ECommerce solution in Pakistan

A complete eCommerce solution

Weebly’s eCommerce website builder gives you a surprisingly easy way to sell products online. We arm you with modern store designs and the powerful features you need to provide a consistent shopping experience that works across desktop, tablet and mobile devices. The online shopping experience once reserved for major online retailers is now at your fingertips.

Fully Integrated Shopping Cart and Secure Checkout

Provide shoppers with the convenience of a fully integrated free shopping cart and a secure checkout experience directly from your ecommerce website. Our shopping cart software is set-up automatically when you create your store so you can start selling online immediately, no technical skills needed.

Complete Mobile Store and Checkout

Give shoppers a mobile experience that works every time from any device. We ensure your online store and products load quickly and display perfectly. All ecommerce websites include a free mobile shopping cart and and secure checkout experience that’s designed to work perfectly on smaller screens like phones and tablets.

Powerful Filtered Product Search

Give shoppers a faster way to find exactly what they want. Highlight the most relevant products and let your customers filter the results by attributes like price, color, etc. Filtered product search helps you maximize exposure across all of your inventory and create more buying opportunities.

Sell Digital Goods, Physical Products , Services and More

We offer flexible options for selling a wide range of products. Digital and downloadable items are automatically delivered to your customers via email with a secure one-time use link. There are extensive options for physical products, one-of-a-kind handmade items, services and donations that can be completely customized to meet your needs.

Search Engine Optimized Online Stores

Our ecommerce websites are designed with search engines in mind so customers can find you. We automatically optimize your site and product pages so you’ll have everything you need to start ranking for search results.

Flexible Shipping Option

Offer the shipping choices that shoppers want and easily handle a full spectrum of shipping situations ranging from simple to complex. Sellers can offer “free shipping” on select orders, set shipping rates based on price or weight and define carriers (e.g. UPS, USPS, FedEx) as well as delivery speed (e.g. ground, 3-day, overnight). Rates can be adjusted for geographic locations including full international support and fine-grained control options for sub-regions (states, provinces, etc.).

Fine-Grained Tax Controls

It’s simple to manage even the most complex tax situations with a Weebly eCommerce website. You determine when and where to apply taxes. Weebly provides and maintains current city, state and province level tax rates for the United States and Canada. For all other countries, tax rates can be defined by the seller.

Track Your Inventory

Manage a handful or hundreds of products. Track your inventory to manage your supply, show customers the number of items remaining to create urgency and boost buying behavior (e.g. only 2 left!), and automatically show items that are no longer available as “out of stock”.

Manage Your Store on the Go with the Weebly iPhone and Android Apps

Mobile apps make it easy and convenient to manage your online store from anywhere. You can process and fulfill orders, provide personalized service and respond to customer inquiries, upload new products and photos, notify customers when a purchase has shipped, check sales figures in real-time and receive notifications whenever a new order is placed.

Powerful eCommerce Website Builder

Getting your store up and running is as simple as choosing a design theme, adding your products, setting up shipping and selecting your preferred way to accept payments. We automatically create a storefront for you to customize as much or as little as you’d like, including the option for full CSS/HTML control and editing.

Modern eCommerce Templates and Storefronts

Choose from a wide variety of modern and unique ecommerce templates and color palette combinations to design the perfect look for your online store. You can showcase featured products, categorize items for easy browsing, customize fonts, and define photo display options to create a store you’ll be proud to share.

Free eCommerce Hosting

Reliable, world-class cloud hosting that’s redundant and scalable means your online store is always available. We handle all the details to ensure your ecommerce website loads quickly every time, no matter how much traffic you receive.

Payment Options

Instantly accept major credit cards directly from your own domain name. Choose from a variety of payment options including Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and Square.

Showcase Your Products with Display and Merchandising Options

The Weebly eCommerce platform brings the ease of drag and drop website creation to product merchandising. Create rich product descriptions with slideshows and videos. Easily reorder products for maximum visual appeal. Shoppers can easily share your products on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

Integrate Content and eCommerce

Combine content and products in unique ways to create more buying opportunities. In addition to a powerful storefront, Weebly gives you the freedom to showcase and sell products or accept donations from any page on your site such as a blog or your homepage with our standalone ecommerce element.

