This post will tell you the top 5 best decisions I ever made to grow my blog into a thriving business and let my quit my job.
As a professional blogger I often look back and think of how I could have done something better or different for my business.
Other times I look back and realize that a decision I made was the best thing I could have done to build and grow my business.
So, here are the top five decisions I made to grow my blog into a business.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and if you buy something through this link I receive a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products and services I’ve used and trust.
1. WordPress
Having WordPress (not the hosting) gives you different options for hosting which is really great because that means you can pick a host and a price plan that suits your needs.
The only other option I know of that offers fast hosting is Blogger because it belongs to Google, but Google doesn’t really pay much attention to Blogger anymore.
WordPress is open sourced so you have a huge variety of plugins you can add to your site and switch between hosts as needed.
And my personal favorite aside from hosting, WordPress is built with pretty good SEO so you’re starting off with an advantage.
2. Trellis
As far as WordPress themes go, I cannot say enough good things about Trellis! I love love love it!
I was one of the lucky 80 out of over 1000 applicants who got to be a part of the closed beta testing.
Right away I saw the speed of my site jump up and my ad revenue with it.
As soon as they opened up beta testing to the public I put Trellis on my brand new second site because I was determined to give it every advantage.
3. Create
Create is made by the same company as Trellis and is just as light weight and well built.
It has recipe cards, how to cards, round up lists, and more.
I switched over to using it as soon as I heard about it and never looked back.
My only regret is that I didn’t hear about it months earlier when it first came out.
Using create not only makes everything I do with it SEO optimized but has also saved me so much time.
Now I put that time to better use by making more content or spending more time with my family or actually having a life.
I actually sent a thank you note to them one day after realizing how much time the list had saved me.
4. Mediavine
Mediavine is an ad management company and so much more.
Once I joined Mediavine I started to make money off my blog and have seen my income snowball from there.
Within a year of joining Mediavine I became a full time blogger working my own hours to build my own dream instead of someone elses.
Some of the things I love most about Mediavine is that they try to make me as much money as possible, they are obsessed with SEO, and they are very transparent.
Other things I love about them is how they try to help publishers grow and make the internet a better place.
They lazy load their ads so they slow down your site as little as possible and they they have loads of useful information on how to grow your blog.
I am an avid reader of their blog posts and have seen almost every video on the Mediavine YouTube Channel.
In addition, to being an ad management company they built Trellis, Create, and Grow. All of which I absolutely love!
5. Agathon
I used four hosts within my first three years of blogging.
Bluehost was fine but slow and only hosts one website at a time.
InMotion had such terrible service I didn’t have enough time to notice anything else before I left them.
Lyrical Host was faster than Bluehost and really better over all. They also had great customer service.
Before moving to Lyrical Host I did consider Agathon because they came highly recommend but I decided against it because they were more tan double the price.
While Lyrical Host is good and I recommend them to anyone just trying to get their toes wet, Agathon is the gold standard.
I switched to Agathon after I started using Trellis and saw what the increase in speed did to my RPMs. At that point I knew it would be a good investment.
I got really luckily because I switched a month and a half after their Next Gen Hosting was out of beta and got put on that server right away.
Immediately I saw a difference in my site speed. I realized this would increase my RPMs and it did right away.
I also really appreciate their quality customer service, transparency, and the perk of getting Grow Pro free with their hosting.