Affiliate Marketing : How to make daily income

Every body wants to earn huge money from his blog but some people fails because they think that  Ads are  only source  of earning money but their is source that is major for bloggers and website owner.
This is Affiliate Marketing.
Now I am going to tell you the full details abut Affiliate Marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing and How it Works
It one of best and oldest method of earning money . In this system you have to recommend someone to buy products from the company and if any body buys a products the you will receive a commission from the company which if range of 1$-1000$ on the basis of product.
One of the most common doubt in people mind that how company knows that this recommendation is from you or any one else. The answer of this question is simple that the URL of recommendation is unique for any partner.
Many old-fashioned affiliate programs allow a buyer to add the email or referral details in an effort to account for affiliate sales, but this is certainly not the best way to track progress.

What do you need?
The this you need is a blog or website , a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS and targeted traffic source.

Many online companies who sell products such as shoes, webhosting space or any service, offer an affiliate program . You can simply sign up for the program and get your unique tracking link. Now, whenever you are writing about the product, you can simply use this special tracking affiliate link to recommend the company’s site, and if your readers buy anything, you will get a commission.
Every affiliate program has a set TOS. For example, many of them offer a 60-day cookie period, which means that if a visitor uses your special affiliate link to land on the sales page of the site and instead of buying today, he buys at some point within the next 60 days, you will be entitled to the sales commission.

For companies offering an affiliate program, this is one of the best ways to receive free promotion, thus saving substantially on advertising. For example, whenever you see coupons or discount links, most of the time these are affiliate links, and when you make a purchase, webmasters make money.

These are some important points
1. Some people think that is illegal but I want to ensure you that this fully legal.

2. AdSense is very sensitive Ad network .
Some people think that it is harmful to use Affiliate Marketing with AdSense but This is wrong .Its totally safe to use with AdSense.

3. To join Affiliate Marketing there is no joining fee but you need good traffic by  which you can attract companies.

I hope this beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing will help you to get started. If you have any additional questions, feel free to ask me in the comments section below.

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Google AdSense: How to get approval

As I had already told in last post that Google AdSense is best for publisher but getting approval is quite difficult.
Now I am going to tell you what is AdSense how it works and how to get approval.

Introduction
Google Adsense is one of the best ad networks to monetize a website or a blog. It is 90% better than any other CPC advertising programs . It offers the publishers the highest CTR for every web page. The publishers could make lots of revenue daily from Google AdSense . Every new webmaster has a dream to monetize his website with this ad network. But unfortunately, many of them fail. AdSense has introduced some strict rules and requirements. It seems hard to get AdSense approval for our own blog. But, we know impossible is nothing.

How it works
AdSense is contextual type ads network  works CPC(cost per click) or PPC(pay per click) basis. These kinds of ads pays you every time when a visitor click ads displaying on your website or blog.
They give you the java script code which you have to install in your blog or website.
By the help of these code they display ads on your website and takes record of every click of ads from your website.

Why to choose Google AdSense
When it comes to the legitimacy of Google AdSense, it speaks for itself. Google AdSense have thousands and thousands of satisfied customers and publishers. AdSense pays on time, every time.
One more reason for choosing Google AdSense is that we can earn huge amounts of money if we do our work in right way. There are many bloggers who are making a complete living from their blogs and Google AdSense. Therefore, Google AdSense should be the number one choice among all the other available networks.
It’s paying rates are better than all of other networks which is the biggest reason it is so popular to all Bloggers and Webmasters. But since everybody is running behind them, they have made the approval system very strict.

Apply for AdSense
Adsense moderators always approve those blogs whose have met up the requirements. First of all, you should make your blog ready for this process. Check first if your blog considers these requirements. Now, there are some initial basic requirements announced by AdSense team, and there are some known hacks and tricks that work. For example, on this official page it’s mentioned that for countries like China & India, publishers need to own the site for minimum 6
month, which is not a thumb-rule. Many Indian bloggers have got approval with one month old domain. The only thing which really matter here is “Quality”. Let’s look at factors which will make your blog AdSense ready:

Write Addicted content
What should be the minimum number of posts before applying for Google AdSense? There is no confirmed answer.
Exactly, what I said that there is no actual answer. However, we can always predict things. According to my experience, you should only apply after you have more than 50 posts. Posts length must be 500+ words too with quality content.
Great contents mean unique, decorated, stated and clear concerted content. Some black hat webmasters say, copy paste content only between 100-200 words is enough. But, I may assure him that his journey to AdSense will be certainly finished. I think, how a blog post or a content could be only between 100-200 words? In my judgment, it is not possible to completely describe a topic within 100-200 words. And if copy paste content is enough, anybody can declare him as a blogger. Please keep in mind, Google AdSense doesn’t approve blogs with copy pasted copyright content. A well optimized blog post should be 100% unique and above 500-600 words. So, always write blog post above this limit and it must be unique which clearly determinate the post topic.

