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Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

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best wordpress themes for blogs

More people blog on WordPress than any other platform. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you need the right theme.

WordPress themes determine the layout of your blog, the impression it has on visitors, and how easy it is to navigate.

There are a lot of WordPress themes to choose from. Over the years, I’ve experimented with dozens of themes across my sites. As one of the internet’s most successful bloggers, I know what works.

Here’s my latest take on the seven best WordPress themes for blogs. This page is always getting updated as new themes come out and others outlive their use.

Keep reading to find my top picks along with a buyer’s guide that will help you make sense of your many good options.

#1 – Extra Review — The Best for Most Standard Blogs

Extra demo page for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

If you are looking for a WordPress theme that lets you do it all–and have an easier time doing it–then Extra is my top recommendation.

With some themes, you can get pigeon-holed into a certain style or format. With Extra, you never have to worry about limits or boundaries.

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Blogs of any type, digital magazines, portfolios, online stores–really any kind of blogging experience you are looking to deliver is possible with Extra.

Extra is from Elegant Themes, the same people who make Divi, which is the most popular WordPress theme in the world. If you are looking to build a unique website on WordPress, Divi is a great choice.

However, if you are specifically focused on finding a theme for WordPress blogging, go with Extra. It gives you the same foundation as Divi, but it’s been optimized for bloggers.

The most important aspects are the new modules within the Divi Builder that help you curate your content for readers, including post feed, post carousel, post slider, and tabbed posts. All of these are tied to the categories you set and easy to arrange in an appealing layout.

Extra theme Divi Builder interface for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

Publishing the striking blog on the left is as easy as filling in the intuitive layout on the right.

With Extra you get the Divi Builder ability to create everything visually, but it’s within a framework that makes blogging easier. It’s a true drag-and-drop editor that lets you build elegant posts and pages very quickly.

Start from one of more than 800 pre-made layouts and customize virtually every aspect from there. Colors, fonts, sizing, spacing, sizing is easy to adjust with clicks, not code. Whatever you design is fully responsive to any screen size. No extra work or double-checking on your part.

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Here are some of the other ways that Extra helps people take their WordPress blog to the next level:

  • Built-in ratings and review system
  • Customizable menus and headers
  • Automatic WordPress updates
  • 24/7 customer support
  • Optimized for WooCommerce
  • Social media integration

All of these features work together beautifully. Your blog readers are greeted by an enticing layout and your site is effortless to navigate. They can read, review, rate, and share your posts across other channels.

Extra is available for purchase through a membership to Elegant Themes. That means for one price, you get access to Divi, Extra, as well as Bloom (email plugin) and Monarch (social media plugin).

This is a complete set of tools that can power your entire website with a modern and integrated blog.

Elegant Themes memberships are $89 per year, or $249 for a lifetime subscription. This includes 24/7 premium support and unlimited usage of every product.

The company is constantly adding new features. I’m talking about fresh layouts every week and new tools to help your blog stand out.

Try the whole suite of Elegant Themes products risk free for 30 days.

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#2 – Olsen Review – The Best WordPress Theme for Lifestyle and Fashion Blogs

Olsen demo pages for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

If you are a lifestyle or fashion blogger looking for a place to store all of your content among a focused layout with crisp fonts, Olsen is the perfect theme for you.

It takes very little work to pull off a very professional blog. You’re not going to break the mold with something people have never seen before–Olsen’s strength is in it’s familiarity. Readers will immediately be comfortable with your layout, knowing how to navigate and share your content.

Providing a fluid and peaceful reading experience, Olsen is the theme for anyone who wants their images to stand out next to their content. Tell a story with more than just words.

Olsen demo page category sort for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

Olsen is completely customizable and is the perfect place to show off your best work.

Two unique elements this theme offers are a  Featured Content slider and an Instagram footer widget. Both elements are great for sharing your work with readers.

The Featured Content slider is a little different from the average Featured Content add-on. This element allows you to pick up to six images or posts and include them at the front of your blog. The reader can navigate this slider by clicking the left or right arrow.

The Instagram footer widget is unique and doesn’t appear in any other theme on this list. This is the perfect add-on for a fashion or lifestyle blogger who wants to showcase their photos. It shows the widget at the bottom of your blog and features your most recent Instagram posts in a large single row.

The downside is for people who want the Instagram feature for free. Unfortunately, you must pay for the theme or buy a plan to use it, but we think this trade-off is worth it.

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You can get started with Olsen today for free. Upgrading to Olsen Pro is only $34.30 for a full year. There is also a Club Membership, which gives you access to many more themes and plugins, and it’s only $48.30.

