Best Free & Paid Blogging Tools For Beginners

If you are looking for the best blogging tools for beginners, you’ve come to the right place. In this post I’ll list some of my favourite blogging tools that will help you set up your blog for success, including the best tools for starting your blog, growing your blog and monetising your blog.

Let’s dive in.

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I may earn a small commission for affiliate links in this post at no extra cost to you. Please read my disclaimer  for more information.

BEST TOOLS TO START YOUR BLOG

If you want to set up your blog for long term success you need to buy web hosting and set up a self-hosted website. I’ll recommend 2 web hosts that I love and use myself.

BLUEHOST

If you are not very tech-savvy I recommend starting your blog with Bluehost because they do all the technical stuff for you. Bluehost installs WordPress for you and makes the whole set up process quick and easy. They even give you a free domain name, a free webmail account and a free SSL certificate. If you need help setting up your hosting, please read this post:

How To Start A WordPress Blog On Bluehost

CHECK OUT BLUEHOST HERE

SITEGROUND

Siteground is another great web host. If you want to host more than one website they offer affordable packages. Siteground will move your website over for free with minimum downtime. They also give you a free SSL certificate but you have to install it yourself. Their support is fantastic, so make sure to call them if you need help with anything.

CHECK OUT SITEGROUND HERE

FREE BLOGGING COURSE

If you’re completely new to blogging, it makes sense to take a course that shows you all the steps you need to take to set up your blog for success.

I have a completely free course that does exactly this:

Kickstart Your Money Making Blog

Save yourself a ton of guesswork and learn how to start a blog the right way.

BEST TOOLS TO DESIGN YOUR BLOG

Are you struggling to make your blog look good? Are you spending hours fiddling with a free WordPress theme and you’re not getting anywhere?

Ouch, I know the feeling. When I first started out I spend weeks trying to do the simplest things without getting anywhere. I was so frustrated that I nearly gave up. But then someone recommended using a premium WordPress theme and this changed everything.

I could not believe the difference!

It was so much more intuitive to use and there were so many cool elements that I could just drag and drop into my layout. I finally starting enjoying using WordPress!

And the best thing is that a premium theme comes with support. So if you ever get stuck with anything, you have someone there (an ACTUAL PERSON!) that will help you out. I’ll list my favourite WordPress themes below.

DIVI

If you think that creating a website is too hard for you, you should try Divi. Divi is a front-end drag & drop editor that makes it super easy to create a website.
Divi is more than just a WordPress theme, it’s a website building platform that replaces the standard WordPress post editor with a visual editor that is much easier to use.

TRY OUT DIVI FOR FREE HERE

BLUCHIC THEMES

If you are creatively challenged and you can’t figure out how to make your blog look good, I highly recommend checking out Bluchic Themes.
Bluchic offers a large range of beautifully designed WordPress themes that will make your blog look professional, and absolutely gorgeous!

Like these two beauties:

They offer great support and have videos on how to set up your blog so you can make it look exactly like the demo.

CHECK OUT BLUCHIC THEMES HERE

BEST TOOLS TO DESIGN BLOG GRAPHICS

To make your blog and your social media posts look good you need some easy to use design tools.

CANVA

Canva is a free design editor that is super easy to use. It’s a great tool if you don’t like designing things because it has loads of templates for logos, Facebook posts, Pinterest pins, banners and anything you might need for your blog.

TRY CANVA FOR FREE HERE

RELAYTHAT

A super easy design editor that practically designs your pins and other social media graphics for you. Simply enter your title and a few images, and it creates tons of graphics, that you can tweak and download. It also comes with a huge library of stock photos, icons and fonts.

RelayThat is a huge time saver, especially now we have to create so many fresh pins each week.

Watch how I use this tool to create Pinterest pins quickly in my RelayThat Review.

or

CHECK OUT RELAYTHAT HERE

CREATIVE MARKET

The ultimate market place for community-generated design assets. Fonts, design bundles, illustrations, website themes, device mock-ups, infographic templates, and anything you might need to make your blog look spectacular!

Sign up for their newsletter and you’ll get some awesome freebies straight to your inbox every Monday.

CHECK OUT CREATIVE MARKET HERE

FIVERR

Fiverr is an online network that offers freelance services. If you need someone to help you design or develop your website or you’d like someone to design an affordable logo for you, Fiverr will have the right person for the job. Besides design and web development services they offer services for: content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, writing & translation services and anything else you might need for your blog.

