Something that didn’t exist many years ago was pre-made WordPress blog themes for bloggers. Some of us would cringe to go back to what our sites used to look like. But today, there’s a plethora of options that are not only beautiful but also affordable.

This makes starting a blog these days super quick and easy (and did we mention, beautiful!). With so many options though it can be difficult to choose which is best.  TBS gets many new members coming in and we see a ton of blog templates and designs. We have found that having a cohesive design that’s reader-friendly and also well-built on the backend is key to success.

Since there are literally thousands of options and brands to choose from, we rounded up a few of our personal favorite pre-made WordPress blog themes for bloggers. From great templates for fashion bloggers, to food bloggers to those who may also have services to offer or an actual shop.

Plus, we love that so many of these take care of all the page templates you would need like Instagram landing pages, shop pages and more. Here are some of our favorite companies that create pre-made WordPress themes and which themes we love the most!

*TBS may earn a small commission through your purchase of our affiliate partners.

The Best Pre-Made WordPress Blog Themes For Bloggers And Small Business Owners

1. 17th Avenue Designs

It was hard to land on one favorite from 17th Avenue Designs, but the Harper Theme is definitely a great option for bloggers. We love the focus on content and the intersertials throughout the home page. Giving you options to have readers subscribe to your newsletter, or check out season-specific content.

For a more service based business, course creators, or shop, the Audrey theme is absolutely stunning. The font is beautiful and we love all the page options that come with it. From sales pages, to portfolios and even an Instagram landing page. This looks professional and customized without breaking the bank.

3. Tonic Themes

Tonic makes some of the prettiest sites I’ve seen. These are built from Showit, which is an easy to use drag and drop builder for websites. It’s still on a WordPress blog, but you use Showit to customize it all.

While the majority of the Tonic themes are more service, coach or podcast related, there are still options and ways to customize these for a blogger as well. I think having a beautiful static homepage is becoming more on trend anyway these days in the blog world, and these themes definitely cater to that.

The Bijou theme is really beautiful, clean and feels editorial. This can easily be customized for a blogger or influencer. And French 75 is another favorite that has a stunning blog homepage with lots of customizable options.

We also love their add ons which can be a great option for anyone with a Showit website. From a favorite things page, to a link in bio landing page, and even blog expansion options. Plus, Canva templates to match your Tonic theme! There are lots of great pages and add-ons to purchase a la carte. Shop them all here.

5. Pipdig Themes

We see Pipdig templates a lot in our inbox from applications. They’re super customizable and allow you to feature your posts and affiliates throughout the home page. However, we do find bloggers tend to turn all the options on which can result in a busy site to digest. Our recommendation is the Etoile WordPress pre-made template, it’s our personal favorite!

6. Hearten Made

Hearten Made themes are absolutely beautiful, editorial style WordPress themes. The Clementine theme has everything you need as a fashion or lifestyle blogger. The double navigation is also very neat and allows you to further organize your content for a better experience.

For a more service based, coach or portfolio option, Magnolia is really stunning and feels like a fully custom website with special details throughout. This theme, along with several others, have sales pages, testimonials and more.

And if you’re a food blogger looking for a WordPress theme, look no further than the Rosemary theme. This theme was designed for food, recipe and wellness bloggers in mind.

Tips For Installing A Pre-Made Blog Theme

Now that you’ve ordered a theme and are ready to install it, there are a few things to keep in mind. Installing a theme for your blog can take a few hours of tweaking. Definitely plan to spend some time on a weekend or at night with a checklist of things you need to do and images ready to go. You’ll want to make sure you keep in mind the following!

Have Your Brand Colors Ready To Go

Write down all your brand colors so you can easily pop them into a theme’s setting. Decide on which colors you want to be the dominant color and which to be the accent.

Branded Images

Have your headshot, any logos and branded images, ready to go. You’ll be using these throughout your theme and pages when updating your website. And if you’re doing a brand refresh, you may want to take NEW brand photos to match your new branding.

Check All Your Links

Once you install your new WordPress theme, go through your site and click on everything. All the links, all the navigation, make sure everything is working and has a link associated with it. You want to make sure you catch any hiccups before fully going live!

PS Be sure to get the best hosting for your blog to make sure your site is running smoothly and quickly. See why we love SiteGround here.

Loving the pre-made WordPress blog themes? Click here now for more essential blogging tips!

As bloggers, it’s important to make sure your site is SEO friendly. By definition, SEO is search engine optimization and it’s how you increase your organic search engine traffic to your website. You do this through several ways when writing a post and building a website. Today we’ll talk about how you can improve your blog posts SEO using Yoast SEO, a free plugin we recommend all bloggers should be using.

Yoast SEO is a plugin that is free to use and can help guide you to creating SEO-friendly posts for your blog making them easier for people on search engines to find you. The plugin will give you either a red, orange or green light based on how SEO-friendly your post is. Ideally, you want the green light in both Readability and SEO. Here are our best tips to getting the green light in Yoast SEO.

How To Use Yoast SEO & Getting the Greenlight

First, write your post and include your images. You always want to make sure your post is about a specific topic, solving a problem, or answering a question.

Try to keep your posts at least 300 words or you will not get the green light. Google will actually dock you if you have under 300 words for posts. Once in a blue moon is fine.

But our rule of thumb is if you can’t write 300 words in your post, it’s probably not worth writing. Providing value and answering a question people are searching for is why you rank well on Google.

