When you start blogging, there are a few things you need to purchase: a camera, a domain, props… There’s no need to break the bank however, as there are lots of things out there that can be a huge help, completely for free. I’d like to share a few of these with you today. I honestly wouldn’t be able to daily blog and upload four videos a week without these tools!
Picmonkey
Picmonkey is a free online photo editing tool that’s absolutely perfect for editing headers and video thumbnails. It’s extremely user friendly and the design is very cute. I like working in this because everything is visually stimulating and it inspires me to make fun images.
Picmonkey has all the basic editing tools like resize, adjust brightness and contrast and colour correction, but also a bunch of filters to choose from, lots of fonts and fun overlays you can use, which is mainly what I use it for. You can even import your own fonts and overlays if you want to, which sometimes really comes in handy. Plus, their blog offers awesome photo editing advice and they always have seasonal editing packages that you can use to give themes to your images. Some of the options are only available if you pay for a premium account, but the free options are plenty.
iPiccy
Sticking with the online photo editing programmes, iPiccy is quickly becomming my new favourite. I was hesitant to use it at first because I’m pretty big on aesthetics and Picmonkey just looks so much cuter, but performance-wise, iPiccy pretty much does everything that Picmonkey can, and more. iPiccy allows you to alter curves, use a clone tool, and just has a lot more professional options in general. What really hauled me over is the option to use each tool with a paintbrush so you can target where the tool will be applied, for example to only sharpen the object in the foreground of your image or only add saturation to flowers, etc.
iPiccy offers more filters, and they’re all free. It also offers a wider range of “skin improvement” tools, but on this front I feel like Picmonkey does a slightly better job.
iPiccy even allows you to use layers. I feel like this is the closest you’re going to get to professional software online, let alone for free. Definitely recommend this!
Canva
Now that you’ve got a beautiful photo, I assume you want to do something with it. If, like me, you love gorgeous design but struggle with designing something from scratch, Canva can be a great help. They provide loads of pre-made designs that are almost completely customisable, but provide beautiful on trend bases that you can start from. The free features are quite extensive. You’ll need to sign up to get started, but the website is well worth a visit!
WordPress Editorial Calendar
I don’t want to imagine what it would be like to blog without my WP editorial calendar. It allows you to schedule all your upcoming posts in calendar form, so you can see exactly what’s coming up when. You can add a new post on any day, and fill in the title, publishing time and an outline of the content straight from the calendar.
I use this plugin to map out my upcoming posts and videos, so that I’m always on top of what’s coming, and can be sure I plan in a nice variety of topics and everything is spread out evenly. The calendar allows me to plan way ahead and already have drafts of all the posts, without losing my overview.
The biggest advantage of this vs. an external editorial calendar, is that everything I do is immediately applied. I can drag and drop posts from one day to another, and the publishing date will change automatically. If I come up with a post title, I can write it on the designated date and boom, the draft is there. It’s ideal.
Buffer
Speaking of scheduling, Buffer is a great help. It’s pretty much like a free version of Hootsuite, where you can schedule social media posts in advance. I use this to publish social media posts about new blogposts and videos when I’m not around. I set the publishing time to a time I know the most of my followers will be online (you can see that in the analytics of your Facebook page, great tool!) so I have the biggest reach, but I don’t have to look at my watch all day and be ready to hit publish at that exact time. I usually schedule my posts for the entire week on sunday and then I don’t have to worry about my promotional social media updates at all throughout the week. I can just post my personal updates and leave the promotional posts to go up automatically. This takes a lot of stress and wasted time out of the process!
Wunderlist
As far as taking stress out of the process goes, my number one favourite thing to do is make to do lists. Wunderlist is absolutely perfect for that: it allows me to make separate lists that can be categorised, and you can add a date and priority to each task. You can also add subtasks and notes, and even add files to your tasks. Lists can be shared, shared tasks will appear in your inbox.
You can view your tasks by list, all tasks of today, or all tasks of the week. If you have any weekly or monthly tasks, you can make them recur (the interval is customizable).
Plus, it makes an awesome *pling* sound when you check off a task.
I got a year of Wunderlist Pro from my network provider, but the only pro feature I actually use is the pro background image (lol) so you can get by perfectly fine with the free version.
There’s a free Wunderlist app that syncs with the desktop version, and even a widget. I love it!
Notebook
Ok, so technically this isn’t free, but it’s definitely inexpensive and maybe you already have one lying around: a good old-fashioned notebook. I got this one with tab dividers at HEMA for €2 and use it exclusively for my blog and YouTube channel. The notebook is currently divided into four sections: topic ideas, series ideas, brand work, and notes. The first two sections are used to brainstorm and write down any ideas or requests I get, so that I can refer to those when I need some inspiration. The brand work section is used to keep track of any agreements I have with brands for advertorials, sponsorships etc.. The last section is used to lay out what I want to say in videos where I talk a lot and need some structure, or what I need to film for a video with lots of different scenes (like a get ready with me), and any other random Loepsie-related notes. Some things just work best on paper, and I use this notebook for those.
So, these are the free blogging tools that make my life so much easier! Do you have any other that you’d like to share?
