This free blog planner is everything you need to plan, start, and maintain a successful blog in 2023.
Introduction: Free Blog Planner Kit For 2023
Let’s face it, starting a blog is like drinking from a watering hose.
From figuring out the essential plugins all blogs need to learning the basics of SEO, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and fail to take action.
That’s why we created this free ultimate blog planner.
This free printable blog planner is exactly what I wish I had when I was first starting my blog.
It includes everything you need to plan and execute your blogging strategy.
Let’s take a further look at some of the benefits:
Free Blog Planner Benefits
Key benefits of using free blog planner printables:
- Save time: Stop wasting time trying to learn a project management tool such as Asana, Trello, or Clickup. As a beginner blogger, there are so many more important tools and tasks for you to learn.
- Save money: Did you know that Quickbooks costs $15 per month? That is 100% more than what you need to spend on managing your blog finances as a beginner. Don’t get us wrong, Quickbooks is great once you’re an established blogger and making money. But as a beginner, you can save yourself a lot of money by avoiding these tools.
- Establish systems early on: Systems are a key component to building a life of financial freedom and having the ability to work just a few hours per week. By getting in the habit of following processes and systems, you will save time and re-work later.
- Keep it simple: Complex doesn’t mean better or more profit. Simplicity works and allows you to focus on what’s most important – growing your blogging business.
- Create realistic and achievable goals: At Samantha Digital, we consider a goal that’s not well documented a pipe dream. Documenting and clarifying your goals is the very first step to achieving them.
- Track your success: It’s no secret that building a wildly successful and profitable blog doesn’t happen overnight. Or that you may not even see results for months. That’s why tracking your progress early on is a great way to celebrate the small wins and stay motivated toward your bigger goals.
Why You Should Choose THIS Free Blog Planner Benefits
Like we said above, printable blog planners are a FANTASTIC tool for beginner bloggers.
And not surprisingly, there are hundreds of different free templates online.
So, why choose Samantha Digital?
We may be biased in some areas, but there’s no doubting these benefits:
- We walk you through exactly how to use it. Below is a complete breakout of every page in this free printable blog planner.
- We are here to help. Have a question? Comment at the bottom of this blog post, and we will reply ASAP.
- We aren’t done yet! We have more templates coming your way. By downloading this template today, you will automatically receive new templates via email as they are released (unless you unsubscribe).
What’s Included In This Free Blog Planner
This printable planner is broken up into three sections. This planner includes:
- Blog Setup Templates: Website Planner, Blogging Goals, Password Tracker, Blog Stats, Competitor Analysis
- Content Creation Templates: Content Bank, Content Calendar, Content Brief
- Blog Finance Templates: Income Tracker, Expense Tracker, Affiliate Program Tracker
Related: Free On-Page SEO Checklist
Free Blog Planner: Blog Setup Templates
Website Planner Template
What Is A Website Planner Template?
A website planner template is a tool to outline your plan for your website and blog.
What Are The Benefits Of A Website Planner Template?
Have you ever played darts blindfolded?
That’s what it’s like to build a blogging business without nailing your website and blog’s foundations.
This template outlines the foundational yet critical questions you must answer as you start your blogging journey.
How To Use A Website Planner Template?
To complete the website planner template, respond to the following prompts:
- Blog Name: What is the name of your blog? For example, our blog name is Samantha Digital.
- Domain Name: What is the domain name for your blog? For example, our domain name is samanthadigital.com. To check and see if your domain name is available, head here to Bluehost’s Domain Checker.
- Blog Purpose: What is the main purpose of your blog? Are you educating your readers on sustainable energy? Or are you inspiring your readers on topics like home decor?
- Target Audience: Get super clear on who your blog is for. Remember: your blog is not for you.
- Blog Values: What are the core values of your blog? Keep in mind your audience’s values as well.
- Content Pillars: Choose 3 to 5 main categories that you will write blog posts about. Each content pillar should be relevant to your target audience.
- Top 1-3 Problems My Blog Solves: Simply put, people read blog posts to solve problems. Whether they want to know the best blogging tools for beginners, learn how to create a blog content strategy or learn more about Elementor Website Templates. Think about the high-level problems your blog solves and always keep this in mind as you plan content.
- Products & Services I Will Sell: The reason that most blogs fail is that monetization is an afterthought. Having a solid idea of how you are going to monetize your blog early on will help you create content that drives those sales.
- Blog Colors: When choosing colors for your website, remember the feelings that different colors evoke. For example, blue makes people sense trust. That’s why companies like Facebook and Chase have blue logos. Read more about the meaning of colors here.
- Blog Fonts: When choosing fonts for your website, remember that you want the fonts to pair well and be easy to read. We love this font pairing tool.
- Blogs That Inspire Me & Why: Before you jump into creating your blog, research blogs that inspire you.
Blog Goals Template
What Is A Blogging Goals Template?
A blogging goals template is a tool to identify, define, and achieve your blogging goals.
What Are The Benefits Of A Blogging Goals Template?
Achieving your blogging goals is hard.
