Choosing the best tools for your blog is always a challenge.

Here’s a wonderful quote on tools by Steve Jobs:

“Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.”

Exactly!

Using the right tools for your blog will always help you save time, energy, and money.

On the other hand, if you choose the wrong tools, you’ll end up wasting your valuable time, energy, and money you put in to make your blog successful.

In this article, we’ll be discussing the 29 best and the most popular blogging tools which will help you enhance the quality of your blog.

To help you find the most relevant tools easily, I’ve grouped them into the following categories:

• Blogging Platforms
• Brainstorming the blogging ideas
• Keyword Research
• Organize your ideas
• Writing tools
• Images and Graphics
• Creating well-optimized content
• Email-marketing
• Social media marketing
• Analytics

 

Let’s just begin:

 

Blogging Platforms

 

#1. WordPress

 

To start a blog you need a blogging platform. There are many platforms you can start blogging with. For example,

• WordPress
• Squarespace
• Joomla
• Wix
• Weebly
• Drupal

But as far as customization your website is concerned, WordPress could be the best choice. You can design your blog/website the way you want. It has so many free themes and plugins.

You don’t need to be well-versed in coding.

Around 75 million websites are powered by WordPress.

 

 

Related Article: 8 Best blogging platforms.

 

Official Website: https://wordpress.org/

 

Brainstorming Blogging Ideas

 

#2. BuzzSumo

 

 

It helps in finding information about the content that has been highly shared on social media.

Just enter a keyword or phrase and you will get a list of blog posts that generated most shares and backlinks.

And by entering domain names of your competitors, you can look at their most popular content.

This will help you get an idea about why their content is doing well.

Buzz Sumo also helps you identify who the major influencers are for your niche to promote your content.

In short, with Buzz Sumo, you can develop smarter content strategies to create engaging content and grow your readership.

 

Official Website: https://buzzsumo.com/

 

#3. Portent

 

You need to enter your subject you want to write about. It will give you a sample blog post title.

The most important thing:

Every time you refresh it generates new blog post idea. And you can refresh as many times as you like. You come up with so many ideas out of which you can choose the best one.

 

Official Website: https://www.portent.com/tools/title-maker

 

#4. Hub Spot’s Blog Topic Generator

 

Enter up to five nouns for topics of your blog you want to write about. In a matter of seconds, it will generate for you a week’s worth of blog ideas.

 

Official Website: https://www.hubspot.com/blog-topic-generator

#5. EMV Headline Analyzer

 

This tool analyzes your headline to determine its emotional marketing value.

The higher the EMV score of your headline is, the greater will be its chance of reaching the prospects.

This will also help in getting more and more shares on social media platforms.

 

Official Website: https://www.aminstitute.com/headline/

 

Keyword Research

 

#6. Google AdWords Keyword Planner

 

Before you start creating your blog posts, you need to do keyword research.

Google Keyword Planner helps you find the exact keywords or phrases people use while making their searches.

It allows you to enter a series of keywords and you can get average monthly searches, keywords trend, competition, and bidding for individual keywords.

It’s a free tool by Google Ads.

 

Official Website: https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/

 

#7. Moz Keyword Explorer

 

This tool allows you to discover and prioritize the best keywords to target. You can identify the keywords your site could outrank your competitors and also get suggestions.

 

 

Official Website: https://moz.com/explorer

 

#8. Keyword Tool.io

 

It claims to be the best Google Keyword Planner alternative. It’s a free tool and you don’t need to create an account to use it.

For any search term, it generates 750+ long-tail keywords and that’s for free.

What more?

It allows you to find the best keywords on YouTube, Bing, Amazon, eBay, PlayStore, Instagram, and Twitter.

 

Official Website: https://keywordtool.io/

 

#9. Ahrefs

 

Following are the tools you get with Ahrefs:

• Competitive Analysis
• Keyword Research
• Backlink Research
• Content Research
• Rank Tracking
• Web Monitoring

And they keep adding new tools and features regularly.

This is a must-have tool for all serious digital marketers and SEO bloggers. It provides you with reliable and fresh data, intuitive design, and innovative features.

Though this isn’t a free tool, it offers a 7-day trial for $7.

 

Official Website: https://ahrefs.com/

 

Organize Your Ideas

 

#10. Evernote

 

It’s a very powerful tool to organize information. You can capture and prioritize ideas and to-do lists.

Using this tool, you can capture the essential notes, images, contacts, voice notes, webpages, snippets, etc.

You can create separate notebooks for every project and save all types of content in these notebooks.

Use its powerful search to find everything you need.

And the best part?

You can access your notes even when you’re offline.

This means you can stay organized wherever you are and any device you’re using.

 

Official Website: https://evernote.com/

 

#11. Trello

 

You can use Trello’s boards, lists, and cards to organize and prioritize your ideas.

And you can go from idea to action within seconds.

If you work in a team, it’s a fantastic tool to collaborate with your team. And you can collaborate with them anywhere as it stays in sync across all your devices.

Just create a board for the project you want to assign to your team. Then add lists to create steps in a workflow that suits you. Now you can create cards for tasks you want your team to complete or information you want them to organize.

You can also add details, due dates, checklists, or comments just by clicking on a card.

And to show progress in your project, you can drag-and-drop the cards across the lists.

 

Official Website: https://trello.com/

 

#12. CoSchedule

 

This tool offers you almost everything you need to organize your marketing efforts in one place.

This lets you plan next week, next month, and even next quarter.

To make sure that your team is working productively, you can create weekly schedules for them.

There’s a 14-day free trial.

The paid plan starts from $80 per month if billed annually and $89 if billed monthly.

You can also check out the following tools to organize your ideas:

• Wunderlist
• Google Calendar
• Todoist
• Dropbox
• Pipefy

 

Official Website: https://coschedule.com/

Writing Tools

 

#13. Grammarly

 

A must-have tool for all the serious bloggers, especially non-native English speakers.

It’s a free Chrome extension.

For advanced features, you need to upgrade to its pro version.

