Get website help and more
Fiverr.com – a bunch of really talented people willing to work for you for just $5. Need a logo or header for your blog, an intro for your Youtube videos, come changes made to your sidebars, a custom graphic or design, marketing and promotion help, and lots more. There are people on Fiverr who can do this for you quickly and for just $5. A fabulous resource for small bloggers with small budgets. Highly recommended.
PicMonkey – easily edit photos and make great graphics and collages for your site. See the series on how to use many of the features.
PinWoot – get extra Pinterest followers, get likes and repins and the best bit – be able to Schedule your Pinterest Pins for free!
Advertising Networks
Moms Affiliate – you don’t have to be a mom to be a member of this great network. Has lots of easy to use options for bloggers including sponsored posts and paid article writing, affiliate commissions on sales of advertised products, banner adverts for your sidebar, coupons and discounts to share to promote sales, giveaways you can promote on your site, and paid advert spots.
Escalate – the easiest Ad Network to run. A good range of advertisers across many interests. Can be paid on Pay per Click, Pay per Conversion and a few Pay per Sale. Very easy to use, the advert banners are available in a number of sizes and are visually appealing, and the customer service from their personal account managers is excellent. If you are new to blog advertising, I highly recommending starting here. Read more about Escalate in Newsletters 9 and 11.
Rivit Media – a good Adsense alternative, they specialise in DIY, Home Decor and Crafting niche blog sites with advertising targeted to your readers for more relevant adverts. Paid on a CPM, no need to get clicks to earn from these adverts. Read more in my recent review – Rivit Media Advertising – Adsense Alternative.
Integrate – more to follow.
Affiliate Networks
ShareASale – the affiliate network where I earn most of my money. Almost 4000 advertisers to chose from – you are sure to find many that will appeal to your readers. Easy reporting, vendors usually have multiple banners to chose from, and easy to set up the custom Deep Linking to promote individual pages and products.
See also this page of recommended ShareASale merchants in response to a Readers Question.
More suggested ShareASale Merchants with reviews:
How to make money with Affiliate Sales – ShareASale and Kidorable case study
Other ways to earn money
Sponsored Posts, Tweets etc – review to follow
Sverve – interesting blogger jobs site. Lots of very well paid opportunities you won’t find anywhere else. Visual Pinterest-style dashboard for you to share your best posts and tips and network with other bloggers in your niche. Endorse bloggers and be endorsed on your areas of influence. Opportunity to also guest post for Sverve and get paid.
Infolinks – true passive income. Set up once and forget and enjoy a steady increasing income stream from subtle keyword advertising. Read more about this in my recent post Earn money with Infolinks.
Hosting and websites
Bluehost – for buying your own Domain Name and hosting your own blog or website on WordPress, I recommend Bluehost. We use this hosting service for several websites. They have a very good forum with questions answered quickly by the support staff, 24hr telephone support and good rates. Plus its easy to set up and I have never had a problem of any sort with them. Highly recommended for self-hosting and domain names.
BlogVault – the ONLY backup for your WordPress site that I recommend. I use this personally after a LOT of research into the back up options available, and am delighted with it. It is not free, but after my research I decided that with the free options being so unreliable, and with no support if things go wrong and you want to restore, I believe my content is worth investing in. 2 minute set up, one click restore with excellent support.
StudioPress Themes – Get the website of your dreams. If you want a premium WordPress theme based on the popular Genesis framework, then StudioPress is for you. Unlimited world-class support forum – essential if you are a beginner to WordPress. There are so many beautiful, or business like themes to chose from.
My favorite resources, plugins and programs for site optimisation, getting followers and making money!
TubeRank Jeet – shows you how to optimise your YouTube videos to get page 1 Google Ranking and more views than you can dream of!
FB Admin – not the most exciting name for a product but FB Admin shows you how to get record numbers of Facebook fans without spending a cent on advertising. And then how to convert those Fans into traffic for your site.
Facebook Infiltrator – if you want your content to really stand out on the page and in the newsfeed and get readers to sign up or even buy right from the newsfeed itself, Facebook Infiltrator is the way to go. Suddenly your page will be head and shoulders above all the other newsfeed content and really get you and your offers noticed!
