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My Favorite Resources, Plugins & Tools For Bloggers

This list contains my favorite resources, plugins, and tools for bloggers wanting to grow their traffic, community, and income and turn their blogs into full-time businesses. 

Note: Some of the below links are affiliate links, meaning I earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you. *All* of the tools I recommend are tools I personally put my seal of approval on, so rest assured I am not recommending anything I don’t totally think would benefit you.

Incredible Deals

AppSumo. I’m obsessed with this site that regularly promotes incredible deals on tools, plugins, and platforms for online business owners. 

Hosting

BigScoots (top recommendation!). This is the hosting company I use and love thanks to its excellent uptime, support, and feature-rich packages. They’re known for their “white glove” support and in my experience they fix issues almost instantly and go above and beyond for their clients.

Bluehost. A reliable, budget-friendly hosting provider. Their hosting plans start at $2.95/month (though note they do get pricier after that).

SiteGround. Another option for those looking for a budget-friendly host.

HostGator. Another option for those looking for a budget-friendly host.

Tools For Blog Setup

NameCheap. One of the best places to get affordable domains. They also offer hosting and business email services.

Envato Market. A huge collection of themes, plugins, email templates and photos to make your blog look snazzy and to your marketing more effective. ***This is almost always the first place I look when I need anything for my blog.

Beaver Builder Theme. This is the lightweight, SEO-friendly theme I use for Jessie on a Journey. It has a much smaller learning curve than many other themes, in my opinion. Bonus: Beaver Builder offers incredible support.

Kadence Theme (get $20 off through the link). Kadence Theme is a lightweight yet full-featured WordPress theme for creating beautiful fast loading and accessible websites. This is the theme I hear bloggers in my community raving about most. They do have a free version as well as a paid pro version, which includes more premium offerings and support.

Memories & Postcard Kadence Child Themes (get $10 off with code JESSIE). These stunning WordPress themes are designed by travel bloggers for travel bloggers, with SEO and user experience in mind.

Beaver Builder Plugin. I use this paid plugin to create gorgeous landing pages / blog pages. Check out my About Page for an example. Basically you can keep the theme you have, but turn it into a drag-and-drop pagebuilder.

On Jessie on a Journey, I love using the Beaver Builder Theme in conjunction with the Beaver Builder Plugin.

WP-Rocket (get 20% off with code jessie20). This caching and performance optimization plugin does a lot. Once I installed it, it analyzed my blog and gave me some suggestions. After simply pressing some of their caching clearing buttons I was already seeing a boost in performance.

Google Analytics & Google Seach Console. Two free tools from Google that will help you monitor — and grow — your blog traffic.

Legal & Accounting

QuickBooks. This robust accounting software is one of the more popular options, allowing you save money on hiring an accountant by taking your finances and your business accounting into your own hands. Personally, I use it to help with bookkeeping and for managing my payroll taxes.

Lisa Fraley DIY Legal Templates. My friend and attorney Lisa Fraley offers DIY legal templates to ensure you’re protecting your business. While not cheap, they allow you to save a lot of money when compared to hiring a lawyer. A few important pages all bloggers should have include a Privacy Policy, Disclaimer, and Website Terms Of Use. If you have products or services or run live events there will be additional pages you should have set up.

Liz Stapleton DIY Legal Templates. Another option for legal templates; these are specifically geared toward bloggers.

Wealthfront. I use their high-interest Cash Account to help my money work for me. They also have robo-investing options too. Please note: I’m not an accountant, so consult your own financial advisor before making financial decisions. I’m simply sharing what I personally use and love. New Wealthfront clients who use my sign-up link will get a bonus offer, as will I for making the referral.

Capital One SavorOne Credit Card. This is my favorite no-fee credit card as it offers cash back (including 5% cash back on travel booked through Capital One Travel), no foreign transaction fees, and a signup bonus.

Chase Sapphire Reserve Credit Card. This is my favorite overall points-based travel credit card. While it does have an annual fee, there are loads of perks included like free Global Entry/TSA PreCheck, Priority Pass, a $300 travel credit, 10x points on hotels booked through Chase Travel, 5x points on flights booked through Chase Travel, and more.

Affiliate Marketing

Affilimate. This tool can help give you advanced insights into exactly where your affiliate income is coming from. You can even see what links/visuals people are clicking on a specific blog post.

