24 Blogs that Bootstrappers Won’t Want to Miss

The following are blogs that I have found useful to bootstrapping your own businesses. They are listed in alphabetical order. If you have more resources to add, please leave a comment below! I will update this post with quality recommendations.

Short on time? Download a PDF summary of these blogs and check them out at your leisure.

Andrew Chen

Andrew writes about tech, startups, and marketing. The content is not click-bait, but rather insightful reflections from those in the know. Andrew regularly accepts guest authors, so you’re likely to stumble across a few other bloggers in this list while reading Andrew’s blog.

Backlinko

Brian Dean has carved his niche by specializing in creative ways to build links to your website. Recently he has also been writing about building your email list (who isn’t?), with long-form, actionable posts that come out about once a month. Brian puts time into his posts, and it shows.

Boost Blog Traffic

Jon Morrow and his team write about once a week on effective blogging and content promotion. Even though not every bootstrapper is a blogger, every bootstrapper writes content for their marketing site (or is at least working with someone else who is), so it pays to be a good writer and know how to promote well.

Clarity

Clarity is a blog about general business advice, with a heavy-skewing towards startups, if not bootstrapped startups. The blog claims to “All stuff, no fluff”, and I honestly believe that they have attained this with the high-quality posts that come out about once or twice a week.

ConversionXL

Peep Laja runs a successful conversion consultancy, and blogs about optimizing conversions. The posts go deep and provide actionable advice I don’t often see anywhere else.

Copyhackers

Joanna Weibe is a highly sought-after copywriter who leverages her honed writing skills with A/B testing to increase client conversions by 100% or more. She freely shares many of these case studies on her blog, showing just which tweaks led to the desired increase in conversions.

Customer.io

The Customer.io blog releases new content weekly regarding “email marketing, copywriting, psychology, and customer happiness.” They offer insight into their own business and strategies as well as offering up general advice-type articles.

Fizzle

Fizzle calls their blog “The Sparkline”, and it is a combination of original content and notifications of new episodes of their podcast, “The Fizzle Show”. Their content is varied, with recent articles on design, podcasting, copywriting, and overcoming depression.

Happy Bootstrapper

Jaana, the author of Happy Bootstrapper, is an accountant who took up design/development and eventually became a bootstrapper. Her insight into the financials of SaaS products is incredible, and her posts are generally long-form and well-researched.

Heidi Cohen

Heidi’s blog focuses more on social media and content marketing, both necessary disciplines for many bootstrappers. New posts come out about every other day.

Help Scout

The Help Scout blog is pretty varied in content, typically within the realms of growth, support, and retention. New, long-form posts are released once a week.

Justin Jackson

Justin is one of those writers that injects his personality into everything he publishes. I love this about his posts, which typically have to do with growing an audience, building products, and life in general.

Kikolani

Kikolani is the home of Kristi Hines, a freelance writer and professional blogger, whose work can regularly be seen around the Internet on a wide variety of blogs. Her content generally relates to social media marketing and search engine optimization.

KISSmetrics Marketing Blog

An online marketing blog from the creators of the SaaS application Kissmetrics (analytics for web applications). Even if you follow no other blog for marketing your product, follow KISSmetrics. They publish content approximately once a day, sometimes more. The content is long-form, in-depth, and chock-full of actionable insight from a variety of authors.

LKR Social Media

Laura Roeder’s blog is a great resource for all things social media peppered with insight into running an online business. Laura is working on a SaaS application named Edgar, so her posts at times reflect her experiences with building and launching a product.

Nathan Barry

Nathan is a hybrid designer/marketer, and his blog is pretty equally split between these two disciplines. Nathan is one of those writers that isn’t afraid to share specific details about what he has found to work for him, as well as what hasn’t worked so well. Some of Nathan’s most valuable content has to do with maximizing launches, pricing strategies, and self-publishing.

OnStartups

Dharmesh Shah’s blog on entrepreneurs is updated about once a month, but the content is long-form and full of entrepreneurial insight from Dharmesh, who is the co-founder of Hubspot.

Quick Sprout

I don’t know how Neil Patel does it, but he consistently outputs high-quality articles multiple times per week on Quick Sprout, as well as the Kissmetrics Blog. Topics include content marketing, social media, and overall engagement strategies. Every post garners dozens of comments and hundreds of shares.

Ryan Battles

I threw this one in there in case this list ends up published elsewhere :) Ryan posts every week on topics that relate to entrepreneurship, productivity, and marketing.

SaaStr

Jason Lemkin writes once or twice a week about all things entrepreneurial, especially in relationship to SaaS applications, and recurring online revenue. Many of his posts go on to be syndicated in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, etc.

Signal vs. Noise

This blog is probably the most varied in the list, consisting of company news, customer profiles, op-ed pieces, and video. However, this blog (from the makers of Basecamp) often provides insight into lessons learned running one of the most successful SaaS applications to-date.

Software by Rob

This blog is not updated regularly, but when new content comes out, I am sure to read it. Rob Walling is the host of the popular “Startups for the Rest of Us” podcast, and author of “Start Small, Stay Small”. He has run numerous startups, and shares his experiences freely while teaching others how to make money off of multiple streams of income.

Unbounce

Every few days Unbounce releases another insightful article on landing page conversion and optimization. From optimizing calls to action to headline tweaking, the tips shared within this blog will improve your landing pages.

Unicornfree

You either love or hate Amy Hoy’s entrepreneurial blog with attitude. I must admit, after meeting Amy in person in Philly, I’m a big fan. Behind the in-your-face headlines (not uncommon for the F-bomb to make an appearance) lies someone who really cares about her audience and wants to see them succeed. Amy details her experiences and shares her expert advice on getting to know your audience, solving their pain points, and building a product that meets needs and turns a profit.