Setting Up Yoast

When you install your Yoast SEO plugin, you’ll want to set yourself up for success. Install your plugin and activate it. You’ll then head to the plugin to do the first-time configuration. The plugin will walk you through the steps from setting up your site title, images, and so on. Once everything is set up, then you can start using your plugin on your posts and pages to optimize your content and site.

Writing The Post

Internal & Outbound Links

Include an internal and an outbound link. Outbound links are those that link to other relevant posts within your blog. Yoast SEO Premium also offers a way to help you find posts to internally link, and also browse posts that need outbound and inbound links.

For example, in today’s post, we linked to our plugin post because it’s relevant and helps to improve SEO. Once this post is live, we’ll update the plugin post, with today’s SEO post to provide an internal link to this post. In and out, that’s key!

Name Your Images

Every time you upload your images to your blog for a post, you should make sure the image itself is named properly. This happens when you export it out of Lightroom or Photoshop (read our tips for images here!).

By naming them something descriptive and relevant to the image/topic, you’re just telling Google AGAIN that your post is about what you want it to be.

ALT Text

Images should include ALT text which are relevant keywords that match the image and also the topic you’re covering. You should also make sure you are exporting your images out of Lightroom with relevant text as well. More on that here.

Add Headings

Your website design should include several heading options. Google reads your site through headings and you should use them in order.

Your title is Heading 1 so you can start by using Heading 2 and work your way down. You can see in this post how “TIPS TO GETTING THE GREEN LIGHT IN SEO” is in our Heading 2 and is relevant to what our keyword will be (more on that below). Then we use Heading 3 in sub-topics.

For even more tips on how to use headings, what to put in those headings, and more on SEO, you can enroll in The Ultimate SEO Course For Bloggers. This course walks you through the basics to get your blog SEO ready so you can start ranking on Google. Enroll here!

How To Fill Out The SEO Yoast Plugin

When you scroll to the bottom of your blog post, you’ll see the Yoast SEO plugin has several pieces to fill out. Let’s break down each section and the order you’ll fill it out.

Focus Keyword

This is specific to what your blog post is about. You can use various websites to search for keywords, we personally just try to keep things short and sweet, and what we would probably pop into a Google search bar. For today’s post, we’re going to use “how to use Yoast SEO”.

This keyword should be in the copy of your post (preferably in the first paragraph), used in your alt text, and always in a Heading 2 near the top. It’s also usually your title! It’s important to use this keyword throughout the post.

You can do quite a bit of keyword research to find the best focus keyword to include in your post. You’ll want to then optimize your content around this focus keyword to ensure your post is SEO friendly.

Slug

The slug is what becomes your URL. You’ll see if you write your title, and your permalink below it will automatically pull this. You’ll want to update it with your focus keyword, simply copy and paste!

SEO Title

This should be an attention-grabbing title that’s specific to the blog post. We like using Headline Analyzer to help fine-tune your title to ensure it’s great. 

This is the title people will see when they search Google and see your post in the search results. It’s important to make sure you use proper punctuation, and capitalization and also include your blog name at the end. Our SEO title for this post is “How To Use Yoast SEO To Get The Green Light – The Blog Societies” which utilizes our focus keyword and includes our website name.

If you have a blog post that maybe has a free guide or downloadable, the SEO title is a great place to also put this. It will catch the reader’s attention when they see your post in the search results.

Meta Description

This is the preview text you see when you do Google searches that is right under the SEO title. Your meta description should be an extension of your title and a small preview of what readers can expect when they click on your article. 

Our meta description for this post is “Learn how to use Yoast SEO to get the green light for your blog posts with these actionable and easy tips to follow to increase your organic search engine traffic.”

Once you’ve filled these all out, you should get the green light and hopefully on both tabs, Readability, and SEO. If you don’t, Yoast SEO will tell you what you need to work on. A few common ones we find for SEO are not using the focus keyword enough.

Make sure this important part of your SEO is throughout your content and in the alt text. For Readability, having sentences that are too long can hurt your Readability. Keep things more simple versus overly complicated. Not sure what needs to be fixed? Under Readability, you can select the eyeball next to each issue and Yoast SEO will highlight the issues.

Is Yoast Seo Premium Worth It?

You’re probably wondering if Yoast SEO Premium is worth the price point. There’s a free option that doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, but it does get the job done. You can control the meta description and title.

The Premium Yoast SEO option comes with loads of options and features. Here’s a general list of what’s included in the Premium option which is only $99 a year.

• Optimize up to 5 keywords for your blog post
• Generative AI to help you write titles and descriptions based on the content you’ve written
• Redirect manager which makes updating links a breeze
• Browse and update orphaned content
• Internal linking suggestions for your posts
• And more!

Premium is definitley worth it if you want to take your SEO more seriously. If you’re just starting out and don’t have a lot of content, the free option is all you need to get started.

In a perfect world, influencers would have their email inbox flooded with prospective brand collaborations, just waiting to pay you loads of money to create amazing content. But that isn’t always the case.

Actually, it’s rarely how it goes.

Part of being an influencer is that you have to put in the grunt work and pitch brands and PR agencies yourself for those collaborations. It’s also how you can foster relationships, secure product for projects you may be working on and help keep your name top of mind when paid partnerships do come around.It can feel awkward, we know.

But if you set yourself up for success, you’ll come through with amazing opportunities. If you aren’t sure how to begin a blind pitch email to a brand, we are breaking it down section by section today.

Let’s dive into how to write a pitch email so you can secure more partnerships and generate more revenue for your influencer business.