Here’re its main features:

• Checks spelling errors
• Suggests proper punctuation
• Checks sentence structures and style
• Suggests alternative words

It also corrects your grammatical errors on some other sites like Gmail, LinkedIn, Twitter, Medium, Facebook, etc.

You can either write directly into Grammarly app or copy the content and paste it into Grammarly online grammar checker.

And if you have installed its browser extension, you can type the content of your blog post in WordPress content manager. It will highlight all the grammatical errors you’re making and give suggestions to correct them.

 

Official Website: https://www.grammarly.com/

 

#14. Hemingway App

 

Unlike Grammarly, it isn’t an in-depth grammar checking tool.

This word editor lightens up your words and makes your writing bold, clear, concise, and more impactful.

It does so by highlighting the words and sentences of your work using different colors.

The online version of Hemingway Editor is free and you can download the paid version, Hemingway App (a desktop version), on a one-time payment of $19.99.

 

Official Website: http://www.hemingwayapp.com/

 

#15. Google Docs

 

Instead of writing your content in the content manager of your blogging platform (WordPress), you can use Google Docs and post your content directly from it.

You can collaborate with your team members and edit documents. As it’s a product of Google itself, you can easily share your content with others using Gmail.

It also has a very powerful spelling and grammar tools.

 

Official Website: https://www.google.com/docs/about/

 

#16. Edit Page

 

It’s a WordPress plugin which helps you to select the best title for your blog post.

You can use the process of A/B testing for different titles and discover which one gets more page views.

The readers will decide to read your article only if they find it interesting.

If you select the best headline, your readership will increase and higher will be the CTR.

And the best part?

It’s a free plugin.

 

Official Website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-experiments-free/

 

Images and Graphics

 

#17. Canva

 

To attract the attention of your readers, you need to make your blog or social media posts visually more appealing.

Why pay thousands of dollars to the professional designers to make graphics for your blog when you can do most of the work yourself using a very easy-to-use tool, Canva.

Best of all,

You can do that for free.

The paid version is also available if you want additional features.

It’s super easy to use. And that’s its beauty. You don’t need to be a photoshop expert.

Using its drag-and-drop feature you can create beautiful customized images, infographics, charts, and other images you require for your blog or social media channels.

Canva also offers quality templates for various social media sites. For example, a Pinterest template will help you create images your readers may find them easy to pin.

 

Official Website: https://www.canva.com/

 

#18. Stock Images

 

You can check out the following websites that offer copyright free images:

• Pixabay
• Unsplash.com
• Pexels

You don’t need to ask for permission or give credit to the artist, even for commercial purposes.

There’re also some paid tools like Death to the Stock, Shutterstock, and PicMonkey.

Death to the Stock offers 14-day free trial and the paid plan starts at $12 per month if billed annually and $15 if billed monthly.

Depending on your requirement and budget, you can also go for Shutterstock. Its plan starts at $199 for 750 images per month.

PicMonkey offers 7-day free trial and its plan starts at $7.99 if billed monthly and $72 per month if billed annually.

 

Official Websites:

https://pixabay.com/

https://unsplash.com/

https://www.pexels.com/

https://www.shutterstock.com/

https://www.picmonkey.com/

 

Creating Well-Optimized Content

 

#19. Yoast

 

This is the WordPress plugin.

It covers almost all the basics of On-Page SEO.

SEO is the most popular and effective way to increase your rank on SERPs so that you get more traffic to your blog.

And Yoast is the favorite SEO tool for millions of users.

 

Official Website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

 

#20. Google Page Speed Insights

 

Just enter the URL of your webpage and you’ll get the reports on its performance both on mobile and desktop. It also gives you suggestions on how you can improve your webpage.

Page speed is a very important factor in determining the rank of your site on search results. If your site loads faster, its bounce rate will also be lower. Your readers will be happier, page views will increase and if you are running a store, the sales will improve.

GTmetrix and Pingdom are also the other page speed tools you can try to check the speed of your site and fix the problems if any. They also give suggestions on how to fix the problems.

 

Official Website: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

 

#21. JetPack

 

A WordPress plugin, Jet Pack offers security, performance, and site management tools.

It keeps your site backed up and sends alerts via email or push notifications about downtime.

You can customize your pages – like home page, blog posts, sidebars, widgets – without any coding skill.

It provides security to your site by preventing all the unwanted intrusions with its effective brute force protection, malware scanning, and spam filtering.

It also lets you schedule the promotion of your new blog posts before publishing them.

Most of its features are free and you need to upgrade to its paid plans for some additional features.

The paid plan is between $39 yearly to $299 yearly.

 

Official Website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/

 

Email Marketing

 

#22. MailChimp

 

This is the best email marketing software for new bloggers because it’s free for up to 2000 subscribers.

And, as your list of subscribers grows, the pricing also increases.

With its pre-built templates, ready-made segments, and one-click automation, you can start a beautiful campaign within just a couple of minutes.

 

Official Website: https://mailchimp.com/

 

#23. ConvertKit

 

This is the best tool for experienced bloggers. It was created by Nathan Barry. He himself was a blogger and he designed this tool with bloggers in mind.

Specifically for bloggers.

You can customize and embed forms on your site which will help you to convert your readers into subscribers. You can organize these subscribers by tagging them based on their interests and activity. And group those tags into segments which will help you send the right message at the right time.

You can also use one of its best tools – visual automation tool – to visually create the marketing funnels. This will help you to know where your subscribers are and make sure they are receiving the right emails.

It has a 14-day free trial and after that, the package starts at $29 per month.

 

Official Website: https://convertkit.com/

 

#24. AWeber

 

It’s one of the most popular email marketing companies with 100000+ email marketers.

With its powerful email marketing and automation tools, you can create beautiful, engaging, and professional email newsletters within a couple of minutes and send them to your subscribers.

And using its testing feature, you can discover what emails perform the best and what emails need improvement.

There’s a 30-day free trial period and after that, you have to join one of their pricing plans depending on the number of your subscribers.

The price starts at $19 per month for up to 500 subscribers.

 

Official Website: https://www.aweber.com/email-marketing-features.htm

 

Social Media Marketing

 

#25. PostPlanner

 

Sharing and promoting your blog post on social media channels is very important to boost your traffic and sales.

