Best Blogging Tools For Entrepreneurs To Scale A Business
Running a profitable niche site requires a few good tools. This list contains all of the apps, plugins, tech, and resources that I use to run my business.
Jump to section:
As an affiliate partner of various brands and sponsored content, HerPaperRoute may earn commission on qualifying purchases. Disclaimer | Advertise With Us
BEST TOOLS & TECH TO GROW YOUR BLOG AND BUSINESS
Blogging and niche site investing can be a very lucrative way to earn money from home, or anywhere!
CREATOR CLASS: $0!
Learn how to launch your business in the creator economy in this workshop. You’ll discover a roadmap to gaining your first (or next) 1,000 followers, subscribers and dollars as a content creator, in 100 days!
CREATOR SOCIETY
This is the ultimate program for anyone who wants a blueprint to build, scale and sell profitable niche sites, with the support of 1:1 coaching and a community of other creators! Unlock our complete sales funnel framework for your niche site, to confidently launch digital products, convert leads, grow your community and go from evergreen to exit.
START BLOGGING COURSE $0
Thinking of starting a blog? You need to take this course to learn the ropes. From the initial setup tech, to choosing a niche, SEO foundations and knowing what to write, this course as it all. Take the first step and start a blog today.
HERPAPERROUTE TOOLKIT $0
The HerPaperRoute Profitable Entrepreneur Toolkit is a resource library packed with everything you need to grow your blog and biz! And you can access all of the resources for free by joining today!
NICHE SITE SELLER’S INTO KIT
Learn how to prime your website so it can sell at the top of its valuation.
SELL YOUR BLOG
Curious about how much your niche site could sell for? Get a free website valuation, and a suggested listing price from us.
PinClicks
Get SEO insight on pins!
EQUIPMENT
APPLE COMPUTER
I use Apple computers for all elements of my business.
EMAIL MARKETING & LIST BUILDING
BEEHIIV
A powerful email marketing system with competitive pricing!
CONVERTKIT
Convertkit is a professional email system to manage your newsletters, subscribers, opt-ins and landing pages. create and send campaigns (newsletters) manage opt-in forms, automation, and more.
FLODESK
A simple email system to collect subscribers and send newsletters. Get 50% off your first year via this link.
INTERACT
Discover how to use quizzes as a list-building and blog growth marketing tool using this awesome quiz-building app!
EMAIL MARKETING COURSE
A blueprint to grow and monetize your list of super fans. No sleazy sales tactics in sight.
EMAIL TEMPLATES
Email marketing templates you can use in your newsletters and sales funnels.
FUNNELS, SELLING COURSES & DIGITAL PRODUCTS
CREATOR SOCIETY
Don’t start building an online course until you take this training.
BETA LAUNCH BLUEPRINT
FREE GUIDE! How to pre-sell and pre-test your course before you create it.
COURSE CREATION ROADMAP
FREE GUIDE! Map out your soon-to-be-famous online course
Free Guide: How To Plan A Stress-Free Course Launch
THRIVECART
The best cart and LMS for your business. Make more sales with upsells and tripwire offers, manage your affiliate program, and integrate with everything. Pay once, use it for life. No monthly fees, ever! This one tool manages your membership, courses, affiliate program, and coaching programs. It’s amazing.
LEAD PAGES
Easy to use page builder for your sales pages and opt-in freebie pages.
CLICK FUNNELS
Clickfunnels allows anyone to build their own high-converting sales funnels and landing pages.
KAJABI
Course and membership hosting platform.
SHOPIFY
Get a free trial: A complete eCommerce platform to run your storefront online.
SENDOWL
Deliver your digital products and manage your affiliate program from $10/month.
TEACHABLE
A course creation platform giving creators full HTML behind-the-scenes access ability.
FUNNEL TEMPLATES
These funnel templates make it easy for you to build interest, offer value, and make money with a sales funnel. Grow your email list, host a webinar, create a tripwire, sell a digital product and more!
LEARNDASH
A WordPress-based LMS for hosting your courses right on your own website.
RUNNING A BUSINESS
GUSTO
Set up your payroll and pay your team with ease. Trusted by more than 200,000 businesses and their teams.
EARTH CLASS MAIL
Use this virtual address to have all of your mail sent, where they will scan it and send it to you as an email.
