SHEILA J’S RESOURCE PAGE
When I first started blogging many years ago, I wished I had the resources that I have now because if I had them, the pains, frustration, mistakes, and circumvention new bloggers like me had to pass through in creating a successful blog wouldn’t have happened. I have created this page to help new bloggers avoid the many challenges I faced as a new blogger.
As I meet new bloggers and continue to learn more about blogging, I have realized that you cannot build a successful blog business without using a great set of tools and resources. You must pick the right tools. Knowing the right set of tools to start with will be immensely helpful to new bloggers, saving them so much time. And this is why I have put together a list of my favorite tools, resources, and blog posts that I constantly use and know will be helpful and supportive to new and old bloggers. These are the products I’ve researched and personally used. I recommend them to both new and already established bloggers for a successful blogging journey.
STARTING A BLOG
If you are overwhelmed with how to start a blog, the blogging blueprints in this blog post, How to Start a Blog, will be a helpful guide on getting started. Some of my other blog posts that could help you more are:
37 APPS THAT WILL MAKE AND SAVE YOU MONEY
MY TOP 19 FAVORITE BLOGGING TOOLS
14 tools that I use to help me grow my business
Some of the links in this document are affiliate links, which will earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you if you choose to make a purchase. These are the products I have researched, used, and would personally recommend to every newbie in the blogging business.
Let’s get straight into a complete list of the many tools, links, and epic resources you can use to help launch and grow your blogging and online business.
MY TOP RESOURCES
MY FAVORITE FIVE
Namecheap – An awesome and one of the best web hosting companies with a great customer support team. namecheap.com has a lot of affordable solutions that will fit your needs and the budget of both new bloggers and already established ones. I have created a detailed guide on how to get started creating your blog or website with namecheap.com.
BUILDING A FRAMEWORK – A great resource for training programs to help start, grow and monetize your blog. It provides the most effective strategies and tangible action steps to help new bloggers start and build a better blog and create a stronger framework for their online business. This great resource has several packages like an eBook-only option that include training videos.
MAILERLITE – This is an amazing and free email service. I use it for my email marketing. Easy to use and has features like email automation, landing pages, popups, embedded forms, etc. Mailerite is designed to help bloggers grow their subscribers and build stronger online relationships.
CREATIVE MARKET – This is where I get most of my graphics, fonts, and stock photography. It is an online marketplace for community-generated design assets. I found this site, and I fell in love with it instantly. Every week they give away 6 FREE PRODUCTS of their choice. You will find everything and almost anything to help with your design needs. When looking for an aesthetic for your blog, the creative market gallery will definitely have something for you.
ASANA – This project and task management web and mobile application are very helpful in organizing and monitoring action steps for projects, especially when you are a team working on a project. It helps teams organize, track, manage, monitor, and schedule their work. It is a great working tool for small teams.
CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM & FRAMEWORK
WordPress.org – This customizable content management software is what most bloggers use. It is not complicated, and you don’t need to be a tech expert to be able to use it.
Genesis Framework – This framework gives you access to many amazing child themes. THE RESTORED 316 THEME is one of the amazing themes in the Genesis Framework. The Restored 316 theme has a lot of feminine designs, and the renaissancewoman.biz is built on the Restored 316 theme, which runs on the Genesis Framework.
Another Amazing theme that I want to recommend specifically for women who want to start blogging and growing their business online is the CULTIVATE THEME. I use this gorgeous theme on my website, frugalandpretty.com, to build my brand and stylingwithsheilaj.com for my community initiatives.
ClickFunnels – I’ve built my funnels, landing pages, and order forms with this amazing tool. ClickFunnels is a great tool to market, sell and deliver products and services online. I currently use WordPress and click funnels for my website. I have bonuses worth more than 10,000 to give out to those who use my link.
HOSTING:
Namecheap – Namecheap is one of my favorites, I switched from siteground to Namecheap, and I don’t regret it because it’s easier on my pockets. I spent $50 for a whole 12 months.
SiteGround – This is a great web hosting company for new and already established bloggers. It has a pocket-friendly budget and a great support team.
Bluehost – Bluehost is another great hosting company. It offers you the convenience of hosting multiple domains on a single account.
WPEngine – Provides a dedicated hosting service for WordPress. Great for bloggers who need a full-service web hosting company
Flywheel – This highest quality WordPress hosting company offers free migrations and an outstanding customer support
E-BOOKS & ONLINE TRAINING
Rachel Luna’s faith-activated journal experiment: This awesome membership journal from Rachel, a motivational expert, gives you daily motivation to believe in yourself and build your dreams.
Rachel Luna’s Profit without Products Course: This is another valuable resource from Rachel. Here she talks about wealth creation through passive income. An awesome resource to help an entrepreneur make better business decisions.