The results of Buzz Sumo and Buffer’s analysis of Facebook posts say that Post Planner posts get 5 times more engagement.

It helps you find the top-performing content and share it at the best time possible across different social networks.

You can schedule your content to be posted at a specific time with bulk uploading.

Or, you can also add your best-performing content to a queue to recycle.

Price starts at $3 per month.

 

Official Website: https://www.postplanner.com/

 

#26. Buffer

 

After publishing your blog post, you can schedule it for all of your social media platforms and Buffer will automatically share it according to your posting schedule.

Just install the chrome extension and Buffer will add the content to your queue. Your post will then be published at the optimum time which may gain you maximum shares.

To see how your post is performing and how to improve its performance, you can use Buffer’s analytics.

The plan starts at $15 per month if billed monthly and $12 per month if billed annually.

 

Official Website: https://buffer.com/

 

#27. Sprout Social

 

With Sprout Social, you can schedule your posts across different social media profiles at once.

It lets you try testing different headlines in the posts you’ll be sharing to find which one performs the best.

It’s also quite easy to find influencers in your industry and ask them to have a look at your content. And they will definitely share your blog posts in their network if they find them worth sharing.

It has a 30-day free trial.

The paid plan starts at $99 per user, per month.

 

Official Website: https://sproutsocial.com/social-media-management/

 

#28. Tailwind

 

If you’re a Pinterest and Instagram user, Tailwind is a must-have tool for you.

Just download the browser extension and schedule multiple pins or grams at once with a bulk upload.

Instagram’s Hashtag Finder suggests you the best Instagram hashtags to reach more and more of the right people.

This tool lets you publish all of your posts to Instagram and pins to Pinterest at the optimum time to gain maximum audience engagement.

You can analyze your results using its analytics to find what’s working and what’s not.

 

Official Website: https://www.tailwindapp.com/

 

Analytics

 

#29. Google Analytics

 

• Where are my visitors coming from?
• What are my top-performing posts?
• What devices are my visitors viewing my website on – a mobile or a desktop?
• Which platforms are sending most of the traffic to my site (social media, search engines, or other blogs)?
• What country or city are my visitors from?
• What are my visitors doing on my site?

These are the questions which must be in your mind once your blog is live.

Google Analytics answers all these questions and it helps you in so many other ways as well.

You can compare the performance of your site of the current month with the previous months.

You can also monetize your blog/website using eCommerce tracking.

Just use your Gmail ID to log in to Google Analytics. After that add your site and see your analytics.

It’s a free tool and the best of all, powered by Google itself.

You can also check out the following tools to analyze and optimize your site:

• KISSmetrics
• SEMrush
• Google Search Console

 

Official Websites:

https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/

https://www.semrush.com/

https://search.google.com/search-console/about

 

Conclusion:

 

Do stay up to date of the best blogging tools.

Blogging is more than just writing quality content.

You also need to research for keywords and rank for them, grow your email list, find amazing images, optimize your blog posts and get streams of traffic.

Only then can you get an edge over your competitors.

These 29 tools will help you blog more efficiently by increasing user engagement, reducing bounce rates, improving click-through rates, and ultimately, conversions and sales.

What are your favorite tools? Did I miss any important tools to include in my list? Do share your thoughts in the comments section.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So you want to start a Blog?

And, you want to become a successful Blogger, don’t ya?

But before you move forward to becoming a successful blogger, consider the following two famous quotes:

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential – these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.

— Confucius

 

You are not here merely to make a living, but to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

— Woodrow Wilson

You badly need to have the will to win, the desire to succeed, and the urge to reach your full potential to become successful as a blogger.

Due to lack of these three things, most of the bloggers quit just after trying their luck for a couple of months.

Also,

The original idea of blogging is satisfying the needs of your audience, and not merely to make a living.

You solve the problems of your readers through your blog.

You provide them with relevant information.

So, choosing the right niche is the most crucial part of starting a Blog.

The Blog Niche helps you to focus your content on the needs of your audience.

In this article, you’ll learn a few tips on choosing the right Blog Niche that can generate traffic and help you grow and monetize your Blog.

 

What Is A Niche Blogging, Anyway?

 

Wikipedia defines it as,

Niche Blogging is the act of creating a blog with the intent of using it to market to a particular niche market. Niche Blog (also commonly referred to as “Niche Websites”) may appeal to “geographic areas, a specialty industry, ethnic or age groups, or any other particular group of people”.

The Niche of your blog is the topic of your blog – the topic your blog focuses on.

And that topic is the specialized section of the broader topic. The aim is to solve the problem of your target audience.

For example, “Soccer” and “Tennis” are the niches within the broad topic “Sports”.

And, if you get more specific, you can call “National Football League” and “Wimbledon Championships” niches.

In Niche Blogging, you are not blogging for “Soccer” or “Tennis” fans. They’re broad audiences. You are blogging for “NFL fans” and “Wimbledon championship fans”. They’re niche audiences.

Let’s take another example,

Mobile Phones, Laptops, Personal Computers, Tabs, Cameras etc. are the niches falling under the broader topic “Technology”.

Getting even more specific, Android Phones and iPhones will be the niches for the general category “Mobile Phones”.

In Niche Blogging, you can blog about Mobile Phones, Android Phones, or iPhones.

 

Why Do You Need A Blog Niche?

 

You write a blog to solve your readers’ problems. And that’s what people search the internet for – to solve a problem.

When a reader comes to your blog and doesn’t find the answer or information he is looking for, how can you expect him to engage with the content of your blog?

And that’s why Niche Blogging is so popular.

Having a Niche is very important to attract an avid readership. You can then easily turn those readers into customers.

Without a Niche, you won’t have a strong voice and your blog can’t grow the way you want.

When you blog on a specific topic and your blog contains a lot of content on that topic, the readers, as well as Search Engines, will start treating you as an expert on that topic. This helps your blog rank higher in Search Results.

For instance, the topic “Cricket” is too big and broad. So, it’s difficult to become an expert on this topic.

