn’t start making money until I started investing in my blog. And honestly, there’s a simple way to cheat this, and that is to become an affiliate for the products that you’ve invested in.
This way, you can make back the money that you spend on the products and continue making money in the future. I’ve found that many of the digital courses and products I’ve invested in I’ve made the money back and then some.
Now that we’ve got those little tidbits out of the way it’s time to talk about each and every little step I took to start making money blogging.
1. Go Self Hosted
My biggest mistake at first was using a free platform like Blogger. You see, when you aren’t self hosted, you don’t own your content, you also can’t run ads on your site. You are basically just on a treadmill and you won’t get anywhere.
I highly recommend that you host your blog with Siteground. It’s the best hosting platform around.
2. Invest in a pretty theme
The first thing people notice when they arrive on your blog is the theme. If your blog doesn’t have a clean design, isn’t user friendly, or it isn’t easy to navigate, your readers won’t stick around.
I got my theme from Pipdig, but I also have a few other suggestions
- Blue chic
- Hello you designs
- Creative Market
3. Start an email list
It took me a long time to start an email list. I wish I had created one from day one. Social media is constantly evolving and it is foolish to not have a backup plan for keeping in touch with your audience.
If you are going to take email marketing seriously, I recommend Convertkit. It is going to be great for all of your sales systems and tour funnels which are important if you want to monetize your list.
4. Create a lead magnet
A lead magnet is a freebie that gives incentive for someone to join your email list. Think about the things that make you want to join someone’s list.
You can easily create amazing lead magnets with Canva, and purchase a lead magnet Canva template from Creative Market. This was a life save for me because I am not very creative.
5. Learn email marketing
Having an email list is absolutely pointless if you don’t know what to do with it. Especially if you are paying for an email service provider every month, you want to make sure you are making money.
For all of your email marketing needs, I HIGHLY recommend Meera Kothand. She is an email marketing queen and she has two books that break down how to master email marketing.
Meera teaches how to create content that turns your subscribers into customers. She has two books that you absolutely must read The Profitable Content System. This is probably the most inexpensive of all the blogging resources that packs the biggest punch.
6. Get serious about planning your blog content
I didn’t start making money until I started seriously planning my blog content. In addition to reading Meera Kothand’s book, I also follow Kat Gaskin on Instagram. She teaches you how to create top notch content that leads to sales.
Kat actually created The Content Planner, which is the only planner you need as a blogger/content creator. I highly recommended
7. Setting goals and reverse engineering.
Setting a goal is pointless unless you set systems for how you are going to achieve said goals.
The best way to set goals for your blog is to reverse engineer. You start with your result, and work your way backwards to create all the baby steps that you need to complete in order to reach the goal.
So if you want to seek 10 e-books in a month, you would probably have some small goals that look like this:
- Write a blog post and mention the book
- Talk about the book on Instagram
- Share book launch in Facebook group
8. Grow your traffic with Pinterest.
One of the biggest struggles for new bloggers is getting steady traffic. I struggled with traffic for two years and almost quit blogging because I was so annoyed that I wasn’t getting results.
Turns out I didn’t have the resources that I needed. But once I found them, I went from 6k page views per month to 10k, then 25k, then 50k! It blew my mind!!! And I owe it all to two groundbreaking courses. I highly suggest taking both. I didn’t get results until I implemented the strategies of both courses.
These two are my absolute favorite blogging resources, if you invest in anything from this list, it should be these two courses.
Still not convinced? You can read a detailed review with screenshots of my traffic jump here.
9. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing was how I made my first money blogging. As I mentioned before, a great place to start with affiliate marketing is to be an affiliate for the products and courses that you invest in for your blog. If that doesn’t suit your niche, you can join affiliate networks. Here is a small list:
- Amazon (but they just seriously cut their commission rates so I wouldn’t prioritize Amazon)
- Shopstyle collective
- RewardStyle
- ShareAsale
- Awin
If you want to learn how to master affiliate marketing, I recommend taking this course. It really helped me make more affiliate sales, and sales of my own digital products.
10. Create your own Digital products
Making money via affiliate marketing is great, but nothing beats creating your own digital products. Here are a few ideas
- E-books
- Planners
- Courses
- Audio files
11. Started focusing on Instagram Marketing
Instagram when used properly is an awesome way to connect with your audience. It’s such a great way to keep in touch with your audience outside of your blog and sell your products to them. One of the best ways to grow your instagram is to use creative market instagram templates and pack your feed with tons of valuable resources that keep your followers coming back.
12. Instagram Landing Page Templates
I wish Instagram got better with sharing links but for now you still have to put your links in the bio. LinkTree is no good, plus it’s way better to create your own Instagram Landing pages. I suggest using the Instagram landing page templates by Bluechic, they are easy to use and work with Elementor which is a free plugin for wordpress.
13. Create A sales funnel
Sales funnels are AMAZING! The beauty of a sales funnel is that once you set them up, they run in the background with little maintenance and if done correctly, a sales funnel will generate income on auto pilot. There are a lot of expensive options for funnels, one of them being Lead Pages, but I recommend doing it yourself via Bluechic page templates and Elementor.
Elementor is a free plugin for wordpress and you do not need to use elementor pro for the Bluechic page templates. I use them for my blog and they saved me so much time and energy because I do not know how to build pages on my own.
14. Create a tripwire sales page
A tripwire is a low cost offer that an email subscriber is taken to immediately after joining your email list. Tripwire sales can make you money consistently if done properly. If you purchase the Bluechic page templates, you will get a tripwire page as well! Another reason why those page templates are a great investment for your blog.
15. Learn how to write a good blog post
There is a science to creating the perfect blog post. It took me a long time to learn how to do this properly. A solid blog post should be pretty long, (at least 1,000 words). It should also have an affiliate link, graphics for sharing, and the main focus of the post should be towards the end.
You should also make sure your blog post is optimized for SEO. I use the Yoast SEO plugin for wordpress. As someone who is totally clueless to SEO, this plugin really helps me optimize my posts.
I think that’s it for now. That concludes my list of the best blogging resources to use if you want to take your blog to the next level and start earning money.
I didn’t start making money with my blog until I invested in these blogging recources and once I did, I started making an income and my income has been increasing every month since then.
