Best Free Resources for Starting a Blog in 2023!
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Are you looking to start a blog for beginners for free? Do you want free blogging resources that actually impact your business? While it’s nearly impossible to start blogging to make money for free, you can get pretty close! These six tools are my favorite free blogging tools, free content creation tools, and free online business tools! You may have to pay for your website and hosting but you can create digital products to sell online for free, start an email list for free and so much more!
Read more to get started using my favorite free online business tools!
Not sure where to start?
The most important thing to understand about blogging in 2023 is that it’s just different than it was 10 years ago! The wild west of blogging is over and there are more expectations of bloggers than there were when they were just getting started. A good shift in your thinking is that your blog is just part of your overall online business. I won’t get into revenue streams today but think of your blog as an advertisement for the content you get paid for. Whether you’re an influencer and create sponsored content or you’re creating ebooks to sell, your blog can support your business goals and help you make money online in 2023!
Mailerlite
I love Mailerlite! I always get a bit annoyed I don’t hear about it more often! Mailerlite is an email marketing tool that’s free up to 1000 subscribers. There are super affordable plans and upgrades you can make to support your business without having to pay for an entirely new tier. You can upgrade just your landing page quota or just your subscribers, which is nice!
Mailerlite does campaigns, automation sequences, embed forms, and landing pages. You can even create websites with Mailerlite, although I haven’t tried that! It’s a really robust tool to get started with!
My only complaint is that I haven’t figured out a way to put in a countdown timer for tripwires on a landing page. It’s a pretty small complaint for where I’m at in my business right now!
How I Use It
I use Mailerlite for all of my email needs. I write my newsletters and launch sequences, affiliate marketing emails, and any other emails I need to send to my list with Mailerlite.
Mailerlite hosts all of my landing/sales funnel pages, tripwires, and embedded forms I use in my posts!
Related Post: How to Start an Email List with Mailerlite
Canva
Canva is a super easy design program you can use on your phone, tablet, browser, or as a desktop app. You can make just about any digital product or marketing asset you need in Canva. From social media graphics, to videos, to printables, to digital art…you can really do almost everything in Canva!
The free version of Canva is pretty much all you need, especially if you’re creating digital products. You can’t actually use Canva Pro templates, images, or fonts in anything you’re selling. The images and fonts in the Pro version are helpful for marketing and social media but definitely aren’t necessary!
How I Use It
I use Canva for all of my blog images, Pinterest images, Idea Pins, digital products, freebies, listing images, and I’m sure much more. I don’t know how my business would function without Canva.
I also use Canva in my personal life! It is much cheaper to make Christmas cards on Canva and have them printed than to use a popular site and order that way. I also used Canva for my wedding for my seating chart and a variety of other things! I’ve created business cards for my parents business, created worksheets for tutoring…there’s so much I’ve used Canva for!
Related Post: Create Digital Products with Canva
Creative Fabrica
Creative Fabrica is an online marketplace for fonts, graphics, and other files! There are quite a few free downloads available, definitely enough for you to get started creating digital products! They also have a $1 trial for your first month which is an amazing value!
There are different commercial use licenses available for different graphics. It’s definitely important to check out which license comes with the graphic you’re looking to download. A super helpful feature is you can filter by Print-on-Demand and full commercial use to make it easier when you’re looking for graphics for mugs and t-shirts!
How I Use It
I hop on Creative Fabrica often for graphics to add to my seasonal digital products. When I’m working on digital art, I exclusively use Creative Fabrica.
I’m definitely not on Creative Fabrica every day but I use it a handful of times a month, more depending on the products I’m looking for. I upgraded my account and have paid through September 2024 for my membership during Black Friday, I think I paid $3.99 a month! But I was using the free version for quite a while!
Related Post: Create Digital Products with Creative Fabrica
You likely know what Pinterest is if you’re trying to start an online business. But Pinterest is my favorite online tool and social network.
Though Pinterest has changed a lot over the past few years, it’s still the best way to get free traffic to your website and content. Whether you’re using Video Pins, Static Pins, or Idea Pins, there’s a pin to help your business!
How I Use It
I create graphics for all of my content (using Canva) and post at least 5 pins per piece of content. I also repost my TikToks as Idea Pins and am working on a new Idea Pin strategy for 2023.
Pinterest definitely drives traffic to my website, landing pages, and products but I’m still working hard to create a strong, consistent strategy. This definitely wasn’t free but Nadalie Bardo’s Pinterest Popular course is probably the best Pinterest course on the market right now. Her strategy is amazing and caused my impressions to go from 300ish per day to SEVENTEEN THOUSAND in one day in November! You can check that out here if you’re interested!
Free Summits and Bundles
I’m really just diving into free summits and bundles but they can be amazingly helpful. They’re definitely not equal though. I have attended a few free summits that have been complete garbage this fall. Same thing for free bundles. If you’re entering your email address for a free product, you want it to be a good one! Still, there are some really great options out there and if you’re just getting started summits and bundles can be a great way to learn more without spending money on courses.
How I Use It
The biggest tip I have for finding good bundles is to look at the contributor’s list. Maybe this is an obvious tip but if you see big names in your niche or names of people whose courses you were hoping to purchase or had already purchased, it’s probably a good bundle. I just participated in Lizzy’s Christmas Party bundle and there were SO many amazing resources, it will take me the full month to sign up for everything I want!
I also use bundles and summits to bring people to my email list as a contributor! As I just mentioned, I was a contributor to Lizzy’s Christmas Party this year. My product wasn’t business related and was definitely one of the lowest-cost products available (because it was my only real product at the time I submitted!) but I grew my email list by 150 people and climbing! And my growth is on the lower end, there are some creators who gained 1000 or more new subscribers just by participating in this bundle!
I submitted applications to contribute to another bundle in January and a summit in April, I’ll keep you posted!
Notion
I’m recently obsessed with Notion. It’s basically like a digital bullet journal. It does everything you want your bullet journal to do but can’t because you can’t link things in a physical journal. I’m still getting the hang of Notion as of writing this but it’s already changed my content creation and business!
How I Use It
I do all of my planning in Notion. I have my content calendar, side hustle calendar, to-do lists, resource links, notes…basically everything I could possibly track and keep track of is linked in my Notion.
I’m also creating Notion Templates to sell in my shop and my Etsy store! I’m super excited about these products, I think they’ll sell really well and also be pretty impactful for the customer!
I hope at least one of these free online resources can help you as you set and reach your 2023 business goals! What resource are you most excited for?