Nice design and Blog Structure
First Impression is Last Impression!!!!
One more thing you must remember before applying AdSense is that your blog should have a great design and it look professional.
Some people makes design worse by extra decorations. This does not leave a good impression.
Choose only those design which comes naturally in your mind.
make sure that you have a nice looking header, content area, sidebar, footer etc. Always think if the visitors will like the structure. If people like it, Adsense would definitely like it. First impression of any blog comes with blog design, and you can take advantage of any professional looking templates (free or paid), and use it on your blog.

Write Legal Content
While writing content take in mind that what is legal or what not ,according to Google. Google AdSense is not for pornographic, pirated content, illegal items, drugs or other blogs /sSites like that. AdSense team won’t be willing to allow you to step in if you own a Non English Blog.

Remove other Ads
If you have any other Ads placed like Chitika, Clicksor or anything, it’s time to drop them off.
Even Google AdSense allows you to use other Ad Networks along with them, it’s better to remove the ads before Applying and don’t put them back until you get a reply from AdSense Team. This does not make a good impression on
So, before submitting your application for Google AdSense make sure to remove all the ads on your blog from any other network.

Add Privacy policy and Contact Info
The first thing you will need to apply for Google AdSense and get approval is the privacy policy of your blog or website. If you don’t have it you cannot get approval simple is that. Why it is important? Because this privacy policy means you are not a scam and gives the sense of a serious business. Google will check the rest of the conditions only if you have this policy.
A privacy actually describes to your readers about what they will get on your Blog , what they should do and what they should not. So obviously there is nothing bad in having a privacy policy. While it can affect somehow on your AdSense Approval, you must give it a try. You can write it yourself or find Privacy Policy Generators online (You don’t need a lawyer anyway).

Create a contact us page, if possible add your professional email there like info@yourblog.com and your social profile links too. By creating this you are telling Google that see we care for our customers, visitors and we are ready to help them. They can contact us any time.
It will also show the Google AdSense Team that is viewing your site that you actually care about your readers and not only the money and AdSense.

Finally read all terms and conditions mentioned by Google AdSense

Conclusion
If you follow all the above mentioned tips, you are most likely to get your AdSense application approval at first go.
And once you are ready, read this guide to apply for an AdSense account . Do let me know if you have any particular question related to AdSense approval, and I would love to answer them. If you enjoyed reading this article, don’t forget to share it on Facebook and Google plus.

And if Google AdSense disapprove your website or blog then you can choose alternative as mentioned earlier.

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Best Alternative of AdSense

As many people already know that Google   AdSense is ad company for publisher as it pay very huge amount and shows ads look nice as many people click.
There are many reasons to look for alternative ad networks and other ways to monetize your sites.
Google AdSense rejects many sites for not having enough content or if they feel your site would not be appropriate for their advertisers. Google AdSense has a lot of rules and they monitor sites constantly. If you happen to break even one rule, they will not just ban the site, they will ban you and won’t let you open a new AdSense account. And even if you manage to open one somehow and they catch you later, they will ban the new account.

Instead of crying or bashing Google in multiple forums, remember the world is not over yet, and there are plenty of alternatives out there to try. Google was just your first one, and you failed.

Here are some of the best Google Adsense Alternatives which according to my experience from my another blog. I am not going to mention my blog's name because I do not want to gain traffic from a fixed source .
I hope this article will help you.

Let's start it:

Media.net
Media.Net gives you exclusive access to the Yahoo! Bing Network.Media.Net offers publishers several ad styles. Do note however that they only allow one of each ad type to appear on a page.
The main ad style available is the content ad. These are contextual ad blocks that are available in different sizes to suit your needs.
The next ad type available is the search targeting ad. These appear the same way as contextual ads but are only displayed to search engine traffic.
Media.Net also provides web bar and mobile ads to its publishers.
I feel that this is the closest AdSense alternative currently available. But, be aware that they are known for suspending accounts and not stating the reason. So, if you use them, read all the rules and be careful to follow them.
Possible roadblock: Media.Net needs to approve each site you want to place ads on. And they’re a little strict on what sites they approve.

