If you're waiting for an opportunity to come knocking, then I've got news for you. That opportunity is right now!
Yes, I know that sounds like a cliche, but stop thinking about 'what if', and just darn well start.
We are so fortunate to be alive in this era. The digital age is truly amazing, and it's filled with so many opportunities.
YOU have access to everything you need to start building your equity, your future, your dream online business or blog. There are so many useful productivity and creativity tools, services, apps, software, technology, and training available!
You can build any kind of business you envision on the internet, and you can build this business out of nothing other than passion, love, and raw determination. You don't need to have a degree or any special qualification to start. If you have a fire in your belly, that will do just fine.
But where do you start?
Well, don't panic, because I created this resource page to help you cut through the noise and find the very best tools you need to kickstart and grow your online business or blog.
Take a look below, find what you need and make something BIG happen today. Stop waiting.
Why do I recommend them?
They're extremely reliable and secure. I can say this with confidence because I've used them for the last 5 years for all of my personal website and blog projects.
Get SiteGround Hosting (Affiliate link)
After hosting, the next step is creating and launching your blog.
For new bloggers, I recommend the Genesis Theme Framework.
Why do I recommend Genesis?
I started my blogging venture in 2010 with Genesis. It's a robust, well-coded, and secure theme framework with lots of easy customization options.
Get Genesis (Affiliate link)
If you're planning to sell digital products or services on your blog or website, the first thing you'll need to do is design some attractive, on-brand, sales pages, complete with your product profiles and marketing content and message.
For this, I use and recommend Thrive Architect. Thrive Architect is a powerful, feature-packed, drag and drop page builder plugin for WordPress.
I have used this plugin to create all kinds of pages and with a variety of conversion goals and purposes for my own online businesses.
Creating great content will be your most important focus when building your blog or online business. In addition, you'll need to arm your website with smart tools for optimizing your content and strategies to sustain growth and increase your conversions.
For this, I use and recommend Thrive Themes Membership. You'll get access to powerful plugins for growing your email list, designing sales pages, doing A/B split testing, managing testimonials, creating and tracking your marketing campaigns, and more.
Optimizing your blog posts and pages for better search engine visibility is a critical step in growing your blog or online business.
For this, I use and recommend either Yoast SEO or SEOPressor Connect. SEOPressor a is powerful, feature-crammed, all-in-one, on-page and site-wide SEO plugin for self-hosted WordPress websites.
SEOPressor Connect is a subscription-based service/plugin that comes with a host of useful options, including SEO auditing tools, broken link checker, over-optimization indicator, multiple keyword optimization, and more.
Growing your email list as well as managing your lists effectively is an integral part of your online business growth strategy.
You can capture emails using Thrive Leads (Available in the Thrive Membership Package), however, you'll need a reliable email marketing service provider to help you manage your list, as well as create and send powerful campaigns to help you promote your content, products, and services, and increase engagement.
For this, I use and recommend MailChimp. They've been around for a long time, and they are 100% cost-effective.
Creating content, promoting content, guest blogging, posting on social media, creating and sending email newsletters, maintaining your blog, managing offline promotions...
With so many platforms to use, it can quite easily become a laborious chore bouncing from one site to the next, juggling your marketing and content creation and distribution all over the place.
Which is why I use and recommend CoSchedule. Since I've started using CoSchedule, my productivity has tripled!
It's no secret, if you want to build a blog and boost your organic search engine traffic quickly, keyword research is an essential process, especially when you are promoting various products and services to maximize your blog income.
For finding profitable keywords to use in your blog posts, I use and recommend Long Tail Pro.
Long Tail Pro is a monthly subscription service. It's a tool that will save you time, money, and help you cultivate a blog packed with not just useful, but also profitable content.
You want to make it easy for your visitors and readers of your blog to share and promote your awesome content on social media.
The plugin I recommend using for WordPress is Social Warfare. This is a lightweight, blazing-fast loading, social sharing plugin packed with lots of powerful on-page social optimization options.
Please note: I no longer use Social Warfare, instead I use a simple social buttons plugin designed specifically for Genesis Framework users.
If you're starting from rock bottom with your blog or affiliate marketing business, and have absolutely no idea where to start, the training website I highly recommend is Affilorama.
Affilorama is a platform that offers sound and practical affiliate marketing training. You'll get access to over 120 tutorial videos, the blueprint for building profitable affiliate websites, and access to a suite of powerful tools for finding profitable niches, keywords, and more.
Affilorama has over 700,000 members and growing. Join today to access the free valuable content, to begin with!
Are you thinking of writing and publishing your own eBooks to sell on your blog or website? Well, that's a great way to start making money from your online business.
To save you a lot of time and resources, I use and therefore recommend Payhip for hosting all your eBooks and digital products.
Payhip has a low commission rate as well as a host of other useful tools, such as membership tools you can use to create simple memberships for your products.
Finally, you can't build a successful or profitable blog without a smart plan or strategy. Trust me, I've been blogging for over 8 years and I know.
Which is why I created the Ultimate Pro Blog Planner workbook for you!
My blog planner contains over 30 printable worksheets and planners and comes in PDF format. There are planners for your blog posts, social media campaigns, traffic generation, content promotion, income and expense reports, and more.