#3 – Newspaper Review — The Best for Breaking Stories

Newspaper demo page for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

Some people need a simple blog that showcases their portfolio. Others need a platform that delivers new content to their readers on a daily basis, whether they are breaking stories about their brand or community.

I’m talking about a blog experience where visitors show up to find a new arrangement of content every morning. If this describes you, then Newspaper is the WordPress theme for your blog.

It is the number one bestselling news theme of all time, and for good reason. You can use any kind of content or social media integration–it’s all going to look sharp.

Beginners and professionals will love how easy Newspaper is to use. Whether you want to get set up in minutes or craft a trendsetting design, you’ll find the theme very accommodating.

Include sound, moving images, and other features to engage your audience with no more than a few clicks. And, you can rest assured that none of the changes you make will slow your site down.

This is true even if readers are on their phone, as Newspaper is completely integrated with the Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) plugin.

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Instead of a slow, cluttered experience–as you might get with another news-style WordPress theme–all of your readers can enjoy what you publish. Given how much traffic comes from mobile-users, this is a big deal.

None of this will require coding, so your whole team can take advantage of the theme. No graphic design degree necessary to edit images. With Newspaper, it’s a snap to create eye-catching, on-brand images that develop your story.

Newspaper image blend mode for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

This means fewer steps to make sure your content, logos, headers, and footers are all working together to deliver a positive blog experience for your readers. And if you are constantly updating, the time-savings adds up quick.

With Newspaper, you can eliminate hours from your monthly workflows and free up your team to create.

Despite being able to do so much, management remains quite simple. Quickly gain mastery over your blog and use the great features included with Newspaper like:

  • 100+ pre-built websites
  • 1,000+ pre-made templates, pages, posts and sections
  • Unlimited sidebars
  • Live search display
  • WooCommerce shortcodes
  • Membership paywalls
  • Rating and review system

Monetizing your blog is incredibly easy with banner ads, Google Ads, and Adsense. All ads are responsive, and Newspaper starts you off with 14 predefined and 5 custom spots. You can place ads where you want without disrupting the flow of your blog.

Pricing for Newspaper starts at $59 for a regular license. This includes free future updates and 6 months of premium support. You can extend support for a full year for $17.63.

There’s a ton included with the price, but if you want to add other plugins to optimize SEO, open an online store, or increase security, you can rest assured that Newspaper theme will integrate smoothly.

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Get started with Newspaper today and start publishing a world-class blog every day.

#4 – Akea Review — The Best for Minimalist Style

Akea demo page for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

Akea is a WordPress theme from GoodLayers, a company that empowers bloggers who live by the “less is more” mantra.

Over the years, the company has released some of the greatest minimal blog themes. It’s best for people who don’t want too much information and stimulation a negative and expect readers with similar tastes.

You get total control over how your content is exhibited. Play with the spacing between items on your page. Tweak the size of thumbnails used for your blog. Use a single image to fit any screen size with the 100 percent fluid layout.

Customize it until you get it just right. With Akea, you don’t have hundreds of templates, but you don’t have to squeeze anything into a pre-built mold. Instead, you get a relatively small selection of blog layouts and each one is an open field.

Upload your own font. Bring in any video, quotes, galleries in a slider. Make a bold impression using a few commanding content elements arranged just the way you like.

Akea example blog post for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

If you’re looking to jam the most content per square inch into your blog, this is not for you.

This isn’t to say you can’t include sidebars, or menus, or give your readers tons of options. With Akea, that’s all easy to do. It’s just really focused on the minimal style, so all of these elements are unobtrusive and clean.

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You get a floating navigation bar, so your readers always have quick access to more content, but you are never overloading them at any point.

That’s the spirit of Akea, which comes with a trim feature set designed for you to start making it your own immediately. Some of the essentials include:

  • Drag-and-drop page builder
  • Unlimited customizable sidebars
  • 14 blog layouts
  • Social media integration
  • WooCommerce integration
  • Custom skin colors for page sections

While you get comparatively few templates compared to other options, there’s a lot you can do with each one.

Akea starts at $54. It includes free lifetime updates and premium customer support for the first six months.

Because Akea is a newer theme, there are fewer reviews of the theme than some of the others I recommend. But GoodLayers has always done a solid job, and Akea works well with the latest plugins and WordPress updates.

This means less work on your end to make sure everything is running smooth, as the modern integration decreases problems and potential security issues.

It’s also fully compatible with the WordPress Gutenberg editor, which is now standard for all new sites. This is going to save a lot of time and make the final product look better with less configuration.

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If you value simple, clean design for your WordPress blog, Akea is a theme you should check out today.

