Resources

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Resources to Help Beginner Bloggers

MOST HELPFUL PAGES

TECH GEAR

WEBSITE HOSTING

  • BlueHost – hands down the best domain hosting experience I have ever had. Ideal for beginners. I used them for 5+ years. There are only two hosting services I’ve ever used that were stellar. Use either of these and I hope you’ll be as happy with them as I am.
  • KnownHost – a more heavy-duty host for those of you that need to ramp it up because traffic is through the roof. Highly recommended are their VPS server accounts. I’ve had one for 3+ years.

BLOGGING TOOLS

  • WordPress.org – nearly 25% of the entire world blogs with WordPress. You should too. It’s free, fast, and has constant upgrades. Use it!

DIGITAL PRODUCT DISTRIBUTION

  • E-Junkie – easy, cheap and quite good to get started selling your own digital products online in minutes.
  • ClickBank – the best affiliate site. Sell your products here, or sell others’ products.
  • Commission Junction, like ClickBank but rather exclusive.

PAYMENTS AND CARTS

  • PayPal.com – a very useful account for both selling and buying.
  • WooCommerce – an awesome free shopping cart plugin by WooThemes creators. If you have a retail website where you sell a number of products, this plugin integrates with most themes and has a good response in the forums for questions you have about it. Works with PayPal.

BLOG IMAGES and GRAPHICS EDITING

  • Dreamstime
  • Flickr – Flickr images are probably not helping your blog if you’re using them, even if you’re using them correctly. They are probably a sign that your blog is not serious, and definitely not business-focused. Use stock images instead!
  • Jing – a quick screen grab app for Mac or Windows that allows simple titles, arrows and other cool stuff.

EMAIL LIST SERVICES

  • MailChimp – I’ve used MailChimp and Aweber. Aweber left a bad taste in my mouth one time when I clicked something inadvertently – it was set up so I did – and I bought a $40 ebook about how to get my first 5,000 email list customers. Funny, because I already had over 8,000 at the time so I had no need for the book. They wouldn’t refund me! So, I would never use them. 🙂

BOOKS (PDF – Kindle) on Business Blogging

  • 50 Ways to Make Money While Living Overseas

VIDEO CREATION

  • ScreenFlow – allows screencapture video, voice-overs, importing video, photos, audio, titles, etc. Highly recommended. Camtasia also has a good product for this.

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