Sell to Shoppers Around the World

Tap into the growing global market with complete international support for accepting payments, shipping and taxes. Payment processing is available in 25 countries with PayPal and 11 countries with Stripe. Easily manage shipping to any destination. Flexible tax management with fine-grained controls to support online stores globally.

Process and Manage Orders

Process and manage orders from end-to-end with order confirmation emails, shipment tracking notifications, refunds and returns processing and real-time reporting for orders and sales.

Import Your Online Store to Weebly eCommerce

Want to see a preview of what your existing store could look like on Weebly? Import your store from Etsy, Shopify or upload a  free version for up to five products and a Business plan with unlimited products and the full set of features for only $25/month.

Drive Sales with Coupon Codes & Discounts

Sellers are armed with promotional offers to compete effectively and increase sales. They can incentivize visitors to purchase with a limited-time offer, attract new buyers by offering a referral discount and generate repeat sales from existing customers by running a sale.CSV file directly into Weebly’s eCommerce platform for fast and easy setup. Once imported, you can adjust and tweak your store design to create a unique look.

We’re Here to Help You Start Your Online Store

We are committed to helping you create a high-quality store that achieves your goals. We offer live chat, email support and a variety of resources to assist you every step of the way. If you are creating a store for the first time, our Site Planner and free live training sessions will walk you through everything you need to know to get your store up and running.

A complete eCommerce solution

Weebly’s eCommerce website builder gives you a surprisingly easy way to sell products online. We arm you with modern store designs and the powerful features you need to provide a consistent shopping experience that works across desktop, tablet and mobile devices. The online shopping experience once reserved for major online retailers is now at your fingertips.

Adsense Vs DoubleClick CPC

Adsense Vs DoubleClick CPC

The legal world presents a unique opportunity for publishers to earn high revenues.  Whether you write a legal blog or operate a legal forum there are a variety of  unique ways to monetize your site.  Lawyers operate in an industry of high margins, therefore they can afford to spend considerably more than typical businesses to acquire new customers.As with most types of blogs or forums, a great way to start is with Google Adsense. Adsense dominates the Pay Per Click (PPC) market and is a great place to begin if you own a new site. You simply need to apply for Adsense, implement the ads on your site, and Adsense takes care of the rest. Adsense pays you every time somebody clicks on your ads, and in the legal vertical ads average $42 per click!If you publish legal content in a particular niche and you’re a lawyer yourself, a great way to initially embark upon site revenues is to reach out to lawyers in your niche outside your geographical market and to sell ads to them in their particular market.  By selling outside your market, you capitalize on your unique, niche content but avoid butting heads with your local competition.  You’ll need to disclose to your prospects your traffic amounts and where that traffic originates, but for a small price you can convince them it’s worth their while.  After all, if a lawyer charges $350/hour and gains one customer billed for 10 hours ($3,500) from a $500 ad then his ROI is 600%.  That’s an amazing return on advertising dollars for any business.If you operate a legal forum, the premise is similar.  Adsense can be a great place to start, but as your forum grows avenues to different niches and subjects will open up.  Once you’re able to segment your forum into categories you can then begin to approach lawyers from different geographical areas and provide each with advertising depending on where your traffic originates.  Of course, you can segment the content so that each lawyer exposes ads to his particular niche.Though there may not be tons of traffic for every niche and geographical segment, the key is the quality and precise targeting of the traffic.  That targeting provides the underlying value for each attorney, as that content finds only the eyeballs of each lawyer’s specific type of clientele in his specific geographical market.  For instance, if a personal injury law blog receives 200 unique visitors/month from Ohio and each spends an average of 5 minutes on the site, maybe a lawyer in Cleveland believes each visitor is worth $2.50 because the visitors are highly targeted and at least one or two are likely to convert into a customer.   This is the logic you’ll use to create appeal to your prospects.So how do you manage all this?  First, you sign up for Google Analytics (GA) for free  to observe and analyze all your site traffic and behavior.  With GA you’ll be able to determine where your traffic comes from and what pages they’re viewing.  Next, you must find a way to segment the ads and serve them in a way that suits each niche and each geographical marget. The solution is through Doubleclick for Publishers (DFP) ad platform, which is also free.   DFP allows you to manage your ads and to show them when and where you want.  It’s a powerful tool, but if it appears too daunting contact us so we can lend a hand.  Lastly, once you’ve signed up for DFP, Google offers a premium version of Adsense called Doubleclick Ad Exchange (AdX).  Google typically extends invites only to premium publishers, but our relationship with Google allows even smaller publishers to join. AdX revenues tend to be 25%  – 100% higher than Adsense and you can sign up here.

