WordPress vs. TypePad vs. Blogger vs. LiveJournal

LiveJournal

Nowadays there are way too many blogging platforms. But when I started my first blog several years ago, there were just a few. LiveJournal was one of them.

An acquaintance invited me to join and I did so more out of politeness than anything else. LiveJournal is a hybrid between a blogging platform and a social network. It's designed for building networks of people who write online journals (mostly personal ones) and keeping up with your network's posting activity.

LiveJounal is a blog plus a popularity contest.

If you enjoy social networking, connecting and keeping up with your online pals, you might like this platform. LiveJournal requires no technical knowledge from a blogger. And as soon as you make an LJ friend, a connection, you get an instant reader for your blog. The more LJ friends you make, the more readers your blog will have. Joining LiveJournal is free.

LJ may be a perfect fit for someone who wants to keep a personal journal online with no technical knowledge required and either already knows a network of LJ users and is planning to become a part of it or is interested in building one.

On a negative side:

• LiveJournal allows for very little customization.
• The network of readers that you build on LJ often lacks a sincere interest in your topic and joins your network either out of politeness (because you join theirs), out of desire to be popular and create their own large network of "friends", or because they know you personally and want to make a social connection.
• LJ is not very suitable for a business blog.
• It requires you to either keep up with your network's journals or be insincere when making connections.
• No SEO optimization.
• Can't use your own domain name.
  

Personally, I was very unhappy with LiveJournal and left it after a few months. The popularity contest, which is a large part of LJ, kept me from speaking in my true voice. My audience was wonderful but wrong for my blog, and instead of writing what I wanted to write about, I was putting too much effort into being witty and interesting. And even though there were a lot of wonderful writers in my network, I was completely bored (and feeling rather resentful) reading their blogs simply because I wasn't interested in their topics. It felt like a complete waste of time for me.

Just to end on a positive note, I know many people who are quite happy with LiveJournal and either keep their personal diaries there or leverage their business blogs by keeping a copy of it on LJ.


Blogger

Obviously, I like this platform, as I keep two of my blogs here. Blogger is wonderful for "off you go" blogging, as practically anyone can set up an account and start blogging in just a few minutes.

Blogger allows for some customization but can be used "as is". It can be easily used for personal, group or business blogging. With a little tweaking you can even build a "normal" website with seemingly static pages.

Using Blogger "as is" requires very little technical knowledge. And you can host you blog for free on their servers as a sub-domain of the blogspot.com or using your own domain name.

If you prefer more control over your blog, you can also host it on your server.

Even though Blogger provides only a few templates for your blog, if you prefer something fancier, there are many third-party templates to choose from. Be careful, however, and test those templates before committing to one of them, as third-party templates are sometimes buggy.

Serious customization of a Blogger's blog requires a lot of technical knowledge and effort. If you plan on doing it, you're better off going with the WordPress platform. WP gives you better results with the same amount of effort.

Another good thing about Blogger is that it plugs right into your Google account, so you can move effortlessly between Blogger and other Google services (igoogle, gmail, google reader, google analytics, adwords, etc.)

Blogger is perfect for someone who would like to quickly setup a blog with the least amount of technical effort, host it for free, be able to make money with it and still have some flexibility in its look and functionality.

On a negative side:

• Blogger provides limited flexibility for blog's design and functionality.
• It doesn't allow you to create static pages (other than "About Me"). Though with some modifications you can produce what might look like static pages.
• Serious customization requires a lot of effort.
• Only some SEO optimization can be done.

WordPress

WordPress gives you two options: you can either publish your blog for free on wordpress.com or use WordPress software to host a blog on your own web account with your own domain name (software can be downloaded from wordpress.org or many web hosts already have WP pre-installed for their clients). The first option allows you to have the least headache with the set up and maintenance of your blog, and the second one allows you to have the most flexibility and control over your blog's look and functionality.