How To Write A Pitch Email For Your Blog Partnerships

First let’s start out with WHY you should be pitching, before we get into the HOW.

Why Should You Pitch To Brands As A Creator

Pitching to brands and agencies as a content creator is a proactive way to grow your brand and connections in the space. It can help to bring you new opportunities for growth, revenue and long term partnerships.

Plus, it can give you more creative control when you find the brands YOU want to work with, instead of waiting around for any brand to reach out to you and then you decide if you want to work with them. In short, pitching is a way to take charge of your career, create partnerships that are mutually beneficial, and help you grow as a content creator.

Step One – Research The Brand

Find The Right Contact

This can be a tricky one to find the right email address to send your pitch to. Especially if it’s a cold pitch and you haven’t worked with the brand before. A good place to start is on the brand’s website. Even a press@ or contact@ email is likely being reviewed by whoever is in charge of that department, so don’t overlook those email addresses.

You can also search for press releases to see who the public relations (PR) contact might be. Another option is to simply DM a brand on Instagram and ask them who you can contact. Here is a simple pitch to send via DM to ask for a contact.

Hi there! I am hoping to connect with [brand name] for an [insert quick idea]. Who would be the best contact for partnerships? I’d love to send over an email with some ideas. Thanks so much!

Have Some Recent Info To Include

When writing an effective email to a brand, you want to really have a great sales pitch crafted and a call to action. Sending your pitch without any specific details, or knowledge of what the brand may be currently working on, is a red flag that you may not be super interested.

Do a little research on the brand if there’s any upcoming launches they are doing, or recent collaborations they did that caught your eye that may be the reason you’re reaching out. When it looks like you did a little research on the brand and highlight either the pain points they help to solve for their customers, or the selling points of their brand that you love, it shows that you really know what you’re doing.

Step Two – Craft The Perfect Pitch Email

Write A Good Pitch Email Subject Line

It can be easy to overthink your pitch email subject line. But listen, it doesn’t have to be complicated! Here are a few example pitch email subject lines that are short and to the point. Here are also 10 subject lines to get your pitch emails read by brands.

• Collaboration Idea: {Your Influencer Name} x [Brand Name]
• Excited to Pitch This Idea, {Your Influencer Name} Here!
• {Your Influencer Name} + [Brand Name]: A Perfect Fit?
• Love Your Brand! Let’s Chat – {Your Influencer Name}
• TikTok Opportunity with {Your Influencer Name}
• {Your Influencer Name} Has a Fun Idea for [Brand Name]

A Compelling Introduction That’s Short & Sweet

It’s best to share with a brand you’ve never worked with a clear and concise snippet of who you are and what this email is all about. Don’t write a novel. A few sentences will do on your blog, your niche, and why you’re reaching out to them.

• Your Name
• Your IG handle, blog link or TikTok handle (with a link!)
• A General Rundown Of What The Email Is About – You’ll go into more detail in the following paragraph, but a sentence or two on why you’re emailing the brand to work together and what it’s for is key!

Give Stats On Your Business

If you’re a blogger, you’ll want to include stats like your monthly pageviews and number of users each month. And of course, include your social media stats, and any newsletter data that will be helpful.

Don’t have a blog? Don’t worry! If you are only on Instagram, or TikTok, or are a UGC content creator, share your social media stats like total followers, IG Story views and average CTR from past partnerships.

• Average Monthly Pageviews (via Google Analytics)
• Notable Social Media Stats
• Newsletter Subscriber Info and Open Rates
• Any Press Mentions or Accolades
• Highlight Past Work – If you’ve featured this brand in the past, definitely highlight that in this section so they can see your great work!
• Case Studies – If you have a notable case study that may relate to this brand or opportunity, include that information!

While you can include a media kit in your initial email, we recommend not if you’ve never emailed the brand before. This can sometimes cause your email to go to spam when there’s an attachment. Feel free to include a line at the end that if they’re interested in more stats and case studies, that you’d be happy to send over your media kit for them to review.

Try to let the brand ask for the media kit if that’s something that they want. But your goal should be to include a decent amount of general information in your pitch that a media kit probably isn’t necessary.

Detail The Pitch & The Offer

We recommend putting most of this in bullet points to clearly show exactly what the brand is getting and what you’re willing to offer when you create content for them. This also makes it much easier to ask for compensation when things are clearly laid out.

• What I am willing to do
• What I want from them
• Any timeline expectations

Following Up Without Being Annoying

Close out the pitch with a quick recap and an actionable request for a follow-up to move forward and offer to answer any questions they may have. Thank them for their time and then follow up in a week if you haven’t heard from them.

When following up, simply use the same thread to ensure all communication stays organized. Be sure to follow up specifically asking a question too. Our general rule of thumb to send follow up emails is up to three times. One week after, two weeks after, and another week. It’s totally fine to follow up a few months later too when it’s a new season but you should tailor that new seasonal email with a new idea that’s tailored to the current landscape.

Common Mistakes To Avoid When Pitching Brands

• Being too vague or generic. It’s important to spend a little time personalizing these pitches just enough so it doesn’t feel like a copy and paste
• Making it all about you, and not how the brand will benefit
• Writing a super long email with lots of attachments
• Forgetting to include your media kit (you don’t HAVE to do this), or at least any relevant information about your business
• Not including a question at the end as this can help to entice the recipient to actually respond

There you have it!

PS you can download our FREE brand pitch template AND hotel pitch template in our library. Not a member yet? Join today to get access to all the resources!