But it would be a lot easier for you to become an expert on the topic “Cricket tips for beginners” – a Niche for the topic “Cricket”.

Niche Blogging also helps you get a loyal audience.

In Niche Blogging you stick to one topic. Your readers will keep coming back to your blog in the hope that they will get more and more relevant information on that topic.

 

How To Brainstorm The Topic?

 

Following steps will help you brainstorm the Niche ideas list:

Step #1: Make a list of your Passions

Start by making a list of all the things you’re passionate about.

What are those things?

The things you enjoy or would love to do every day.

Step #2: Make a list of the topics you think you’re an expert on

Are there some areas of your expertise?

Or,

Are there some topics on which you think you’re an expert or are very knowledgeable in?

Try to list all such areas on a sheet of paper.

Step #3: Make a note of your target audience

After making a list of potential niches, you have to make a note of the ideal audience for those topics.

You should choose the topic keeping in mind the age, gender, profession, income range etc. of your audience.

Your Blog Post is for your audience.

And if it doesn’t solve their problems or give value to them, it may fall flat.

 

Now that you have brainstormed the topic and have a list of potential blog niche ideas, what to do next?

Now is the time to validate those ideas to finalize the best one for your blog.

But before finalizing the Niche for your blog, you have to make sure that it strikes a balance between the following three factors:

• Your Passion/Interest about the topic,
• The interest of other people about that topic, and
• Its Profitability i.e., whether or not you can monetize the blog.

 

• If you choose a topic of your interest but others are not interested in that topic, you are never going to get good traffic for your blog or make money.

 

• If you go with a topic of others’ interest but you are not passionate about that topic, very soon you’ll lose interest in blogging and eventually quit.

 

• You pick a topic that you’re passionate about and others also like it and has a huge audience, but there’s no scope for earning money.

In that case, chances are that you might become popular, but you won’t be able to earn income if that is your goal.

 

So, How to Choose A Blog Niche That Fulfills All The Three Criteria?

 

Here are the 5 important points you need to consider to choose the Niche for your Blog:

 

• Your Passion/Interest

 

Your Passion/Interest comes first.

Exactly!

It’s the first and foremost thing you should consider while finalizing the Niche for your Blog.

If you are not passionate about the topic you can’t continue with it for long.

Chances are that very soon you may find it boring and quit the idea of blogging.

Blogging is a slow process. It takes years to become a famous blogger and earn good money with your blog.

Why is your interest important for choosing a Blog Niche?

To answer this question, just ask yourself one simple question.

How can you spend important years of your life talking about something that you are not passionate about?

Think about it.

So, how to pick a topic of your interest to blog about?

It could be about your hobby, your work, or the things you enjoy doing.

Just follow your heart and ask yourself:

• What are your hobbies?
• What are the things you love doing?
• How do you spend your free time?
• What topics do you love reading and learning about the most?
• What can you talk about for hours on end?

 

These questions may help you identify your passion.

The main purpose of your blog is to help your audience solve their problems.

You also need to be passionate about helping your audience.

 

• Your Knowledge Or Expertise On The Topic

 

To have expertise on a topic is necessary to build credibility in it.

For example, how can you give writing tips if you don’t have a knack for writing?

Here are some questions to guide you:

• Is there any topic you have mastery in?
• Can you teach your readers something better than others?
• What do you have a lot of experience doing?

 

Answering these questions may help you identify your main areas of expertise.

Remember: You don’t need to be the best of the best in your niche.

Just teach what you know. That’s all.

Share your knowledge, your experience, and your journey.

And, don’t act hastily.

Take your time and think about it honestly over a few days.

And then choose a topic so that if you write content on that topic, it could give more value to your readers.

• The Competition

 

If there’s a competition, it’s a good sign.

Why?

Because it shows that there’s a market for it and people are talking about your niche.

On the other hand, if there’s no competition, it means the market for that niche is dead.

Make sure that there’s a balance between your interest, the popular trend, and the level of competition.

So, how to analyze your competition?

Knowing competitors in your niche helps you get all the information to understand every aspect of marketing. This may also help your site to get to the top page of the Search Results.

Just do some searches on Google for the keywords around your topic. This will give you some idea of the size of the competition.

You can also use some other tools to analyze the competition:

• Majestic:

With the help of this tool, you can check your competitor’s backlinks, keywords, and other website stats.

• Market Samurai:

This is one of the best tools to spy on your competitors. This tool has a module which shows how many competing sites there are and how strong they are without that niche. You’ll get to learn what exactly should be the level of your blog in order to compete with them.

• SemRush:

This may be very helpful in identifying the trends occurring within your niche.

You may be able to find out the keywords your competitors rank for. Backlinks and SEO page audits are also available. You may also be able to see the average monthly volume of searches for your niche.

Just take 5-10 top blogs and try to get the following information:

• What is the quality of the content of their articles?
• What are the articles that get more comments and social shares?
• Is there anything they are doing poorly? Can you better them?
• Is anything missing in their content? Have they skipped some important topic?
• Are they consistent with posting new articles? The frequency of their posting.

These questions may help you understand your competitors very thoroughly.

You’ll be able to choose a great niche and write quality content on that topic.

 

• The Popularity Of Your Niche

 

You don’t need to go for the most popular topic. Such topics will have a lot of competition.

Also, choosing a topic that is too narrow will have a limited audience. Your blog can’t get traffic beyond a certain limit. And with a too narrow topic, you may not have so many ideas to generate new content.

So what should be the strategy?

You guessed it right – Middle Path!

Exactly!

Adopt a middle path and choose a topic that is neither too popular nor too narrow.

Make sure that there’s a balance between the level of competition and the popularity trends.

For this purpose, you can use the free and easy to use tool Google Trends.

Just do some searches on Google Trends for the keywords targeting your niche. This will show you the trend over a few years whether the topic you are going to choose is growing or shrinking. You can also compare it to other topics.

 

• Profitability

 

So, you are ready with a niche topic you’re passionate about, knowledgeable in, and that’s neither too broad nor too narrow.

What next?

