Blogging Tools to Start a Blog

Blogging is hard. A lot of people won’t tell you that when you set out on this journey. They also don’t mention the tools you need to get the job done successfully. I’ve been at it for almost a decade now and there are still challenges I didn’t see coming. It’s an ever changing world and keeping up with it can be a full-time job in and of itself. Today we’re sharing a few tools to make the job flow a little more smoothly.

Services to Invest in

Many of the articles I read before starting a blog constantly said “It’s easy, start a blog for free”. That’s all well and good and you certainly can do that. However, having your own domain and paying for certain services upfront that have a help desk or online support will be gold when you need them. Plus it can save you from those early growing pains. Because remember free platforms don’t have a help desk and they certainly don’t care to hear about your problems.

• Self-hosting-  I personally use Bluehost for self-hosting and have been very happy with it. What is self-hosting? “Self-hosting means that a user has full access to all the site files and code and can deploy them in any way they like. A self-hosted site has its own domain name and is hosted by one of a number of web hosting providers who make server space available for self-hosted sites of all kinds. Owners of self-hosted sites are free to make changes to the site files in order to customize the website and add any needed functions.” -Bluehost Basically this means you have control over your own content. Approx: $100 per year.
• Email Marketing Tool- Blogging requires reaching out to brands that you’d like to work with. It’s a big part of the marketing aspect. Sure many will eventually come to you. But as you’re beginning to grow you’ll want to seek out clients. You can use cold email templates to approach brands and businesses. It will help increase open rates and get responses. Email is here to stay! It is still considered one of the top communication tools.
• Newsletter- From the beginning you should get your email newsletter started. We created ours through Mailchimp. It’s easy to customize with all of your own branding material. It’s a slow process in building an audience but its also one of the best ways to make sure your readers aren’t missing your weekly content if they don’t follow your social media regularly. You can set this up in many ways and give your readers the option of how they’d like to receive your newsletter. Daily, weekly, even monthly if they’d like. With services like this it will make your blog look more professional. See Mailchimp for pricing info.
• Photo Editing and Design Service- Marketing and posting good quality pinnable content is the name of the game when it comes to blogging. Picmonkey or Photoshop are two wise investments that you will use frequently to edit photos, add text to photos and create other pinnable images. Currently, I use Picmonkey but they are both excellent and vary slightly. See Picmonkey pricing here.
• Blog Themes/Templates- Overall I’ve had decent luck when purchasing a blog theme. If you spend a little time on Etsy you’ll probably find a great design that will work well for your new blog. Just remember to choose a template that works with your blog platform. As in Blogger, WordPress, Squarespace….etc. We went outside of Etsy and chose something that was totally customizable and we built it ourselves so the cost was very minimal. Our theme is through Empress Themes . Which also came with a Help Desk for the first year. After the year there is an annual charge if you’d like to still have access to the Help Desk.

Social Media Platforms

Of course we all know the major social media platforms and we do use most of them. Some sparingly and others all the time. Here’s how we utilize our top four.  They are all unique in every way.  You’ll probably find that what is popular on Pinterest, your Facebook crowd will have nothing to say and vice versa. Which in a lot of  ways is good because you can expand your reach in many different avenues to obtain  a broader audience.

• Pinterest- Why does it work for us? We tend to be heavy on the visual aspect of all our work on the blog. That doesn’t mean all of our pins resonate. On average we can get anywhere from 1,000-90,000 views. That’s big. But again, it’s not every single thing we post. Sometimes we are quite surprised with the pins that resonate with our followers. The other thing to consider is a very old pin can potentially go viral a year later. The sky is the limit with Pinterest.
• Facebook-  Is one of our main traffic drivers. You should also know that they regularly change things up so your numbers can fluctuate. If you pay for advertising this number will go up of course. One of the greatest benefits is having the scheduling tool. This is such a time saver to get all of your posts scheduled for the week so your only job is to respond to comments. Because your list of to-dos will be endless.
• Instagram- of course everyone LOVES Instagram. But if you’re using it as a blogger, it’s a tough one until you hit 10k followers. No, we’re not there yet. However, you can find some really supportive bloggers and communities on this platform which will help expand your blog in other ways. A huge advantage is being able to use your Like to Know it links to increase affiliate sales. You probably know by now that you can’t include a link on your Instagram posts. This is a way around it.
• Twitter- They say that most bloggers no longer use this platform. I can’t say whether that’s true or not. But based on the people I follow personally, it doesn’t seem to be a top choice for many. It’s really good to just grab a few views here and there. But its that rolling scroll and once you’re off that feed your content is pretty much gone. Unless you have some really good hashtags that will make it resurface.

Things to Consider

Although, we are far from expert bloggers and constantly working on our tech and marketing skills we wanted to share a few things to consider based on our experience.

• Your very first blog post might have 2 views. You and your mom. It takes time and a lot of work to build your readership. If you give up for even a few days, you’ll notice it in your numbers.
• Feast or famine- Some days the partnerships, campaigns and  affiliates roll in and you’re on top of the world. Then……crickets. This is the nature of the blogging world. It’s hard not to get discouraged. If you are prepared for this it will be a lot easier.
• People will constantly ask you how much you make blogging. It’s possibly one of the only careers where there doesn’t seem to be a social etiquette for these types of questions.
• You’ll hear “that sounds like a fun hobby” a lot. Many will dismiss it as an actual job. Probably even your own family at first. Chin up, keep going.
• A successful blog will be a challenge to be a one man/woman show. Brandi and I can tell you, it’s a challenge to be a two woman show. Some days we are up at 5am and don’t shut it down to almost 10pm at night. AND there are two of us.
• Your life can easily be consumed by blogging. With every potential purchase you might check if they are an affiliate before you buy. It’s important to compartmentalize your life and work early on before you go down the rabbit hole. We know, we’ve been there.

After spending the last decade blogging it’s still an ever changing world. It’s tough to keep up. When starting you probably won’t be able to hire a team. I’ll be honest with all the avenues you post to each day a team would be pretty nice. Brandi and I ARE the team for now and lucky for us!! Because it is tough to get it all done and get it all done right. She’s an ESTP on the Myers- Briggs scale and I’m an INFJ and that’s one of the main reasons why we make a great team. Because her strengths are my weakness and vice versa. It’s the perfect mix. Leave a comment if you’re thinking about starting a blog. We love supporting creative people with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Disclosure: This is a post in partnership with Nokturnal. All thoughts and opinions are always our own.