Whether on the road, at home, or in between, these are the products, tools and resources that I genuinely love and I think you will too!

For travelers

LODGING

The best places to stay don’t have to have turndown service. I find great lodging options on Airbnb, Booking.com and TripAdvisor. I read tons of reviews and weigh my decision most heavily on location and wifi availability.

FLIGHTS

I use google.com/flights heavily for finding cheaper rates cksed on having a flexible schedule. I recently wrote this post highlighting 7 amazing features of Google Flights including the option of inputting vague destinations like “Europe”. Other more creative sites like skiplagged.com can offer serious savings for folks willing to throw away parts of their route (not sure what I’m talking about, go check it out!).

Check WOW Air, XL Airways and Norwegian for deep discounts.

CAMERA

I love my Canon EOS 70D, it’s a high quality, crop-body camera, ideal for intermediate level photographers. I especially appreciate it’s video and wifi features. If you’re just getting started, I suggest the Canon EOS Rebel T5 EF-S.

LENSES

I was always trying to zoom out to get as much of the scene into the frame as possible. After searching high and low I found my dream lens: Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Lens. I also interchange a portable and multi-purpose pancake lens: Canon EF-S 24mm f/2.8 STM Lens.

SOFTWARE

With a ton of practice (and Skillshare classes) I’ve become a self-proclaimed master of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6– the best photo editing software available for travelers, bloggers, and photographers. Lightroom has it’s own workflow that takes some getting used to but once you’re familiar you’ll find it’s also a great way to store and organize your images.

For Bloggers

Web-Based Tools

It’s only me working on this blog! To help carry the load of social media, WordPress, and content creation I rely on a ton of helpful tools that have saved me a tons of time over the past year.

1 | CoSchedule to manage my social media and editorial schedule, also check out their free Headline Analyzer which analyzes the strength of your post title

2 | BoardBooster to keep my Pinterest boards cycling with fresh content and optimizing my best pins & Tailwind to quickly grab pins in bulk from my site and drip them onto my boards (**Pinterest is a key source of traffic to my site so these are critical for me!)

3 | ThemeForest for high quality WordPress Themes (I always read a bunch of reviews before purchasing too!) and I also love Station Seven.

4 | Bloglovin’ to help get the word out about my blog

5 | Canva to create images for Pinterest and posts

6 | Dropbox to backup my images offline and enjoy the ease of the Dropbox desktop application to toggle which folders are readily available

7 | Creative Market to buy fonts, WordPress Themes, graphics and InDesign templates

8 | Mail Chimp to handle my email lists and auto emails

9 | **SiteGround for web hosting – I can’t overstate their exceptional service and customer support! I used BlueHost for years and constantly dealt with outages and 30 minute customer wait times (that typically lasted MUCH longer than 30 minutes!), since moving to SiteGround in February 2016 my site has been up 100% and their helpful customer support technicians have been by my side throughout WordPress theme updates, answering ALL my questions, and going above and beyond to explain and resolve technical issues.

10 | Buffer to schedule tweets, I love their helpful Crome plugin which allows me to share content from within the browser. More importantly, their insightful ‘best times to post’ disperses tweets at only the most optimal times.

I would not recommend joining MatadorU’s Travel Media School. I found it to be a total waste of money!

WordPress Plugins

1| TwentyTwenty – quickly setup a before and after slider to display Lightroom edits like I did here.

2 | Bloom – attractive email opt-in that permits insightful A/B testing

3 | Content Upgrades – widget to do Opt-Ins at the bottom of my posts and a much cheaper solution than LeadPages

4 | jQuery Pin It Button For Images – adds a helpful ‘Pin It’ button to images in posts and pages

5 | Search Meter – see exactly what folks are typing into your search bar

+ the BASICS: JetPack & Yoast SEO

Photo Apps

Like a most millenial Instagrammers, I’m a huge fan of the A Color Story app and love using their curves functionality to make my images really pop. I also use a little-known app called UMUM to assist me with planning my instagram feed so that the images I post are cohesive. (Subtle self-promo: follow along with cohesively posted and curve-edited Instagram account here: @margo.paige)

Postcasts

I really love staying informed about the latest in terms of marketing and social media. Podcasts that I find extra inspiring are: Social Media Examiner, Smart Passive Income (SPI), Manly Pinterest Tips Podcast with Jeff Sieh, and The Get Paid Podcast.

Networks & Conferences

1 | TBEX – travel blogging conference that takes place annually in Europe, Asia and North America. I shared my experience attending TBEX in Bangkok in October 2016 here. Note: bring business cards and an elevator pitch!

2 | Travel Massive – fun networking group for connecting with other bloggers with social gatherings and events, there are Travel Massive chapters worldwide so take a look and see if there’s one near you!

3 | ITB – considered the premier travel trade show and blogging conference, held annually in Berlin

Blogging Advice

There’s plenty of folks willing to offer up advice on blogging, I’ve found the Buffer Blog and Coschedule Blog to be among the most insightful and subscribe to their email lists.

For Expats

Find and make new friends using online networks: Meetup and InterNations! These sites were game changers for our time in Germany and definitely were the starting point for the majority of our friendships.

Miscellaneous

1 | Le Tote – A clothing rental subscription, I’ve been a Le Tote subscriber for 2 months and absolutely love the service. I receive 3 pieces of clothing and 2 accessories, wear them as long as I like then mail them back in when I’m done in a prepaid postage bag. I then use their app to pick my new set of clothing based on my personal taste and weather! I love it most for the ability to rent trendy statement pieces that I typically would buy and wear only for a season or two. Their motto is “Always Wear Something New” which explains why it’s satisfying my lifelong retail-therapy ailment. 🙂