#5 – Pearl Review — The Best Corporate WordPress Theme

Pearl demo page for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

Pearl is an incredibly feature-rich and flexible WordPress theme that’s got enough options to outfit any business.

I recommend this to people whose blog is part of a larger website. Pearl is kind of overkill if you just need a blog, though you could make an incredible blog with it.

On that note, it might be a good option if you are hitting your limits with your current WordPress theme. If there’s features and functionality you can’t swing now, Pearl will help you get there.

To put it simply, with Pearl you’re not making compromises–you’re making a blog that’s tailored to fit the needs of your industry and goals. Pearl offers an astonishing range of demos for virtually every vertical: agency, beauty, ecommerce, law, music, software, and more.

Each of these demos has been carefully designed to include a suite of features and layout to meet the challenges businesses face.

The Pearl Viral demo, for example, showcases your posts according to how popular they are, with professional category tags to help readers find what they want.

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Pearl blog feed for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

For a business in the entertainment industry, the out-of-the-box power of this blog layout and styling is obvious. The same is true for everyone of the many industries Pearl supports.

And your blog will be totally tied into the rest of your site, which is a must if blogging is a part of your business outreach. Readers can react to posts, leave a reply, share it on social media, or get drawn further into your site and company offerings.

You can add more than 55 different types of shortcodes (UI blocks) into your posts. This includes things like a music player, calls to action, events lists, icon boxes, galleries, pricing tables, and a lot more.

This is huge for corporate users who need a range of ways to communicate and interact with their audience. Some of the other standout features include:

  • Visual Composer drag-and-drop builder
  • Mega menus with three drop down levels
  • Customizable headers and footers
  • 800+ fonts
  • Custom icons
  • Sidebar builder
  • 24/7 with live chat

There’s really not much you can’t do with Pearl, and most of it can be accomplished without writing a line of code.

And all of this is available for the price of $59 for a regular license with free lifetime updates. Six months of maintenance is included, with additional coverage available for purchase.

If you need a high-functioning blog, bear in mind that Pearl includes a number of premium plugins for free. You get WPBakery, Booked Appointments, Ninja Popups–in total it’s about $325 worth of premium plugins based on the going rates.

Pearl is a very reasonable price for what you get, and you’ll have to spend less moving forward.

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Get started with Pearl today, and forget about limitation.

#6 – TinySalt Review — The Best for Food Blogs

TinySalt demo page for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

For as popular as food blogs are, they can be tricky to create if you are using a multi-purpose theme.

You can do it, for sure, but it’s going to take a lot more work. And it’s probably not going to come out as well as if you had just started with a WordPress theme built specifically for food blogs..

TinySalt is just that. It’s got every feature and formatting capability you need to blog in this space.

Where a recipe would be difficult to get the formatting correct with an ordinary WordPress theme, TinySalt gives you turnkey options to produce this niche type of content immediately.

Breakdown your most complicated dish into a series of simple steps. Include photos where you think it will help. Add a button early in the post to let readers jump straight to the recipe.

And you don’t have to spend any time getting all of this to flow on your blog. TinySalt has 12 demos you can import to your website. Mix and match to deliver the exact experience you are looking for.

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TinySalt example recipe page for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

Readers can quickly search through your recipes with a convenient filter, or browse your beautiful blog. When they find one they like, they can print, rate, and share them with their friends on social media.

If they decide against a certain meal, your blog can automatically recommend related recipes at the end of a post.

Don’t let the Tiny in the name fool you, this theme is packed with potential. You get:

  • 32 blog variations
  • 10 post templates
  • Recipe videos
  • Unlimited colors
  • 900+ fonts
  • Featured recipes slider on your homepage

All TinySalt is missing is your recipes and imagination.

TinySalt starts at the low cost of $39 for a regular license. Future updates and six months of premium customer service is included at that price. Ongoing support is available if you need it.

At that price, it’s not hard to turn a profit with TinySalt, even if it’s just a side-hustle for now.

You’ll be able to see your own products with WooCommerce, or promote items through advertising and affiliate marketing. It’s also compatible with MailChimp, which means you can turn your food blog into a newsletter to build your subscriber base.

Eliminate the complex configuration that goes into food blogging and take your site to the next level. Stop cooking with the wrong equipment and get TinySalt today.

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#7 – ConsultingWP Review — The Best for Promoting Your Business

ConsultingWP demo page for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

I really like ConsultingWP for businesses that want their blog to make a splash.

Whether you are looking to make connections for providing services, or to get your brand out to the world, this is an empowering WordPress theme for business blogs.

You get tools to build that anyone at your company can use on day one. You’re not going to have to hire out a professional or lean on a single person in-house to keep everything looking great.

