The beauty of mommy blogging is that it costs almost nothing to get started.
Yes, you have to pay for web hosting, but apart from that everything else you can get pretty much for free!
Here is our complete list of resources you can use to get your blog started or to make your existing blog work better & earn you more money!
Have you been using any of these?
Did we miss out any important free tools? Leave a comment below!
BLOG SET UP
Everything you need from blogging platform, website themes, design help, fonts to use and plugins that will make a difference.
- Website Templates – Free WordPress Themes (Responsive)
- Weebly – free blogging platform, includes free site templates
- Blogger – together with WP (WordPress) the most popular free blogging platform, free templates included
- Free HTML course : udemy.com – online class at Udemy
- Free webdesign course – online course with the basics of webdesign
- Website Logo – free logo generator
- Unique Hipster logo generator – generate hipster logo for free in few minutes
- Hive – free cloud service
- Tumblr – free blogging platform
- Dropplets – an easier way to blog
- Slimvoice – simple invoices
- Website Colors – free color palettes for your website design
- Impossibility – domain name generator
- Wordoit – create a unique and catchy blog name
- Google fonts – over 600 free fonts to use on your website
- Quick Sprout – detailed analytic of your websites performance and recommendations for improvements
- Coffee cup – basic html editor for people with minimal or no html skills
- Feedburner – easy set up of RSS feeds
- Laspass – no need to remember all your passwords
- Yoast SEO – best WordPress seo plugin
- Cory Long Reviwes– Businesses of all sizes need solid lead generation strategies to get more leads for their product and service.
- PageSpeed Insights – find out how fast / slow your site loads
- Jetpack plugin – WordPress plugin that comes packed with many briliant features, social sharing buttons are our favorite
- Disqus Comments – popular comments plugin for WP
- Facebook Comments – WP plugin that lets you comment with your facebook account
- Contextly – add recommended content to the bottom of your post (WP plugin)
- Google XML Sitemap – WP plugin, sitemap generator, seo essential
- W3 total cache – WP plugin that helps your site run faster and smoother
- WP Affiliates manager – manager your affiliate accounts and links
- Nelio AB Testing – great for running a/b tests on your website
- Marketing Grader – review the performance of your website’s marketing effort
- Similarweb – research what your competition is up to, where they get their traffic, how much visitors they have and much more
- Hotjar – website optimisation, reports and recommendations for improvements
WRITING & PHOTOS
Tools to help you become a better and more organized writer, plus photos to make your blog stand out from the crowd.
- Hemingway – free writing editor, make your posts more clear and concise with this simple tool
- Content Progress – custom mark each post in WordPress to keep track
- Ilys – forget about writers block. Set a wordcount and Ilys wont let you go back, delete or amend until you reached your goal.
- Editorial Calendar – organize and keep track of your writing and posts schedule
- Storywars – brainstorming, writing stories together
- Alltop – trending content online
- Photopin – free photos for bloggers
- Phonto – app that adds text on photos
- Picasa – organize, edit and share your photos
- QuotesCover – create visual quotes
- Sellfy – desing freebies (fonts, graphics and more)
- Pixabay – free high quality images
- Canva – create free graphics, images
- Unsplash – free to use images
- Gifmaker – make gif images
- Picmonkey – photo editor
- Piktochart – create free infographics
- Rhyme Zone – when you need something that rhymes
- Creative Commons – Search and discover creative commons licensed media for free use
- Soovle – type in keyword and this tool will research most popular terms across all search engines
- Google Keyword Planner – free keyword research tool
- Content Idea Generator – type in subject and get ideas
- Everpost – content curation tool
- Quora – research most talked about topics
- Google Alerts – get an email every time google finds content based on your keywords
- Buzzsumo – top performing content by keyword
- Headline Analyzer – analyze your headline for emotional marketing value
- Headline analyzer by CoSchedule – pop in headline and get results right away
- Blog post generator – by hubpost
- Plagium – check the originality of a text online, great if you’re planning to use texts written by guest bloggers
- Check your grammar – free online tool
- Blog post title generator – for catchy blog titles
- Copyscape – most popular plagiarism software online
- Cliche finder – don’t ever use cliches in your blog posts
- Listly – discover and create great lists
- Optinskin – opt in box you can use in emails or bottom of your blog post
- Storify – curate articles and opinions on selected topic
- Writer app – write & draft your blog posts on the go
- Bubbl – brainstorm and create map of your ideas for content
PRODUCTIVITY & STAYING ORGANIZED
Keep track of your progress, stay organized, focus better and get more done!
- Markticle – mark where you finished reading while doing your online research
- Toggl – track how much time you spend on your tasks & get more productive
- Focus Booster – get more efficient with your writing by using pomodoro technique
- Cold Turkey – block out distracting website and focus more on writing
- After the Deadline – polish your writing, correct grammar and more
- Evernote – great for keeping ideas for blog posts, inspiration, resources and everything else you need. Your virtual notepad and diary in one.
- Coffitivity – white noise generator, to help you concentrate while writing.
- Social Locker – ask visitors to follow you before revealing content
- Asana – free project management tool
- Dragon Dictation App – text to speech app
- Trello – visual way to organize your ideas
- WordPress Distraction free writing – just click on the 4 direction arrows in your blog posts for clean writing environment and more productive writing
- Bitly – shorten your links for free
- Flickr – use advance search to find free to use images
- IFTTT – if this then that – schedule and organise your posts and social media activities
- Dig Dig – floating social share bar
- Bookmarklets – convert any online content into easy to read format with this browser extension
EMAILS
Good email management platform is absolutely essential for managing your subscribers list!
- Aweber – the King of email autoresponders, not 100% free, but you can get first month with only $1!
- Hello Bar -get more subscribers for free
- Mailchimp – basic account limited to 2.000 subscribers for free
- Contact Form 7 – free contact form for email collecting
- Scroll Triggered Box – capture more emails
- Product Psychology – free email newsletter series on user behaviour
- Double your email list in 30 days – free 30 day course
SOCIAL MEDIA & MARKETING
No blog cannot succeed without proper social media tools. Here are just a few options:
- Hootsuite – social media management platform
- PollDaddy – for online polls (free account with limited options)
- Delicious – discover, organize and share the hottest links online
- Repost App – great for re-posting others’ photos on instagram
- Bluestack App – install and access all your mobile apps through pc, brilliant for uploading instagram photos
- Click to Tweet – includes click to tweet boxes in your post
- Latergramme – schedule your instagram posts
- Buffer – social management software (limited accounts in free version)
- Bloglovin – free blogging directory, get followers and more traffic
- Likealyzer – analyze your facebook page and get recommendations for improvements
- SavePublishing – find tweetable passages of any online text and use for twitter
- Latest – generates a list of interesting links on twitter
- Tweriod – discover the most optimal times to post on twitter
- Mention Map – explore your connections with this simple tool
- Press Kit Template – free template to edit, needs photoshop skills
- Amazon Auto Links – WP plugin for your affiliate sales
- Linktrack – track your affiliate links
- Crowdfire – free instagram and twitter management
- Iconsquare – free instagram management tool
- Clickmeter – another free link tracking tool
- Takeoff – schedule instagram updates
- ThingLink – create interactive images or videos
- Followerwonk – find, analyze and grow your presence on Twitter
- DoShare – sharing extension for chrome browser
- Crowdfire – Twitter management tool
- Tweetdeck – manage multiple Twitter accounts
- Simply Measured – free social media analytics tool
- Wistia – video hosting with analytics
- Stupeflix – create and edit videos
Adele says
Knldeowge wants to be free, just like these articles!