Personal Finance & Blogging Resources

Here is a list of resources that I use for blogging, business, and money. Some of these are affiliate links, which means I’ll earn a commission if you click on those particular links and then buy something through them. (There’s no extra charge to you.) And some of them are not affiliate links, because there’s no program available. Either way, these are the sites I use and recommend :)

Money-related resources

  • Digit – a very cool service that automates your savings for you (you can see my review of Digit right here)
  • Capital One 360 – we have our emergency savings here, along with some other longer-term savings. Very handy for having “sub accounts” / naming your accounts.
  • Pay Off Debt – the debt snowball app I created for the iPhone, iPad, and Android.
  • Ally Invest – I have my main Roth IRA here, and buy stocks and mutual funds within that. (They used to be at TradeKing, but that was acquired by Ally and I’m still just as happy with the service.)
  • UDirect – I have my self-directed traditional IRA here. They’re good about compliance, which is super-important with a self-directed IRA.
  • 101 Ways to Make Extra Money in Your Spare Time – an idea book I wrote. If you’d like to make some extra money on the side but aren’t sure how you could do so, you’ll find lots of ideas here.

Blogging-related resources

  • Aweber – allows you to send out email newsletters and create and manage mailing lists. They now allow you to tag subscribers and add them to various campaigns too, which is a nice feature. (Although I haven’t tried that feature since it’s been out of the beta.)
  • Deposit Photos – a nice stock photography site that I use pretty much all the time. They’ve recently added a feature that allows you to search for images without people in them, which is really good for Pinterest.
  • Fiverr – a site I’ve used with great results for several small projects. (Having a custom image created and getting a CSS issue fixed, etc.) Make to sure to choose responsive folks with good individual reviews if you have something done here.
  • Elite Blog Academy – I’ve been blogging for years and I still got so much value out of this course. In fact, I’m going through EBA a second time. The course isn’t offered very often, so if you think you might be interested get on their wait list now.
  • Focus at Will – Music that helps me stay focused and concentrate while writing.
  • Gravatar – allows you to post comments on blogs, etc using a “globally recognized avatar”. (These are the little pictures that appear next to some comments.)
  • Grayson Bell of iMark Interactive – Grayson knows his stuff when it comes to WordPress, so he’s great at troubleshooting problems or just plain managing the technical stuff for you.
  • Icon Finder – like the name says, a nice site to find icons for social media, etc.
  • Pin Mastery – Learn exactly how to create compelling, Pinterest-friendly images for your site that will be eye-catching enough to stop the scroll on Pinterest and drive traffic. I get a huge, huge, HUGE percentage of my traffic from Pinterest. Do not ignore Pinterest if you are a blogger.
  • Pinterest for Bloggers – a book I wrote that goes through the steps you need to take to use Pinterest effectively as a blogger.
  • Teachable – the site I used to host my Pinterest-related courses. It’s super easy to set up and use.
  • Vimeo – video hosting platform that allows you to keep videos private & specify the URLs they can be played on. Good for courses! (Which is what I use it for.)
  • WishList Member – a nice membership plugin that works great with WordPress. Allows you to quickly and easily create a members-only site or to put up a pay wall on a portion of your site. I’ve used this elsewhere and been very happy with it.
  • WordPress.com – good site if you want to start a completely free blog. Note: I haven’t personally used this one myself.
  • WordPress.org – free and wonderful blogging software (use with various themes and plugins) that you can use for self-hosted blogs. (For example, if you host your site on BlueHost and are hoping to make an income as a blogger.)
  • Xenu – site with a weird name & logo that does a great job of allowing you to check for broken links on web sites.