My Top Business & Blogging Tools and Resources

Business & Blogging Tools and Resources

Welcome to the Business & Blogging Tools and Resources page of Let’s Reach Success.

I created this list to keep track of all products, services, tools and people who’ve helped me along my journey to creating an online business and living a life of freedom and independence.

I’ve also covered brands I respect and products I don’t yet use but which I believe in. All items listed below will be beneficial to your escape from the 9 to 5, personal growth, entrepreneurial mindset, and – ultimately – digital business earning enough.

Some of the links included below are affiliate but that’s because I trust some products so much that I’ve joined their referral program as I want to recommend them to my audience as often as I can. They can indeed help you take your goals and business to the next level. That adds no extra cost for you in case you decide to subscribe to their services, use them for free (most of what you’ll see below is free!) or purchase a product.

This page with business and blogging tools is for the learners who want to know more. For the hustlers who are looking to get things done. And for the creators who want to practice their craft, do what they love and turn it into their career.

Here are the sections you’ll find:

My Most Recommended Tools
Blogging Tools
Make Money Online Resources
Work from Home Resources
Blogs, books and podcasts to check out

My Most Recommended Tools

Everything you’ll see in this section was crucial to building this site and growing my income. There are many other options and companies offering the product or service every item in the list below. That’s why experimentation is necessary. But if you’ve been following my journey or like how Let’s Reach Success has been doing over the years, then the tools below will work for you too.

Build a site and blog with WordPress [free]

Host your site with WPX Hosting

Create and sell an online course with Teachable

Create a newsletter with ConvertKit

Create graphics with Canva [free]

Track website traffic with Google Analytics [free]

Get a free business email with Zoho.

It’s a whole CRM software, but I’m using it for email only.

Make and receive payments easily with PayPal [free]

Blogging Tools

Setting Up Your Blog

Launch Your Profitable Blog Today– If you just want to take the first few steps in your blogging journey, I have the right resource for you. This is a free course and will help you set up a site in less than an hour so you can move onto creating content, building your brand and monetizing your site.

WordPress – the best blogging platform and content management system.

Blog Planner Printables – A blog planning kit that includes everything new and intermediate bloggers need to start and grow their blog traffic and income, organize their blogging tasks, and turn their blog into a full-time online business.

Hosting

SiteGround – One of the leading hosting companies that powers over 2,000,000 websites.

WPX Hosting – A professional hosting for WordPress sites. Let’s Reach Success is currently using their services. Here’s my honest WPX Hosting review.

Themes

Theme Forest – the #1 marketplace for website templates and themes.

Chic Boss – the premium theme I’m using for Let’s Reach Success (it’s by Bluchic).

Plugins

Wordfence – a top plugin for website security. I’m using it and it’s blocking so many attacks, sends reports of warnings, and scans the site all the time.

Grow (by Mediavine) – the social sharing plugin I use for Let’s Reach Success.

WP Optimize – the tool I use to clean my database with one click.

W3 Total Cache – to improve site performance.

Adding visual content

Styled Stock Photography – I’m a lifetime member of this stylish stock photo platform for female business owners. I love their photos and Canva templates (my Pins and IG posts as well as lead magnet freebies are mostly from there).

Pixabay – a site with A TON of royalty-free images that I use almost daily. Open any post on Let’s Reach Success and see the images. They look professional but are something I found through tags on Pixabay in a matter of minutes.

Pexels – another great resource for royalty-free images. I also use images from Pexels to create beautiful graphics for Pinterest which helped me double my views there.

Canva – feel like a designer without any special skills. I use it to create book covers, Pinterest-friendly images, banners and more. It gives you all the right sizes too.

Site Monitoring

Google Webmasters – see if your site is crawled properly and if there are any errors that Google has found.

Google Analytics – know exactly who’s visiting your site, what content performs best, create campaigns, set goals, etc.

Email marketing

ConvertKit – the email marketing software I use. It should be your next move if you want to up your email game.

Zoho – I use it for mail but it’s an operating system for businesses that has literally anything. I can help you with sales and marketing, email and collaboration, and managing the business process and your team with the right apps.

SEO

Stupid Simple SEO – This course teaches you everything you need to know about growing your traffic and revenue with SEO, in plain English. I’ve personally taken it and recommend it.

Yoast SEO – the best SEO WordPress plugin. Helps me a lot. Guides you when installing it for the first time. From then on, helps you set up sitemaps, optimize your site for search engines, optimize each separate post for keywords, verify your site with Google and other major webmaster tools, as well as other features.

Google Keyword Planner Tool – find the keywords to plan content around.

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer – a free, one-click tool to help you write better headlines that drive traffic and shares.

Traffic from Social Media

Pinterest Traffic Avalanche – My favorite course on how to drive traffic from Pinterest to your blog and grow your email list and income as a result of that. It’s by Alex and Lauren from CreateandGo.com who earn over $100K/month blogging and have mastered Pinterest among many other aspects of blogging and making money online.

Pinterest Traffic Avalanche create and go courses

Make Money Online Resources

If you need some inspiration, check out my monthly income reports to see exactly how I earn money blogging.

Blog to Biz System – It took me 5 years to start earning $5K/month blogging. In this course, I share all that I’ve learned about it. It’s the formula for starting a blog, turning it into a 5-figure business, and living life on your own terms. Inside it, you’ll find answers to all your questions about becoming a full-time blogger, behind-the-scenes content, real ways to make money and build blog traffic even if you have no experience, a ton of video tutorials, how-to guides and screenshots.