RevenueHits
RevenueHits is a fairly new ad network and looks very promising. They offer a nice variety of ad types including banner, pop-under, sliders, top and footer style banners, buttons, and interstitials.

Revenue hits is a Performance Ad network, which means they pay you for results (CPA which is great for many niches), however, they have CPM and CPC models too. Revenue hits has an interesting platform that learns from your Ads so if you give them a try make sure to keep their ads running for 2-4 days to get the best results.
You can create banner ads, sliders, pop -unders, buttons and more. Revenue Hits pays on a NET 30 basis and they issue payments via wire, Paypal and Payoneer!
some publishers have been generating more than $100 per month in their first try with Revenue Hits. Some of them are already generating a lot more, and there’s no entry barrier such as with Adversal.

Adversal
Adversal is an excellent alternative to AdSense if your site gets over 50,000 page views per month. They have fast approvals but make sure your site meets their requirements before you apply to be a publisher.

They have good banners and the CTR and revenue adapts to get the best results for your website. I’ve seen the Ads on Adversal have a good CTR and they have good image ads too. This is probably the Ad network which seems to work better for those looking for a replacement of Google Adsense. It works decently with other languages too (Chitika doesn’t).  You account gets approved really fast and they also have Pop under /CPM ads as an option.
Currently their minimum payout is $20. A PayPal option is available.
Adversal is also one of the few ad networks that has an affiliate program.

AyBoll
This company is recommend by Harsh Agrawaal. As I had seen after that I found it pretty good. 2016 is the age of native advertising, and if you are looking for an alternate way to earn money, you should start using native advertising. This type of ad can be placed anywhere around the content. The most popular placement is after a related post or in the blog’s sidebar. AyBoll offers native advertising, and it is easy to get started with AyBoll.

Ayboll displays native ads, and it is a premium CPA network. You will get paid for any action on the site, and the payout is huge. Their revenue split is high at 50/50, but considering the fact that they pay premium $ per sale, it’s worth trying out. Ayboll minimum payout threshold is $100, and the payment method is bank transfer or via Skrill. To place the Ayboll ad widget, you can use the Ad inserter plugin.

Popads
PopAds is a performance network specialized in Pop Unders. They have good rates and they can monetize all countries. Something great about PopAds is that they can pay daily as long as you earn $5 or more per day. Their quality is good, and they also have pop ups and other monetization methods. Their approvals are easy and setting your ads takes just a few minutes.

Viglink
Viglink is perfect for a blog which is linking out to a business or e-commerce site. The Viglink concept is quite different from all of the alternatives mentioned above, and with Viglink you can earn money by making affiliate sales.
Viglink works great when you have outgoing links to business or product pages such as fashion store or Amazon.
Even if you don’t have outbound links but you are using money-related terms like Apple, iPhone or any other, Viglink will automatically add links to these words, and you will end up making decent money. What’s best about Viglink is that it’s incubated by Google and it is an SEO-friendly ad program.

BidVertiser
BidVertiser pays you on both clicks and conversions. This could help you make more money from your sites.
Text ads, banner ads, mobile ads and slider ads are available.
They offer publishers a point-and-click ad builder tool that helps you to customize the ads to fit the look and feel of your site.
They pay monthly by check, wire or PayPal. The current minimum payout is only $10 if you choose to receive payments through PayPal.
One downside to BidVertiser is that they use an advertiser bidding system. Each advertiser bids ad placement and what sites their ads appear on. So, it may take some time for advertisers to find your site in the BidVertiser network and start bidding on your ad spots.

Yllix
Yllix is a network I have heard a lot in the last years that has a decent CPM and many monetization options. Their homepage might look simple but their dashboard is great and it’s easy to get started. Yllix has Pop under ads, mobile redirects, sliders, layer ads and full page ads so you can get a good CTR and make money with them. Definitely a good option for starters and their approval is fast.

I will soon going to give the full review of each and inviduals with help of some of my friend who are currently using one of them.