Never touch code and never compromise on the finished product.

Simply browse through the hundreds of templates offered by ConsultingWP, find the one you like, and begin importing it. You’ll have complete control over what plugins and options you want to bring over to your new blog.

From there, you can customize the blocks, fonts, headers, layout, and so on on. Instead of having to mess around editing PHP or CSS files, everything is a few clicks.

Up to this point, what I’ve described is a very good WordPress theme for blogs, but where ConsultingWP steps away from other easy/powerful options is the business-focused feature set.

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One of the most useful is the Cost Calculator Builder, which lets clients price out your services on your blog. Instead of having to call for a quote (which can be a tricky step to get people to take) people can investigate on their own using the simple calculator.

ConsultingWP example order form for Best WordPress Themes for Blogs

Normally, creating an interactive form like this would take some serious effort. And, if you wanted to make changes to your pricing, it might be a hassle to get it right.

With ConsultingWP, you have full control over this simple feature. Run promotional pricing without worrying it’s going to break your site and confuse potential clients.

Some of the other fantastic built-in elements include:

  • eRoom Zoom meetings and webinars
  • Professional booking for appointments
  • 100+ page templates
  • 500+ theme options
  • Customizable menus
  • Events manager
  • 24/7 customer support

For businesses, the all-in-one feature set is really attractive. I mean, you can do all of this with a hodge-podge of third-party plugins, but there is zero guarantee they are going to work well together. At best, you’d have a lot of maintenance to keep things running smooth without slowing your site to a crawl.

With ConsultingWP, on the other hand, businesses get a toolkit that’s been designed to work in harmony. This means less work for better results.

Starting at $59 a regular license, this is a great deal. Trying to match the feature set by downloading individual plugins would be far more expensive and frustrating.

A regular license comes with six months of premium customer support. You can choose to extend support for an additional cost.

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If you are looking for a professional blog that establishes your business as a leader in your space, I highly recommend ConsultingWP.

What I Looked at to Find the Best WordPress Theme

Now that you know our seven best theme recommendations, it’s important to understand what matters.

Make the right decision by following these considerations.

Know Your Blogging Niche

It sounds self-explanatory, but it’s relevant when choosing the perfect theme. Today we looked at the seven most common blogging niches, and how each theme suited for those niches is different.

When choosing a theme, you must know your blogging niche because you don’t want to install TinySalt if food blogging is your focus. Different niches require different themes with distinct features, layouts, and designs.

I would suggest creating a list of your most passionate hobbies and start there.

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Customization is Key

Having a customizable theme is crucial for an easily-navigated blog.

It’s okay if you are not interested in investing money into your blog. However, many free themes have limits on customizing, whether for headers, colors, or layouts.

Every theme on this list is customizable to some extent, some more than others, so it’s important to look into the nitty-gritty before installing.

Features

Every theme listed here today has some incredible features that work best for its particular niche. However, some themes have more unique elements than others, and it’s critical to weigh whether you need them.

Paid themes are more likely to have more unique elements, such as Olsen with the Instagram footer widget, and the premium plugins that come free with Pearl.

If you know you won’t need an Instagram footer, it’s best to keep your money in your pocket.

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Some basic features that are imperative for most blogs include:

  • Custom colors
  • Site logo
  • Flexible display
  • Classic menu
  • Widgets

So, make sure you look for these when installing any theme.

Conclusion

Running a successful WordPress blog isn’t easy. Having the right theme helps a lot.

Here’s the complete list of my top recommendations:

  1. Extra – Best for most standard blogs
  2. Olsen – Best for lifestyle and fashion blogs
  3. Newspaper – Best for breaking stories
  4. Akea – Best for minimalist style
  5. Pearl – Best corporate WordPress theme
  6. TinySalt – Best for food blogs
  7. ConsultingWP – Best for promoting your business

Extra is a great all-in-one blog solution that’s going to cover most people. No matter what direction you take, you’re always going to get the latest features to experiment and engage your audience.

Some of my recommendations work really well in particular niches, like Olsen and TinySalt, whereas others play to a certain style. Akea favors minimal content with maximum impact, whereas Newspaper is going to give readers dozens of posts to read at every turn.

ConsultingWP and Pearl are safe bets for any business blog. I’d lean toward the former if you are looking for something sleek for your company, and toward the latter if your blog is part of a more complex site.

What matters most, of course, is what you do with your WordPress theme. Even the best products can only get you so far. Check out my guide on how to get your blog posts to rank in Google’s top 10 search results.

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Hope this helped. Happy blogging!

