The voice of the blogosphere has grown over the years to be a well respect medium for disseminating information as well as a tool for launching
businesses and opening doors for ordinary people to making a decent living and achieve their dreams online. Blogging today is not quite as simple as it was in past years and with over 200 Million blogs in existence the competition is quite fierce.
However, one thing I have noticed is that not many bloggers are extraordinary in their efforts to making their blog a success. Lots of mediocrity and sub par performances are abundant as most don’t truly respect the art and are just not hungry enough to seek to be better day-in day-out.
There will never be a perfect blogger but we can work to achieve the best of the best by continuously reading, tweaking, studying, designing and learning to ensure that we stand out in the crowd.
Here are 20 excellent resources that will help you to get started on the right track if you’re new to blogging as well as links for the seasoned blogger who needs to tip the scale.
Excellent Books
Crush It! Why Now Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion – By Gary Vaynerchuk – Through his own success, Gary highlights useful and unique methods for making the most out of social media to grow your business online through the power of passion.
31 Days To Build A Better Blog – Darren Rowse provides a daily “things to do” course that instructs you on what to do to get your blog off the ground and driving traffic.
Digging Into WordPress – This book provides the most concise, easy to follow guides on how to master the most powerful blogging platform on earth, WordPress.
Purple Cow – Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable – The thoughts and strategies of a marketing mastermind, Seth Godin. In this book, he provides practical and effective marketing techniques that apply easily to every online business venture.
Design & Coding
How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer – Teaches how to truly make your WordPress blog extraordinary in design and content.
Lynda.com – This site has a plethora of unique, easy to follow video tutorials to help you master blogging, WordPress and anything digital.
WordPress Codex – From the developers of WordPress themselves, here you will find detailed explanations of every element within the WordPress CMS.
WordPress Themes
Within these sites you will find some of the best WordPress themes on the web.
Awesome Sites You Should Follow & Use
Problogger.net – One of the best blogs you could ever read which gives practical advise from it’s founder, Darren Rowse, as well as the greatest minds on the net.
My Blog Guest – Excellent community, useful for finding Guest Blogging opportunities.
2Createawebsite.com Blog -Another experienced leader in the blogosphere who freely provides the knowledge to help you master blogging while earning from your efforts.
Sam’s Web Guide – Although fairly new, my blog provides articles that hit the nail on the head by pointing you in the right direction on your blogging journey.
WP Beginner – This site has amazing tutorials for tweaking and customizing your WordPress blog.
Other Online Resources
Google’s SEO Starter Guide – Forget about what so-called SEO experts have to say. Find all the information on SEO you will ever need from the creators of the biggest search engine.
SEO Book – Massive authority on Search Engine Optimization and is a powerful community for dominating your niche through search.
Google’s 20 Things I Learned About Browsers & The Web – To be an effective blogger, its very important to know the basics of the web, browsers and how it is presented to users.
Web Hosting
Host Gator – Host Gator is one of the best web hosts I have used since I first started building websites. My sites have never been down with them, they provide excellent support and sites load much faster than most other hosts I’ve tried in the past. I recommend you give them a try.
Online Tools
Firebug Extension for Firefox & Chrome – If you’re tweaking and customizing your own themes then you need to get this extension. It allows you to view and identify HTML and CSS elements that are crucial for making real time changes while growing to understand how your theme works.
Conclusion & Discussion
Whether you’ve been blogging for years or a newbie, the resources above will present something new and will help to grow or ignite a passion for blogging; and open your eyes to effective ideas over-looked by the masses.
Do you have or know of an awesome resource not mentioned above? Please share it with us in the comments section below. We would love to hear from you.
12/02/2011, 05:22 am
Since I am newbie, I know very little about blogging but now blogging becomes my passion and find your article as a great help for me. Thank you sam:)
12/02/2011, 07:10 am
You’re welcome Jomson, thank you for reading.
03/11/2012, 02:47 pm
Great Resources… and much useful, i think every blogger should know about that. i really like 31 Days To Build A Better Blog book, thanks for sharing.