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How to boost your blog traffic

When I started blogging 3 years ago , my biggest problem is that my blog is read by only few people . I started exploring how to gain traffic and now I am going to tell you my experience.
Why do some bloggers get the lion’s share of attention, while others toil endlessly to write posts that virtually nobody will ever read?
On a recent forum where both new and experienced bloggers share tips for getting traffic, SEO, etc, most of the discussions were debating minutiae about meaningless changes they could make to their blog to get more readers.


Share your Post
Sometimes getting what you want can be a simple as asking for it. A study by Social Bakers found that users who asked their followers to “RT” their posts on Twitter received 73.48 average retweets per tweet. Those who didn’t ask for retweets received just 2.09 retweets.
If you want people to share your content, ask them to!
This goes for just about all call-to-actions. While your intentions may seem obvious to you, reiterating the course of action for visitors greatly increases the likelihood that they’ll follow through.
Another great way to get traffic to your blog is by submitting your blog posts to social bookmarking sites like digg and stumbleupon.
If done properly, social bookmarking sites can send you great traffic that will help you skyrocket your blog to another level of success.
It is also very important not to share only your own content on social bookmarking sites but make sure you share more of other people’s content before sharing yours.

Write on viral topic
The most successful content is the kind that
meets a specific need. Think about your audience and what they love. Content these days almost always falls into one of two categories: cool and funny or useful and educational. Choose either and you’re probably off to a good start.
If you need ideas, check out Quora and see what questions are being asked that relate to your industry subject. Also try using
Buzzsumo to see what others have written about in your field, then make something even better. Or use one of these eight handy blog topic generators .
When it comes to content style, shoot for shocking statistics, beautiful infographics, and rich storytelling via video. Create stuff people want to link to and share.

Promote by Forum
Another great way to get traffic to your blog is by promoting it through forums. Forums are a huge place to get traffic to your blog and they also have an established audience. While I have got success from forum marketing I have also been banned on hundreds of forums.
When marketing your blog through forums, it is very important not to spam the forums with links to your blog but only make helpful comments and people will visit your blog through the link in your signature.

Use Long Keywords
If you really want to drive big time traffic to your blog, keywords and SEO have to be a part of your strategy. People get really nervous these days when you suggest doing something in the name of SEO, but remember,
search engine optimization is fine when done right. More than fine - it’s wonderous! You get targeted traffic from Google, and users find the information and answers they’re searching the web for.
So go ahead, shout it from the rooftops, “I care about keywords!” Be loud and proud my friend.
They key thing to remember with SEO is all good things in moderation.
Use keywords in your context text?
Yes!
Use keyword stuffing to saturate your content completely with search queries? No.
Link to other related blog posts you’ve written on a specific subject?
Yes!
Include so many links that every other sentence is dotted with blue hyperlinks? No.
Let keywords influence your outline and help conceptualize your post?
Yes!
Put keywords and search bots before user experience? No!

Update Regularly
Updating your blog regularly will help you in so many ways, it will help you gain more search engine traffic and respect, it will also make your readers love and always want to visit your blog.
There is no fixed rate for updating your blog but it all depends on you, you might decide to update your blog twice a day or maybe three times a week, it all depends on you.

Send Newsletter
Promotion needs to be a big part of your content strategy, so that your hard earned blog posts drive that traffic you so desperately desire!
One quick and easy way to start driving more traffic to your blog is to start collecting emails for a blog newsletter. Once you’ve captured those contacts, you can send them weekly or monthly emails featuring your best posts,
bringing already familiar visitors right back to your website. Since these users are already comfortable with your blog, chances are they might explore a bit more on their next visit. Who knows what they’ll find?

Capture your Audience
When it comes to promoting your blog, it’s essential that you’re strategic about where you spend your time. While it’s nice to establish your presence across a range of social networks, you’ll quickly burn out trying to excel with every social site.
Dip your feet and see which social networks work best for you. Is your blog heavy on the visuals? You’ll probably want to set your sights on LinkedIn. Is your blog catered more towards nerd culture? Find the right subreddits and you could strike it big.
If you’re looking for seagulls, you go to the seashore. To drive blog traffic, you need to go to where your flock hangs out. Know where to find your bird of a feather. Understanding your audience is also key for building strong referral links from relevant websites.
Use Google Analytics to see which websites are driving the most referral traffic. Find the forums and sites your target audience visits, and get active. Engage in discussion and post links or blog comments when appropriate . This is big – you can’t come off as spammy. You need to be seen as a valuable member of the community who is sharing something of merit. If someone mentions needing advice about scheduling healthy meal plans for each week, go ahead and point them to your resource! If they’re discussing their struggles in mastering the fine art of clowning, you can probably move along.