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WP Engine sues WordPress co-creator Mullenweg and Automattic, alleging abuse of power

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Web hosting provider WP Engine has filed a lawsuit against Automattic, and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, accusing them of extortion and abuse of power. The lawsuit comes after nearly two weeks of tussling between Mullenweg, who is also CEO of Automattic, and WP Engine over trademark infringement and contributions to the open-source WordPress project.

WP Engine accused Automattic and Mullenweg of not keeping their promises to run WordPress open-source projects without any constraints and giving developers the freedom to build, run, modify and redistribute the software.

“Matt Mullenweg’s conduct over the last ten days has exposed significant conflicts of interest and governance issues that, if left unchecked, threaten to destroy that trust. WP Engine has no choice but to pursue these claims to protect its people, agency partners, customers, and the broader WordPress community,” the company said.

The case document, filed in a court in California, also accused Mullenweg of having a “long history of
obfuscating the true facts” about his control of WordPress Foundation and WordPress.org

The story so far

Mullenweg had criticized WP Engine for infringing WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks. He called them the “Cancer of WordPress” and also called out WP Engine’s private equity partner, Silver Lake, for not caring about the open-source community.

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Later, WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter, asking Mullenweg and Automattic to withdraw these comments. Automattic then sent its own cease-and-desist, accusing WP Engine of infringing WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.

Notably, Mullenweg banned WP Engine on September 25 from accessing WordPress.org resources, including plug-ins and themes, and preventing WP Engine customers from updating them. Two days later, Mullenweg provided a temporary reprieve and unblocked WP Engine until October 1.

On Wednesday, Automattic published a proposed seven-year term sheet that it had sent to WP Engine on September 20, asking the hosting company to pay 8% of its gross revenues per month as a royalty fee for using the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.

Alternatively, WP Engine was given the option to commit 8% by deploying employees to contribute to WordPress’s core features and functionalities, or a combination of both people hours and money.

WP Engine didn’t accept these terms, which included a probation on forking plugins and extensions from Automattic and WooCommerce.

You can contact this reporter at [email protected] or on Signal: @ivan.42

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Automattic demanded web host pay $32M annually for using WordPress trademark

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Automattic demanded web host pay $32M annually for using WordPress trademark

“WPE’s nominative uses of those marks to refer to the open-source software platform and plugin used for its clients’ websites are fair uses under settled trademark law, and they are consistent with WordPress’ own guidelines and the practices of nearly all businesses in this space,” the lawsuit said.

Mullenweg told Ars that “we had numerous meetings with WPE over the past 20 months, including a previous term sheet that was delivered in July. The term sheet was meant to be simple, and if they had agreed to negotiate it we could have, but they refused to even take a call with me, so we called their bluff.” Automattic also published a timeline of meetings and calls between the two companies going back to 2023.

Mullenweg also said, “Automattic had the commercial rights to the WordPress trademark and could sub-license, hence why the payment should go to Automattic for commercial use of the trademark. Also the term sheet covered the WooCommerce trademark, which they also abuse, and is 100 percent owned by Automattic.”

Automattic alleged “widespread unlicensed use”

Exhibit A in the lawsuit includes a letter to WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner from a trademark lawyer representing Automattic and a subsidiary, WooCommerce, which makes a plugin for WordPress.

“As you know, our Client owns all intellectual property rights globally in and to the world-famous WOOCOMMERCE and WOO trademarks; and the exclusive commercial rights from the WordPress Foundation to use, enforce, and sublicense the world-famous WORDPRESS trademark, among others, and all other associated intellectual property rights,” the letter said.

The letter alleged that “your blatant and widespread unlicensed use of our Client’s trademarks has infringed our Client’s rights and confused consumers into believing, falsely, that WP Engine is authorized, endorsed, or sponsored by, or otherwise affiliated or associated with, our Client.” It also alleged that “WP Engine’s entire business model is predicated on using our Client’s trademarks… to mislead consumers into believing there is an association between WP Engine and Automattic.”

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5 Most Profitable Online Businesses You Can Start Today for Free!

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5 Most Profitable Online Businesses You Can Start Today for Free!

In today’s digitalized world, starting a business doesn’t always mean you have to have a good chunk of money and years of experience in the field. Yeah, it’s good if you have them, but even without them, you can start a business and make money. Not just a few hundred dollars; some businesses can even make you a millionaire if you invest your time and available resources into them. 

You need to have the right approach and the proper set of skills to make that happen. And you can learn such skills for free on the internet. So, all you need is the willingness to put in the work and effort it needs. 

In this post, you’ll see 5 most profitable online business ideas that you can start today for free. You don’t need anyone to help you with these businesses when you’re starting out; you can do it all alone, and you can manage these businesses from the comfort of your home. 