1. Publishing a free blog on WordPress.com

WordPress.com hosts many high-quality high-visibility non-profit blogs for famous companies and famous bloggers. So, if you decide to publish your blog there, you'd be in a good company.

You would be able to choose one of sixty available templates and start your virtually maintenance-free blog in minutes.

The two main differences between publishing a blog on WordPress.com and publishing one with a Blogger are:

• WordPress provides better flexibility over blog's design including a function for building static web pages.
• Unlike Blogger, WordPress.com doesn't allow affiliate marketing or selling products on the blogs it hosts (with a couple of exceptions). And although it promises that bloggers will be able to make money with advertizement (possibly, AdWords, Chitika, etc.) in a nearest future, at the moment blogs published on WordPress.com do not have this option. This is the reason why Wordpress.com isn't a good fit for a business blog.

WordPress.com is an excellent option for a personal/group non-profit blog or a professional "expertise showcase" one.

On a negative side:

• Allows for non-profit blogs only.
• Only some customization can be done to blog's look and functionality.
• Only some SEO optimization can be done.

2. Using WordPress software to publish a blog on your own web account/domain

Hosting WP on you own web account with your own domain name gives you the ability to fully customize your blog and use it in any way you see fit. It's the most flexible and functional publishing option available for a blog. You can have a personal, group or business blog or a website with static pages. And even though WP software comes out-of-the-box with only 2 templates, you can choose among thousands of third-party templates (themes), numerous plug-ins and widgets created specifically for WP. You can customize any WordPress template to your liking and fully optimize it for search engines.

It's the most advanced and the most technically involved option of blog publishing.

Publishing WordPress on one's own web hosting account is an excellent option for a technically inclined blogger who wants full control over his/her blog functionality and design.

On a negative side:

• The most technically involved option. Not suitable for technophobic people.
  
• Requires some (although small) financial investment.

TypePad

TypePad is another popular blogging platform, but unlike WordPress, Blogger and LiveJournal, TypePad isn't free. The basic account costs $4.95/mo and lets you publish one blog hosted on their server as a sub-domain of typepad.com. Not bad, if you consider that TypePad was build with non-technical people in mind (more specifically -- with non-technical small-business people in mind), requires no technical knowledge for setting up and managing a blog, is search-engine optimized and has 24x7 live support in case you still have questions.

It only will take you minutes to set up your new blog on TypePad, customize its look by choosing one of 3,000 professionally-designed templates TP provides for you, change colors and a header, add widgets, and start writing your first post. TP has many features and options, and allows you to make money with advertisement, affiliate offers, and by selling your products or services, thus making it an excellent choice for a business blog.

However, if you prefer to publish your blog with your own domain name, it will cost ya. You would need to upgrade to a Plus account with $8.95/mo fee for the privilege. Moreover, if you would like to have two authors contributing to your blog or be able to have a full control over your blog's design, you'd have to upgrade to a Pro account with $14.95/mo for the privilege.

Hm.

Compare it with a completely free Blogger account, which, of cause, doesn't have all the bells and whistles TypePad offers, but provides all the basic necessities including custom domain option and group blogging free of charge. And how many TypePad bloggers use those bells and whistles anyway?

Or compare it with a WordPress blog hosted on your own web account which gives you even more functionality, complete control and customization, thousands of third-party templates (themes), tons of plug-ins and widgets, huge international community of fans, designers, developers, discussion and help forums, plenty of documentation and tutorials, but no customer support. The price to pay for all that? $6-9/mo in web hosting fees.

To sum it up, the one and only reason to publish your blog with TypePad is if you never want to think about a technical side of blogging. TypePad takes care of that for you. It deals with all the maintenance for you and presents you with a very user-friendly interface.

TypePad is a perfect fit for a non-technical business blogger, who would like to never deal with a technical side of blogging and is satisfied with partial control over a blog's design and functionality.