Many people start blogging as a hobby and don’t want to monetize their blog.

But if your goal is to earn some income from your blog, then you need to make sure that your niche topic is profitable enough to monetize your blog.

So, how can you check if your Blog Niche is profitable?

Following are the two important ways to be sure whether your Blog Niche is profitable enough:

• Google Ads

 

Just do a Google Search for your topic or keywords.

Do you see ads at the top of the Search Results for your keywords?

If yes, then you’ve picked the right niche.

If people are spending money to advertise products targeting your niche, they’re making money in that niche/keywords.

This means there’s a potential for you too to make money.

 

• Affiliate Products

 

Selling Affiliate products on your blog could be a better and more profitable approach.

You can join Amazon Affiliate Program to promote its products. There are also other Affiliate Networks such as Commission Junction, ClickBank, ShareASale etc. which you can check out to see if they have any products targeting your niche.

All you need to do is attract and convince the potential customers of the value of the products. If they end up buying the products or services, you can earn a commission.

35 Best Blog Niche Ideas:

 

Here are 35 best Blog Niche ideas to help you get started…

But keep in mind that these are the broad niches. There could be hundreds of sub-niches within each one.

• How to make money online
• Health and Fitness
• Beauty and Fashion
• Lifestyle
• Parenting
• Travel
• Yoga
• Photography
• Personal Development
• Cooking Tips
• Real Estate
• Education
• Career Advice
• Sports
• Cryptocurrency
• Cars and Bikes
• Artificial Intelligence
• WordPress
• Sewing/Knitting
• Digital Marketing
• Entertainment
• Entrepreneurship
• Politics
• Product Reviews
• Tech and Gaming
• Animals
• Relationships
• Home and Decor
• Wedding Blogs
• Language Learning Tips
• Writing Style
• Pregnancy
• Gardening
• SEO
• Freelancing

 

Conclusion

 

So, you’re all set to start a Niche-specific Blogging.

Congratulations!

But don’t do it without a plan.

Never make the mistake of going too broad or too narrow.

If your Blog Niche is too broad, you’ll never find your target audience.

And if you pick a too narrow topic with no demand, you’ll struggle to get traffic and your blog will barely make an impact.

Time to Act, my friend!

Choose a niche keeping in mind all the above criteria.

And keep posting exceptional content.

Just get started and let’s end this post with a very famous quote by Mark Twain,

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

 

 

 

 

 

Do I need to be a great writer to write a Blog Post?

Do I need to be an expert on my topic to have a successful Blog?

These kinds of questions must be bouncing around your head if you’re starting off as a Blogger.

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” Stephen King gives this advice about the craft of writing.

But trust me!

Anyone can write a great Blog Post. You just need to follow a process and work hard and smart.

Then what’s the no.1 requirement to write a good Blog Post and become a Successful Blogger?

It’s PASSION.

You heard it right.

Just choose the topic you’re passionate about. It will make the process to follow much easier. You’ll be able to consistently post valuable and engaging content.

Blogs tend to be casual and conversational.

You don’t need to be formal at all.

Just write the way you speak.

It will help you in establishing a friendly relationship with your readers.

In this digital age Blogging is the best way to educate your audiences and build trust with them.

A blog lets you express your thoughts, help your readers solve the problems they’re facing, and establish yourself as an expert.

And the best part,

You can use some tools to monetize your blog and earn some money.

 

What is a blog, anyway?

 

According to Wikipedia,

A blog (a truncation of the expression “weblog”) is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page.

The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, “blog”, was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.

Blogging is the best way to connect to the world in this internet era. It allows you to communicate any information, companies can keep their clients up to date, readers can comment and interact with you.

Why is Blogging So Important?

 

The blog is one of the most valuable marketing tools. It’s important for so many reasons. Some of them are:

• It helps you to generate leads, build brand awareness and brand loyalty. You can also use a blog post to increase the credibility and reputation of your business.

• It gives you an opportunity to interact with your readers. People start commenting on your blog. You can educate your readers through the comments section and at the same time, you can also learn many things from your readers.

• It’s the blog you use in your SEO and Social Media promotion.

• Through Blogging, you can also earn some passive income spending just a few hours a week. It will continue to make you money long after the Blog Post is written. Top Bloggers are earning in millions every single month.

There are many popular sites like Huffington Post, Perez Hilton, and Engadget which started out as blogs.

So, How To Write A Great Blog Post?

 

Following steps will help you learn writing compelling and engaging posts that convert:

• Know Your Audience
• Hook Your Audience With The First Sentence
• Write An Outline
• Write Compelling Headlines
• Add Sub-headings, Use Bullet Points, and Add Bolded Words
• Add Images and Videos
• Use Internal and External Links
• Include Call-To-Actions (CTAs)
• Optimize Your Post for Search Engines

 

Step #1: Know Your Audience

 

Before creating your Blog Post, you have to understand who your audience is, what they’d like to read, and why they’d like to read it.

For this, you can take regular polls on Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. In the polls, you can give the options of 3-4 topics that you’re considering to write about and ask people to vote on one they like the best.

The tools like Survey Monkey and Polldaddy are also some easy to use tools for running polls or online survey.

After creating a free account with Survey Monkey or Polldaddy, write your specific questions. You should avoid open-ended questions. Then promote your survey in Social Media and Email Newsletters by including a link.

Industry research and competitor analysis are also great ways to know your audience. For this, there are some tools you can use.

• Twitter Advanced Search: You just need to enter the keyword and select the filter “questions”. You’ll get all the questions related to that keyword people are asking.

• Quora: A free and great tool to find what questions are being asked by the people in your industry.

• SEMRush: It’s a very powerful All-In-one competitor analysis tool. It allows you to know your competitors and their strategies.

• Google Trends: Just enter the topic you’re considering to write about. It will display a graph showing interest over time around your topic.

• Google Keyword Research Tool: Just enter a keyword or topic and it will give you a complete list of ideas and monthly search volumes. You can pick one broad idea from this list.

By using the tools and following the processes properly, you’ll have a good idea about who your audience is. You can also understand what your readers want.