Even if you don’t know a single thing about these businesses, you can learn them for free on YouTube, Udemy, and the Interent. There’s more than enough free resources out there about these topics to take you from 0-10 real quick. 

So, sit down and grab your popcorns, because this article might be the only thing you need to launch your first online business, today itself!

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Please note: This post contains affiliate links to products I use, trust, and recommend. If you choose to purchase a helpful product using these links, I may receive a small commission for referring you – at no extra cost to you. These funds help me keep this blog up and running.

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most profitable and easy-to-start businesses out there. In affiliate marketing, you need to promote someone else’s product in order to make money. The person who promotes the product in exchange for some commission is called an affiliate

When you sign up to be an affiliate of any program, you’ll get a unique link to promote the products called an affiliate link. You need to use your affiliate link to send customers to the seller’s page. That link tracks the amount of sales you generate to determine the money you make. 

You don’t need to create, package, or ship the products yourself. The seller who is selling the product will do these all. All you need to do is, refer customers to the seller. And when the customer referred by you through your affiliate link makes a purchase, you get a small percentage of the sale amount as a reward. That’s it. That’s what affiliate marketing is! 

Through affiliate marketing, you can promote both physical and digital products. 

You don’t always have to sell products to earn affiliate commission. Sometimes, you get commission to make people download something. That can be an app, software, or browser extension. Sometimes, you get commissions to make people sign up for particular websites or services. Sometimes, you get commission to generate leads for businesses and agencies, etc. All these things need to be done through your affiliate link in order for you to make a commission.

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how affiliate marketing works

How to Get Started?

1. Choose your Niche

You need to choose a niche to start affiliate marketing. You can’t promote everything from workout gear to making money online courses yourself! So, choosing a niche is very important to succeed in affiliate marketing. Some popular niches for affiliate marketing are: health & fitness, finance, home & kitchen, technology, relationships, etc. 

2. Find the Product

After choosing a niche, you need to find a product to promote. If you decide to get into the health and fitness niche, then you can promote workout plans, weight loss supplements, keto meal plans, hair loss products, and so much more. So, decide what you want to promote and find a good product for it. 

3. Build a Platform

Now, you’ve decided your niche, and your product is ready to promote, so all you need is a platform to promote it. You can promote affiliate products either through a blog or through social media. You can write articles on your blog or grow your social media accounts to share your affiliate links. 

Here are some popular affiliate marketing platforms you can join. 

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The affiliate marketing industry is worth nearly $17 billion. So, you can start your affiliate marketing journey today to get a small chunk of that seventeen billion dollars for yourself!

2. Selling Digital Products

Selling digital products is another great way to make a hefty amount of money online. Digital products are a great way to share your knowledge and creativity with the world while making some money. 

Digital products are products that are created and sold online. They don’t exist in the real world, except for printables. Printables are graphics that are created digitally but needs to be printed out in the real world to be used. 

From ebooks to online courses and printables to music, there’s a wide variety of products that you can create and sell. 

Here are some digital products that you can create and sell easily. 

If you’re wondering which digital product sells the best and which one you should sell, consider this analysis done among 96,000 creators by influencers.club. According to the analysis, online courses were the most sold digital products, with 35.7% of the entire digital products sold, followed by ebooks (7.3%) and cookbooks (3.8%)

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Here are a few more: 

Check out 16 Best Digital Products to Sell in 2024

How to Get Started?

1. Choose Your Niche

The first step to building a profitable digital product business is to choose a niche that you’re interested in and have a demand in the market. You can select a niche based on your expertise, passion or to profit from an untapped market opportunity. Make sure that there are enough people willing to pay for your products so that you can make a good amount of money selling them.

2. Create Your Product

After choosing a niche to get into, you need to create a solid product to sell. In order to get constant sales, your product needs to be highly valuable. Either it needs to solve your customer’s problem or it needs to add significant value to their life. Make sure that your product is up-to-date, functional, and user-friendly. 

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3. Set up a Platform to Sell

Now that you have decided your niche and your product is ready to sell, all you need is a platform to host and sell your products. You can either sell digital products through your own website or through platforms like Etsy, Gumroad, Teachable, etc.

You can sell ebooks, printables, planners, digital arts, wallpapers, templates, etc. through Etsy and Gumroad. And to sell online courses, you can use platforms like Teachable or Udemy. 

You can use graphic design tools like Canva and Adobe Illustrator to create printables, stickers, templates, wallpapers, etc. And you can write your ebook on Google Docs or Notepad and save it as a pdf to sell it. 