One of the things that people don’t tell you about running your own business, is how much time you can sometimes spend chasing down money that’s owed to you. It’s just part of the job sometimes and it sucks. We are independent contractors and don’t have the pleasure of having a regular payday and payroll.

Ideally, you want to set yourself up for success from the beginning so that this DOESN’T happen. But there are sometimes instances that pop up where you don’t get paid, your contact went missing or the brand refuses to pay you. So what do you do? How can you make sure you get paid on time?

First, let’s chat about how you can set yourself up on your end to reduce the likelihood of this happening. Here are some important things to have set up for our business to prevent nonpayment or even delayed payments from happening.

Set Yourself A Reminder

Put on your calendar one week before payment is due to follow up with the brand to ensure they have everything they need to process your payment. Sometimes things slip people’s minds and they just need a friendly reminder. Maybe they need you to fill out a form that they didn’t send at first. Setting a reminder will keep you on top of your invoices and top of mind for people who owe you money.

Now that you’ve done everything on your part to make sure you do get paid, there’s still the off chance that a brand may just not want to pay you. Or totally forget. What do you do?

STEP ONE

Follow up persistently. Give yourself 1-2 weeks to follow up and get an update if you can. Sometimes it’s just being the squeaky wheel that will get you paid. Sending just one email is not enough. Be persistent and demand an update. Also if you have the invoicing email or accounts payable email handy, copy them on all emails.

If this doesn’t work, move on to Step Two.

STEP TWO

CALL THEM! Pick up the phone and give them a call. This will likely get a fire under their butts. When you call, be sure to ask if there’s someone in accounts payable who you can reach out to.

This is the person in the organization who is responsible for paying any invoices to vendors. Be consistent and follow up multiple times when you are not getting a response. You can even head to LinkedIn to reach out to someone demanding an update if things continue.

STEP THREE

If you’re still not getting a response from your contact and also accounts payable, you will need to send a payment demand letter. This letter is designed to be a final notice that payment is due before taking legal action.

You can easily Google sample payment demand letters to get an idea of what should be included. Or you can always work with a lawyer to help create this. This letter will usually escalate the situation and hopefully get you paid finally.

What To Do If Nothing Works?

What to do if none of these things work to get paid? You may want to reach out to a lawyer to discuss your options. But oftentimes, it’s not worth the legal fees. Suck it up, learn from it and move on.

It’s an unfortunate situation to be in but it happens. In our many years of blogging, we can really only count one or two times where there were times that we were not paid. These were usually with companies that were small and shady, to begin with. Which is why it’s important to always work with reputable brands and to have contracts and invoices set up for success. But delayed payments are definitely more common. Be persistent and continue to follow up.

We’ve all been there and it happens, so ensure you have systems in place to prevent this from happening in the future. And as always, work with reputable brands and agencies who respect the blogging industry.

If you haven’t blogged in years and are thinking of jumping back in, this step by step guide is for you. Just because you haven’t posted to your blog in a while, whether it be a few months or even years, there’s no better time to start than right now. Today we’re going to talk about how to get back into blogging, because nope, it isn’t dead!

We often wonder if blogging is even still relevant. But it is! Google will be a thing people use to search for answers and inspiration and your posts should be the one they land on. So whether you’re an old school blogger who is hoping to dive back in, or are trying to get back into a schedule after being MIA for a while, here’s how to get back into blogging today.

How To Get Back Into Blogging

Step 1 – Reflect On Why You Stopped

Everyone may have their own reasons for putting a hold on blogging. Maybe life got in the way and you just didn’t have the time. Or perhaps you just got roped into the Instagram hamster wheel, hey it happens! Whatever it is, it’s important to figure out why you stopped so you can figure out if you need to make adjustments to your schedule or calendar to avoid these same pitfalls once you get going again.

Step 3 – Figure Out Your New Niche – Or Redefine Your Old One

Everyone should have some sort of a niche, or why, for their platform. Are you a foodie, do you want to share your travels, maybe you just want to offer outfit ideas for your lifestyle. Whatever it is, figure it out. You can use our content creator roadmap to help you fine-tune this if you’re struggling.

Having a new vision for your niche and blog going forward will help you overcome the hurdle of feeling like you can’t restart. Once you can clearly define what you want to talk about, even if it is a total 180 from what you used to share, you’ll be reinvigorated to write for your blog.

And if it is a complete 180, that’s the perfect FIRST post to write. Explain your why to your audience, let them in on the process.

Step 4 – Start Fresh With An Audit & Revamp Content Pillars

If you’ve been ignoring even looking at your blog in a while, it’s time for a bit of an audit in terms of the website, back-end and your content. Start with the website. Is it functioning and covering the basics that you need? That should be top priority. You can get into updating the site down the road once you get into a routine and know you’re going to stick to it.

You’ll also want to make sure your website has been updated on the back end. From your plug-ins to your hosting, just ensure things are working properly! Be a user of your website too and browse around, click on things and just double check things work and function! User experience is so important and can easily be overlooked.

Lastly for this category, review your content pillars. Determine 3-5 key topics that align with your current goals and topics you want to discuss.

Step 5 – Plan Your Blogging Comeback

Set Realistic Goals

Now that you have some ideas, your website is functioning again, let’s plan your blogging comeback. Set some realistic goals on how often you want to post. Keeping a consistent cadence is key, but don’t stress about how often it is. Once a week is plenty, twice a month is also a good place to start.

