So I was a little unsure what topic to cover whilst doing this guest blog post over here at Blog Engage, various things went though my mind, and I spent a good few hours shooting them down, I finally settled on Blogging tools.
Blog Engage is all about bloggers so what better subject to cover than some tools that may potentially help a few fellow bloggers out!
I have tried to be broad in my collection and avoid the basics, (i.e. blogging platforms etc…) and covered stats, monitization, domain reporting, and some tools to help with productivity.
I have listed a bunch of useful tools and resources below, the lists by no means is exhausted as there are many different solutions.
Statistics
Keeping track of your visitors such as where they come from and bounce rates etc.. are important for a few reasons, one obviously for monitzation as you can sell adspace for a higher price the more pageviews and unique views your blog has, the other it gives you scope for improvement and areas to target where you may be struggling, natural traffic for example.
StatCounter
Google Analytics
SiteMeter
MyBlogLog
Seo Tools
Domain tools are great for keeping track of things like your backlinks, pagerank, alexa rank and some tools will give you some feedback and where to target your attention, (such as SeoRush.com and ReviewMyWeb.com)
DNScoop
SeoRush
SeoMoz
SeoBook Tools
Review My Web
Blog Writing Software
Sometimes your blogs wysiwyg editor might not be up to the job, or simply you might not like it. There are a number of options available which will allow you to write your blog without actually being on your blog!
Microsoft Writer
ScribeFire
Blogdesk
Blog Search
Check your blogs linkage and coverage is always useful, as is being able to identify other blogs and bloggers in your niche, the following do a fantastic job of both.
IceRocket
Google BlogSearch
Technorati
MyBlogLog
News Aggregators
Keeping track of your subscriptions and other blogs in your niche can be tricky if it is a large number to keep track of, news aggregators can help you do this from one location and free up some time for you to focus on your own blog.
BlogPulse
BlogLines
RoJo
FeedReader
NewsGator
Protecting Your Work
Unfortunately there are still people out there who will steal for work, morally this is bad, but more importantly you can be penalised by the search engines if they think its actually YOU that has stolen content. Protect your copyright to the best of your ability.
Google Alerts
CopyScape
WP Copyright Message Plugin
Creative Commons
Making Money
A large number of bloggers want to reach the ranks of “Pro-Blogger”, to do this your blog needs to be earning, funding itself and leaving you enough cash to keep a roof over your head, there are many different monitization solutions, these are well known and actually do pay up!
Google Adsense
AdBrite
Bidvertiser
Yahoo Publisher
Amazon Affiliate
Other Blog Tools
This is a mixed bag, they don’t fall into any of the above sections but are definitely of some importance. Tools such as pinging, image hosting and plugins can vastly improve your productivity and save precious bandwidth.
Ping Tools
Image Hosting (for none stand alone blogs)
Wordpress Plugins (Social Bookmarking)
Social Bookmarking For Non Wordpress Blogs/Sites
Favicon Creators
Free Stock Photos
A Few More
Disqus (cool comments system)
FeedBurner (feed management)
Wibiya (awesome toolbar)
About the author: McBonio is a full time web designer and developer and usually blogs over at WebM.ag, you can also catch him over at twitter: twitter.com/mcbonio
Author: mcbonio (1 Articles)
I'm a full time web design/developer, who also does a little blogging. You can find me over at http://www.webm.ag or on twitter @mcbonio
A Collection Of Free Blogging Tools…
Blog Engage is all about bloggers so what better subject to cover than some tools that may potentially help a few fellow bloggers out!
I have tried to be broad in my collection and avoid the basics, (i.e. blogging platforms etc…) and covered stats, mo…
Great list. I’ll be giving a few of those tools a try.
Some of them are new to me will surely give it a try
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Thanks for this post! I’m giving Amazon another try right now, we’ll see how they do.
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