4. Price Your Products

After your product is ready and you’ve decided a platform to sell, you need to set a price to sell your products.

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Pricing is a really crucial part. You can’t price it too high or too low. If you price it too high, very few people are likely to buy it, and if you price it too low, you won’t make enough profit.

So, while pricing your product, evaluate the product yourself and do your market research to analyze your competitors pricing to determine your own product’s pricing. 

You can promote your digital products by creating video/image content, writing blog posts, email marketing, paid ads, SEO, and through social media marketing. 

Digital products can be a great way to make money online passively without needing much work and attention. So, this might be something you would love to get into! The best part is, there is no limit on how much money you can make. Ana from TheSheApproach has made over $55,000 selling ebooks alone through her small blog.

3. Print on Demand

Print on Demand, or POD, is gaining immense popularity in recent times due to its business model. Print on demand business has less to no startup cost, which makes it easier for anyone to get into it.

In Print on Demand business, you create designs to print on mugs, t-shirts, hoodies, caps, pants, etc. After your design is ready, you find a print-on-demand supplier to print and sell your products. 

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Unlike other type of businesses, in POD, the products are not produced first and listed for sale later. Instead, the products are promoted first and only produced or printed when a customer places an order. 

In POD, your job is to create designs and market your products. Your POD supplier will do everything else, from printing, packaging, and delivering the product. They will even handle the returns if they have to. 

How to Get Started?

1. Choose a Niche

First of all, choose a niche you want to start your business in. Choose a niche that has huge demand in the market and something you’re interested in. For example, if you’re interested in sports, you can create designs related to sports, print them, and sell them. 

2. Create Your Designs

After you’ve chosen your niche, you need to create designs to print on products. Good designs attract more eyeballs and generate more sales compared to plain, low-quality designs. So, put your maximum effort into creating good designs. Your designs might be the only differentiator between success and failure of your POD business. 

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3. Choose a Print on Demand Supplier

After your design is ready, you need to find a good and trustworthy POD supplier to print and supply your products. Choose a supplier that uses high-quality materials to create products, has less fees, low shipping time, good customer support, and large area coverage. These things are crucial for your business’s success. 

Here are some popular print-on-demand suppliers: 

4. Set up Your Store

Now that your product is ready to sell, you need to find a platform to sell it. You can sell your POD products on Etsy, WooCommerce, or eBay, or setup a Shopify store to sell them. Your store must be clean and colorful to convert more visitors into customers. 

5. Price Your Products

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After your store is setup, you need to price your product. Make sure to check your competitors prices before pricing your own products. You can’t sell your products for significantly more than what your competitor is selling for. If you do so, you won’t get as many sales as you would have with a lower price point. 

You can market your Print on Demand products mainly through social media and paid ads. You can start and grow a social media account to promote your POD products for free. 

The print-on-demand market is worth more than $7.24B in 2024 and is projected to reach $43.4B by 2030 with a growth rate of staggering 26.8%. So, this might be the chance to dip your toes into the world of ecommerce with print on demand.

4. Dropshipping

Dropshipping is one of the hottest and most popular online business right now. It has made thousands of teenagers and 20-year-olds millionaires, and its craze is not going down anytime soon. 

Dropshipping is a business model where you find a product, advertise it, and generate sales, but someone else produces, packages, and ships them for you.

You buy products for less price from retailers or even manufacturers and sell them for a higher price through your own store. For example, if I find a cool watch on Alibaba.com that I can buy for $7 a piece, then I will create my own store to advertise that product and sell it for $20, $30, or even more. That is how you make money with dropshipping. 

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In dropshipping, you don’t have to worry about producing product, packaging, shipping, or keeping a product inventory because whenever an order comes in, you forward that order and customer’s details to your supplier, and then your supplier will produce, package, and deliver the product to your customer. There are several tools and softwares to automate this entire process. Here you’re basically a middleman reselling the products. 

How to Get Started?

1. Find a Product

To start a dropshipping business, first you need to find a product that solves a specific problem of your customers. Sometimes the product can be a fashionable or decorative item like a watch. The product has to have a high potential to sell. In the world of dropshipping, a product that solves a problem and has a high potential to sell is called a winning product.

2. Find a Supplier

After finding a good product to sell, you need to find a supplier who can supply you the same product for a cheaper price. A supplier can be the making or breaking point of your business because your job is to promote the product and bring customers. Everything except that is done by your supplier, so if you find a good supplier, you won’t have or have very few problems in your business, and vice versa.

So, before choosing your supplier, check their product quality, delivery time, packaging style, and customer service. A good supplier must have high-quality products, low delivery time, good packaging quality, and good customer support. 

