5 FREE Blogging Tools For Beginners

Managing a blog is not an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of creativity, research, constant learning and man-hours to successfully maintain and grow a blog. These last few years of blogging recreationally, I’ve learned a lot; some things intentionally through research and reading, others through experiences. This includes information I had no desire to use at the time. With this redirection, I’ve been able to implement them as I go along and watch the effects of my upgrades and tweaks impact numbers almost immediately because I already had traffic as opposed to a blog that is new.

Starting from scratch can be intimidating. But that’s okay, right? If you’re committed to the process, you’ll learn as you got. I, however, think that learning can happen a lot faster through sharing. So if you’re a new blogger who is looking to get up-to-speed a bit more quickly, keep on reading.

P.S. If you’re extra green to blogging, you should ready my blog post on What is Blogging? Why You Should Blog in 2021. It’ll give you a nice starting point.

FREE Blogging Tools for Beginners

Chances are, if you are starting your blog, you don’t want to dump a ton of money on things that you think are good resources only to find out they’re not the best one (or few) for you. Okay, so here are some free blogging tools for beginners that you can apply to your own blog, that will help you out with the learning curve.

1. Grammarly: Free Online Writing Assistant

Grammarly is awesome. I do a lot of my initial writing on my phone (a smaller screen) and it showed. Grammarly is available as plugins and add-ons for browsers and writing applications. Now, in my experience, Grammarly (at least, the free version) may catch some typos and sentence structure errors, but some will slip through if you a not careful. The application can e set to read I your preferred language, for example, English (UK) vs English (US), But it obviously won’t edit with culture and slangs in consideration, and may autocorrect a word where it is not needed and throw the whole thing into wack.

Since blogging is typically in a conversational style, you may want to look out for this and be sure to revise and edit. The platform also has a pro-version, where you can subscribe and get even more help with reviewing your writing if the is something you need. They’ll even send you a summary at the end of the week with your writing stats, containing word count, productivity, vocabulary mastery stats and more.

2. Canva Graphic Design Platform

If you aren’t a graphic designer and you want a really great tool with the option to create stunning designs from scratch or with thousands of free templates, you have got to be using Canva. I use Canva for social media images, YouTube Thumbnails, banners and so much more. You also get access to thousands of free stock images and dozens of fonts. There are a ton of great feature on the free version and even more with the Pro Subscription. The below Pinterest Pin image was designed from scratch, sized and designed for this blog post. Go ahead, Pin it!

3. Pixabay and Pexels Free Stock Photos

When it comes to blogging, images are your friend. It’s aesthetically appealing and help to enhance the reader experience. You can take your own images of course, however, sooner or later, you may run into the need for some stock images. On my own blog, I like the stock images I use to help with storytelling, and will often choose to go without a photo if I cannot find what I have in mind, rather than use something unrelated.

Pixabay.com and pexels.com are extensive online catalogues of high-resolution stock images you can download for free. There are others of course, but these are my favourite. You can even tip your favourite image provider when you especially enjoy their catalogue.

4. Google Analytics

I use WordPress.com to host my blog, and it is awesome for a non-technical blogger. However, for years, I made the mistake of relying on the built-in Jetpack stats tool. Do. Not. Do. If traffic analyzation is impotsnt to you, Google anlytics is the best. It snot as simplistic as the Jetpack stats, but you can derive so much more from te information. If you are like me, the hungreds of percentage of discrpancy. Sometime last year, I decided to check out Google Analytics so that i could learn more about my traffic, an what a revelation that was. couldn’t elieve it. I even cnsulted another option to make sure that was what was actually going on.

You May Also Like: Blogging: What You Should Know Before You Start

Google Analytics is by Google, which speaks to it credibility, and offers a paid and free version, whereas, WordPress (JetPack) is free. Analytics is a more complex and takes some getting used t find your way around all the information provided, but it is infinitely worth it.

free blogger tools — Google Analtics Snapshot

5. MailerLite Email Marketing Provider

If you do not have an email list, you need to start one, like yesterday. MailerLite is awesome. It allows you to create automation, aesthetically pleasing and functional email companies and to build your life with beautiful pop-up designs and in-feed sign up form. I transferred from MailChop a few months ago and I am so happy I did. MailerLite offers all access to their features for 14 days with the initial signup. After that, if your mail list is less than 1000 subscribers, you can send up to 12000 emails monthly. If you have more than 1000, the subscription rate for your subscription begins at US$10 per month (at the time of this post). Once you are on a paid plan, your email count is unlimited.

There is so much more I want t share with you about blogging. Make sure you are subscribed to my blog so the you’ll be notified as soon as they are published.