I use a variety of tools to make my website run fast, keep it online, and keep things running smoothly. Out of all of these options, hosting your mailing list offsite (not directly in your WordPress blog) would be my top recommendation.
Email Marketing
Once someone clicks this to download they will be prompted to enter in their email address and they will be added to your list. This works with all top auto responders.
The beauty of this plugin is that once they have downloaded the PDF to their computer, there is a link inside the PDF that has an option to click back to your website if they wanted to go back and visit.
Not only does this create more people on your mailing list, but it also drives traffic back to your website!
Another way to help grow your list is to have a Landing Page on your website.
Landing Page Monkey: This is the new marketer friendly, page building platform that guarantees more opt-ins and less hassles. Your pages will look great in any browser on any device (including mobile & tablet) so you’ll be up and running fast!
WordPress Plugins
Easy Recipe: This has been the recipe plugin I have used since starting my blog. It allows you to format your recipes for your site and search engines, as it helps your recipes become more searchable to sites like Google (one of our biggest traffic drivers). There is a free version to start with. I chose to upgrade to the Plus version because it had more options that I wanted.
VaultPress: Our go-to offsite backup plugin. The $5/month “lite” plan is sufficient for almost all needs. If you want hourly backups (instead of daily backups), go with the $15 “basic” plan. This helps ensure you never lose your valuable content.
Yoast SEO: Yoast SEO provides handy options for dealing with page titles, descriptions, and URLs. Yoast also includes customizable options that appear beneath every page and post editor which forcefully remind you to choose a keyword and encourage its use in the heading, page title, URL, content, and meta description of your posts or pages. You can also switch through the tabs to get a page analysis, customize some advanced robots.txt settings, and specify what information you want social networks to use.
WordPress Themes
The Genesis Framework: The Genesis Framework is what is currently running on Tastefulventure. With Genesis, you’re going to want to purchase the Framework ($59.95) along with a Child Theme (prices vary). It’s also possible to get a Genesis child theme custom designed.
Free Themes For WordPress: WordPress has thousands of free themes available if you’re not interested in purchasing a “premium” theme right away. It’s a great place to start if you’re looking to start your blog without spending a lot of money right off the bat. Be sure to do some research and check the theme’s rating before you download it and install it onto your blog. I would recommend looking for themes with a four or five star rating.
Social Media Tools
Viraltag: Pinterest. It’s a food blogger’s dream come true. The amount of traffic you can send to your blog through Pinterest is incredible. It’s also incredible how much time you can spend on Pinterest if you’re not careful. As a blogger, your primary focus should be on creating quality content for your blog. Viraltag makes it easy to quickly schedule pins for Pinterest saving you loads of time. You can also use Viraltag to schedule Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.