Daily commission club: An Affiliate Marketing Private Program with Rachel S. Lee. It has so much top-notch content, and it was exactly what I needed.
Rachel Lunas Feels Good Sales Society: This masterclass is a good foundation for bloggers serious about making money from their online activities.
Equipping Godly Women / Strategies worth Sharing Affiliates: A must-have resource for a new blogger to enable strategizing and growth. Here you find many resources on strategies worth sharing.
EBOOK: Sweet Sales Systems: This has been very helpful. I always referred to it from time to time. An awesome resource to help bloggers develop sales systems that will grow their business
EBOOK: How to Make Your First Affiliate Sale in 24 Hours: A good guide on how to get started with affiliate sales.
EBOOK: Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing: This resource is a step-by-step affiliate marketing strategy course for bloggers who want to increase their affiliate income.
THE Millions Conference: The Millions Conference is a powerful 2-day training and equipping conference for entrepreneurs, bloggers, world changers, and businessmen and women. I make it a point of duty to attend this conference once a year. It has been very helpful and a recommendable resource.
Marshawn: Marshawn is another highly recommended resource from a great mentor and coach. The ready-to-work initiative is geared toward helping women entrepreneurs increase their income and influence.
Gram Slam: Dedicated to social media content sharing strategies to grow followers, build your brand, and make sales. Here you have the opportunity to access so many Instagram stories. It is a great resource for using Instagram stories to build trust, boost enlargement and strengthen your sales.
Affiliate in a box: My free Affiliate Business in A Box resource is here. All the steps and the things you need to do to get results in your affiliate marketing business are all there. Check it out.
Danielle Leslie: She knows what it takes to create and launch a profitable online course and has been helping many entrepreneurs create, set up platforms, and launch their courses online.
PAID STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY
SC Stock Shop – This is a resource with exceptional custom feminine stock photos. Shay produces a large variety of top-notch photos. Her photos are exclusive and sold in limited copies.
White Hart Design Co. – You find an extensive range of mockups and styled photos here. Lucie offers a lot of natural and vintage photography to help you achieve the best attractive and polished look online.
Haute Stock – There are a lot of high-resolution images, mockups, seasonal images, and exclusive graphics to help you showcase and build your brand. It is a membership site updated monthly with many colorful, vintage, and subtle images.
Creative Market – Many designs, fonts, and graphics can be found here. So many amazing photographers sell their works here. This is a one-stop-shop for all kinds of stock photographs with a wonderful aesthetic
Ivory mix – This membership-based resource offers multiple bundles to mix and match stock photos. There are over 2100 images perfectly designed for multiple uses. Whatever niche your blog is, whatever color you need, they have a lot of vibrant and colorful-styled stock photos.
Pixistock – When on schedule and in urgent need of ready-to-go stock photos, you can get unique custom photos incorporating your brand colors, style, and product. It is indeed a great resource for a quick mix of custom photos.
Sheila J stock photo – Get six free products and 10% off from my online picture shop on Creative Market. You will find all categories of stock images, from natural to business, foods, drinks, architecture, industrial, etc.
FREE STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY
Unsplash – There are so many lifestyle and natural style collections on Unsplash. You can explore the large collection of free images for all purposes.
Death to the Stock – This is a commonly used pack of images. They work with a crew of passion-driven expert photographers worldwide to produce and give out monthly packs of images to their subscribers. It’s a good and recommendable resource.
PHOTOGRAPHY EQUIPMENT
Canon EOS Rebel T5 – As a blogger, if you are new to photography, this affordable and pocket-friendly camera is very good for learning about photography and all the capabilities of a DSLR camera.
Canon EOS 80D – This is a good tool for business video and photo sessions. It is an enthusiast-level DSLR and the successor to the 70D. Video is a major part of the 80D’s total package.
Canon EOS 5D Mark III – This camera has a good distance lens. Good for real-estate owners with high-quality video. This is affordable if you need a camera with such a feature.
Eyefi Mobi 32GB Wi-Fi Card – This Wi-Fi card can automatically synchronize your images to your device and make it available for use almost immediately.
Manfrotto MT055XPRO3 055 Tripod – This sturdy tripod is used mostly for stable shooting. It will give you a good value that is worth the price.
Yongnuo fast EF 35mm wide-angle lens – Can capture any moment, even in the lowest lighting conditions! It has a minimum focusing distance, so you can still obtain that natural wide-angle effect even if you’re close-up.
Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM Lens – This lens has an awesome optical zoom system and a stepping motor STM with a refined focus mechanism for smooth and continuous AF during video recording.