Recirculate And Refresh Old Content

You can also review old posts and see if any of them can be recriculated now. A few tweaks, new photos, and a fresh shopping widget can be a lot faster than drafting a whole new post from scartch. Use those posts as fillers so you can focus on quality content and staying consistent.

Create A Content Calendar & Start Writing

Now that you have your content ideas, maybe a few posts you know you want to write and also work on to refresh, plan your content calendar and get to work. Slowly chipping away at your idea list and to-dos. Slow and steady really does win the race in the blogging world.

Announce Your Comeback

Announce your comeback! You can make this fun by doing a giveaway, or just sharing it on your social platforms inviting people back to your blog to check it out.

Step 6 – Embrace New Tools and Strategies

It’s no secret that blogging today is totally different than it was 10 years ago. If you’re blogging for fun, great. Share whatever you like however you like. But if you’re planning on getting more serious about it it’s time to focus on new tools and strategies. Embracing good SEO, utilizing ChatGPT to help come up with ideas and sreamlining your workflow with tools like Canva and Asana.

It can be a little overwhelming at first, but you have to start somewhere.

Step 7 – Share Your Content Everywhere

If you haven’t been blogging in a while, and have been ignoring most of social media, you’ll want to make sure you’re cross-posting as much as possible. Creating Reels, Instagram posts, pins and newsletters are an important way to boost your traffic and get your blog seen by more readers.

Step 8 – Keep The Momentum Going & Celebrate Your Wins

Blogging can be challenging to stay motivated due to its slow growth. But celebrate your small wins from posting consistently, setting goals you can acheive and acknowledging that you’re doing it. Even if it feels slow. Blogging success does not happen overnight.

The hardest part about getting back into blogging is often times just finding your rhythm again. Once you have your topics and niche more fine tuned, it erally is just about getting motivated and into a routine. This can be achieved by adding small tasks to habits you already do every day.

As a new industry, scammers are taking advantage and preying on the eagerness of the industry to grow, make money and collaborate. We’re seeing this with blogging scams time and time again.

From Instagram accounts getting hacked, to content creators not getting paid for partnerships, or product showing up that isn’t what they expected. It seems to be everywhere, but you don’t have to be a victim of it!

Avoiding these blogging and influencer scams and navigating illegitimate businesses is part of the job, unfortunately. Here are a few telltale signs that your email or DM is definitely a scam.

7 Ways To Spot A Blogging Scam

1. Spelling Errors

Major spelling errors are usually a big red flag that something’s not right. Most reputable brands and businesses are hiring educated and professional people to run their influencer marketing campaigns. And spelling is usually something they’re not so bad at.

2. Links To An Instagram Account

This is the NUMBER ONE WAY people’s Instagrams are being hacked. If there’s a link to an Instagram account within an email and it prompts you to SIGN BACK INTO INSTAGRAM, it is a scam.

It’s collecting your password so that they can hack your account. It’s likely you are already signed into your Instagram on your phone or computer, right? So why is it asking you to sign in? BIG RED FLAG

3. Foreign Businesses

Not all foreign businesses may mean a scam, but this should alert you to look deeper. But if there’s already something fishy going on, and they’re not a domestic business that you’ve heard of, then definitely proceed with caution.

4. Weird Salutations

If an email inquiry addresses you by the first word of your blog name, or just “hi dear” it’s usually a red flag. These are automated emails that are sent to the masses. While these may not always be a scam, we typically almost always delete these because nothing good ever comes from a pitch to an influencer with “hi dear”. They will use your name period if they really want to work with you.

5. They Ask You to Buy Something Or Pay For Shipping

If a brand came to you requesting you purchase something, there’s no way it can be legitimate. Reputable brands have a budget to provide free products for campaigns or gift cards. The same goes for covering shipping. We’ve seen a newer influencer scam happen where they say they will send you hundreds of free clothes, but you just have to pay for shipping. This is also a scam!

6. The Brand Is Sending From A Gmail Account

Overall, most brands should be using their brands email account to send you emails. Sure there may be a new small brand pitching you, but we find that to still be pretty rare. Lately, a new scam is the nearly instant emails for “COLLABORATION {INSERT BRAND NAME}” the second you tag a brand on your Instagram post. They email you from a Gmail account making it sound like it’s coming from a brand who loves your content.

Then they want to let you know that they will send you PR boxes, but you just need to pay for shipping. The most recent one I received said that Everlane needed me to pay $121 for shipping (what an outrageous number too). These are total scams, instantly delete!

7. Trust Your Gut

Your instincts usually won’t steer you wrong. If something doesn’t look or sound right or sounds WAY too good to be true, well, it likely is.

If you think an email looks fishy, just do a quick Google search. See if the brand or company actually exists, or looks reputable. You can usually easily spot a fake and you can save yourself a big headache! Trust your gut, Google and please, DO NOT CLICK INSTAGRAM LINKS!

Check out all of our blogging tips here.

Being a blogger and influencer means that you are now running a business. It’s important to take all precautions to protect your business from scams that could truly decimate your business from taking over your Instagram account or destroying your bank account and credit.

Be careful and cautious, and always work with reputable brands and agencies. Not sure if something is legit? Being a member of The Blog Societies also gives you access to our Facebook group where you can ask questions and get feedback from fellow creators.