ADOBE CREATIVE CLOUD
Get access to all 19+ Adobe apps with the Creative Cloud Suite. Including Photoshop, Lightroom, Premier Pro and more.
CLIENT & PROJECT MANAGEMENT
HONEYBOOK
The only CRM you will ever need. Capture leads, manage projects and clients, send invoices, sign contracts online, get paid, and more. Get 50% off your first year today!
DUBSADO
The best online accounting tool. Track your blog’s profit and loss and so much more. Take 20% off with code HERPAPERROUTE
CLICKUP
Stay on track with your team, no matter where your team is located. Manage projects, launches, SOPs and never miss a deadline.
SEO & TRAFFIC GROWTH
LINK WHISPER
Make it easy for Google to crawl your site and interlink your content properly! LinkWhisper makes interlinking your blog posts simple.
RANKIQ
Quickly optimize your articles with Rank IQ’s suggestions. Improve your score to know exactly how to rank your posts on SERPs.
FRASE
Frase AI helps you research, write, and optimize high-quality SEO content in minutes instead of hours.
KEYSEARCH
One of the best keyword research tools, trusted by top bloggers!
WP ROCKET
WP Rocket is a lightweight plugin that speeds up your website, handles caching, GZip compression, WebP image delivery, lazy loading images, CSS minification, database optimization and more
TAILWIND
Tailwind for Pinterest – The only Pinterest scheduler you will ever need. Check out Tailwind for Instagram too.
SMARTERQUEUE
Save time with this evergreen recycling social media marketing automation tool.
CONVERTBOX
Stay on track with your team, no matter where your team is located. Manage projects, launches, SOPs and never miss a deadline.
TASTY PINS
Tasty Pins offers all the Pinterest marketing and SEO features you need to optimize your blog for increasing Pinterest traffic.
SHORTPIXEL
ShortPixel is a plugin that optimizes and compresses your images, so that your website can load super fast. This image CDN and compression plugin majorly helps speed up your website and improve SEO. It even serves up your images as WebP versions, for free.
MILOTREE
MiloTree is a smart popup and a very helpful tool that converts your blog visitors into email subscribers and social followers.
APPS, TOOLS & SOFTWARE
APP SUMO
AppSumo is a website that offers daily deals and special promotions on popular apps. Get incredible lifetime deals on useful tools and apps.
EPIDEMIC SOUND
Massive library of royalty-free music and sound effects that you can use in your content across Youtube, Instagram and TikTok
OTTER
Otter is an AI transcription tool that transcribes your video and audio files – and even transcribes live!
LEGAL RESOURCES FOR BUSINESS OWNERS
REGISTER YOUR BUSINESS (USA)
Incorporate your company and access the greatest startup ecosystem on the planet. Firstbase is your organization’s first step.
REGISTER YOUR BUSINESS (CANADA)
Incorporate or register your business with ease and help keep your business compliant. Get 15% off with this link.
LLC OPERATING CONTRACT
The Contract Shop® provides contract templates and all the legal paperwork you need to run your business well. No expensive attorneys required.
COACHES BUNDLE
All of the legal contracts your coaching business needs in one easy-to-use collection.
NEW BUSINESS BUNDLE
All the legal documents you need to protect and grow your business. Plus sales call scripts so you always know what to say!
AFFILIATE TEAM CONTRACT
Have an affiliate program? Make sure you have everyone on your team sign this contract before they start promoting your products.
BRAND COLLAB / SPONSORSHIP CONTRACT
This template sets clear expectations of your relationship from the beginning by defining timelines, revision guidelines and what exactly the brand can or cannot do with the materials you create
INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR CONTRACT
Whether you provide services to clients or you are hiring a freelancer to perform work for you, you need this template to protect yourself.
LEGAL BUNDLE
The Legal Bundle contains fill-in-the-blank templates for the 3 legal pages your website is required to have.
SPONSORED POST CONTRACT
Lawyer written contract template you need to easily work with brands to produce any kind of sponsored content and build lasting relationships with them, while also protecting your financial and legal interests in the process.
LEGAL COURSES
Protect your content, website, products and courses by applying what you learn in these step-by-step legal trainings.
ADA & WCAG COMPLIANCE & TRAINING
ACCESSIBILITY WIDGET
Trusted tool that makes a website accessible to people with various disabilities.
ADA & WCAG TEMPLATE BUNDLE
With this ADA and WCAG Compliance legal bundle, you get Amira’s ADA guide, WCAG checklist, Website Accessibility template, and more!
