In no particular order here are the tools I am currently using and a few that I hope to try in the the near future.
Domain
Just like with hosting there are a million affiliate programs and special offers floating around about which domain provider to go with it. At the end of the day I use a lot of google products and it just made sense to go with Google Domains and so far I am happy with my decision.
I also like to do a quick check to see what social handles would be available to fit this domain if I wanted to say start a Youtube channel or Pinterest account with the same name as my domain. You can use sites like https://www.namecheckr.com/ to see what names are currently available.
Hosting
Currently I am with bluehost.com for my Niche sites. It seems to be a popular choice among niche site builders (probably due to the affiliate program) but I needed a place to store my sites and I figured I would give them a try. Any host will have bad and good reviews but it really depends on who you are willing to give a chance to as if the worst scenario happens you take your site backups (which you are religiously doing) and move to another provider.
Keyword Tools
For keyword research at this early stage of my sites I am depending on Google Trends. Eventually I plan to use Google’s Keyword Planner tool once I signup for Google ADs.
Other tools that are heavily marketed to us that I would like to try at some point are:
- SEMRUSH (semrush.com)
- ahrefs (ahrefs.com
Blog Platform and Plugins
In a past life I ran a family blog with Drupal but that ended up having way too large of a learning curve with my work load at the time so eventually it fell by the wayside and the hosting expired on me. For these niche sites I went with the pack leader in WordPress. So far I’ve enjoyed the easy setup of WordPress using the tools that Bluehost provides.
The only plugins I am currently running on my sites are:
- Bluehost – the provider has this plugin but it looks to duplicate tools natively found in WordPress. I’ll probably disable in the future but for now it is active.
- Jetpack – another plugin installed by default but I plan to test out the backup feature so leaving for now as well.
- Site Kit by Google – the only plugin I installed on my sites so that I could easily setup Google Analytics as it’s a numbers game if you want to be a winner.
- Yoast SEO – installed by default but leaving until I get more familiar with SEO.
Blog Theme
Since I’m using wordpress I looked at the most popular (non-default) themes and everybody seemed to be using the generatepress or Astra themes so those are my current go to themes. I have run into a few issues with the generatepress theme around limited functionality since I only run the free version but so far I have found workarounds that I am happy with. I think if I am going to keep generatepress I might as well buy the premium version but I don’t want to waste money on a product I might leave in the future and also I want to experience the shortcomings so I more fully understand how product works.