Did you know that TBS founders Cathy (Poor Little It Girl) and Jessica (An Indigo Day) have been blogging for a collective 25+ years? Crazy huh? So needless to say, they’ve learned a few things about affiliate income and revenue strategy in their day as full time content creators. And that’s why today we’re chatting our ShopStyle Collective (now known as Collective Voice) review and why it’s the superior affiliate platform for bloggers.

We are all about using the best tools that make their jobs easier and, in turn, make them more money. And for them, one of the biggest changes they’ve both made is switching their affiliate strategy to focus on using, almost exclusively, Collective Voice (formerly ShopStyle Collective).

While many influencers use and love rewardStyle for their affiliate needs, we have found Collective Voice is best for our blogs. Plus, the backend of Collective Voice is much easier to navigate and manage than rewardStyle.

If you’re wanting to learn more about the best features of Collective Voice, then this post is for you. We’re sharing our Collective Voice review and our favorite features of Collective Voice affiliate platform that we use daily to manage our blog affiliate income.

A ShopStyle Collective Review – Our 10 Favorite Features Of Collective Voice

There’s a long list of things we love about ShopStyle Collective (Collective Voice). Overall, it’s ease of use and the time saved in creating widgets for our blogs that really make a difference. But there are also tons of great features that Collective Voice (formerly ShopStyle Collective) offers that no other affiliate platform does. And that’s why we LOVE using SSC as our affiliate platform.

No Need To Save ALL The Product

Creating a product widget is so easy in Collective Voice, it’s one of our favorite features of the affiliate platform! Let’s say you want to create a widget just on pink coats. There’s no need to find a dozen pink coats across the internet and save them with a bookmarklet to your folders.

Instead, just head to Collective Voice and select Widgets, and then start creating! You can search the massive database of products and easily filter by brand, retailer, price, and color. It makes creating widgets a breeze. While there are a handful of brands who are not part of the search catalog (yet you can link to them on their site directly), we rarely find it an issue as there are so many retailers and especially multi-brand retailers for us to pick from.

All Your Widgets In One Spot

Every time you create a widget, it lives in your widget dashboard. It’s saved forever so you can easily access it in the future. You can even name them so you can find them with a quick search. This is great if you need to re-use a widget, or need to update an old post. This is a feature we haven’t seen on any other affiliate programs before and it makes it so easy to update.

Easily Star Widgets That You Update Frequently

In your widget dashboard, you can star a widget so it is pinned to the top for easy access. This makes it really easy to update the widgets you permanently have on your site.

For example, Jessica of An Indigo Day, has several widgets that she updates on her shop page with various categories. Anytime she shares something new on IG Stories, she can easily find this widget, add the products, and update. The widget automatically updates on the front end making it super quick and easy to share products with her followers.

A Live View Of Clicks

When you log in to your dashboard, you can get a live view of what’s happening with your links. What’s being clicked, the increase in clicks and also where they’re coming from in the country. 

Enhanced Analytics

Ever wanted to know where your clicks are coming from? Are they coming from Instagram, your blog, Facebook, or that widget or Look you created? One of our favorite features of Collective Voice (formerly ShopStyle Collective) is the enhanced analytics to show you a detailed breakdown of where your clicks are coming from via traffic sources, tool types (widgets, looks, or text links).

In addition, you can view stats by brand, retailer, or product category. This allows you to see where you earn commission which can be useful in crafting an affiliate strategy for your business.

Get Sale Alert Feature

When creating your widgets, you can opt to have a “Get Sale Alert” under each item. Readers can heart this so they can receive a sale alert via email with your affiliate link when the item goes on sale. Thus increasing your clicks and probability of making a sale.

Sold Out Feature

Easily update sold out items in your widgets so users are always landing on in-stock products. This can be done quickly on your widgets dashboard. SSC even provides similar items to swap out sold out pieces with so you aren’t searching for product.

A Helpful Homepage

When you log on, the homepage not only shows your latest sales and clicks, but also helpful blog posts that are timely. Plus, a countdown for major sales and deals. It’s a great resource to access brand updates, commission info and more. 

Brand Partnerships And Gifting

While you can monetize your blog posts, Instagram and more, one thing we love is getting brand deals through Collective Voice. Just like LTK, they manage brand partnerships with top retailers and you can be hired to create content for them. They also do some gifting as well which is always nice when there’s a specific launch, or they’re testing out creators and interest in brands.

The best part about the brand partnerships are that they pay out in 30 days as their payment terms. No waiting for months for payouts like the other platforms. You earn your flat fee payment typically in your next payout cycle.

Comment DM Feature

The most recent feature at Collective Voice is their new comment DM feature. When you create a Look to share on social media, you can enable an automated DM via a comment. This is a popular feature on Instagram to encourage followers to comment a trigger word so that it sends them a DM with a link to shop. Many platforms charge for this, and Collective Voice offers it for free for their users.

Collective Voice will send a DM when users comment “Shop The Look” on your posts. Once you’ve enabled it, you don’t have to do anything else! This can help increase conversion rates on Instagram. The only downside is that it just sends the Look link. So, if you ever want to send any other links, like blog posts or newsletter links, you’ll need to use a different platform like LinkDM or ManyChat.

So don’t sleep on Collective Voice as your go-to affiliate platform when creating content for your blog and Instagram. If you’re ready to start making money with your influence, this is one you better check out. It’s truly our favorite platform for ease of creating widgets, the time we save and the brand partnership opportunities that are run smoothly and professionally.

Thanks for checking out our Collective Voice review. If you want even more tips on how to grow your affiliate revenue, enroll today in The Affiliate Academy!