ADA COMPLIANCE NOW COURSE
This course will walk you through the required steps to become compliant with ADA and Unruh Act
STYLED STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY & TEMPLATES
HAUTE STOCK
Premium stock photo membership with various lifestyle and workspace images. A modern, feminine photo membership. Unlimited downloads, and new collections are added each month, as well as limited time collections.
PIXI STOCK
Pixi Stock is a styled stock photo membership that offers chic and feminine stock photos and graphic templates. Perfect for female creators.
STYLED STOCK SOCIETY
Styled Stock Society is a stock photography membership for female entrepreneurs. Members get access to over 2,000 stock photos (plus tons of new photos are added every single month).
BLUCHIC
Quickly create your lead magnets, ebooks and digital products with these done-for-you lead magnet templates.
ENVATO ELEMENTS
Unlimited downloads to millions of stock photos, website themes, graphic elements, templates, logos, and more.
DESIGN BUNDLES
Access to 136,466 exclusive products with Commercial Use. So you can use the designs on the digital and physical products you sell
WEBINAR TOOLS & PLANNING A VIRTUAL SUMMIT
SUMMIT IN A BOX PROGRAM
Everything you need to plan, strategize and launch your first profitable online summit with ease. A complete summit coaching program with Krista Rae.
VIRTUAL SUMMIT MONETIZATION KIT
Includes Canva sponsorship pitch deck template, summit CRM workshop, and strategies to monetize your summit in multiple ways at once!
SUMMIT PROMOTION BUNDLE
With this bundle, you’ll get a marketing calendar, promotion strategy training, 7 email scripts, 7 pieces of social media swipe copy, a Facebook ad strategy overview, Facebook ad swipe copy, and Facebook ad graphic templates.
WORDPRESS THEMES
KADENCE
The best WordPress theme framework. Build and customize anything your heart desires!
STUDIOPRESS
StudioPress is a leading WordPress theme developer. They are the creator of the popular Genesis Framework.
17TH AVENUE
Professional quality Genesis themes, with a feminine style. Beautiful themes to make your website look super stylish.
CHICSERVE
WordPress theme + funnel + landing pages kit for service providers
CHICSHOP
WordPress theme + funnel + landing pages kit for digital product eCommerce shops
CHICBOSS
WordPress theme + funnel + landing pages kit for service-based creators who ALSO sell digital products
WEB HOSTING
BEST OVERALL: BIG SCOOTS
The award for best professional-grade web hosting goes to Big Scoots! They provide the fastest FREE migrations, offer super-fast VPS and managed WordPress hosting and A+ customer service. Worth every dollar.
CHEAPEST: BLUEHOST
On a tight budget, and don’t need much customer service? Bluehost is the cheapest option! They are known for having less than stellar customer service, but if budget is an issue, you will save money. Get it for just $2.95/month.
SUPER FAST: WP ENGINE
Another quality, professional-grade web hosting provider. When you sign up via this link you get 2 months of hosting free
- Custom three-capsule array: This professional USB mic produces clear, powerful, broadcast-quality sound for YouTube videos, Twitch game streaming, podcasting, Zoom meetings, music recording and more
- Improved Dual Pixel CMOS AF and eye detection AF 24.1 Megapixel CMOS (APS-C) sensor with is 100–6400 (H: 12800)
The Best Tools & Resources For Creators
When you decide to start a blog and/or business, oftentimes it can quickly feel like an expensive undertaking.
There are many tools, courses and ‘things’ you will want to invest in. You don’t need to spend much money when starting a blog, but you should spend some money on it.
In order to grow and scale, you need to invest in your business.
One of the hardest parts of running a successful blog is figuring out which tools you need, and which you don’t. In this ultimate roundup, I break down the best blogging tools and best business tools for social media, growing your email list, and making money online. Including Courses, tech, and more!
I have discovered some fantastic tech and software, taken some incredible courses, and used some awesome tools to stay organized and on track in my business.
And today, I’m rounding them all up for you! I’ve kept the descriptions relatively brief, but where possible and linked to extra resources where you can learn more about that tool or course.
On this page, you will find some supreme discounts on premium blogging tools here, plus many free ones, too!
For any ones that aren’t free, I have included a free trial wherever possible. Here are the tools, tech, apps and educational resources I use to run all of my websites.
