Back to School Freebie Countdown: Best of Blogging Advice

Recently I have began following quite a few blogs that are just getting started. I wanted to share some post that have been very helpful in improving the quality and accessibility of my blog. I know that there is still SO much I have to learn but here are a few things that will make your blogging life a little easier. 

1. REMOVE WORD VERIFICATION!!!!!

One of my pet peeves is having to type in those insane word verification formulas when I want to leave a comment. Usually I go ahead and do it because I DO want to be friendly and all but I am gritting my teeth all throughout.

I guarantee once you take it off the number of comments you receive will GREATLY increase! I have only ever had ONE spam comment, and many people have never had one at all.

If you decide NOT to do this, I won't decide to stop following you, this is just a suggestion. :)

Here is the EXCELLENT how - to from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits. 

2. How to Add the thing that says "You might also like" to your blog post.

You may notice that at the bottom of this post there are references to my past postings. If you want to add this widget it is SUPER easy. I mean it, like really easy. Visit Fun in First for the Tutorial.

 3. How To Add a Link to Your Blog in When You Leave a Comment

I would say that this tip was one of the most helpful in gaining followers for my blog in the beginning. I would leave a nice comment on someone's blog and then others could simply click on the link to come check me out. There is a great tutorial for this on Ladybug Teacher Files. She also has a tutorials page that has a ton more blogging tips.

4. Get a Blog Design

Like it or not, unless you are a talented digital designer, you will probably at some point want/need to pay someone to design your blog for you. Looking at everyone's pretty designs will eventually wear you down. Let me first say that I was incredibly RESISTANT to this in the beginning but it was SO worth it.  My design is adorable and makes me happy and more importantly readers seem to take you more seriously when you move away from using the free designs. I used Leelou's freebies for sometime, and still love her designs, but I started getting annoyed that 6 other blogs I followed were using the same design. Anyway, I'll stop ranting and provided you some links to designers that are incredibly AWESOME but also quite affordable.

If you want MY opinion, I think you should go with Creating and Designing. Erin is AWESOME and fast and super nice and gave me everything I asked for and more. I provided the other links because I know that everyone has a particular style they are looking for!

Okay, those are my top four tips. I could post about many, many more but those four tips helped me grow so much as a blogger. :)

I also wanted to comment that I gave away about 70 free products over Thursday and Friday. I was so excited to give back in such a big way. I was also exhausted because I had to stay up late at night sending everyone their free stuff after I got home from my work days. I will probably do something like this again but definitely NOT during my beginning of the year teacher workdays! :)