Conclusion
Gaining traffic is not so easy and sometimes it is not so quick so you have to take patience and follow the above steps.

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How To Write a Responsive Contents For Your Blog

Having meaningful things to say can actually help your blog with people’s love and Google’s blessings.
In order to keep your reader interested, you should think about structuring your text and writing in an appealing style. You should help your readers to grasp the main idea of your post by providing headings, subheadings and clear paragraphs. If people understand and like your text, they are much more likely to share, like, tweet and link to your post. And that will increase your rankings! So, in order to improve your ranking in Google, you should definitely try to maximize your writing skills!
The path for content marketers is clear. In order to boost SEO rankings, gain traffic and/or leads, you need to have great content on your blog or website.

Think before writing original content
Think hard about the message of your text. What do you want to tell your readers? And what is the purpose of your text? What do you want you readers to do at the end of the page? Write down the answers to these questions before you begin writing.
Original content goes a long way with Google and your visitors. Copying other people’s content will result in a punishment from Google, which can crush your bottom line.
Want proof?
Remember when you used to find ezine articles in top Google rankings? You don’t see them anymore, and it’s no accident. They were one of the hardest hit by Google’s algorithm update , which aimed to prevent bad content from ranking highly.

Collect detail about a topic:
We just cannot pick up a topic and write about it. In order to make your content worth appreciation, you need to have proper knowledge on the topic. This is where research comes in.

These sites may help you
1) Wikipedia : Wikipedia is the first and foremost resource when you want to get the basic information as well as data statistics of a subject. But, sometimes this does not just fit all. Wikipedia can sometimes be biased or has information that can be manipulated. In that case, you can include the following tools for research:
2) Google scholar : Google scholar is my go-to source when it writing on topics that need references from university articles, thesis by experts and other published research papers.
3) Google books : Citing quotes and references from books under public domain can be a great add for your blog post. You can customize Google books to source such information for your upcoming blog posts.
Project Gutenberg is the largest collection of free books that you can edit, twist and use for your commercial blog posts.
Other such places, where you can find hidden knowledge to make your post outstanding are The Internet Archive which has way too much information that sometimes can be a gold mine, Google Public data also has some wonderful resources based on your niche.

Choose a catchy headline
People have an average attention span of just 10 seconds and no matter how intriguing your blog post is, no one will read it if they are not convinced that it is worth their time within the first few seconds.
A good headline sparks interest and invites readers in. Consider these great statistics from Copyblogger:
80% of people will read your headlines.
But only 20% of those people will read the rest of your content!
And that is why the headline is as important as the article or post itself.
So, you have to make your headlines or titles so smart that they just cast a spell on your readers. A boring headline can drive them out even if the content inside is rich in information.
Take time with your headlines. If possible, make a few and select which one you like best. Don’t skim over them. They are the first thing people read, and they are the basis those people use to decide if they want to read your article or not.

Use long tail keywords:
Keywords are still important if you want some traffic from search engines. However, having keywords less than three to four words makes it quite broad to appeal to a single reader base.

Make your content best
The best content gives the user a sense of how to apply the information. It doesn’t degrade users by telling them what to do, but rather respects them and provides them with assurance that they know best how to use the material. When you write your blog post, give users tips on applying what you are offering them. Many times, just writing well about a topic will spark some ideas for readers.
Your sentence structure and grammar should be compelling. Write short and crisp paragraphs.
Double check your grammar, you always need to proofread because you never know when a typo might surface. I use Grammarly for proofreading and checking my grammar and spelling errors .
You should also check if something you wrote matches with something written prior to you.

Use paragraphs.
Everybody uses paragraphs, but make sure to use paragraphs that make sense. Do not start a new sentence on a new line, just because it looks nice. There should be a reason for making a new paragraph. Every paragraph should have a main idea or a main subject. Ask yourself what the main idea of each paragraph is. You should be able to grasp that main idea in only one sentence. If you need more sentences, you simply need more paragraphs!