It’s even harder when you aren’t correctly defining and tracking your blogging goals.
This blogging goals template requires you to get specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timely (SMART) with your goals.
How To Use A Bogging Goals Template?
First, identify a blogging goal.
Do you want to reach your first 10,000 website visitors?
Do you want to earn your first $1,000 in blogging revenue?
Both are great goals and require different strategies.
We recommend sticking to one goal at a time.
Once you’ve identified your goal, determine why you want to achieve this goal.
What happens when you reach your first 10,000 website visitors?
Will you apply for an ad network?
This field primarily serves as the reason and motivation for achieving your goal.
Next, break out the goal and be sure the goal is specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound.
Then, define the high-level steps you need to take to achieve these goals.
Blog Password Tracker Template
What Is A Blog Password Tracker?
A blog password tracker is simply a list of all your username and passwords for your various blogging accounts.
What Are The Benefits Of A Blog Password Tracker?
The number #1 benefit of using paper and pencil to track your passwords is that they cannot be hacked.
Ensure you keep this tracker in a safe, hidden place where you won’t lose it.
How To Use A Blog Stats Tracker
Every time you create a new account online that will be used for blogging, add it to this spreadsheet.
Blog Stats Tracker Template
What Is A Blog Stats Tracker?
A blog stats tracker monitors your blog’s key performance indicators (KPIs), such as website traffic, email subscribers, income, expenses, and backlinks.
Keeping track of your stats helps you stay focused.
Additional benefits include:
What Are The Benefits Of A Blog Stats Tracker?
The benefit of a blog stats tracker is to monitor and analyzes your blog’s performance over time.
As trends emerge, you can quickly dig deeper and then adapt.
For example, if you published a free lead magnet in February, you may notice your email subscribers increase in April and then your affiliate income increase in July.
Based on these results, you may want to offer another free lead magnet and/or double down on your email marketing campaign to increase affiliate sales.
How To Use A Blog Stats Tracker
At the end of every month, update the record for the month:
- Website traffic: We recommend pulling your blog traffic data from Google Analytics.
- Email subscribers: We recommend using ConverKit for your email marketing. You can find your subscriber count in the admin dashboard.
- Income: Add up the money your blog earned from affiliate revenue, ads, products, services, etc. Pull this data from the income tracker below.
- Expenses: Add up your blogging expenses. Pull this data from the expense tracker below.
Competitor Analysis Template
What Is A Blog Competitor Analysis Template?
A blog competitor analysis template is a tool to analyze your competitors and document your findings.
What Are The Benefits Of A Blog Competitor Analysis Template?
Conducting competitor analysis is a critical component of any successful business, and a blogging business is no exception.
To stay relevant in a rapidly changing digital world, it is critical to research your competitors to find out what is working and where there are opportunities for your business.
How To Use A Blog Competitor Analysis Template?
First, identify your competitors.
Leverage social media, YouTube, and Google to search for accounts and blogs relevant to your niche.
From there, narrow your findings down to 3 large competitors and 3 small competitors.
As a beginner blogger, we recommend leveraging the 3 large competitors for your own inspiration.
For the 3 small competitors, complete the competitor analysis template.
Review the competitor’s blog and social media to answer the questions from the template.
Domain Name Idea Tracker Template
What Is A Domain Name Idea Tracker Template?
A domain name idea tracker template is a tool to research, brainstorm, and vet potential domain names before actually registering your domain name.
What Are The Benefits Of The Domain Name Idea Tracker Template?
The benefits of this tracker template:
- Confidence in your domain name: by following this template, you can be confident that you’ve considered the best possible available domain names for your blog.
- Guidance: this template guides you through the step-by-step process of identifying possible domain names.
How To Use A Domain Name Idea Tracker Template?
To learn more about this domain name idea tracker template, check out our blog post: Exactly How To Choose Your Domain.
Free Blog Planner: Blog Content Creation Templates
Content Bank Template
What Is A Blog Content Bank?
A blog content bank is a list of keywords relevant to your industry that you may or may not target for your blog posts.
What Are The Benefits Of A Blog Content Bank?
The benefit of a blog content bank includes keeping all your possible blog post topics in one place.
A blog content bank also lets you compare various keywords to decide which to target next.
How To Use A Blog Content Bank?
Start by choosing a keyword research tool.
The Ubersuggest Chrome extension is one of the best free keyword research tools for beginners.
The Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension is the best paid keyword research tool for beginners ($10 per 10,000 queries).
As you conduct keyword research, update the content bank with relevant keywords that you think you may target.
In the search intent field, indicate if the keyword has informational or comparison search intent.
To learn more about search intent, check out our beginner’s guide to SEO.
Search volume indicates how frequently a keyword is searched.
The higher the search volume, the more competitive the keyword.
It depends on the industry, but as a rule of thumb, we recommend that beginners target keywords with less than 10K monthly searches.
To determine the search volume for a particular keyword, you must check out the keyword research tool you chose in Step 1.
Content Calendar Template
What Is A Blog Content Calendar?