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AliExpress is the go-to platform to find suppliers and products at a cheaper price, for dropshipping.

3. Build Your Store

After you’ve found a good product and a reliable supplier, you need to build a store to market your products. You can create your store on platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, GetResponse, and Wix or sell them directly on Amazon or eBay. The design of your store must be clean, simple, and colorful to get more sales. 

4. Market Your Store

After your store is setup and ready to sell, you need to advertise it, to bring customers to it. To advertise your store, you can use social media, paid ads, content marketing, SEO, and more.

Most dropshippers advertise their store through either Facebook or TikTok ads and through content marketing by creating viral pieces of content for TikTok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts. 

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That’s it! That’s how you can start your own dropshipping business and profit from the $250B dropshipping industry.

5. Dropservicing

Now you know what dropshipping is, but have you ever heard about dropservicing? Huh? Dropshipping deals with selling physical products, but dropservicing is all about selling services. 

Dropservicing, also known as service arbitrage, is a business model where you sell services to clients. But instead of doing the work yourself, you outsource the work to a third-party service provider, either a freelancer or an agency. In dropservicing, you’re basically a middleman, just like in dropshipping, who acts as a service seller in front of clients to make money without doing any work yourself. 

Whatever remains after paying your service provider from the amount your client paid is your profit. For example, if you find a client who is ready to pay you $1000 to edit a video for him. Then you find a freelancer or a video editing agency who can edit the same video for $400, then you can keep the remaining $600 with yourself. The more you charge your client and the less you pay your service provider, the more money you make. Didn’t understand? Read it again, you’ll get it! 

How to Get Started?

1. Choose a Niche

To start a dropservicing business, you must be good at some kind of skill or a particular niche. That can be web designing, video editing, graphic designing, content writing, etc. Even though you’re not the one doing the work, you need to have proper knowledge and skill in the field to convince your client that you’re capable enough and a perfect fit for the work. 

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2. Find Your Service Provider

After you’ve decided your niche, you need a service provider to do the required tasks for you. While choosing a service provider, you need to make sure that they are good at what they do; otherwise, you’ll end up with a low-quality output that may not satisfy your clients and may not fulfill their requirements. You can find service providers on platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer, etc., or on social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. 

3. Setup a Platform

After you’ve decided your niche and found the service providers, you need to market your services in order to get clients. To do so, either you can create your own website, create a profile on freelancing platforms, or promote your services through social media. 

While setting up a platform, you need to add your portfolio, past works, pricing, client testimonials, and contact information. Don’t worry if you don’t have any of these! You can add your service provider’s portfolio and client testimonials as yours while setting up your platform. 

4. Set Your Prices

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Before you launch your dropservicing business, you need to set a price for your services. While setting up pricing your services, find out how much your service provider is charging for the service you’re going to sell, and set your prices accordingly. For example, if your service provider charges $400 to edit a video, you can set your video editing price at $600, $700, or more. 

You can promote your dropservicing business through content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, cold outreach, paid advertising, and freelance platforms. 

Cold outreach is a process where you reach out to or contact someone via email who doesn’t have any connection with your business. The email is meant to aware them about your product or service and provide them with an offer.

Best Platforms to Start Your Business

If you’re thinking of starting a blog to get into affiliate marketing, then I would highly suggest you create your blog on either Wix or WordPress. These two are the best blog builders out there. 

And if you’d like to create your own website to promote your digital products, dropshipping/dropservicing business, and print-on-demand products, then I would suggest you use GetResponse’s simple drag-and-drop website builder. It’s very easy to use and completely free to create and manage a website for lifetime. Getresponse also has its own email marketing tool, so, if you want, you can even start email marketing with it for completely free!

Get your business online with free website builder (en)

Tips to succeed:

1. Stay Consistent: You won’t see results overnight, so you need to be consistent to get results and make money. 

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2. Learn, Learn, Learn: Whatever business you get into, learn about it as much as you can. Learning will help you gather more knowledge about the topic, which ultimately helps you to get better results and earn more. 

3. Be Patient: Many people give up too early because they are really, really impatient. Remember, great things take time, and if it were so easy and fast, then everyone would have done it. 

4. Provide Value: If you want to make money, then you need to provide something that is equally valuable to your customers. So, make sure your main motive is to provide value along with making money. 

So, these were the 5 most profitable online business ideas that you can start today for free. Let me quickly recap them for you. 1. Affiliate marketing 2. Selling digital products 3. Print on Demand (POD) 4. Dropshipping 5. Dropservicing. Make sure to give them a try if you’re thinking of starting an online business. And tell me in the comments, which one of these businesses would you start if you have to?

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