CHECK OUT FIVERR HERE

SHE BOLD STOCK PHOTOS

A great collection of girly stock photos, Pinterest templates, social media templates and lead magnet templates. All templates are editable in Canva so you can customise them as needed.

Sign up to their email list to receive 50+ free stock photos.

GET FREE STOCK PHOTOS HERE

PIXI STOCK

If you’re looking for beautiful feminine stock photos and social media graphics templates, you have to check out Pixi Stock.

Sign up to their email list and receive free stock photos every month!

CHECK OUT PIXISTOCK HERE

BEST TOOLS TO GROW YOUR BLOG

You want to grow your blog traffic and to do this you need the right tools. Below you’ll find the best tools to drive traffic to your blog and maximise your growth.

MAILERLITE

To keep your audience coming back to your blog you need an email service provider. I use MailerLite because it’s so easy to use and super affordable. It has a free plan for up to 1000 subscribers and this plan includes all its functionality. You can create multiple optin forms to collect email addresses on your blog and multiple automated sequences to keep your audience engaged.

CHECK OUT MAILERLITE HERE

CONVERTKIT

Another great email marketing platform is Convertkit. Convertkit is super easy to use and especially made for bloggers. Easily create multiple opt-in forms, automated sequences and tag your audience for personalised emails. You can even A/B test your email headline and Convertkit will use the one that gets the most clicks. Convertkit has just released a free plan so…

TRY CONVERTKIT’S FREE PLAN HERE

TAILWIND

Tailwind is the scheduling tool you need to grow your blog traffic fast. You can use it to schedule Instagram posts or Pinterest pins. Tailwind is especially handy for Pinterest and will save you hours of time. Simply schedule your pins once a week and let Pinterest drive traffic to your blog on autopilot. It also chooses optimum times to schedule your pins, giving your pins the most exposure.

TRY TAILWIND’S FREE PLAN HERE

SOCIAL WARFARE

To grow your blog you need your audience to share your content. More shares on social media means more eyeballs on your blog. Make it easy for your blog visitors to share your content with social sharing buttons. Social Warfare is a free plugin that adds stylish social sharing buttons to your blog. To get more control over how your shared post looks when shared, you can get the premium version for only $24 per year.

CHECK OUT SOCIAL WARFARE HERE

BEST TOOLS TO SELL DIGITAL PRODUCTS OR COURSES

Do you want to make more money with your blog? Consider selling your own digital products, services or courses with the following tools:

SendOwl

SendOwl is a great tool for selling digital products like eBooks or Canva templates. Besides digital products you can also sell services, memberships and you can even create bundles.

SendOwl is easy to use and has affordable plans to get started with. You can also try it out for free with their 30 day free trial.

TRY OUT SENDOWL FOR FREE HERE

THRIVECART

ThriveCart is a funnel based shopping cart platform with high converting checkout pages that maximise profits with up-sells, down-sells and bump offers. It is the perfect tool to sell your digital products and it now even has a full blown course platform so you can create and sell courses on it too!

I recently bought ThriveCart with this amazing one-time payment offer and I absolutely love it! It is super user friendly and the shopping cart pages look stunning!

The one-time payment deal makes this one of the best options on the market if you want to sell digital products and courses or memberships. It even includes an affiliate management centre so you can start your own affiliate program and increase your sales even more!

CHECK OUT THRIVECART HERE

BEST TOOLS TO MONETISE YOUR BLOG

A great way to make money with your blog is through affiliate marketing. To learn more about affiliate marketing, check out this post: How to start with affiliate marketing.

I’m going to let you in on a great affiliate program that you might want to join:

Ultimate Bundles

You might have heard of Ultimate Bundles? Well if you haven’t, Ultimate Bundles is a great resource for bloggers. They curate the best online content on a particular topic and turn them into the biggest collections of digital products. Then they offer it for sale for a limited time with a huge discount.

They have bundles available that are suitable for several different niches, like: health & wellness, food, productivity and finance. The bundles are for sale for $97 and if you sell one through your affiliate link you get a whopping 40%.

You can sign up for the Ultimate Bundles affiliate program here.

This is my list of best free & paid blogging tools for beginners

Let me know what your favourite blogging tools are in the comments below. If you’re new to blogging and need help planning your blog, I have a handy Blog Planner Workbook. Just sign up below and I’ll send it to you straight away!