Transform Your Online Business with These Powerful Tools and Courses

In this article: Save frustration and time by using helpful blogging resources and tools to help streamline your blogging business.

The world of online business is ever changing and growing. As a full-time blogger and online content creator, I’ve found it’s essential to find resources that help me make decisions based on strategic planning, analytics, and trending topics.

Today I’m sharing with you my favorite blogging resources, tools, and teachers that have helped me along the way!

Grow your Online Business with These Tools

This post contains affiliate links. 

If you’re a online business owner, you know it take lots of time and patience to grow a business online – whether it’s a blog, products for sale on Etsy, or something else! Here are some tools I’m currently using (in 2024) to help with keyword research, trending topics, and SEO. They help narrow down what people are searching for online and when they are searching for it the most.

1. Google Trends: This tool is free to use! Check out what topics are trending right now, or filter an exact date. Researching what topics people are interested in and searching for will help you choose what topics to cover in your blog posts.
2. Keysearch: I have tried out almost every keyword research tool there is, but now that there are no free options, I’ve landed on keysearch. I use it nearly every day and love it. It’s easy to use and has all the information I need to find in it.
3. Done-for-You GA4 Reports: If you were in the online space before Google completely changed its analytics reporting system, you will totally understand how frustrating it is to try to find the information you want and need in the new GA4 system. I had two blogging friends highly recommend the services of Done for You GA4 reports and both said, “It was the best thing I ever did for my business!” That was high praise, and I totally agree!!

Done for you GA4 Reports sets up custom reports (that are what bloggers are looking for) so you can easily read and find so you can check where your traffic comes from, what pages are being viewed, and even comes with a video showing how you can use the reporting to make better decisions for your blog. I highly recommend!

Graphic and Web Design

1. Restored 316 is my go to source for beautiful web designs. I’ve been using their products for years and love them so much! I did install one of the web themes myself with their tutorials, but if time is an issue, I highly recommend Hello Chicky Designs if you want someone to just do it for you! Deanna is an expert in Restored 316 Designs. She can install and get your site up and running quick. I have been so impressed with her work.
2. Canva is the place I do all my social media graphics for my blog and social media channels. It has an amazing free program, but upgrading to professional might be worth it for you. (It is what I use.)

Social Media Marketing + Growing Your Newsletter List

If you want to grow your business online, you’re going to want to do some promoting in a variety of ways. You’ll want to be looking for your ideal customer and client, and provide them with solutions to their problems, so they will want to take action and buy your product/ read your solutions/ or whatever your end business goals are.

One important way to communicate with your people is through a newsletter list. There are a variety of newsletter services available. I have personally used and loved Mailerlite and Convertkit. Others highly recommend Flo-Desk, but I’ve never used it personally. Each of them come with different price points and plans, so research which one serves your business needs best.

In order to get people to WANT to sign up for your newsletter list, you’ll want to create something to give them (digitally) that will be an incentive for them to hand over their precious email address!

That can be a confusing process at first, so I highly recommend Restored 316s Newsletter Growth Course. I have taken that course personally and it is excellent! It walks you through the step by step process of getting all the content and tech pieces put together so the process works seamlessly. (This course is designed for bloggers, so a basic understanding of blogging practices is helpful.)

If you have any kind of business online, I highly recommend Pagewheel to help you create digital products that can be used as newsletter opt-ins or digital products to sell. It is a relatively new program that is still being tweaked and perfected, but it is AMAZING and comes with weekly training by some of the wisest online coaches I know!

Increase Productivity with AI assistance

I know, I know. AI is a hot button topic and I have mixed feelings about it, too.

However, I like to think of AI as a helpful assistant. It doesn’t do all my work for me, but it helps me with ideas when I get stuck.

I like to use the free version of chatGPT for things like creative email subject titles or ideas for upcoming content.

Learn from the Pros!

There are so many online business people who have blog and webinars that teach such helpful things for free! Here are some of my personal favorites.

• Jenna Kutcher – Has a free podcast called Goal Digger that touches on all kinds of business topics. She also has lots of courses on specific topics. I took her course on how to start a podcast and it was excellent.
• Christina Dennis – Christina is a blogger I’ve admired and followed for years. She recently started a podcast called The Six Figure Creator, and it has really helpful content for creative people who have businesses online.
• Jasmine Star – I’ve taken a few free webinars of Jasmine’s on how to create social media posts and reels quickly, and I really learned a lot.

Update Old Content & Find Current New Topics for New Content

If you’ve been blogging for a long time, you probably have hundreds or thousands of blog posts you wrote previously. They still contain great information and would be helpful to people if they knew about it!

Having a system to help update old content and freshen it up can help breath life into content that might be cooling off. Here are some tools to help you strategize what content should be updated and what new content should be written.

1. Clariti – I use this tool nearly every day. All of my blog posts are imported into this nifty program and I can get a lot of information (like which posts have the most pageviews) at a glance thanks to the amazing filter system they have. As I update old posts, I can make notes of what I’ve done and the results of the changes.
2. Rank IQ – Use this tool to help guide you as you write new posts and look for new blog post topics that could potentially rank quickly online.

Want to start a Blog? I highly recommend taking a course to help you along the way…

When I started blogging over 10 years ago, I did everything by google and searching high and low for tutorials for every.single.little.step. It took FOREVER! And, sadly, I didn’t start out with the best framework base that it could have been. Now I’m trying to get it whipped into shape.

The good news is, now there are great courses available that will walk a new blogger through every step needed to start a blog.

I highly recommend you first start with a blogging course as the first important step.They will save you hours and hours of frustration, plus many dollars on purchasing items you think you’ll need, but don’t!

However, I’m going to have to get back to you on courses I recommend. Because the world of blogging changes so quickly, the courses I previously recommended are no longer available. When I find something I can recommend, I’ll get back to you!