The Passive Income Blog Boss [Free Course] – That’s a free course I released on the topic of earning passive income through blogging. You’ll learn what passive income is exactly and how it works, how to get started with blogging and make your site powerful, and the 4 main passive income streams you can create using your blog.

Teachable – create, sell and promote your online course. With Teachable you get the whole experience. Analytics, customization, marketing and hosting and security.

How to Create a 7-Figure Course from Scratch [Free Webinar]

Affiliate Marketing

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing is one of the top ways bloggers monetize their websites. Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is also the best course for beginners and one I recently took to add this as a new income stream. It’s by Michelle from Making Sense of Cents, who earns over $50,000 a month through affiliate marketing. In this course, there are 6 modules, over 30 lessons, over 20 worksheets, bonuses, an extremely helpful exclusive Facebook group, and more, and she goes through everything when it comes to affiliate marketing.

Have an online store

Shopify – the best e-commerce platform that lets anyone create a store and start selling things online, on social media or in person.

WooCommerce – best plugin to add an online store to your WordPress site and turn it into a real business. Handles payments, is highly customizable and offers plenty of extensions.

Amazon – largest retailer. You can sell literally anything there.

Ebay – another huge retailer.

Etsy – the place to be if you have handmade goods.

Sales funnel

ClickFunnels – create any marketing funnel to promote, sell and deliver your products online.

LeadPages – one of the best landing page builders.

Payment gateways

PayPal – quickest way to pay or get paid online, and set up a merchant account.

Stripe – another popular software platform to run an online business.

Invoicing and Billing

FreshBooks – with this accounting software, you can create professional invoices for clients and get paid, request a deposit, send reminders, track your business expenses, keep your business records organized in the cloud, track your time to improve work efficiency, and much more.

Work from Home Resources

How to Have Energy All Day When You Work from Home – There are many challenges we face when working from home. In this post, I tackled the problem with the afternoon slump.

20 Tips to Stay Ultra Productive While Living The Laptop Lifestyle – The laptop lifestyle isn’t always easy. In this guide, I’ve outlined my best practices that help me stay on top of my productivity and keep my focus to perform well on a daily basis.

Slack – This team collaboration tool will simplify communication and streamline workflow. Use it for free to stay in touch with your team, make video calls, integrate with other apps and share files.

Asana – Project and task management tool for remote workers.

Google Drive – Create spreadsheets and store and access easily all your files.

What/Who to Read

Blogs to read

The Blog of Tim Ferriss – the lifestyle designer and jack of all trades Tim Ferriss who’s a bestselling author, successful blogger, podcaster, investor and advisor in major startups, and who speaks 5 languages, knows Jiu-Jitsu, dances Tango, is a national Chinese kickboxing champion and has hacked his body and mind, teaches us how to do the same.

JamesClear.com – behavioral psychology, habit formation, and performance improvement.

Making Sense of Cents – Michelle created a million-dollar blog in the personal finance niche starting from nothing. Her income reports are some of the most popular posts on her site where she shares how she earns over $100,000/month blogging. There’s a lot to learn from them.

MarkManson.net – the harsh truth about passion, success, relationships, and more (plus a lot of psychology and philosophy).

TropicalMBA.com – insights on entrepreneurship, location independence, building great products and scaling businesses.

ZenHabits.net – tips on how to ingrain a new behavior and stick to it, have peace of mind, be content and live more simply.

Tynan.com – thoughts on life, habits, loving work, writing books, playing poker, buying your own island, minimalism and being a nomad.

Natalie Bacon – Natalie was once an unfulfilled lawyer but is now a 6-figure blogger and a Certified Life Coach. She helps people manage their money, life and business better through her blog, podcast and online courses and is an inspiration for all of us. She quickly grew her blog income to 5-figures a month and is now teaching others how to do the same.

QuickSprout – learn to optimize content, grow traffic, increase your conversion rate and anything you need to know from the expert himself – Neil Patel.

ProBlogger – tutorials to help you learn the skills of blogging.

MOZ – SEO software, tools and resources for better marketing.

BackLinko – SEO training and link building strategies.

CrazyEgg – more advice and products on site optimization from the experts.

Books

Think and Grow Rich (Napoleon Hill)
The 4-Hour Workweek (Tim Ferriss)
Crush It! (Gary Vaynerchuck)
The Lean Startup (Eric Ries)
The Tao of Pooh (Benjamin Hoff)
Eat That Frog (Brian Tracy)
The Miracle Morning (Hal Elrod)
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson)
The One Thing (Gary Keller)
The $100 Startup (Chris Guillebeau)

These blogging tools and resources will make your life and online business easier.

There are plenty of products and software services to answer any need of the aspiring entrepreneur, or online business owner. The point is to explore what’s out there and start with one tool today.

After experimenting, you’ll keep using those that save you time and money, improve your site’s ranking and content, help you get new leads and expand your brand.

While using these and becoming more tech-savvy, you should also dedicate your free time to the books, blogs, and podcasts I mentioned in the beginning. That’s because you need to feed your mind with the right type of information, build additional skills, and get encouraged knowing how others before you have succeeded in the same market.

Here’s to you and the blogging tools and resources you need to succeed at every next level!

Let's Reach Success