[Jane]’s TOP PIcks
Blogging Tools & Affiliate Programs I Love
Since starting this blog in 2024, I’ve used many different tools & resources to improve & grow.
I’ve also joined some fantastic travel related affiliate programs that I’m starting to earn a little bit of money on too!
I’m sharing them here to help anyone who wants to start their own travel blog 🙂
Disclaimer: This page may contain affiliate links, meaning if you decide to make a purchase through my links I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
WordPress & Domain Hosting
To start a blog you’ll need a Domain Name: this is just the name of your website such as andyandjane.com & you’ll want to get WordPress Hosting which you will build your site on.
LYRICAL HOST
10% OFF YOUR FIRST HOSTING PLAN PAYMENT: ANDYJANE10
I’ve recently moved my hosting to Lyrical Host. From the moment I signed up they were super helpful in moving my site over to their hosting platform & getting me all set up.
The service is friendly, efficient & feels really personal. I’ve also moved a few of my domain names over to Lyrical too & if I need any others in future I will purchase them on their platform.
I feel safe that my site now gets daily back ups & I can also create a staging site if I ever want to change my theme again without closing down my current website.
Highly recommend Lyrical & I only wish I’d joined sooner!
WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme is simply how your blog looks or the layout. It can include colours, fonts & page structure.
If you’re just starting out, I recommend using the free version of the Kadence Theme. It’s fast, customisable & user-friendly. There’s also free starter templates you can use. Don’t buy Pipdig themes.
DIY DREAM SITE
I recently upgraded my theme as my blog has grown & I wanted it to look just a bit better. I eventually decided to purchase a Kadence Child theme from DIY Dream Site!
The theme I bought was the Rae Theme. It was super simple to install & so easy to customise.
Our site now looks really professional, it’s easy to navigate & all Katy’s themes are built with site speed in mind so everything loads quickly & smoothly!
Photo Editing & Graphics
If you want to enhance your travel photos or create Pins for your blog posts, here’s what I use:
Canva
For adding text or graphics on photos for Instagram, I use the free version of Canva, however I will probably upgrade again soon once my blog starts making money lol.
It also comes in super handy for creating & designing your pins for Pinterest.
Canva is really user friendly so you don’t need any design experience to get started with it. I’ve been using Canva for my fitness business for years!
Keyword Research
For every blog post I always do Keyword Research beforehand. This is simply a word or phrase that users will type into a search engine to find content related to a specific topic.
Keysearch
When I first started blogging & learning about keyword research, all the tools seemed so expensive! Until I stumbled across Keysearch!
It’s really affordable especially if you’ve just started your blog & I use it all the time to figure out keywords & what to include in my posts. Highly recommend!!
Keywords Everywhere
Another favourite keyword tool that I use regularly is Keywords Everywhere. I’m on the Bronze plan which gives me 100,000 credits a year.
Once you purchase credits & install the extension on your browser, you’ll be able to see lots of cool metrics such as SEO Difficulty for a keyword or phrase, traffic metrics, related keywords & so on. It’s so easy to use.
It can also be used for analysing Youtube, Pinterest & even Instagram metrics!
I love it because I can see how difficult a keyword may be to rank on google & plenty of other numbers to inform my research!
Travel Blogging Affiliate Programs
If you’re starting a travel blog you might want to think about joining Affiliate Programs to earn money for hotels you want to recommend or travel services.
Here are some of the best programs I’m part of at the moment:
Discover Cars
This was one of the first affiliate programs I joined & boy am I’m so glad I did. It’s earnt me the most money so far (although I haven’t cashed it out yet.)
Because we like to hire cars everywhere we go, it was a no brainer for me to join as I could easily write blog posts on hiring cars in certain places & then add my Discover Cars affiliate links.
It helps that we have booked through the website as well so we can offer a personal review. They have really helpful tips & info on how to write blog posts when you sign up too which is fabulous!
Stay 22
I heard lots of people talking about Stay 22 so recently signed up. It’s one of the best affiliate solutions for travel creators & you don’t need a certain amount of traffic or followers to join.
Stay 22 will let you create links from Booking, Expedia, VRBO & the like without having to sign up for each individual program. They have some really cool features to boost affiliate sales on your blog.
Travel Payouts
Travel Payouts is another fantastic travel affiliate platform.
It has a solid selection of travel-related affiliate programs to join all in one spot. I organize all my Booking.Com, Get Your Guide & Expedia links from their hub.
They also provide great affiliate tools to help increase your income & promote your favourite travel brands on your blog.
Highly recommend Travel Payouts if you’ve just started your blog!