Step #2: Hook Your Audience With The First Sentence

 

You have to actively engage your audience right from the start.

Make your audience part of the show.

How to hook your audience to reel them in?

You can use any of the following approaches:

• Ask The Audience A Question: You can pose some interesting, intelligent, or thought-provoking questions to the audience.

For instance,

“What will you do if your blog starts making $5 million a month?”

• Quote Famous People: Quoting some famous people like Steve Jobs or Ernest Hemingway can be a great way to hook your audience. People tend to believe every single word these people say.

For example,

“Any achievement in business is never accomplished by a single person; a team of skilled members from diversified fields is always needed.” — Steve Jobs

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” — Ernest Hemingway

• Tell A Story: Storytelling could be the key ingredient in making your post more engaging. It’s one of the most effective ways to make your audience pay attention.

Stories make your audience more relatable which allows you to deliver your message in a clear and persuasive way.

A study by Ethos3 says that storytelling increases audience retention by up to 26%.

• Quote A Foreign Proverb: You can hook your audience by using some foreign proverbs.

For example,

“Not the cry, but the flight of the wild duck leads the flock to fly and follow.”      —- A Chinese proverb

“However long the night, the dawn will break.”      —- African proverb

“One good turn deserves another.”       —- English proverb

“Gold doesn’t rust on the ground, and rocks don’t get soaked in the rain.”        —- Turkish proverb

Step #3: Write An Outline

 

By creating an outline you can ensure that your post covers all the important points in a logical order. This also helps to keep you focused on the overall structures of your blog.

Divide your post into three sections:

— Introduction

— Body

— Conclusion

The body may consist of headings, sub-headings, and notes for including images and links. For List Post, you can write bullet points of the items on your list.

For Introduction and Conclusion, you can note what you have to say.

Step #4: Write Compelling Headlines

 

A headline is the most important part of your Blog Post.

A compelling headline will be good for Search Engines as well as your readers.

As per Copyblogger’s study,

Only about 20% of your readers will actually read the full content of your post, and 80% will read only the headlines.

According to David Ogilvy,

On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you’ve written your headline, you’ve spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

So, creating a catchy, descriptive and compelling headline is not only important but crucial to a successful blog.

A few tips for writing great headlines:

• Use attractive adjectives

Use attractive and compelling adjectives to stir interest and make an impact on your reader.

Here are some examples of strong adjectives you can include in your headline:

Essential	Appealing
Powerful	Absolute
Amazing	Simple
Efficient	Winning
Valuable	Successful
Trendy	Recommended
Fascinating	Fantastic
Proven	Mind-blowing
Critical	Outrageous
Effortless	Stunning
Free	Useful
Smart	Incredible
Awesome	Huge

• Use Numbers

Using numbers helps you in organizing your post. And at the same time, use digits instead of writing them in words.

• Include Keywords phrase

Including keywords in headlines would be good for your SEO. Search Engines like Google, Bing, and others use the keyword phrase to rank your post in their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

• Use Rationales

Rationale means an underlying reason or the reasons or intentions that cause a particular set of beliefs or actions.

And your post must contain a strong enough reason for your readers to go on reading the full content of your article.

You can consider the following rationales to include in your headline:

Tips

Tricks

Lessons

Facts

Principles

Reasons

Ideas

Strategies

Secrets

Ways

• Use multiple headlines

Make a list of all the headline ideas you have and choose the best one from that list.

Or, you can share 3-5 best headlines with your team or your employees and ask them to vote.

This way you will be able to find the one that’s most clickable and shareable.

Step #5: Add Sub-headings, Use Bullet Points And Bolded Words

 

Break your article with sub-headings rather than making it a giant paragraph.

Most of the readers first scan the content and only after that they decide to read it.

Splitting your content into multiple parts will make your readers scan the content more easily.

Use bolder or bigger fonts for your sub-headings to draw the readers’ attention.

To highlight important information is also important.

For this, you can bold the important sentences and also use bullet points.

Bolded words and bullet points also help your readers skim through easily.

Step #6: Add Images and Videos

 

Add Images and Videos to your post to make it more engaging and entertaining.

Using images and videos will be helpful for SEO as well. Search Engines like Google and Bing prefer media rich content. They may display your site in relevant results.

Make sure to include descriptive Alt Tags for the images of your post. This will be helpful for your SEO. With the help of images, your readers will be able to understand more complex topics quite easily.

For instance, Diagrams, Charts, Infographics, or Tables can help your readers grasp the points more clearly you’re trying to make through your blog.

Step #7: Use Internal and External Links

 

Linking your post internally, i.e., linking to other related posts on your blog will be very helpful for both the Search Engines and readers.

Internal Links will send the readers to other posts on your blog and they will end up spending more time on your blog.

It’s also good for the SEO viewpoint because Search Engine bots will create relationships between the pages in your blog. This will help boost the rank of the page you’re linking to.

And linking your post externally, i.e., linking to other high-quality related sites will also improve the ranking of your site in SERPs.

External links will help your readers find additional information related to your post.

Step #8: Include Call-To-Actions (CTAs)

 

Adding a clear Call-To-Action is very important to connect with the readers.

You can ask your readers to leave a comment, share your post, follow on social media, purchase a product, subscribe to your blog post, or sign up for the email newsletter.

Here are some examples of CTAs:

• Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts.
• Download my free guide.
• Buy my book to learn the most effective ways to write great blog posts.

Step #9: Optimize Your Post for Search Engines

 

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of affecting the online visibility of your website or your post in SERPs. It helps your pages rank higher in SERPs and thus sending more and more traffic to your site.

Following are some of the basic SEO rules:

• Add Page Title.
• Add proper Meta Description. It’s important because it is what gives your readers a brief idea about your post.
• Use a variety of related keywords.
• Use proper URL structure and keep it short. Just include your target keyword.
• Maintain the quality of the content. This will give your readers the reason to read and share your post.
• Add well written Alt Tags for your images.
• Use internal and external links.

Conclusion:

 

You don’t need to be a great writer or an expert on your topic to become successful as a Blogger.

Just choose a topic that interests you and get started.