Link to previous content.
If you already wrote some content about the topic of your current post, don’t forget to link to these posts. It will make your post stronger because you show some authority on the subject. Next to that, your link-structure is also of importance for your ranking in Google. You should read Joost his post about cornerstone articles if you want to read more about this.
Internal linking a post not only adds value to the articles linked in the post but also makes your content more relatable by adding related articles that the reader can refer while reading the article.
You should at least add three (it’s not fixed and depends on the length of the post used) internal links to each of your posts.
Also, edit the old posts and include links to recent articles in them as internal links as it will help in faster indexing of new articles and also pass some SEO juice to them.

Write SEO friendly post
While a quality blog post should be devoted to the readers, it should also please the search spiders to rank them for those readers.
On page SEO is also very important to let the search engine bots know what your content is all about.
A quality article which is expected to be loved by search engines are ought to be SEO optimized.
You should not hesitate to link to authority sites (the relevant ones) in fear of bleeding SEO juice. Linking to other authority blogs can make your content more relevant and trustworthy.
On-Page SEO includes internal linking (explained above), adding of related keywords, optimizing images for search engines etc. Don’t forget to check these 5 Lesser Known On-Page SEO Optimization Techniques.

Optimize the length of your article.
Make sure your articles have a minimum of 300 words. Google likes long articles, if your article is too long though it might scare away users. So try to stop at around 700 words. And, as a general rule of thumb: try to put your search terms in about 1 to 2 percent of your text. So in an article of 300 words, you should mention your search terms 3 to 6 times.

Conclusion
The era in which some SEO tricks were sufficient to get your website to rank high in Google has long ended. Nowadays, good content has the highest likelihood to result in a higher positions in Google. And good content also leads to more Facebook likes and shares, tweets and return visitors to your website. Of course, you can do some extra things to maximize the SEO friendliness of your post, but most important is: just write a very, very good post!

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WordPress vs. Blogger – Which one is Better? Merits and Demerits

When it comes to blogging, we have plenty of options such as WordPress, BlogSpot, Tumblr to name a few. One of the most talked topic here is WordPress or Blogger for blogging. My recommendation is always start with WordPress.com for a month, and once you get accustomed with blogging, you should start a new blog on Self hosted WordPress platform . You are free to use Blogger.com , as your launchpad blogging platform, but don’t stick to it for too long.

We are often asked by new users why they should use WordPress instead of free blogging services like WordPress.com or Blogger? WPBeginner is the largest resource site for WordPress beginners, so it is obvious that we favor WordPress over other blogging platforms. In this article, we will do a WordPress vs Blogger comparison to help you decide which one is better for your needs. We will cover all WordPress vs Blogger pros and cons, so you can make the best decision when it comes Blogger vs. WordPress as a platform for your site.

First Blogger

Ownership

Blogger is a blogging service provided by the tech giant Google. It is free, reliable most of the time, and quite enough to publish your stuff on the web. However, it is not owned by you. Google runs this service and has the right to shut it down, or shutdown your access to it at any time.

Controls

Blogger is a fine tuned service with very limited tools allowing you to perform only specific tasks on your website. The things you can do on your blogspot blog are limited, and there is no way you can extend them to meet a need.

Appearance

Blogger by default only provides a limited set of templates to use. You can modify the colors and layout of these templates using the built-in tools, but you cannot create your own layouts or make modifications. There are some non-official Blogger templates available, but those templates are usually very low quality.

Security

Using Blogger you have the added advantage of Google’s robust secure platform. You don’t need to worry about managing your server’s resources, securing your blog, or creating backups.

Supports

There is limited support available for Blogger. They have a very basic documentation and a user’s forum. In terms of support, your choices are very limited.

New Features

Blogger has not seen any major update since a very long time. We have seen Google kill their popular services such as Google Reader, Adsense for feeds, and the possible demise of FeedBurner . Future of Blogger depends on Google, and they have the right to shut it down whenever they want.

Now WordPress

Ownership

With WordPress, you use a WordPress hosting provider to host your own site. You are free to decide how long you want to run it and when you want to shut it down. You own all your data, and you control what information you share with any third party.

Control

WordPress is an open source software, so you can easily extend it to add new features. There are thousands of WordPress plugins allowing you to modify and extend the default feature set such as adding a store to your website, creating portfolio, etc.