Tamron AF 18-270mm f/3.56.3 Di II VC PZD Lens – This lens provides a faster, quieter auto-focusing. It is lighter, shorter, and slimmer than any previous lens in its class, an awesome tool!
Yongnuo YN85mm F1.8 AF/MF – This lens is ideal for portrait photography. It is best for shooting without flash in low light conditions because it has a Standard Medium Prime Fixed Telephoto Lens for DSLR Cameras.
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 Lens – This is my primary lens for any business type of shot. This lens is a fixed length so that it won’t zoom.
VIDEO/AUDIO SOFTWARE & EQUIPMENT
Yetti mic – I use this USB mic. It’s good when recording with your computer. It is easy to use and creates a studio-quality recording. It’s a must-have for your total recording control.
Lavalier Microphone – This body clip mic is a great hands-free mic. When needing a wireless mic with a powerful and reliable signal, this high-quality mic with minimal noise and great voice clarity is a good option to consider.
Wistia – This platform provides simple software for creating, managing, and sharing videos for business. I recommend this video hosting platform for more engagement, collaboration, and growth for your blog and online business.
Envato market – This is a marketplace for all the digital assets you need as a blogger. You can get anything from Photoshop actions and video footage to advanced WordPress themes and plugins. I use it and quite recommend it.
Wirecast – Wirecast live video streaming production tool allows you to create live or on-demand broadcasts for the web. It offers Facebook live cross-posting, 48 kHz audio rendering, Restream, and Live Captions web services. Check it out; you will be glad you did.
Screen flow – Another one from Telestream for Styles, Templates, Stock Media Library, Freehand Annotations, etc. It supports both OS X and iOS screen capturing. Many bloggers use it to create screencasts, video tutorials, presentations, and more.
Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) is a free and open-source streaming and recording program. With OBS, you get everything you need to live stream and record videos using multiple sources. Get familiar with it, and you will smile.
PHOTO EDITING
PicMonkey– I use this tool for my basic image editing. It is an awesome online tool, and it is free.
Canva– This great free online tool is used for beautiful graphic creation and image editing.
AfterLight – This iPhone app is a great tool for editing images on the go.
A Color Story– This is another iPhone app that is a great tool for editing images on the go.
Adobe Photoshop – One of the best photo editing software for spectacular photos and graphics. You can adjust clarity, color, and tone and create image manipulation effects to perfect your graphic design work. It is a must-have tool to take all your projects to the next level.
Adobe Lightroom – This tool is meant for bold photographers and storytellers who want to make the most out of pictures. With its Cloud-Based Photo Storage & Organization, you can work with it anywhere and anytime.
COLOR INSPIRATION
ColourLovers – This is where you can get millions of color schemes. You can also create your custom color scheme.
Design-Seeds – This is another color scheme website. With this site, you can pull many color schemes from a photograph.
Adobe Color – Another awesome tool for pulling color schemes from an image!
DESIGN TOOLS
Adobe Creative Cloud – This creative cloud is what I use for some of my designs and photo editing. It has programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.
Picmonkey – This is a great online tool for creating simple graphics for your blog.
Canva– This is a very flexible tool with a lot of creative opportunities for creating different types of blog headers
SITE SECURITY
Sucuri– This security tool does an awesome job of cleaning up your website whenever it happens to be hacked. I use it as an SEO tool that takes care of any blocklisting on my website.
Wordfence– Although not all hosting companies allow the use of this plugin on their server, this plugin can efficiently protect your website from hackers.
LEGAL RESOURCES
Small Business Bodyguard – This resource takes care of all legal needs of your site. It is recommendable to all new bloggers.
Disclosure Policy – The disclosure policy takes care of all you’ll need to make known on your site.
Disclosing your affiliate links – This is a mandated practice that demands that whenever a link that results in commission is used on your website, this information must be disclosed to visitors to your site. I guess you have already seen it here on my resource page.
The Contract Shop – This is where to get your legal templates and courses for creative entrepreneurs, online course creators, bloggers, coaches, etc. Christina Scalera owns it just for purchasing or viewing a contract template.
EMAIL SERVICE
GSuite – GSuite is used to manage business email through Gmail. I’d strongly recommend this service.
EMAIL MARKETING
ConvertKit – There are many features in service, and many bloggers are building email lists of thousands of subscribers using this program. Most blogs (including mine) that offer free incentives if you sign up to their mailing list use this program.
Mailerlite- – This email service is very efficient for new bloggers who have just started building their email list. It is easy to use and frees up to 1000 subscribers.
Sendlane – This is a powerful, easy-to-use email marketing & automation service made affordable for everyone. The all-in-one solution they provide for the marketing needs of its subscribers shows that the customer’s happiness is their Priority. I am thinking of switching to this service.