A blog content calendar is your editorial calendar and schedule of upcoming blog posts that you will publish and update.
What Are The Benefits Of A Blog Content Calendar?
The benefits of a blog content calendar include:
- Consistency: with a blog content calendar, you can easily map out when to publish new posts on a cadence that is right for you.
- Stay organized: when life gets busy, it’s easy to lose sight of your blogging priorities. Documenting them on a calendar helps you stay organized and plan ahead.
- Accountability: saying ‘I’m going to publish two blog posts per month” and actually doing it are two totally separate things. A blog post helps you stay accountable to your commitments to your readers.
How To Use A Blog Content Calendar?
Start by updating your calendar with holidays and any other important dates.
Next, establish your blogging publication cadence.
Will you publish twice per week, twice per month, or something else?
Make sure you choose a cadence that is realistic and maintainable.
Then, indicate the dates on the calendar where you will publish new weekly posts.
Next, pull vetted keywords from your content bank and assign them to a date for publication.
Blog Content Brief Template
What Is A Blog Content Brief?
A blog content brief is a game plan for your blog post. It outlines your focus keyword, word count goals, related keywords, post title, and more. In other words, it helps you write an amazing post that’s optimized for search engines.
What Are The Benefits Of A Blog Content Brief?
The benefits of a blog post content brief include:
- Save time writing: while it may seem like writing a content brief takes more time, it actually saves you time.
- Write optimized content: a content brief forces you to do keyword research and competitor research to understand what it takes to rank truly.
- Avoid writer’s block: when you follow this step-by-step template, you avoid wasting hours and hours of writer’s block.
How To Use A Blog Content Brief?
First, determine which keyword from your content bank you will target for a blog post.
Next use google and your keyword research tool to complete the prompts within the template.
Free Blog Planner: Blog Finance Templates
Blog Expense Tracker Template
What Is A Blog Expense Tracker?
A monthly blog expense tracker monitors the purchase you make for your blog.
This includes purchases such as domain registration and hosting, LLC registration, blogging courses, subscription services, and more.
What Are The Benefits Of A Blog Expense Tracker?
If you’re trying to make a business out of blogging, then tracking your expenses from day 1 is critical.
It will save you so much time when it comes time to file your taxes in April.
How To Use A Blog Expense Tracker?
Whenever you make a purchase related to your blog, add a line to the expense tracker for the description, type, and amount.
Optionally, add notes that you don’t want to forget.
For example, “Canva subscription on auto-renewal”, so you don’t forget that your Canva subscription will automatically renew during the next billing cycle.
Use the ‘type field’ to group similar transactions, for example, ‘website maintenance’, ‘business administration’, ‘subscriptions’, and ‘education.’
Blog Income Tracker Template
What Is A Blog Income Tracker?
A blog monthly income tracker monitors revenue from your blog.
This includes revenue related to products or services that you sell, as well as any affiliate income.
What Are The Benefits Of A Blog Income Tracker?
Similarly to the blog expense tracker, if you’re trying to make a business out of blogging, then tracking your income from day 1 is critical.
It will save you so much time when it comes time to file your taxes in April.
However, we also like to use the blog income tracker for motivation.
Being able to update your blog income early often helps inspire and motivate you to keep going.
How To Use A Blog Income Tracker?
Whenever you receive a payment related to your blog, add a line to the income tracker for the description, type, and amount.
Optionally, add notes that you don’t want to forget.
Use the ‘type field’ to group similar transactions, for example, ‘products’, ‘services’, and ‘affiliate sales.’
Blog Affiliate Tracker Template
What Is A Blog Affiliate Tracker?
A blog affiliate tracker lists all the various affiliate programs you are part of.
For example, ShareASale, ClickBank, and Rakuten Affiliate.
What Are The Benefits Of A Blog Affiliate Tracker?
As you begin to diversify your blog’s revenue streams, you will likely join more and more affiliate programs.
This can become a lot to track.
For this reason, we love our blog affiliate tracker –
Forget having another excel document or email folder with all your accounts.
This blog affiliate tracker makes things soooo much easier.
How To Use A Blog Affiliate Tracker
Whenever you sign up for an affiliate program, add a line to the tracker:
- Affiliate program: Use this field to capture the product or service you recommend. For example, Bluehost or Elementor.
- Platform: Use this field to capture the platform where you manage the affiliate partnership. For example, ClickBank or Kartra.
- Payout: Use this field to capture the commission you receive per sale.
- Notes: Use this field to capture any special notes you don’t want to forget. For example, an additional 10% commission in December.
Blog Product/Service Planner Template
This template is coming soon! If you download the template today, you will be the first to receive this blog product/service template!
Conclusion: Free Planner Kit For 2023
We hope you absolutely love this free printable blog planner!
This whole planner should do an amazing job at helping with your blog organization, staying organized, and meeting your blogging needs.
Download this template today and get started building your blogging business.
If you have any questions, post them below and we will get back to you ASAP.
We wish you blogging success, and don’t forget to check out our on-page SEO checklist download.
