Hey! Are you looking for the best resources in the business? Below I’ve listed some of my most favorite blogging resources. Most are things you’ll absolutely need if you’re starting a blog… and some other things that I recommend, but aren’t necessary. I’ll give you details on each.
Domain Name.
This is your (insertyourblogname).com or .net or .club…. the possibilities are endless these days.
NameCheap : This is where I have all of my current domain names registered. They’re cheap, as indicated by their name, and I’ve found their customer service to be really awesome!
Hosting.
Assuming you choose to go with WordPress (and please, please do!), you have to choose where to buy space to keep your blog.
Currently I have Rose Bakes hosted at BigScoots, RoseAtwater.com hosted at SiteGround, and Cake Blogging hosted at BlueHost.
Why all the different companies? Let me explain.
BigScoots. I used to use BlueHost for all of my blogs. But as my traffic grew at Rose Bakes, I guess the best way to describe it is I “outgrew” BlueHost. I needed hosting that was more powerful and faster – something to meet the demands of the traffic I was gaining. Joy of Five J’s Design (she did my redesign in December 2015) highly recommended BigScoots – so I went with it and I have not been disappointed. I could immediately see that my site was loading faster and their customer support has been out of this world!
SiteGround. RoseAtwater.com has never had any dramatic traffic growth and currently remains a very small blog. When I heard about SiteGround recently, I decided to give them a try so that I could speak from experience, so I switched my personal blog over to SiteGround and I haven’t had any complaints so far. It was a very smooth transition and I’ve been impressed.
BlueHost. Shortly after that I decided to start CakeBlogging.com, and because BlueHost had one of their amazing deals going on (I’m cheap!) and I was familiar with them because I’ve used them for years… I decided to park CakeBlogging.com there for now.
So what do I recommend for you? For beginners, I can wholeheartedly recommend BlueHost.com. It’s generally the least expensive (especially if you sign up during one of their sales) and it’s been reliable in my experience.
My hosting service with them only went down a handful of times in 5 years and it always come back up very quickly. Also, the customer service was good with BlueHost.com. Again I’ll mention, if you’re starting out and want very low cost, reliable service – BlueHost would be a good place to start and I have step-by-step instructions to do this HERE!
Note: Studiopress Sites is a brand new service available that is all-inclusive and it looks like it would be a dream for new bloggers! I wrote about it here if you’re interested in skipping alot of the details and having everything taken care of with one service!!
Designer.
After you have your domain and hosting, it’s time to make your site pretty. If you’re gifted technically, you may be able to do this on your own. I, however, am not gifted in this area so I’ve always used a designer. Here are a few that I’ve used or have been recommended to me.
- Five J’s Design – my current designer for Rose Bakes. Joy is nothing short of amazing, but she’s a premium designer and I couldn’t have afforded her in the beginning. However, if her services fit in your budget, I cannot recommend anyone more highly!
- Jumping Jax Designs – designed RoseAtwater.com Becca is easy to work with and affordable.
- Cre8tiveDiva– Anita has not done design work for me, but she has done some other WordPress developer techy stuff and I really like her a lot!
- Smitten Design – One of my previous designers has gone out of business but she recommended this company to me if I needed a design in the future. I cannot speak from personal experience, but I would trust the recommendation.
- Purr Design – I’ve never used them but I know several sites that they’ve done and they’re beautiful and very smooth running. They’re more high-end though, so may not fit in everyone’s budget.
- Genesis Developers – Amy Lynn Andrews, the blogging guru who has influenced me the most in my blogging journey recommends checking here. There are a lot of designers to choose from at different price points. You can check out each designer’s portfolio!
If you want to try to do your own design work, I’d encourage you to buy and install the Genesis Framework, then choose a theme to work with. There are hundreds of free themes out there or you can pay for themes! {Related: If your head is swimming when I talk about this stuff, check out this free ebook: The Genesis Guide for Absolute Beginners. It’s FULL of excellent information!}
Studiopress themes seem to be super popular and that’s what I use on my blogs. If you go that way, you just have to customize them with your own logo/header, colors, etc. Foodie Pro is one designed for food bloggers so if I were going to do my own – I’d probably start with one like that.
Blogging Help.
One-on-One Coaching. Have you ever just wanted to talk to someone vs reading a thousand blogs and doing all the research on your own? I offer personal one-on-one coaching and mentoring services! Do you want to talk through something that you’re stuck on – or learn more about monetizing your blog or earning multiple streams of income? Maybe you want to know how to get more followers on Pinterest or how to edit your photos? If so, click here to see what I offer for coaching and mentoring!
Photography.
If you’re going to have a successful cake or food blog, you must have amazing pictures. This is non-negotiable. Other than the in-person photography class I took (which was the most help to me!), these are other resources that have helped me learn and improve on my photography!
Tasty Food Photography ebook. This ebook is a must for anyone wanting to learn about food photography! It’s inexpensive and worth every penny!
If you do not have a fancy camera, you can use your smart phone. Most smart phones have decent, if not excellent cameras included. I’ve never used my phone for blog photography, but if you want to, I’d recommend at least taking a class or researching how to make the most of your phone. Here are two online classes that might help:
- Mobile Photography: Perfect Photos in Your Pocket
- Creative iPhoneography Tips & Tricks (for iPhone users specifically)
Building Your Business: Beautiful Cake Photography. For cake decorators, there is an online class just for us! The instructor is Carrie Sellman from The Cake Blog, and this class is worth every penny!
The equipment I use:
- Canon EOS 6D. This is the current camera that I use. However, for the first few years I used the Canon Rebel and I loved it too! Note: the Canon Rebel model that I used is now outdated, but I think the Canon Rebel T6 is the current equivalent.
- Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II. This is my favorite lens for cake/food photography, by far!
- Lowell Ego Lights. If you think you’ll struggle at all with natural lighting, I highly recommend these lights! I have a set of two and I use them all.the.time.
- Backdrops. Most often I use backdrops created at home by painting pieces of luan or using real wood pallets. However, I have purchased some wood grain placemats that I use for some shots and I have a couple of backdrops from this Etsy shop that I love (one is white marble, the other is a wood grain).
Plugins.
I am not an expert on plugins, but I have recently come to love three plugins put out by the peeps from Pinch of Yum. Tasty Recipes, Tasty Pins and Tasty Links are all FAVES for me as a food blogger!
Email Marketing.
One of the very first things you need to do when you start your blog is start collecting email addresses for an email newsletter. You might choose to send out an email every time you publish a new blog post or you might choose to send out a weekly or monthly newsletter that links to all of your new posts. Or you might do both. But either way – having your readers’ email addresses is the best way to be able to contact them.
I use Madmimi to send out all of my blog posts and newsletters for all of my blogs. I have it on my “to do” list to try some of the newer, more powerful platforms but for now, I absolutely love Madmimi! Learn more about Madmimi in my post here.