SEO Optimize Blogger

SEO Optimize Blogger

In my previous tutorial on BBC (BestBloggerCafe) I tutored about optimizing blogger labels and thus, in this tutorial I'll address optimizing blogger comments. Comments are very important for a blog because they are crawled by search engines. So if a blog is having a lot of comments from the visitors then it is a very good thing. Google and other search engines give importance to the websites or blogs which's posts are commented the most. This shows the popularity and usefulness of a blog. But when people leave bad links in their comments, this becomes a headache for the blogger as well as for search engines. Bad links in comments can destroy your blog and SEO. In general, we keep comments links as nofollow. And nofollow means, we instruct the search engine's crawler to not crawl the link inside comments, but crawl only the content of the comment.This is the best practice, because you can't give dofollow external links to the commentators. This reduce your Page Rank and can harm your blog's SEO. By default now many platforms including WordPress add nofollow HTML attribute to the comment links, but in Blogger there isn't this setting available  But we can do it manually by ourselves.

How to optimize Blog's comments?

Now here is a simple solution for getting rid of this problem. You'll just have to add an HTML attribute to the comments part of HTML section of your blog. Follow steps below:

1. Login to your blog
2. Template >> HTML >> Proceed >> Check the Expand Widget Templates
3. Now find below piece of code by using CTRL+F

expr:href='data:post.createLinkUrl'

Just replace the above code with given code below:

rel='external nofollow' expr:href='data:post.createLinkUrl'

Save your template and you're almost done!

What we did?

We just added a rel='external nofollow' attribute to the comments of the visitors, so now search engines won't follow the links inside comments. You can only use rel='nofollow' but the external nofollow is better then only nofollow, because sometimes you can insert links indicating to your blog's other pages, so they will be followed by search engines and the rest won't be.

Your Turn:
I'm trying my best to resolve all the issues you're facing while working on blogger, so let me know if you have questions regarding this tutorial... Stay happy and peaceful.

Insert Adsense Ads

Insert Adsense Ads Below Posts

Adsense works great on content receiving good traffic from search engines, because it is a targeted keyword based PPC ad network. but if you receive good traffic from search engines and still don't make considerable income with it then you might be doing  some mistakes somewhere in implementation, and ads placements is included in this. So make sure your ads are on the right placements where visitors pay attention at first. We can implement Google ads on any platform or manually created websites, we can insert the ads wherever we want into our pages. But the problem is with blogger blogs, when you use blogger.com for your blog then you are limited to add third party widgets only by using HTML/JavaScript widget in the Layout area. You don't have direct access to the blog post body or Single post in WordPress. Therefore, it becomes headache when you want to insert Adsense ads inside your blog posts, and this is very necessary because the best positions for Google ads are; the header, the post body, below the posts and the sidebar. You can use the header in some templates and sidebar in every template, but the main placement is below the post titles in blogger.But as you might know that blogger.com is built within XML which doesn't allow some characters inside scripts such as >, +, <, && and so on. Therefore, we'll need to alter the ad codes to make it possible.

So this post is all about inserting Google ads below post titles in Blogger for increasing your CTR (Click rate on ads), and the revenue. obviously, when CTR get boosted, the revenue get increased.

I won't take your much time, and I've simplified the tutorial, you just need to follow the tips and easily insert Google Ads below post titles in blogger. And you'll see a dramatic change in your earning and CTR. Let's start how to do this.

1. Login into your Adsense account: http://www.google.com/adsense
2. Go to my Ads at top left side and click My Ads >> Create a new Ad unit
3. Now make the settings for new ad unit as per your choices (See Below picture for example)

4. Select an ad unit of 300*250 which is best for inserting after the post titles in blogger and click the Save and Get code button which is highlighted in the screen shot.

5. You'll get a pop up in which the generated code for the ad unit will be looking like this image:

6. Just copy all the code and paste into this tool http://www.bestbloggercafe.com/bbc-html-character-encoder/

The above tool actually converts the characters to be accepted by blogger core, because blogger in fact doesn't allow illegal characters like <,>,+,&& and so on, so therefore, you need to convert the code by using above tool, so it will convert all the illegal characters to the accepted ones.