Affiliate Tables. Travel creator Shelley Marmor earns $275,000+ per year from her blog, mainly from affiliate marketing. One way she’s been able to increase her affiliate income is by creating and implementing visually stunning affiliate comparison tables on her website. The link shows you exactly how they work too!

Travelpayouts (new users can use code “JESSIE” for a $50 bonus on their first payout). This affiliate marketplace is 100% focused on connecting travel creators with travel brands. Their team is also super collaborative and is open to creative ideas for promotion. To earn on autopilot, you can set up their Emerald tool, which uses AI to automatically add calls-to-action to your content to help convert readers into bookings.

Stay22. Along with being able to create maps that promote local hotels and vacation rentals, their LMA features use the power of AI to help travel bloggers earn more affiliate income. Join through my affiliate link and get a $100 bonus once you hit 100 bookings (which their AI tools can make it easier to do!).

ShareASale. Another great affiliate marketplace as they have loads of high-paying programs related to travel and conscience lifestyle.

Email Marketing

Mailerlite. An email marketing platform that is free up to 1,000 subscribers. This is the email marketing I use and love. They have one of the most robust free plans I’ve ever seen as well as excellent support.

Kit (my link gets you 30 days free, no credit card required). Possibly the best email marketing service for bloggers, with loads of features to help you build and nurture your list and a very user-friendly interface.

Email Marketing Membership from Liz Wilcox. This amazing membership gets you email marketing trainings + done-for-you email/newsletter swipe copy for just $9 per month. Click the sales page link for a video showing exactly what your membership dashboard looks like. Bonus: Not only is Liz brilliant when it comes to email marketing, she is incredibly fun to learn from!

Norbert. A great tool for finding a contact’s email (as long as you know their name and where they work).

Interact (Use code “INTERACT10” for 10% off). Grow your email list by creating beautiful free quizzes that engage your audience. You can use this strategy to grow your email list by asking people for their email address in exchange for their quiz results.

Social Media

ManyChat (get 1 month of their Pro Plan free). This tool allows you to automate the delivery of your content/freebies/products on Instagram. Example: You can encourage people to comment a certain word to get your opt-in in their DMs. Example here.

PinGenerator. This tool helps you create and schedule loads of pins instantly. Simply give it a blog post URL, click generate, and it will pull text and photos into your pin templates automatically. Bonus: The tool includes a built-in scheduler! Click here to watch a short demo I created.

PinClicks (get 20% off with code “Jessie20OFF”). This tool makes it easy to do keyword research for Pinterest. Along with being able to find keywords and related keywords to optimize for, the tool tracks your keywords so you can see where you’re gaining and losing rankings!

Tailwind (free trial for new users + $30 credit). A great tool for scheduling Pinterest pins during optimal times to keep your account healthy and active. Their *Communities* feature allows you to collaborate with other pinners in your niche to share each other’s content.

Taja (7-day free trial included). This tool uses AI to automatically turn your YouTube videos into 10+ YouTube Shorts and social media posts in one click.

SmarterQueue. This is the social media scheduling tool I use to plan and schedule my social media content. My favorite feature is that it *recycles* your posts, so you can spend less time creating posts while still staying visible online. They also have a built-in feature to search for content by other creators that you may want to share. The platform supports Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, Threads, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, and Google My Business.

Later. While I use SmarterQueue for most channels, I still use Later for Instagram. They also have an AI tool that can help you create captions and find hashtags – and a place to save your captions and hashtag bundles to use later.

TubeBuddy. This tool provides information that can help you rank your videos in YouTube search. I especially love the keyword research feature!

Hubbub Lite (formerly Grow Social). This is the social media sharing plugin I use (and love!). First of all the buttons look sleek, and there are numerous customization options, from the look and placement of the buttons to how many shares there should be before share counts are displayed. ← A powerful feature for growing your authority.

Graphic Design

Canva. Again, a free tool that helps you create beautiful blog and social media graphics — even if you’re not a designer.

IvoryMix. This site features loads of tools and resources for your creative projects. That link will score you 500 FREE stock photos, too!

Creative Market. This is my absolute favorite resource for finding graphics, templates, fonts, graphics, and more.

Depositphotos. To help avoid copyright infringement issues, I like to purchase the licenses of the stock photos I use. This site has a huge library of photos and is budget-friendly too.

Blogging & SEO

CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer. This free tool helps you come up with enticing headlines for your blog posts.