Books
31 Days to a Better Blog – perhaps the Internet’s best-selling book on blogging and for good reason. Darren Rowse from ProBlogger is an Internet SuperStar. 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is a downloadable ebook designed to help you revitalize your blog. One step at a time, it will transform your blog into the page view powerhouse you’ve always dreamed of. Designed to Make you Think, but more Importantly DO.
iBlog Magazine – the only printed blogging magazine for women. Also an excellent website filled with articles, advice, webinars, interviews, a daily blogging news round up show, live hangouts and more. Lots of free content as well as the magazine subscription and access to premium content on the site.
Mailing List
Mail Chimp – free for up to 2000 mailing list subscribers. Lots of newsletter templates, easy to use and can send up to 12,000 newsletters a month for free! Read more about setting up Mail Chimp and configuring your list, adding it to Facebook etc in the Setting up a Newsletter series.
Magic Action Box – the perfect way to increase your website sign ups and increase your subscriber list. Create beautiful custom sign up and share boxes and forms, add them to posts and pages, or your sidebar and even split test them to see which converts best! Integrates with all mailing list suppliers – there’s a free version, but the upgrade to the paid version is worth its weight in gold.
WordPress Plug ins
These are my favorite WordPress plugins that help me run my sites more easily or efficiently. And the good news – they are all free!
Pretty Link
Pure HTML
WP Optimize
Broken Link Checker – tidy up your site by finding, removing or repairing all the broken links
Easy Digital Downloads – the perfect addition to your site if you have downloads, e-books, graphics, photos or even services to sell. Free plugin creates buy it now buttons for your posts and beautiful product listings. Sell via your site and collect money via Paypal.
Reply Me – tell your readers by email when you have published a reply to their comment, so you can keep the conversation going.
WP-Ban – stop all that nuisance comment spam for good!
May 19, 2014 @ 2:10 pm
I’m possibly interested in making the switch (right now I’m a .com with Blogger – hosted by 1and1) to WordPress. The problem is…I’m a “techie-dummie!” I know I’ve got all kinds of issues on my site right now…currently, I don’t believe my RSS is even working (aggh). I’m afraid to make the switch with these problems that I don’t have a clue how to fix. Any insights?
You can check out my blog here http://www.diybeautify.com (not sure if you’ll be able to see the broken links, other errors, feed issues or not).
I’d appreciate any resources you could give me for someone who could help me (on a teeny tiny budget) by taking a look at my site and fixing all these things.
Thanks SOSOSOSO much (SOS pun intended, lol!!)
Cindy
May 23, 2014 @ 12:55 pm
Hi Cindy, sorry I missed your comment, it got sent to the spam folder because it included a link. My service only includes moving existing blogspot accounts, not those who already have a domain name and hosting account. I would suggest that Blogelina is the way to go – she offers a full range of site transfer services, including a switch from custom domains to new hosting and WordPress. And her price is very reasonable. You can check out her site transfer services HERE.
August 2, 2014 @ 6:05 pm
I don’t see Blogher on here.. with all the tweets from their latest conference, I feel like I am missing something big here. Thoughts? I treasure your advice!
August 3, 2014 @ 6:03 pm
They’ve changed a lot since I started out with them and are switching away from the premium campaigns and more towards the generic Adsense style of advertising for their spots. They also introduced a huge fee, then increased it again a few months later – so they’ve fallen out of my good books and despite a good increase in views, revenue is well down because of the fees. However, they do pay well for their sponsored campaigns I think – but I don’t qualify because I’m overseas. It’s certainly worth applying to get on the waiting list and give them a try, but be aware you have to sign a contract for 12 months at a time.
August 20, 2014 @ 1:30 pm
This information is wonderful! Thank you so much!
August 20, 2014 @ 5:46 pm
Wow! When I read through this blog post, I definitely see creativity in you. I am very pleased to see how you get the resources out to the readers of your blog. I have also been blogging for a while, I recently started to incorporate earning strategies on my blog which has so far turned out positive. This information will inspire me for the next months as I put in effort to develop it. Thank you!
May 6, 2017 @ 10:01 am
Hello, I found this page on accident, but super glad that I did. I sell SVG cutting files which are digital downloads. I have been wanting to create my own page for the past couple of years. Do I need to pay someone
to “host” my page, or is this something I can just do on my own.? My husband is a senior systems analyst, so I would assume he could help me with any technical issues. This is just something I want to finally do by myself, for myself. any info would be greatly appreciated.