Now your converted code should be looking like this:

&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt;&lt;!--

google_ad_client = &quot;ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXX&quot;;

/* XXXXXXX */

google_ad_slot = &quot;XXXXXX&quot;;

google_ad_width = 300;

google_ad_height = 250;

//--&gt;

&lt;/script&gt;

&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;

src=&quot;http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js&quot;&gt;

&lt;/script&gt;

All the illegal characters are now removed by that tool and this code is now acceptable for blogger. Now for adding the code to blogger follow these steps(In Blogger New Edit HTML):

• Blogger >> Template >> Edit HTML >> Jump to Widget >> Blog1 >> Find var='post'
• When you found var='post' just click the arrow at the left side for expanding that widget
• Now when the widget is expanded, search for this code: <data:post.body>
• Just before <data:post.body> paste the converted code

Now your code should be looking like this:

&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt;&lt;!--

google_ad_client = &quot;ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXX&quot;;

/* XXXXXXX */

google_ad_slot = &quot;XXXXXX&quot;;

google_ad_width = 300;

google_ad_height = 250;

//--&gt;

&lt;/script&gt;

&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;

src=&quot;http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js&quot;&gt;

&lt;/script&gt;

<data:post.body/>

This is for displaying the ads below the post title, if you want to insert the ads below the post then simply paste the converted code below tag. So the ads will be showing up below the post.

But in above code there is a problem, the ads will be appearing on the home page as well as on single posts, and we don't want that because we need this unit to be displayed only on single posts, not on home page. So we'll need to add an if statement which is a XML tag in blogger, so now you should be inserting the ads along with these two conditional tags like this:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>

&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt;&lt;!--

google_ad_client = &quot;ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXX&quot;;

/* XXXXXXX */

google_ad_slot = &quot;XXXXXX&quot;;

google_ad_width = 300;

google_ad_height = 250;

//--&gt;

&lt;/script&gt;

&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;

src=&quot;http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js&quot;&gt;

&lt;/script&gt;

</b:if>

Now by inserting the tags we are actually making the codes to appear only on post pages, but not on home page.You can also use the tags if you want the ads to be centered align. Just add the tag before the ad code and at the end of the ad code, so the ads will be centered align.

Conclusion

By doing this, you are not gonna violating any program policy of Google Adsense, because this is necessary for inserting the ads inside blog posts, and also you are just converting the characters to alternative characters. This doesn't mean you are changing or altering the entire ad code. So don't worry and take it easy.

I hope you'll insert Google ads easily by following all the steps mentioned in this tutorial. However, if you faced any difficulty then I'm always here to help you out, just leave your comment. Take Care!

Increase CPC Adsense

Increase CPC Adsense

Are you geting very low CPC from your Google Adsense account ? Some advice on how to increase your Adsense CPC and an increase revenue.

Why sometimes Adsense CPC goes down

Consistently high level for a few months to several publishers with their CPC reported that the sudden gone. One reason for this, some advertisers have recently targeted to your site and ended campaigns.
Your sales and total revenue increases, but the CPC does not work, then you can get a low CPC content, more traffic, and it is possible that the reduction in the average CPC. However, an increase in its total income, you do not have to worry about changes in CPC.

Obtain placement of targeted ads, which arrive with the greatest CPC

Placement-targeted ads are always more than normal ads. Placement-targeted ads one of the best ways to increase your Adsense CPC must consider your site for the targeted advertising that is AdWords advertisers. Advertisers are supposed to go down at the same time in many places on the web for the loss of the target CPC is one of the main factors.

Right Way to Get Placement Targeted Ads on Your Blog

Section Targeting permits you to point to Google regarding that a part of your page is to be thought-about for discourse targeting of Ads. as an example, if you have got sidebars and menu that has fully impertinent content, you’ll wish to exclude those components by victimization section targeting so your Adsense ads are a lot of relevant to the first content of the page instead of matching the content with the text in sidebars. By victimization section targeting, you’ll get a lot of relevant Ads for your content that successively can provide higher CPC.Always keep in touch with online markets because advertisers more concentrate on those products i.e. when Windows 8 was launched and become in Market so it was the most searchable item on the search engines, all online marketer wants their product to promote so make your self always touch with hot stuff like new products and write article with High CPC targeting related keywords.

