Five Important Blogging Tools You Need To Know About

As a professional blogger, I take the software and hardware tools I use every day to make money online very seriously. I need to work fast, and I always strive to be as productive as possible. Like many internet techies, I am working on multiple projects concurrently, and most often with tight timelines. Consequently, the software and hardware tools I select to run my online businesses need to assist me in working efficiently while delivering high quality content to my readers. And so my readers, let me introduce five important tools I use every day to make money online.

“He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail.“ - Abraham Maslow

Here are five important tools I use every day to make money online.

1. My web platform is Drupal

A powerful website architecture is an important cornerstone of any professional blog. For the last few years, I have been using Drupal 6 for my blogs. Drupal is an open source CMS that continually wins awards. You can buy a Drupal account from a company like Go Daddy and have nothing to do with the technical hosting, or you can host it yourself (note: Drupal by itself is actually free), and therefore you can have greater control over how you configure your website for the particular needs of your business. Recently, I have been using a pre-packaged distribution of Drupal called the “Acquia Distribution”. You also can grab a free copy here, and there are plenty of instructions on the Acquia website to teach you how to install and configure your first Drupal website.
 
2. My offline text editor is Open Office

I always recommend to my readers that they do not write directly into a web text editor (i.e. the browser window), rather I promot writing offline using a text editor and then when ready only taking a few seconds to post/format your post into your contact management system. Why you ask? Because there is always a chance that your web pages “times out” (i.e. resets) and you lose your post. This is likely to happen when you spend more than 20 minutes writing your article. Having used Microsoft for many years, nowadays I am actually more of a fan of free Open Source solutions. Consequently, for the last couple of years I have been using Open Office and I have been very happy. Open Office is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. I use the word processor for writing my blog, you should try it. Grab yourself a free copy here.
 
3. My roaming desktop is Google Docs

I feel that I have been particularly productive this last year, and for one new reason – I store my passwords online, and therefore they are accessible from any computer in the world, at anytime. This has allowed me to move at a faster speed on the internet than ever before. I can arrive at a blank computer (say at a friends house while travelling), and in a few minutes I can download a host of open source tools, using website account passwords that no one could possibly remember because I h. The secret to my online storage area, is Google Docs. I use a host of Google Applications to make money online, but none more than my Google Docs Spreadsheets. Here I store usernames and passwords for a host of internet applications and accounts that allow me to work efficiently online. Prior to storing my passwords online, I used to keep them on a local file on my home computer. This was not accessible when I was travelling. I strongly recommend to my readers that they sign up for Google Applications and start learning how powerful and efficient “software as a service” document management can be! Try it by signing up here!

4. My code editor is Notepad++

Professional bloggers, who really want to be successful, will often find themselves needing to adjust code on their website. For example, adding a “no follow” attribute to your non-affiliate links is a hugely powerful internet marketing trick. When adjusting code in your CMS theme (which in my case is Drupal) to do this, you will need a good code editor. A good code editor will have features like color changes for different types of code. As I have stated before, I enjoy working with open source solutions as much as possible. This means that wherever I am in the world, I can download a new free copy of the software and start work immediately – it doesn’t matter which computer I am on...because the open source code editor is free! For the last few years I have been enjoying a product called “Notepad ++” (PC only, sorry Mac addicts. Perhaps you suggest a Mac alternative using the comments below?)

5. My image editor is GIMP

Traditional newspaper editors learnt many years ago, that a good story needs a great photograph. You can pick up a number of royalty free photographs from sites like EveryStockPhoto. However, if you want to stand out from the crowd, then it’s a good idea to add some custom digital enhancements to your photographs using another great open source “Photoshop” alternative called GIMP. GIMP takes a couple of hours to learn well, but has many modules that extend its functionality for more advanced users. For example, there is a plug-in for adding watermarks to your photographs. You can grab a free copy of GIMP here!

Summary

I hope you find these tools useful. If someone here is a big Mac fan, perhaps they can suggest some Mac alternatives by posting a comment below. Next time, I will introduce some other useful tools that I use everyday. Until next time...

Julian Barabas