Appearance

There are thousands of free and premium WordPress themes which allow you to create professional looking websites. There is a WordPress theme for just about every kind of website. No matter what your site is about, you will find plenty of high quality themes which are easy to modify and customize.

Security

WordPress is quite secure, but since it is a self hosted solution you are responsible for security and backups . There are plenty of WordPress plugins that make it easier for you

Support

WordPress has a very active community support system. There is online documentation, community forums, and IRC chatrooms where you can get help from experienced WordPress users and developers. Apart from community support, there are many companies offering premium support for WordPress. Check out our guide on how to properly ask for WordPress support and get it.

New Features

WordPress is an Open Source software which means its future is not dependent on one company or individual. It is developed by a community of developers and users. Being world’s most popular content management system, thousands of businesses around the globe depend on it. The future of WordPress is bright and reassuring.

Merits and Demerits of Blogspot

Blogger or BlogSpot platform is very useful, when you just want to start a blog to share your thoughts. When you are not blogging for money, or you need a platform which doesn’t require any technical know-how, BlogSpot is really good. There are many limitations of BlogSpot in terms of functionalities, SEO benefit, but over all if you just need a platform to start a blog with almost 0 cost, BlogSpot is the right pick.

At the same time, if you are blogging for money, fame or for branding yourself, BlogSpot is not the ideas choice. Reason being, you have limited control on visibility in search engines, and after a while, you are limited with adding new features. I have read it many times, that Blogger is Google product, and it gives more SEO advantages, and it’s a pure rumour. It doesn’t matter if you are using WordPress, Blogger, Drupal or any other platform, SEO is decided by how you configure your complete site for search engines. In Blogger platform, we have limited control, and despite of the fact, they added new SEO features , BlogSpot still lacks in SEO optimization.

In nutshell, Blogger platform is better than WordPress, when you are creating a blog, for your passion, and you are ok with the limited features offered by Blogger platform.

Merits and Demerits of WordPress

We generally uses WordPress as a blogging platform, but this will not make my reasoning bias. WordPress gives you complete control on your blog, and you could technically do anything you like. You get complete control on the SEO, you host your own files, you can add

SEO plugins , which will help to make your blog more SEO friendly. More over, you can always add latest SEO techniques like start rating, Authorship without sweating.

WordPress will let you do everything you wanted, but at the same time you need to manage your own blog. You need to install WordPress on your server, and maintain your blog. It may sound technical, but with such an amazing support from WordPress community, you can always learn everything in no-time. Infact, if you stumble on ShoutMeLoud WordPress guide , most of your queries regarding WordPress, will be answered. Getting started with WordPress may require some effort, in terms of watching videos, learning how to add a plugin, getting use to dashboard, but is in’t the similar thing we learned on Blogger?

If you are planning to create a blog, with mind-set of making it popular, making money from it, you should prefer self hosted WordPress blog. If you are an occasional writer, or a hobby-blogger, BlogSpot is the best pick for you.

Blogger – Summary

It’s got all the basics covered

You don’t own your site, Google owns it

You need to have a Google account

Very simple and easy to use

Your URL is yourname.blogspot.com but you can transfer your own domain name

Limited choice of design templates means it is hard to make your site look unique

Template Designer makes it easy to change background, column width, font and colors

You can do HTML changes to your template through a browser interface

No access to FTP

There are no plugins

There is a decent number of simple gadgets that you can use to improve your sidebar and footer

Integration with Google Adsense account – add ads and start making money

Integration with Google+ – Post to Google+, pull Google+ comments instead of default Blogger comments

Might not be a viable option in terms of sustainability. It doesn’t get much attention from Google currently and everyone has seen the fate of Google Reader and some other Google products

In case there are issues like someone reporting that you use copyrighted material like pics or videos, Blogger may shut down your site. Same can happen if the algorithm thinks your content is spam. Most sites won’t be affected by this but it is important to be aware that you do not have the full ownership of the site before making your decision on what platform to use.

WordPress – Summary

WordPress is a flexible solution with many different design and functionality options, room to grow and expand your site

It is also the platform to go for if you want freedom in terms of control, flexibility and ownership

What’s great about WordPress is that it’s an open-sourced software with a large and vibrant community of developers and designers

A wide range of design templates to help you create a pretty and unique looking presence

There’s a plugin for anything you want to do that allows you to make changes and add features without needing any coding skills

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