Flodesk – This is another easy-to-use email kit that allows you to design attractive and valuable emails that look great on all devices. You can try it for free here.
ONLINE SALES
Woocommerce – You need this plugin to add eCommerce functionality to your WordPress website. Best for bloggers who want to monetize their blog.
GumRoad – This allows you to create landing pages and sales copies to sell anything online.
Teachable – This is good to use when you want to create and sell online courses.
ClickFunnels – This is a Sales Funnel for EVERYTHING You Need to Market, Sell, and Deliver Your Products and Services Online.
Shopify – This is a one-stop eCommerce platform that has everything you need to sell online, on social media, in-store, or in person.
Storenvy – This e-commerce platform has millions of products listed on it. It is made up of an online store builder and social marketplace.
Etsy – This is a great tool and extra selling platform for templates and blog kits. It is a great tool to showcase your product to so many customers.
Builderall – provides entrepreneurs with the best digital online business builder and marketing platform on the web.
Kajabi – This knowledge commerce platform helps you launch your online business by teaching others what you know through online courses, coaching, and membership.
SITE STATISTICS & SEO
Google Analytics – This tool is used to track the traffic coming to your site to know its source. You need a google account to be able to use this.
Google Webmasters– This tool helps you track your site’s search performance. It works very well with google analytics and should be set up together.
Yoast SEO– This is a must-have SEO plugin for your WordPress website. It is used to determine the SEO friendliness of your website.
ORGANIZATION AND PRODUCTIVITY
Asana – A good task planner that makes it easier for a team to organize, track, manage, monitor, and schedule their work.
Acuityscheduling – This is great scheduling software to help you organize, track and manage your appointments.
Dubsado – This program help bloggers and Creative freelancers manage contracts, invoicing, questionnaires, etc.
Trello – This is another online project management platform with millions of users worldwide.
Hello Sign – A good platform for your business agreements that help you create a signing link to share your document quickly.
Moo – There are various business cards and other online printed materials that you can use in MOO.
Erin Condren – “LifePlanner” is a planning system that allows you to personalize and customize.
Google Drive – A safe place for all your files with one of the best file storage and synchronization services,
DropBox – This is a free and secure File Sharing and Storage tool. Dropbox makes working on a shared document easier if you’re working with other people.
Zapier – Get more done with Zapier. It enables you to share your data by linking your web apps.
Sumome – Has a lot of free tools used to grow your website’s traffic. The Sumo tools are seamless and easy to install. Help you convert more of your visitors to customers.
Link Tracking – Clickmagick is the best link tracking software used by affiliate marketers to determine the effectiveness of marketing activities and campaigns.
Quick Traffic – Udimi is fast and safe for quality advertising. With its experienced vendors, It is my favorite marketing place for Solo Ad traffic.
Social Proof – Make your reviews & testimonials stand out with “sticky review” popups to get more sales! Morevago is affordable, easy to use, and awesome at increasing sales.
Funnel Scripts – Funnel Scripts makes copywriting easy. Get all of your sales letters, scripts, and webinar slides written in under 10 minutes without hiring a copywriter.
YouTube SEO – Want to improve your YouTube SEO and get more views on your videos? Maximize your organic reach and choose the proper tags and keywords. Analyze your stats and growth with cool dashboards. Plus, it’s free. GET IT FREE NOW!
Track Reddit – Signup for your accurate and effective broadcast tracking Campaigns. You will get real-time results and advanced tracking. With track reddit, you can easily save and share tracking results.
SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULING
For Scheduling Instagram
Tailwind is what I use now for scheduling Instagram posts. You can read my post on how you can schedule and post on Instagram using Tailwind.
Automating and Growing Pinterest
Tailwind – I have used Tailwind since I started using both my Pinterest views have skyrocketed to over 100k views. You can check out my blog post on how to grow your Pinterest account.
Automating and Growing Instagram
Instato is a cool software that will grow your Instagram and get targeted followers and leads. It has auto-like, auto-comment, follow/unfollow, and auto DM features.
Popsocial – This is an affordable social media agency. If you’re looking to grow your Instagram and want to outsource, you should check them out.
Automating Facebook Group Posting
Pilot Poster is a cost-effective Facebook group auto poster. Pilot Poster saves you a lot of time and energy when engaging with your target audience on Facebook.
SmarterQueue – This is a useful all-in-one social media management tool that will help you keep track of your posting and marketing efforts.
Loomly – This tool will help your branding efforts and help you develop a unique brand that nobody can compete with.
DID YOU FIND THIS RESOURCE LIST TO BE HELPFUL? I’D APPRECIATE IT IF YOU COULD SHARE IT ON PINTEREST!
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