And never go for perfection.

Perfection is nothing.

Your blog post will never be perfect.

And you got to accept it.

Even the best blog posts of yours could always be better.

Just try to make it as good as it can be.

So, choose the blogging platform (Recommended: WordPress.org), use the tools available and follow the process.

And share your thoughts, your ideas, and your experiences with the world.

 

 

 

 

In order to blog, you need a blogging platform. There are plenty of Blogging Platforms available, but all are not equal. So, you should choose the one that has all the features needed to make a successful blog.

What to look for before setting up a Blog?

Before setting up a fully-working blog, you should look for the following features:

a)     Easy to use: You don’t need to be an expert or developer to build your blog website. Always go for the simple and easy to use blogging platform.

b)    Customizability: The blogging site should be customizable enough so that you can give your site the style and functionality using its customization tools.

c)     Text editing options: As blogs are mostly text, there should be plenty of editing options in a good blogging platform.

d)    Monetizing options: A good platform lets you add Google AdSense code and such other tools to your site so that you can make money from your blog. With free blogging platforms, making money online isn’t easy. If you want to build your blog website with commercial intent, you must go with the paid platform.

The 8 Best Blogging Platforms:

 

In this article, we are going to compare the 8 best blogging platforms. We’ll be discussing the features they provide, their pros and cons and their pricing.

1)    WordPress.org

WordPress.org was launched in 2003 by its founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is a free and open-source content management system(CMS) based on PHP and MySQL.

This is the most popular blogging platform. Over 32 percent of the websites world over is powered by WordPress. In other words, we can say that every one in three websites is built using the WordPress software.

So, what makes wordpress.org so popular?

There are thousands of free and paid themes you can install and switch from one to the other. Using themes you can change the look and functionality of a site as per the requirement without altering the core code or site content.

WordPress has over 55000 plugins available. These plugins also help you to extend the functionality and features of your blog.

WordPress is optimized for Search Engines. Also, there are plenty of SEO plugins available.

With wordpress.org, you have total control over your data. No one has access to your content. You own your blog, your content, your data.

WordPress.org is the primary support website of WordPress. For any issues with this platform, finding tutorials, information, and documentation or any kind of help is very simple.

Most of the popular websites like Boing Boing, the Chicago Bulls, Vogue, Beyonce, The Rolling Stones, Sony, BBC America, Time Magazine etc., all use wordpress.org to build their websites.

Not only blogs, with wordpress.org you can build any kind of website(for example, sports, entertainment, education, fashion, hobby etc.).

Pros:

·        You have total control over your blog. You own your content, your data.

·        Thousands of themes available which allow you to build the website you want.

·        More than 55000 plugins available. You can extend the functionality and add more and more features to your blog.

·        Very easy to set up. It doesn’t require any coding knowledge.

Cons:

·        If you’re just getting started, it comes with a bit of a learning curve.

·        Lots of low-quality themes and plugins.

Price:

Though the WordPress software is free, you need to buy the domain name and hosting. You can get the domain name for $12/year. The pricing for Bluehost’s hosting plan starts at $2.95 per month(36 months sign up) plus you get a free domain name and for Siteground, it is $3.95 per month.

     Official Website:    https://wordpress.org/

2)    WordPress.com

WordPress.com is another version of WordPress owned and hosted by Automattic.

It’s free and simple to use but the customization is limited.

To use some of its features you need to upgrade to various paid plans depending on your need.

The free plan provides .wordpress.com domains – for example, digitalutsav.wordpress.com – but in paid plans, you can use custom domains.

Pros:

·        Very easy to use and manage.

·        Doesn’t require coding skills.

·        All the basic and original features are free to use.

Cons:

·       WordPress can suspend your blog if they find any violations of their terms of service on your blog. The reason being that you don’t own your blog.

·        In free plans options are limited.

·        You can’t run ads on your blog.

Price:

The basic account of wordpress.com is free. But if you want to remove ads and get a custom domain name, you need to upgrade to their personal plan which you can get for $2.99 per month(billed annually).

    Official Website:   https://wordpress.com/

IMPORTANT: Don’t confuse wordpress.org with wordpress.com. With wordpress.org version, you have total control on your blog and unlimited customization options. You get a full domain, you own the content and people start taking you more seriously.

 

3)    Wix

Wix is an Israeli cloud-based website builder and website hosting service provider.

You can create HTML5 websites and mobile sites through the use of online drag-and-drop tools.

Wix is very easy to use. However, to add the blog module you need to go through a couple of additional steps.

There are over 500 customizable website templates. Claimed to be the only drag-and-drop HTML5 website builder, it also includes apps, graphics, image galleries, fonts, and other options.

With the free plan, you get 500MB storage and 1GB bandwidth. You’ll have to upgrade to its premium plans if you need more features like your own domain name, unlimited bandwidth, no Wix ads, Google Analytics, Premium support.

 

   Pros:

·        Very easy to set up your website. No coding skills needed. You can build your site using very easy drag-and-drop tools.

·        Over 500 designer templates to choose from.

·        Free hosting and great support.

Cons:

·        With the free plan, Wix shows its ads on your site.

·        Customization options are limited for blogging. Also, it’s not a platform fully dedicated to blogging.

·        Template once chosen cannot be changed.

Price:

Though the Wix website builder is free, to get a custom domain, you need to pay $4.50. The Premium plan starts at $8.50.

     Official Website:   https://www.wix.com/

4)    Blogger

Developed by Pyra Labs in 1999 and acquired by Google in 2003, Blogger is a free and easy to use blogging platform.

If you have a Google account, it means you already have a Blogger account. All you need to do is log in with your Google account and go to the Blogger app and start blogging. Within a few hours, you’ll be able to have your first blog published.

Blogs on Blogger are hosted by Google and accessed from a subdomain of blogspot.com(yoursite.blogspot.com). If you want a custom domain like yoursite.com, you got to pay for that.

You can also monetize your blog using various tools like AdSense, sponsored posts, direct ads, Amazon associates etc.

But the popularity of Blogger has declined over the years as is clear from the Google Trends chart.