On a negative side:

• Group blogging or custom domain requires upgrade to premium accounts.
  
• Requires $5-100/mo financial investment.
• Third-party templates and plug-ins isn't readily available.
• Allows for partial customization only.
  

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Photo: Vasily Koval

New Year - New Client

I got my first SEO client. Actually, I did consults before. But one thing is to give a good advice and be done with it, completely different is to make things happen and impress a person who doesn't have a clue as to what kinds of hoops you have to jump through to make it happen.

Am not excited about the project. Maybe it's because I'm nervous. Another possible reason I'm not happy about this project is because it's not my kind of thing. Maybe SEO is like cooking for me -- I can do it well, yet don't enjoy the process.

I certainly would prefer if it were a consult or a training.

Anyway, good luck to me.

On Friday I started researching keywords. Autism is a confusing market for someone who has no clue as to what people might be looking for there.

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Picture: www.prikolist.biz

Impressing a Pig

"One of the most universal causes of self-doubt and depression: trying to impress people you don’t like."

Tim Ferriss

This is so true! The problem, however, is that an attempt to impress someone often happens automatically, by default, as a normal human response before we even know that we don't like the person we are trying to impress.

Perhaps, they are skillfully hiding their dislike of us while pretending to be friendly.

Or, for whatever reason, they dislike us instantly, and we haven't gotten a clue yet.

Then, there is situation with clients or bosses. If we only try to impress those we like, we either go broke or loose our jobs. And yet, there is nothing worse than trying to impress a moron who holds a power over you.

Partnerships

Probably the majority of the successful male internet marketers formed one or a few partnerships on their way to success, and after reaching it keep partnering up with other successful internet marketers for working together on even bigger goals.

At the same time, the majority of the female internet marketers tries to accomplish the same task on their own. A few form partnerships with male internet marketers, and almost none (at least, I've never heard of any) create a partnership with another female internet marketer.

The question is why?

I am guessing here.

My first guess would be that women get emotionally attached to their own business projects and are not likely to take on a project toward which they feel indifferent -- that is, someone else's project.

My second guess would be that women are less prone to taking on a risky endeavor, and partnering up with someone -- especially someone you don't know all that well -- does seems to be rather risky.

My third guess would be that it's much harder for a woman to find a business partner simply because:

• Men prefer partners who have business approach similar to theirs -- that is, other men
• It's statistically harder to find a woman-partner as there're not that many women who are interested in building an internet business (other than darn MLM), and ready to persevere at it.

And if you find this post to be politically incorrect, I don't give a damn. I am here in search of the truth, not in search of a political correctness.

Lost Opportunities

When Corey Rudl suddenly died in 2005 I felt like the sky fell down on Earth. I never met Corey in-person, but he was one of a few netpreneurs I admired and trusted -- probably the most admired and trusted of them all. He had that honest, kind, generous demeanor about him that "sells" better than any advertisement or loud pr. And I really wanted to go to one of his live seminars... one of these days.

I wasn't in a hurry. After all, if I couldn't go that year, next year would be good as well.

Shortly after Corey got married he held a free seminar -- yes, free -- to celebrate his happy marriage. An unbelievable opportunity! I couldn't go. Well, I could, but it was bad timing, stuff came up... you know. Basically, it required a really big effort on my part. So, I didn't go. There would be a better timing and another seminar, I told myself.

Then, Corey died in a car crash. And there would never be another seminar. Or another Corey. That opportunity is forever lost -- it died in that crash too.

We often feel that some opportunities -- whether it's about business, things or people -- will always be there for us. That we can get to them when we can get to them -- tomorrow, next week or next year... And it's just not so. We loose opportunities monthly, maybe even daily unless we stop taking them for granted and do something about them.

Some huge opportunities died on me last week. I didn't kill them, I just didn't use them when I had a chance. I thought I could get to them... whenever. And now I can't. By the way, they weren't about money -- they were about my dreams.