The holiday season is just around the corner! If you’re regularly working with brands, chances are you’re decorating and creating content for Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks if not months in advance.

Get a head start in the weeks and even months before the holidays with some of these tips to prepare your blog and social media channels. But if you haven’t started yet, there’s still time! Today, we’re sharing how to get your blog ready for the holiday. 

How to Get Your Blog Ready For The Holidays

Review Old Holiday Content To Reuse

Before you start making any new content, be sure to review old holiday content on your blog. Make a list of posts you may want to reuse for the upcoming season. Recirculating content is an easy way to save time and also helps to improve your search engine optimization.

You can find these top posts by going through your Google Analytics in past holiday seasons to see what performed well. Or maybe you had a post that you really loved the photos, but the content could be improved upon.

Now that you have a list of old posts to reuse and a list of new ideas, it’s time to head to the next step.

Brainstorm Content Ideas For The Holidays

Take some time to sit and plan out your content for the holidays. Research recipes, home decor, outfits, tutorials, and look for inspiration on Pinterest. Decide what sort of content you want to share so you can then head to the next steps!

You can also use last year’s search results for your website around this time of year to come up with more ideas. We love to use Google Search Console to see what people are searching and how they’re getting to our site. And this can be a great way to expand on content you already have.

Now that you looked through your past posts, and brainstormed some new ideas, you can then start to create a holiday calendar for your business.

Plan Your Editorial Calendar

Begin to plan out your editorial calendar for the holidays. Figure out when old posts will be recirculated and the social posts that will go with them, and then fill it in with new content you want to create. This is a great way to prepare your blog for the upcoming holiday season.

When planning out the editorial calendar keep in mind popular holidays and shopping days. Black Friday is always a busy week of sale sharing, and you’ll want to probably not post much on actual holidays as most people aren’t on social media.

Update Past Holiday Content

Now that you know what posts you want to use, you can begin to update them. Update affiliate links and outdated information, edit content when needed and make it as fresh as you can. The best thing you can do when updating old posts is to keep them as evergreen as possible. This will help you in the long term when you want to reshare them again. Keep out anything that may feel dated or make it too personal.

And don’t forget to update these posts with any new photos, fresh internal links to new posts you may have written, and of course, update those affiliate links!

Never recirculated a blog post before? Learn how to recirculate blog posts here

Create Your Holiday Content

Once you’ve figured out what posts you want to reshare, make a plan on when and how you’ll share them. Make new pins, turn them into Reels and IG posts and so on. You can also get these posts shared to Pinterest early as people start researching holiday content as early as July!

Plus, now that you have a plan of action for the seasonal content you want to recirculate, and the new content you want to make, you can then see where you want to focus in terms of content creation. Maybe you have a lot of recipes already done, so you can focus on fashion. Or if you are a food blogger and realize you need some more holiday cocktails you can put your energy into creating in that category.

Reach Out to Brands You’ve Worked With This Year

Part of the holiday prep for your blog is to do some pitching! Brands save most of their advertising dollars for the holidays. If you worked with a brand and had a great experience, shoot them an email and ask if they would like to collaborate on a holiday campaign. Get some of our best pitching tips here!

Plus, it’s important to know your content calendar when pitching. Analyzing your past content and creating a plan for how to reuse it for the season will help you pitch more strategically. This will also help you feel less overwhelmed when you have some direction.

Don’t forget to follow up with brands several times. Just one email isn’t enough. Reach out to brands and build those long term relationships.

Use Your Newsletter for Gift Guides & Sale Round-ups

Utilize that email list and do weekly newsletters on your gift guides and sale round-ups. Make sure you promote this to your followers so that if they subscribe they’ll get that exclusive content!

Update Your Holiday Shop

As we head into the holiday season, there will be a lot of people doing lots of shopping. Make sure your holiday shop on your blog and your affiliate pages are updated. Whether you use ShopMy, or LTK or Amazon (read all about our favorite affiliate platforms here), make sure these main shopping landing pages are updated.

If you spend some time updating this holiday shop, make sure you also spend some time promoting it. Work this into your editorial calendar, and into your social media plan.

Use Your Platform for Good 

Yes, this is a great time to get brand collaborations and affiliate income but use your platform for good. Encourage giving back or donating to a specific charity or encouraging to donate their time to an organization. The best part of this season is giving back!

Now that you have all the tips to get your blog and influencer business ready for the holiday season, let’s have our most lucrative and productive season ever.

Let’s go back to blogging basics today, shall we? Today, we want to talk about your blog navigation bar. You know, the little menu area at the top of your website’s page? It’s the area above the fold that helps readers and site visitors, you guessed it, navigate your website.

You probably set this up when you first launched your website and haven’t evaluated it in a while. While a navigation bar and mobile menu are standard on almost all blog designs custom or premade templates, it’s such an important part of your business, and here’s why.

The navigation bar or mobile menu helps your reader navigate your content. And this is something you want to be easy and get your audience into your best, most consistent, content with ease. Let’s dive into what to include in your website navigation for a good user experience, and to help increase page views.

What To Include In Your Blog Navigation Bar

Most importantly, you want your navigation bar to be easy to read and understand. It should be able to provide anyone who visits your site easy access to the content on your website and highlight your niche.

So after you read this blog post, head to your own website and do an audit of your own navigation bar and be sure you’re providing all the proper information and links necessary for success.