Fact: You’ll never get ahead as a blogger or business owner if you don’t have the right tools, systems and mentors.
Instead, use these awesome and tools to manage your time, store your digital files, and prep for a productive and profitable year.
Email Service Provider: ConvertKit
This tool is something I’ve had tucked away in my toolbox since the early days of my business.
I feel like I’m always shouting about ConvertKit from the rooftops, but that’s because it’s truly *that* good.
Looking for a platform to start your email list on? Or ready to upgrade from the free program you’re currently using (and not loving)?
Sign up for your first month of ConvertKit here. Oh, and here’s my handy Guide to ConvertKit!
Landing Page Builder: LeadPages
Once you’ve set up your email list, you’ll need a way to create professional, high-converting landing pages to get people to join your list.
Enter: LeadPages. With hundreds of templates to start from (literally, hundreds), the ability to create standalone signup pages AND pop-up boxes, plus an amazing support team, there’s nothing not to love about LeadPages.
Pricy? Sure. Worth it? 100%. Learn more about what you can do with LeadPages and start creating beautiful landing pages.
Stock Photography Membership: Haute Stock
I use the Haute Stock images to design all of my opt-in freebies and make them look as pretty as possible.
But really, I use these styled stock photos just about everywhere in my business – on my website, for my social media images, and in my emails + freebies. Become a member of the Haute Stock Library here (this is one purchase you definitely won’t regret).
Social Media Automation: SmarteQueue
I’m all about automating my social media accounts. I like things to run seamlessly in the background while I’m off getting my “real work” done. SmarterQueue tool that helps me do just that.
SmarterQueue will put your Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Page, and Facebook Group posting completely on autopilot.
It’s as easy as loading in your pre-written content for each platform, setting up a posting schedule within SmarterQueue, and then sitting back and letting it works its magic. Absolutely genius.
Here’s a post where I talk about SmarterQueue in a bit more detail.
Instagram Feed Planning: Planoly
Planoly allows you to schedule up to 30 posts per month on a free account, and you can even preview all of your scheduled posts together to see how everything will work once the images are in your Insta-grid.
Motivational Book: You Are A Badass At Making Money By Jen Sincero
Master the mindset of wealth with the help of the hilarious Jen Sincero. You will be surprised how many money breakthroughs you will experience while reading this.
I’ve read my copy 4 times over now, and I STILL discover a new ‘a ha!’ moment each time. Find out more here.
Organization, Files & Sheets: Google Drive
Google Drive is a free tool and a MUST! I store all my blog post drafts and stock photos in my Drive, I use it to organize videos for my ecourses, and I ask all of my guest posters to submit their posts to me as a Google Doc. Google Drive is a must, in my opinion.
“The Weird (Almost Backwards) Funnel Secret That Is Currently Being Used By An Underground Group Of Entrepreneurs To Sell Almost Anything You Can Dream Of!”
Education: CreativeLive
This is an amazing online resource packed with hundreds of free and premium courses on everything from photography, design, music, money, business and more. You can tune in to watch live classes for free, or sign up for on-demand workshops. Check out the classes here.
Bookkeeping: FreshBooks
The badass entrepreneur’s bible! It makes invoicing clients and keeping track of my accounting documents super easy. Every small business owner should use this, even if you are just starting out. Get a free trial here: FreshBooks Cloud Accounting
ECom: Shopify
Most eCommerce sites will take a cut off of each of your sales, which can become quite expensive, but Shopify doesn’t, you just pay a small set monthly subscription rate and then you can sell as much as you want and keep all of your money.
Affiliate Networks For Bloggers
Affiliate Programs Directory
Check out this list of high-paying affiliate programs for bloggers, organized by niche and updated regularly.
AWIN
Awin.com is a high paying affiliate marketing network. It costs just $5 to sign up (which you get back once approved), then you join affiliate programs, work with brands, and get paid. Big brands host their affiliate programs here.
ShareASale
ShareaSale – Once you are a member, you can join the affiliate programs of thousands of brands. They have a handy tool to build collections of products that you can then add to your website as well. > Read my guide on top high-paying affiliate programs here
What tools, courses, and resources are you loving in your business?
Any awesome tools I haven’t tried yet that I need to look into? Leave a comment and fill me in!
Know someone who would like this post? Share it with them by clicking the social media buttons at the top!
Follow along on Instagram!