RightBlogger. Created by expert blogger Ryan Robinson (who I’ve personally followed for years!), RightBlogger is the ultimate asset for content creators who want to streamline their workflow using AI. They have templates for everything you can think of: drafting outlines, writing and optimizing articles and social posts, turning YouTube videos into blog posts, writing newsletters, content planning and keyword research, and so much more. The tool can even help you monetize your blogging business with its templates for creating sales pages, ad copy, course outlines, and freelance contracts, just to name a few examples.

Keysearch (get 30% off with code “jessieonajourney30”). This inexpensive tool allows you to kick your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) up a notch to more easily rank on Google’s first page and increase your traffic. 

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. This free tool from Ahrefs not only performs detailed site audits to identify over 140 common SEO issues (and fixes), but also monitors backlink data, analyzes traffic-driving keywords, and enables site comparison against competitors in search engine results pages, enhancing SEO potential understanding through metrics like Search Volume, Keyword Difficulty, and Traffic Value.

Rank Math. This plugin will help you optimize your content for SEO. Most bloggers use either this plugin or YOAST to also add an SEO title and meta description to their posts (though Rank Math is more feature-rich and higher rated).

Semrush (get a 14-day free trial of their Pro Plan with my link). Do SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC and social media marketing from just one platform.

What Would Seth Godin Do?. A free plugin that allows you to show a call to action — such as to sign up for your email list or follow you on Instagram — to every visitor to your website.

TablePress. This plugin allows you to create comparison charts within blog posts where, hint hint, you can place affiliate links.

Bitly. Allows you to create tracking links, which make it easier to track link clicks in a campaign.

LinkWhisper. Automate your internal link building! This tool suggests links based on the content of your site, helps you clean up broken links, finds posts that need backlinks, and more. Remember, backlinks are an important part of SEO and ranking in organic search, so this tool can help you grow your traffic.

Short Pixel. This tool can help you compress your images for faster site speeds.

AI-Powered Site Boosters. Get unique coded elements that will make your site stand out to Google and your audience!

Google PageSpeed Insights. Use this free tool to check your site speed.

Giveaways

Gleam. This viral giveaway tool is my go-to for running giveaways that grow my email list, podcast subscribers, and social media followers — and really any platform I want to grow. 

Video & Podcast Creation

Descript. This video and podcast production tool helps you streamline writing, recording, transcribing, editing, collaborating, and sharing your content. One of the best features is the ability to automatically remove filler words, which can help you save time with editing.

Tella (link includes a free trial + 30% discount). My favorite tool for creating videos on my laptop quickly and easily. With Tella, you can share your screen, record your face, or both. The platform also allows you to quickly turn your clips into a visually stunning video using a variety of templates and tools. Here is an example video made with Tella.

Samson Technologies Q2U Microphone. This is the microphone I use for all of my podcast interviews (example here), workshops, and basically anything I record while sitting at my laptop.

Zoom H4n Microphone & Recorder. This is the microphone I use for audio and video content that I recorded away from my laptop, such as my solo podcast episodes (example here). Note: There is also a newer Zoom H6 if you want to get the latest version.

Insta360x4 (it can shoot up to 8k resolution!). I use this to create unique 360 videos (like this) and photos (like this). There are so many interesting things you can do with this camera, like tiny planet shots, FPV shots, drone-like shots, and more. The best part is the magic happens within the app, so you can simply walk with the camera and then edit the clips in different ways later. Recommendation: I highly recommend also adding the Invisible Selfie Stick, Lens Cap, and large SD Card (V30 or higher). You might also consider buying a backup battery.

Product Creation & Promotion

PeekPro. This is the software I use to collect tour bookings safely and securely. The platform has so many features that can help you increase sales – with amazing phone and email support included.

CountdownHero. This evergreen countdown timer allows you to create true limited-time offers across multiple digital touchpoints – including pages as well as emails. This is helpful when creating tripwire funnels and other evergreen sales funnels.

  • Deadline Funnel is another timer option for creating scarcity. It’s super robust and I absolutely love it, though note it’s much more expensive than CountdownHero.

Teachable (use code JESSIEONAJOURNEY to get 1 free month of their Pro Plan). For many bloggers, it makes sense to create a course or coaching program to help monetize their blogs, and Teachable is one of the most popular and affordable platforms for doing this.