Blogger

THE Best Places to Start a Blog 

Note: We’ve just published a quick guide to blog hosting sites. Make sure to get those detailsif you haven’t already!

Blogging. The thing your friend does that you could do better. The hobby of the century. Your key to boss-less freedom and your cat’s one shot at fame. So do your homework with this list and start a blog the whole world, and your mom, will love.

WordPress.org

Browse at WordPress.org

About:

Setup nowadays so easy Snoop Dogg can do it with the elegance of NYTimes, Sony PlayStation, Wall Street Journal, Paris Hilton and more. WordPress requires no coding knowledge and is free software – it’s the domain name and hosting you pay about-as-much-as-a-cup-of-coffee-per-month for. It gives you a website like the world’s best and teaches you all about websites, too. For countless bloggers who do this for a living, WordPress.org is the best place to blog. Click here to watch our step-by-step setup video and join the largest blogging community on the web.

Stats:

• Recommended for: Blogging and websites
• Founded: May 27th, 2003
• Founder: Matt Mullenweg of Automattic
• Total users: 60 million, 19% of the internet and 1 in 5 websites as of December 2013
• Total employees: 151
• Pros: Elegance and ease
• Cons: You need to get a domain name and web hosting first (“Create a WordPress.org Blog First Try”)
• Costs: Your domain name and hosting can be bought together for about $3-6 per month. I recommend HostGator for this, but other places are more than willing to charge you more 
• My verdict: The best place to blog if you’re serious about it. Good for all types of review websites, mommy blogs, company sites, eCommerce sites and more.

Please Note: There is a material connection between this blog and HostGator. I receive compensation in the form of an affiliate commission for referring customers who need web-hosting to HostGator. This is by no means an easy process as quality reviews and guides take months to make, however I do receive compensation for such efforts. There are plenty of good web hosts out there besides HostGator so let me know if you have any questions! Please assume all links to HostGator are affiliate links for which I stand to earn compensation. These commissions are how I keep the blog online and free for everyone, so thanks. I only recommend the few products I use and depend on to succeed in blogging.

WordPress.com

Browse at WordPress.com

About:

WordPress.com is a free blog-hosting site with roughly half the features of .org. The general idea here is less maintenance for you, but less control of the blog. Get a .wordpress domain name like “dearblogger.wordpress.com” or pay to use your own domain name. Need a niche? WordPress.com sees 100,000 posts published each day so you’ll surely find like-minded thinkers. Not a full company website but a loyal companion for one. Write posts, try a free theme, set up social media buttons and learn blogging at WordPress.com.

Stats:

• Recommended for: Mass community blogging
• Released: November 21, 2005
• Founder: Matt Mullenweg of Automattic
• Total users: 56 million blogs
• Pros: Ease to use with little you can mess up.
• Cons: Less customization and a bit fussy with adding certain features.
• Costs: Free, you can pay WordPress.com to get a domain name without the “.wordpress” addition.
• My verdict: A lovely intro to blogging that about 1 year in takes us all to a crossroads: stay put, or transfer to WordPress.org.

Blogger

Browse at Blogger.com

About:

Blogger is Google’s free blog-hosting site. More popular at the turn of the millenium, Blogger still offers a great service but the designs are a bit elementary. Login and publish your first post for free with only a Gmail account. Try Adsense “monetization”, design a new layout and even edit your first piece of code.

Stats:

• Recommended for: Blogging
• Founded: August 2013, 1999
• Notable events: Bought by Google in February, 2003
• Founder: Evan Williams of Pyra Labs
• Total users:
• Pros: Publish anywhere, huge community, images, video, edit HTML/CSS, template designer, track traffic stats in Blogger, Adsense at no charge
• Cons: While Blogger is where many writers (including Dear Blogger) started publishing, it’s designs appear a bit childish today. Google owns your blog – they axed Reader – so acknowledge a bit less control upfront.
• Costs: Pay $10/year for a domain name without the “.blogspot” extension – otherwise totally free.
• Future predictions: May merge with Google+.
• My verdict: Everything blogging should be and more – Blogger was the sandbox for names now headlining in tech. The only real negative comes from outgrowing Blogger, at which point many (like myself) transfer to WordPress. Less popular today – even Google’s PR Mogul Matt Cutts runs a WordPress site.