Though Blogger is free and easy to set up and also being reliable as it is owned by Google, it has many limitations. In the long run, using a free platform like Blogger wouldn’t be a smart move. If you want to go for a free blogging platform, then wordpress.com or medium.com could be the better option.

Pros:

·        Free and easy to use. No technical skills required.

·        As it is run by Google, it easily gets linked to other Google products such as Google Analytics and Google AdSense.

Cons:

·        Number of blogs per account shouldn’t be more than 100.

·        Blog description should be maximum 500 characters and it’s not HTML markup supported.

·        If your site is violating any terms of service it may be suspended by Blogger without any prior notice. If the violations are repeated, it may lead to Google account suspension.

·        You can’t design your blog the way you want as fewer templates are available.

      Official Website:   https://www.blogger.com

5)    Medium

Medium.com was developed by Evan Williams(Twitter co-founder and former CEO) and launched in 2012. It’s an online publishing platform and is regarded as a blog host.

You can sign up using your Google or Facebook account. As far as a free blogging platform is concerned, Medium.com is the best alternative.

It has become very popular among writers, bloggers, journalists, and experts. In fact, it is the community of writers and bloggers.

One of its features the system of “claps” is used to upvote the best articles and stories. This helps the audiences to choose the articles or stories they want to read as the system of “claps” divides the stories into different categories.

But if you intend to build an online business, this isn’t an ideal platform. You can’t use it to monetize your blog.

Pros:

·        Free and easy to use. No coding skills required.

·        With Medium your only focus is on writing. You don’t bother about picking the theme, installing the plugins.

·        You can share your content on Medium to get extra traffic. Using its reporting tool you can understand how readers engage with your content.

Cons:

·        You’ve limited control over your content. Once you lose your blog, you lose all your followers.

·        You cannot monetize your blog as you can’t run ads on your blog to make money.

·        No customization options.

Price:

Medium is free to use but if you want to become a member then you’ve to pay $5/month or $50/year for unlimited, ad-free reading.

    Official Website:   https://medium.com/

6)    Tumblr

Tumblr was founded by David Karp in 2007. It is a microblogging website and you can post multimedia and other short-form content(quotes, images, videos, text posts, or links to other’s blog).

You can connect your blogs to Facebook or Twitter account. This helps your post to be sent as a tweet and status update whenever you make a post.

It’s a great platform if you want to connect with other bloggers. It also helps your post get more exposure as it is itself a social media platform.

You can use a custom domain name and also edit your blog’s theme HTML coding to customize your blog.

Pros:

·        Free and easy to use and no special skills required to run a blog on Tumblr.

·        Great platform to get your post more exposure.

·        You can use a custom domain.

·        You can customize your blog by editing theme HTML coding.

Cons:

·        Limited features available.

·        Monetizing your blog is difficult.

·        It’s tough to import your content from other platforms.

·        If you’re working towards developing long-form content, this is not the platform to start with.

Price:

Tumblr is free to use but if you want to use a custom domain you need to purchase it separately. Third party themes and apps are also available to purchase.

     Official Website:   https://www.tumblr.com/

 

7)    Squarespace

Squarespace provides website building and hosting service.

Because of the visual quality of its templates, Squarespace is one of the best blogging platforms for artists and designers.

Its layouts are customizable. You can give your website the look you want using its drag-and-drop tools.

The templates work for all the devices. You don’t have to design again and again. You can also load your content quickly on mobile with Google’s AMP.

But with Squarespace, there is no free plan. The pricing for the Personal plan is $12/month and for Business plan, it is $18/month.

Pros:

·        Very simple and easy to set up your website.

·        Perfect for artists, designers, photographers etc. because of its designer templates.

·        An eCommerce storefront can be easily integrated.

      Cons:

·        Using this platform can get expensive over time.

·        Software integrations are limited.

·        Very few options available for themes and third-party plugins.

      Price:

 For Personal Plan, $16/month or $12/month if billed annually and for the Business plan, it is     $26/month or $18/month if billed annually.

      Official Website:   https://www.squarespace.com/

 

8)    Joomla!

Joomla! was developed by Open Source Matters, Inc. Just like WordPress.org, it is a free and open source content management system(CMS). It’s the second most used CMS on the internet after WordPress.

It is free but being a self-hosted solution, you need to buy a domain name and hosting.

Pros:

·        Joomla! is very flexible. You can build any kind of website, from the simplest to the most complex.

·        Thousands of free templates available. Paid templates also available.

·        Extensions are also available to extend the functionality of your website.

Cons:

·        Joomla! community isn’t as large as WordPress. You don’t get as many themes and add-ons as WordPress.

·        Being resource-heavy application, your Joomla! website may run out of server resources very quickly.

Price:

Though the Joomla! software is free, you need to buy the domain name and hosting. You can get the domain name for $12/year. The pricing for Bluehost’s hosting plan starts at $2.95 per month(36 months sign up) plus you get a free domain name and for Siteground, it is $3.95 per month.

     Official Website:   https://www.joomla.org/

CONCLUSION:

 

After comparing the 8 best blogging platforms, we may conclude that WordPress.org outperforms all the other platforms.

My recommendation would be WordPress.org. This is the most popular and most used platform in the world. You own your blog. There are many features which are updated regularly. You can use so many tools to monetize your blog.

You can choose the platform according to your needs.

Do you want to write a blog without investing any money?

Go with WordPress.com.

Do you want to focus only on writing?

Medium.com is for you.

Do you favor design over content?

Choose Squarespace for designer templates.

Do you want to integrate your blog with a website and at the same time want access to a wide range of templates?

Wix.com is the best for you.

Tumblr.com is the best choice for microblogging and short-form content.

You don’t want your blog to grow in the future and want to do things quickly without investing any money – go with Blogger.com.

Both Joomla! and WordPress.org are self-hosted blogging platforms. The main drawback with Joomla! is that it is a resource-heavy application. Chances are that your website may run out of server resources very quickly.

In the end, once again I would like to say that you really get serious about writing a blog and try your level best to make it popular, and choose WordPress.org.

HAPPY BLOGGING!