8 Important Free Accounts to Utilize When Blogging

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8 Important Free Accounts to Utilize When Blogging

I want to run this Blog Plan blog on zero dollars.


I don't want to purchase a domain name, I don't want to spend money on marketing or advertising.  Lets see how long I can last for!

Essentially it could last for years, and I know a lot of you also don't want to spend a cent.  The blogosphere makes life hard for people like us, that don't want to spend any money until 'the dust has settled', but everything in the first few weeks on this blog has been at no cost.

So, to run for free, I will need to use a few external sites.  I wont go into great details about how to use them (otherwise we'll be here all day), but here they are for you to at least set up.


These are free accounts that I created for the Blog Plan.:

Gmail

Google's free email service is what I use for you to contact me (theblogplan@gmail.com).  Ooh, that reminds me, I should already have a contact page set up here.  That should be one of the first things that you do. But to be contacted, you need an email address, and Gmail is the best.

So why not Yahoo or Hotmail?  Maybe in the past these two were good, but there is so much more uses that Gmail has such as using it with anything Google plus other sites such as YouTube and Feedburner.

If I had my own domain, I could use my domain name email address, but that would cost me money.

Twitter

I don't think that you can get by as a blogger without having a Twitter account.  It's a great way to increase exposure for your blog, get new followers, find new clients and get that elusive traffic.  The only draw back is I find it very addictive.

My Twitter account @TheBlogPlan was created. At the moment I am averaging only 11 new followers per day.  This isn't very much and something that I can improve upon, but not a bad goal to achieve.

Facebook


You'll need a Facebook fan page.  Here's mine. If you don't want people to see your personal account, create one for your blog like I did.  Torkona Exon was created.  That profile is what I use to create all my fan pages for my blogs. This is what you want to mainly use Facebook for, the fan pages.

Feedburner

If you want anyone to RSS subscribe to your posts, Feedburner is a must have.  Also handy if you want to automatically post your new posts to sites like Twitter.

I love my RSS reader.  It is the main program that I follow blogs with.  It is everywhere on the blogosphere, so you don't want to miss out on having those subscribers following you with it.

MailChimp

If you plan on building an email list for your blog, MailChimp is a great free site to send newsletters with. I currently use it at Review'd.  Similar to Aweber, but it doesn't cost you a cent until your email list reaches 2000 people.

HelloBar

A new widget exists called the HelloBar.  I've only recently discovered this.  It's very new, but a lot of top blogs seem to be using it.  I have it installed at the top of each page and it links to my free eBook of site traffic tips.

You can only get the HelloBar with an invite.  I have 10 invites to giveaway.  The first 10 people to comment on my Facebook page "I want a HelloBar Tork!" will get one.

Dreamstime

People love photos.  I love them too.  It is great to make your own custom photographs, but there are also free sites that offer you use of professional photographs.  Dreamstime has a large online collection of free photographs that I use from time to time.

MyEcoverMaker

Last but not least, MyEcoverMaker.  It's how I made my eBook.  You don't need to make an account to use it, so it technically shouldn't be included in this list, but it is a fantastic free tool to make any eBooks that you offer look professional.

Why is it important

For my blog to function, I need four important areas to cover.  Being able to be contacted, showing my info via social media, creating a email list and doing it for free.  All of these are required to cover these areas.

Tips to remember

• The carefully about what you create as your feed or usernames.  It can be difficult to change down the track if you feel you need to.
• Remember, you aren't always going to be able to run for free if you become successful.  It's going to be a fantastic problem to have when it occurs.

Have you got any other free accounts that you use that you swear by? Would love to hear from you.

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