Below are some of the tools I use on a daily to weekly basis to run my travel blogging business. The links to some of these tools are affiliate links, so if you sign up for them or purchase them, I’ll earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. As a matter of fact, you’ll get my gratitude and a happy dance for using them in return 🙂
Let me know if you have a question about any of these tools.
Keeping the blog online
Siteground
Siteground is the third hosting company I tried out and so far, the third one has been the charm. Great support, no downtime and very reasonable pricing. I’m on their Go Geek shared hosting plan, which allows for an unlimited amount of websites, as long as they don’t take up more than 30GB web space, which they aren’t even close to doing.
StudioPress
This blog is designed using the StudioPress Genesis framework. While StudioPress sells different themes you can use with the Genesis framework, I had a custom theme designed for Wonderful Wanderings. That’s the benefit of this framework: you can go anywhere with it… if you know how to code or hire a great designer/coder 🙂
Keeping the emails flowing
Convertkit
After having used Mailchimp for over four years, I made the switch to ConvertKit because it allows me to tag my subscribers so that I can send very targeted emails without bothering people with things they don’t want to read about. It’s a bit pricier than other companies, but they’re the only company offering the kind of options that they do.
Money Matters
TransferWise
Aside from having a regular business account with my Belgian bank and an international PayPal account, I started using TransferWise as a way to get paid in foreign currency without having to pay any fees. Unlike PayPal, Transferwise doesn’t charge a fee when you receive money. Their Borderless account functions as a collection of virtual foreign bank accounts through which you can send and receive money in various currencies. You only pay for transfers.
Sign up via my link and get a $500 free transfer.
Other useful stuff
Travel Blog Success
Travel Blog Success is a course tackling just about everything you need to know as a travel blogger while giving you lots of great networking opportunities in its Facebook group. You can read my review of the course here
Tailwind
I use a bunch of tools to help me with my social media, but I’m pretty sure Tailwind is the most valuable one. It allows me to schedule pins so that I’m not tempted to waste away my days looking at pretty photos on Pinterest itself. It’s very user-friendly and support is great.
Sign up through this link and get your first month of Tailwind Plus for free!
Insightly
Insightly is the CRM in which I input, tag and categorize all my business contacts. In two seconds I can save any email conversations in there and the paid plan allows me to batch draft and edit emails in just a few minutes. This is like my little black book, but way better.