Tumblr

Browse at Tumblr.com

Introduction to Tumblr:

At a time when WordPress and Blogger were neck-and-neck for new users, Tumblr showed up as the 3rd guy to the party. They received lots of sign-ups from users wanting a totally refreshing take on blogging, and have grown ever since. Tumblr was recently bought by Yahoo, who has interesting plans for the whole blog advertising thing.

Stats:

• Founded: February 2007
• Founder: David Karp
• Total users: 152 million
• Pros: Ease of use and ability to share your friends’ work through re-blogging.
• Cons: Less customization, just a shade less professional and not ideal for conducting business.
• Costs: Free, pay Tumblr to get your own domain name without the “.tumblr” addition
• My verdict: Great for photography and other forms of art. Super-simplistic designs and a whimsical vibe make Tubmlr a great choice for any new blogger.

SquareSpace

Browse at SquareSpace.com

About:

All over television with beautiful and encouraging ads, SquareSpace offers a nice solution for the business owner in need of a web presence. Get online quickly with a free trial, setup a cool design and start attracting clients – that’s the motto. If a more complex blogging platform were snowboarding, SquareSpace would be skiing, in the pie wedge stance 

Stats:

• Recommended for: Individual and business blogs and websites
• Founded: January 2004
• Founder: Anthony Casalena
• Total users: ?
• Pros: Elegant designs setup with a couple of clicks.
• Cons: Less customization – you’ll pay for things that may come free at a place like WordPress
• Costs: 14-day free trial with plans from $8 and up afterwards
• My verdict: Less hands-on than WordPress but arguably better advertising and accessibility – Squarespace gets your business site up quickly. A good quick solution.

Google+

Browse at Plus.Google.com

About:

If you need a guide on how to use Google Plus we’ve got you covered, because we’ve been trying to dominate it for a year now. Fun features like the badge make getting followers easier. Google Plus brings you instant community + audience – two things any blogger wants more of. Make sure to share publicly if you want to build any sort of following.

Stats:

• Recommended for: Social networking (“social layer”)
• Released: June 28, 2011
• Founder: Google Developers
• Total users: 540 million per month
• Pros: Google circles, photography (1.5 billion uploaded each week), “hangout” feature, multi-language, authorship, can increase a publisher’s search rankings, Gmail integration, chat, mobile chat, mobile publishing,
• Cons: None, start using it today.
• Costs: Free
• My verdict: Absolutely necessary for anyone who wants to be considered an expert in any field. Fun. Challenging. If you’re curious, I’ve also written on how to master Google Plusover at Social Media Explorer.

Wix

Browse at Wix.com

About:

Wix is a cloub-based web development platform whose brand name stresses originality, simplicity and above all, free. For this reason the platform is popular among musicians, photographers, entrepreneurs and other small business owners who want a quick-fix website on a very low budget. The catch with Wix is the premium features, which of course cost money, which you’ll almost definitely need as you expand your website. The main difference here between a Wix and a WordPress is with Wix you enter for free and pay more as you go, and with WordPress you enter for a cost (domain name and hosting) and afterwards all resources are free.

Stats:

• Recommended for: Quick fix small-business budget websites
• Released: 2006
• Founder: Avishai Abrahami
• Total users: 57 million
• Pros: Drag and drop website builder which uses HTML5, little to no coding knowledge necessary, free to get a basic website online, text editor and free fonts, free templates, mobile friendly, login through Facebook or Google + accounts, and more.
• Cons: Charges for many features one would expect to be free. Difficult to transfer away from.
• Costs: Premium version of the software and additions, domain names, hosting capability. Unclear exactly how much you might spend but it has been reported to often cost several hundred dollars per year.
• My verdict: Obviously a very successful company with a wide marketing budget and clean look. But I’d never recommend Wix. There is just no situation I can bring to mind in which I would recommend Wix because of their pricing structure and decreasing market share among respected online brands.

✩  Alternative Communities  ✩

Medium

Browse at Medium.com

• Founded: 2012
• Founder: Evan Williams (Twitter, Blogger) and Biz Stone (Twitter)
• Total users: ?
• Pros: Story telling feel, goal to improve content quality
• Cons: Still low usership
• Costs: Free
• My verdict: Probably won’t reach the development status of WordPress.org but definitely chomping at the heels of Blogger, Tumblr and even Twitter as it borrows several of their services, like topic searches and nostalgic photo shares from the founders themselves.