Your Main Content Categories

Be sure your navigation bar reflects the bulk of your content. For example: if you are a food blogger, your top food categories should be easy to find and click in your drop-down menu or navigation area. Don’t make people work to find the good stuff you want them to see.

Same goes for fashion! If you have only written a handful of home decor posts, no need to put this in your main navigation. And if you write personal updates every so often, probably don’t need that either. If you find you have a handful of random things in a few random categories, these can all live under just one category (maybe lifestyle) and add it. Otherwise, keep it simple!

You can utilize dropdown menus to further expand on your topics if you write a lot within each one. This is great for a lifestyle blogger who may cover many topics. Put the main overarching topics like style, or life, in the navigation at the top of the page, and then you can further expand on the topics in a dropdown style menu. So your style category may include “fall/winter” and “spring/summer” as part of the level categories.

You may need to really think about the information architecture of your website. And that’s okay. If you’re struggling to figure out your categories, it may be time to niche down a bit and figure out your why. Our free roadmap can help you do this too, check it out here.

Leave The About Page, Press Page and Contact Page OUT!

First, it’s time to consolidate things. No need to have a separate page for About, Contact, Press, and so on. You can put everything together in one big beautiful page. You can see our About Page here which includes all that information and more!

Second, these pages shouldn’t be in your website’s primary navigation bar at the top. Period. This is prime real estate with the most relevant content you want readers to dive into immediately. Instead, move this to your footer as these pages are typically the least visited on a website. While these are important pages to have on your site, they do not need to be in prime real estate.

If someone is on your site, they should get a feel of what you’re “about” by simply consuming your content. And that usually starts with just taking a look at your navigation. If you’re looking at your navigation and consuming your content and they can’t figure out your “about” then that’s a problem you need to deal with that is beyond a navigation menu.

But these pages should not take up valuable real estate in that primary navigation. They are not popular pages on your site, so you should simply pop them in a footer menu instead. Many pre-made themes come with this option!

If you don’t have a footer, you can add your ABOUT page in the navigation on the FAR right so it’s the last thing a visitor would click. No need for this to take up valuable real estate on your website. And again, consolidate everything into this one page so you don’t create multiple pages.

A Search Button

Every navigation menu should include a search button that is easy to find and works. Make sure you have this on both desktop and mobile. You want your visitors to be able to easily find what they’re looking for.

Social Media Icons

Make sure your social media buttons or icons are easily visible. If a brand or new reader comes on to your site and wants to learn more about you on other platforms, make it easy for them to find you!

Also, be sure each of your social icons leads to the correct page. This is a simple audit you should be doing each season or at least twice a year.

And lastly, make sure you’re only sharing social media platforms that you actively post to. If you haven’t posted to Twitter in 3 years, time to remove it. And if you started posting to TikTok, time to add the icon to your navigation!

Your Logo

This may seem like a no brainer, but trust me, it needs to be said. Make sure your logo, site title, whatever it is that you call yourself and how you display it, is in your navigation. And make sure this is linked to your homepage. This should act as your “home” button so that if a reader is anywhere on your site, they can get back to your homepage by simply clicking your logo.

When you can make your logo clickable, you can remove the need to have a “home” category in your navigation. Which is a big win if you cover home content because it does get confusing! Just ensure your logo is on every single page of your website making it easy to navigate back to home.

Your logo should also be small enough that when you are browsing on desktop or mobile, you are able to see a good bit of your content above the fold. Above the fold means everything you see when you land on a page BEFORE you scroll. If your navigation and logo is taking up a good portion of this, it’s time to resize some things! At the end of the day, the most important thing when someone lands on your blog is for them to dive right into your content, not your logo!

Don’t Forget These Navigation Bar Tips If You’re A Blogger

Tip One – Make Sure Your Navigation Is Also Mobile Friendly

Check your navigation bar on both desktop and mobile so you can ensure it’s easy to use on both devices. Click on everything to ensure it all functions properly. Your theme and blog design should have a mobile version that is optimized for all screen sizes. It is crucial to test this out yourself and ensure the user experience is working.

Tip Two – Consider A Sticky Menu

We like a sticky navigation which basically keeps your navigation at the top of the page or screen no matter how far you’re scrolling. This makes it easy to explore other categories as a reader while you’re consuming a post. Plus, this is a really common type of menu that I think people are used to and it looks really nice on a page.

Tip Three – Review Your Color Choices And Contrast

Check the contrast of your text and background colors. This is often overlooked and can make a huge difference in the user experience. Ensure your text is easy to read and that the background color and text color don’t look too similar. We want to clearly see text!

It’s also important to check the colors when you HOVER over your menu items. Sometimes these can easily be styled incorrectly and you can’t see the text. Be a USER of your blog and click around on everything on both desktop and mobile to ensure the best user experience.

Tip Four – Keep It Simple

Lastly, keep it simple. Always. Having dozens of categories featured, and so many categories in the primary navigation can overwhelm a reader.

The same goes for the trending mega menu which looks really great on desktop and is something we tend to love as creatives. These are menus that have images and multiple categories and just a lot going on. For normal people reading a blog, these massive menus are a LOT. Plus, they rarely look great or function at all on mobile (where most people are usually reading anyway). So it’s not usually worth the extra money to code something like this.

If you can’t narrow your site’s main content down to let’s say 3-6 categories, and a handful of sub-categories for each main category, it’s time to really think about your content and how you’re organizing things. Keeping things simple is key.

What other items do you feel should be included in a navigation bar? Did you find any mistakes in your own blog’s menu? Let us know in the comments below!