ThriveCart. ThriveCart is a powerful cart and checkout platform that makes it easy to sell digital products, courses, and memberships with high-converting sales pages, upsells, and affiliate tracking built in. It’s a must for bloggers because it simplifies the tech side of selling while boosting revenue through features like one-click upsells, lifetime access (no monthly fees), and customizable funnels that are beginner-friendly yet super effective.

ThriveCart Learn+. For a more budget-friendly option for creating an online course, ThriveCart Learn+ is a solid choice – especially as it is a one-time fee (vs monthly/annual subscription). Just note you’ll need to sign up as a ThriveCart customer first.

Memberpress. If you want to create a membership website through WordPress, this feature-rich plugin can help you monetize your site through subscriptions, courses, paywalls, communities, more.

Shopify. Incredible platform for creating an online store with physical products. 

Proof. While Proof Experiences allows you to customize your site for different website visitors — for instance, showing different people different CTAs to better personalize the site experience — their Proof Pulse allows you to add social proof to your products by showing notifications when people take actions on your website (ie “Cindy from NYC just purchase The Travel Course”).

Organization & Managing Teams

Asana. Another free collaboration tool. This is a great tool, though is less visual than Miro.

SaneBox (2-week trial + $25 off!). Cut your team’s email management time in half & get started on the road to a cleaner inbox and more productive day with SaneBox.

Working With Brands & Partnerships

My Travel Blogger VIP List. Weekly paid and growth opportunities for bloggers sent to your inbox every Monday at 8am EST.

InfluenceKit. When following up with a brand/tourism board or creating a case study for your media kit, you can use InfluenceKit to create beautiful reports. You get 1 free report per month too!

PRNewswire. On this site you can find press releases — and contact info — by PR people on behalf of the brands they represent.

Cision. Create a media profile to get on the lists of PR people (though note you will receive a lot of press releases if you do this).

Travel Massive. A global networking event for the travel industry taking place in numerous cities worldwide. It offers a great opportunity for networking with brands and tourism boards that you want to work with.

Visibility & Publicity

Google Trends. This free tool can help you keep up with trending topics to craft story ideas around and pitch to media.

Awareness Days. Use this site to research holidays and awareness events to create timely story ideas around.

Qwoted. This tool helps you easily share your expertise with media to be a source.

Sources of Sources. This tool helps you easily share your expertise with media to be source.

Photography

Getty Images Pricing Calculator. Get an idea of how much you could be charging for your photography and videos.

Insta360x4 (it can shoot up to 8k resolution!). I use this to create unique 360 videos (like this) and photos (like this). There are so many interesting things you can do with this camera, like tiny planet shots, FPV shots, drone-like shots, and more. The best part is the magic happens within the app, so you can simply walk with the camera and then edit the clips in different ways later. Recommendation: I highly recommend also adding the Invisible Selfie Stick, Lens Cap, and large SD Card (V30 or higher). You might also consider buying a backup battery.

Nikon Z6ii. This lightweight mirrorless camera is what I use to get professional shots. This lens is high-quality, versatile, and budget-friendly when compared with the pro-level quality you get.

Courses

I have my own collection of courses for bloggers. Along with my Travel Blog Prosperity membership, my most popular offerings include:

Additionally, other courses I highly recommend include:

Nadalie Bardo’s Pinterest Courses. Nadalie has a massive reach in the multi-millions on Pinterest — which helps her grow her website traffic, email list, and income. She shares her strategies in her Pinterest courses — including Pinterest Popular, which is the only Pinterest course you’ll ever need.

  • By the way, Nadalie and I co-hosted a Free Pinterest Masterclass together! It’ll give you a taste of Nadalie’s teaching style (and you can score a special discount at the end).

Profitable Part-Time Blogger (eCourse) via Nina Clapperton of She Knows SEO. Learn how to take your blog full-time while working part-time hours. By the end of the course, you’ll have a clear roadmap and algorithm-proof strategy for success!

  • Looking for something more budget-friendly? Nina also offers the 6 Months To 50K Sessions Masterclass, which offers a step-by-step plan for getting your blog into Mediavine in 6 months!

Outdoor Creator Academy UGC Course by Chad Lubinski (get 40% off with code webinar). Want to learn how to earn as a UGC creator, no following required? Chad has been able to secure up to $10,000 months through UGC collabs and quit his 9-to-5 job, and in this course, he breaks down a step-by-step strategy to help you do the same! If you’d like a taste of Chad’s expertise, I interviewed him on my YouTube channel here.