Hubpages

Browse at HubPages.com

About:

Hubpages started as an article network, the kind of place where you were rewarded for publishing lots of articles on any one topic like cooking, travel or home-improvement. Today, it boasts millions of informative articles and guides. However, a by-product of mass publishing is slightly lesser quality. You may find articles at Hubpages you’d wonder why anyone would ever publish. Or, you may find the best home for your blogging and writing needs.

Stats:

• Recommended for: Social networking (“social layer”)
• Launched: August 6th, 2006
• Founder: Paul Edmondson
• Total users: 74,000
• Pros: Not going out of business soon.
• Cons: Less ownership of your work.
• Costs: Free
• My verdict: A solid place to start writing and learn from other experts. Tightly-knit. Fun for everyone involved.

Joomla

Browse at Joomla.com

About:

Joomla is an advanced CMS used by developers to publish some of the websites we visits each day. Written in PHP, it uses many of the same structures as a WordPress site does. For whatever reason, developers have flocked elsewhere, but Joomla remains one of the web’s oldest and savviest places to run a blog or website.

Stats:

• Recommended for: Content Management, Web Content
• Released: August 17th, 2005
• Founders: The Joomla Project
• Total users: 35 million downloads
• Pros: over 6000 free extensions, estimated as the second most used content management system (CMS) after WordPress
• Cons: Smaller community, help out articles you find may be out of date.
• Costs: ?
• My verdict: Only really for a Joomla developer or website manager. Not an easy access point for a beginner.

Live Journal

Browse at LiveJournal.com

• Recommended for: Blogging, journaling, writing a diary
• Founded: April 15th, 1999
• Founder: Brad Fitzpatrick
• Total users: 39.6 million accounts, 1.7 million active accounts
• Pros: friend others to read their entries and leave comments, avatars, user info pages, to-do lists
• Cons: moved design to Russia in 2009, basic plan users see advertisements
• Premium features: express lane for quicker load times, call from your phone to a LiveJoural number and post voice recording to your journal
• Costs: Premium version, not sure of the costs here. Anyone know?
• My verdict: In mother Russia, blog write on you.

Quora

Browse at Quora.com

• Recommended for: Question and answer based websites
• Released: June 21st, 2010
• Founder: ?
• Total users: 500,000 reported in 2011, more now.
• Pros: Collaborative feel and separate blogging platform recently released.
• Cons: Less costumization.
• Costs: Free
• Interesting facts: 30% of Quora users hail from India. Founded by two former Facebook employees.
• My verdict: If you’re passionate about a topic but don’t have the time to maintain a blog, submitting questions and answers to Quora discussions is a great compromise.

Typepad

Browse at Typepad.com

• Founded October 2003:
• Founder: Say Media
• Total users: ?
• Pros: Ease of use
• Cons: Less costumization
• Costs: Free
• My verdict: Just love the news? If so, know that ABC, BBC, CBS, MSNBC and more use Typepad to maintain blogs.

Weebly

Browse at Weebly.com

• Founded: 2006
• Founder: David Rusenko
• Total users: hosts 15 million websites
• Pros: Drag and drop feature so easy a monkey could use it.
• Cons: Less control for the user
• Costs: ?
• My verdict: I’ve heard a lot of positive reviews here. For a company owner who needs a website but despises tech, it’s Weebly or Squarespace, and both are sound choices.

Drupal

Browse at Drupal.org

• Recommended for: Blogging, Content Management, Web Applications
• Founded: January 2001
• Founder: Dries Buytaert
• Total users: 1 million users and 30K developers
• Pros: 22,900 free add-ons, free and premium themes via the Drupal Theme Garden
• Cons: Quite involved, not ideal for beginners
• Costs: ?
• My verdict: Fun for developers and bloggers with a real interest in building code.

Squidoo

Browse at Squidoo.com

• Founded: 2005
• Founder: Seth Godin
• Total users: 1.5 million
• Pros: Lenses and points systems to level up are only part of the fun.
• Cons: Like Hubpages, you might not feel an ownership of your work.
• Costs: Free
• My verdict: A classy place to meet others before you get more serious about blogging.

✩  New Releases  ✩

Postach.io

Browse at Postach.io

• Recommended for: On-the-go bloggers, note-taking
• Founded: 2013
• Founder: Evernote
• Total users: 20,000
• Pros: Supports popular comment plugin Disqus, lighter feel, easy to use.
• Cons: Less costumization
• Costs: Free
• My verdict: Too soon to form a verdict here!

