Recommended Resources

Web Hosting & Domain Purchase*

I recommend that whenever possible you purchase your domain along with your hosting.  You can own as many domain names as you want, but one will have to be associated with your hosting account & it’ll be easier for you to manage if both are with the same company:

• Bluehost
• SiteGround

Stock Photos

Helen Sedwick wrote a great blog post with legal advice for using images on your website/blog, and also about creative commons and public domain images.  Once you understand the differences and what they mean, you can use any of these options:

• iStockPhoto
• Creative Commons Search
• Public Domain Image Search
• Pexels (royalty free images)
• Unsplash (royalty free images)

Sharable Image Generation

Sites like Pinterest & Instagram are designed for sharing images, and Facebook & Twitter allow you to also.  But how do folks generate super sharable image-based content when they’re not a designer?:

• Canva
• Shareasimage

Keyword Research

It’s important that you have data to help you know just how many people are searching for your keywords and how much competition there is for them.  Sometimes just changing one word slightly can improve searchability many times over.  You’re always looking for that sweet spot between enough people searching to make it worth your while, and not so much competition that you’ll never rank:

• Google Adwords Keyword Tool
• Keyword Spy
• Moz
• WordStream

Email Marking (ie: Mailing List Subscription)

If you want to build an email list by having a subscribe form on your blog/website (and most folks do), this allows you to easily build that list by adding the simple embed code they provide:

• MailChimp
• MailPoet (WordPress-specific)

Social Media Marketing

If you’re looking for a simple way to update multiple social media profiles at once, and schedule them out for when your updates will have the most impact, this is for you:

• HootSuite