Facebook Notes

Browse at Facebook.com/notes

• Recommended for: Social media integrated blogging
• Founded: 2013
• Founder: Facebook Developers
• Total users: Well, 1.1 billion already on Facebook…
• Pros: Simple to share images, links and quotes – useful if you’ve got a large, Facebook-centric audience already.
• Cons: Limited design and that blue Facebook-y feel we all should just escape every now and then.
• Costs: Free
• My verdict: Not much different from a Facebook page – I predict this to be a feature Facebook tries, directs advertisers to, then slowly wanders away from.

Svbtle

Browse at Svbtle.com

• Founded: 2013
• Founder: Dustin Curtis
• Total users: ?
• Pros: New, different; aren’t we all?
• Cons: Must apply for a membership and no commenting feature as of yet.
• Costs: Free
• My verdict: They are a “network of great people who want to make it easier for people to share and discover new ideas”. Excited to see where Svbtle goes in the next few months.

Sett

Browse at Sett.com

• Founded: Early 2013
• Founder: Tynan (a blogger) and Todd Iceton
• Total users: 1,000 – 10,000
• Pros: Generally bent on community, top navigation bar like Blogger, has a word-matching system that matches similar posts and will recommend users to your posts the moment they sign-up, private discussions, one click subscription system
• Cons: Premium service that allows for more image hosting (does this mean normal users are limited?)
• Costs: Free with premium service offered
• My verdict: I’ve always believed it’s the readers who really grow a blog, not so much the blogger him/herself. 80/20. So I’m excited here. Will they win the battle for 3rd place? Either way, the web is always better with more variety, more options, more places to blog.

Ghost

Browse at Ghost.org

• Founded: Early 2013
• Founder: Ghost Foundation
• Total users: 10,000 – 50,000
• Pros: Open-source so once you download it you own it, organized at run by volunteers and non-profits
• Cons: Any service that charges based on the amount of views you get is a villain in my book or could become one. Don’t limit us, thanks.
• Costs: Free with premium service offered
• My verdict: Got to respect their lofty ideas. But, I suspect they are trying to KO WordPress and possibly backed by BlueHost based on their web design, so I oppose 

Posthaven

Browse as Posthaven.com

• Founded: Early 2013
• Founder: Ghost Foundation
• Total users: 10,000 – 50,000
• Pros: Post by email. Oh and “they’ll never get acquired, never shut down” as long as you pay them.
• Cons: “Simple, easy blogs for $5 a month, forever.”
• Costs: 5 bucks
• My verdict: They’re a group of engineers who want to build blogs for us. Love this idea and wish them the best. But as a company you just can’t get ahead in an open environment like blogging by trying to control things, at least not upfront. Their technology might be great and “durable” but most of us will never know, because their marketing is a zero and their homepage design is really weak.

Posterous

Browse at Posterous.com
Unfortunately this site has been deprecated, or slowly removed with no further updates.

✩  Almost Extinct  ✩

Blog.com

Browse at Blog.com

• Recommended for: Blogging
• Founded: 2004
• Founders: ?
• Total users: 2 million
• Pros: Free themes, multi-author blogging, social media widgets, video
• Cons: Less customization
• Premium features: Your own domain name, advertising network
• Costs: ?
• My verdict: You’d hope a domain name as strong as blog.com would produce a winner…

Zoomshare

Browse at ZoomShare.com

• Founded: ?
• Founder: ?
• Total users: < 50K
• Pros: Still has a community
• Cons: Shifting 100% of users to paid version
• Costs: “As of May 22, 2013 our free website service has been discontinued. If you would like to convert to the paid service click here and upgrade for the low cost of $6.95 a month.”
• My verdict: Not enough information to form a verdict.

Xanga

Browse at Xanga.com

• Founded: ?
• Founder: ?
• Total users: < 50K
• Pros: Resembles WordPress
• Cons: Unclear timeframe of new software releases
• Costs: ?
• My verdict: Not enough information to form a verdict.

The End?

Hardly. But drum roll, now it’s your turn. If you’ve got anything to add, drop it in the comments right below.

Lastly, this post took me months to research and make. So if you know a friend who could benefit, why not send this to them? Just send an email. I’ll let you steal my work 

Thanks and cheers!