Comparing Live Journal, Blogger and Word Press

From: http://www.free-press-release.com/news-is-livejournal-blogspot-or-wordpress-better-for-blogshop-in-singapore-1267058339.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) February 24, 2010 -- 
www.blogshopcity.com shall explore whether Blogspot, Livejournal or wordpress is suitable for you when it comes to building your Blogshop 

Livejournal 
The key advantage of Livejournal is the social platform solution where blogshop owner can create their social space within LiveJournal in the internet and meet their possible customers. 

1

Is Livejournal, Blogspot Or Wordpress Better for Blogshop in Singapore

Pluses: As mentioned above, LiveJournal has some many social networking features and communities where blogshop owner can advertise their sales item to the community. It is very easy to find new friends there and track their blogs. 

Minuses: If you are thinking monetizing your blog, Livejournal will not allow that – all advertisements there are added by Livejournal company. 

Categorizing your sales item is differient and the number of themes is limited. There are no plugins at all. 

More importantly when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) The search engines don't like Livejournal: It is unlikely you will ever be on the first page of Google , so all you'll get is the same Livejournal users as you. 

Blogger

IMO, Blogger is the easiet platform for anyone is starting off. Compared to Wordpress, it is much much easy. This is a platform for beginners, who just start off creating a Blogshop. 

Pluses: Yes, you can monetize your blog with Adsense: the advertisements can be added in limited amounts and positions 

Plugin is available in making your blog more entertaining, and more themes. 

Another advantage is it allowed you to use your own domain (without blogspot) while using their template. 

Minuses: It is not SEO friendly. Many beginners think that if this platform is earned by Google, then their blog will be in the Top 10 on every page of the search engines and have thousands of visitors every day. It is not true: Although there is a possibility to be on the first page of Google, it will take much more time to get there as on Wordpress. 

Blogger doesn't look nice: doesn't allow to add categories which is vital for a Blogshop. 

With the countless of theme available, It does help Blogshop who needs to create a professional image. However tweaking is limited. 


Wordpress 
This is the best solution for Blogshops who want to have professional and nice looking web-page. However be prepared to learn a bit more about wordpress as it is simple as Blogshop. Also for wordpress, you need to have your own hosting so it does take a little programming if you decide to choose wordpress. 

Pluses: There are many professional themes and plugins, Code programming can be done with many plugins which is helpful for blogshop. 

Minuses: Hosting is required, the price is not expensive and can be covered by earnings from your blog. 

Excellent platform for everyone who wants to build a professional image but a little knowlege of web programming is required 

More information can be found online at http://www.blogshopcity.com

Yahoo! Small Business

This is the Yahoo! Small Business application which provides an online store solution to aspiring entrepreneurs.


http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/

This is a commercial application where users have to play USD 29.96 a month to use this service.

I would like to look at the features of such an application so that it can be compared to those of blogs, to appreciate how blog users have managed to turn blogs into retail sites.

SO here are the features you would get from a purpose built e-commerce site:

1. STORE DESIGN

Blogs match this feature well as you can download all sorts of templates and configure your blog pretty much like what you can do here.

2. INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

Yahoo can do these:

• Add up to 50,000 products to your ecommerce store using our simple wizard, or upload information from a spreadsheet or database.
• Create a detailed catalog of the products you sell online, with product descriptions, SKU numbers, sizes, colors, prices, and any other custom fields you'd like to add.
• Track product-inventory levels and set alerts to notify you when quantities are low.
• Integrate with existing order- and inventory-management systems like OrderMotion and StoneEdge to keep data across sales channels in sync.*

 

Apparently, blogs do not have any of these capabilities so blogshop owners need to manage their inventories manually.  Meaning there will be limitations in terms of what they are able to do.

3. SHOPPING CART

Yahoo's shopping cart feature can accomplish these:

• Choose a single- or multipage checkout, along with custom colors, fields, and buttons.
• Select your preferences, and your shopping cart and checkout pages will be created automatically — no coding required.
• Let customers see checkout totals before they pay. The shopping cart can automatically calculate shipping, tax, and discounts.
• Offer customers the ability to purchase gift wrapping or include a personal message with their order.
• Sell downloadable products like software, music, or gift certificates.
• Add tracking codes to the checkout process to keep track of important purchase data.
• Enable registered or guest checkout options [BETA]
• Provide streamlined checkout and detailed order history to registered users[BETA]

 

In comparison, shops made from blogs have to rely on very rudimentary and resourceful methods to process checkouts and orders, like emails and phone calls.

4. PAYMENT PROCESSING

 

 Yahoo can do these:

• Accept online payments via credit cards, checks, POs, and money orders, or process credit card payments offline.
• Accept and process payments via PayPal checkout or a merchant account (such as PayPal, Bank of America Merchant Services, or any other merchant account compatible with the FDMS Nashville payment gateway platform).
• Use FDMS payment gateway services at no additional charge. Please note that you must have a merchant account to use gateway services.
• Protect your business and your customers with multiple security layers.Learn more
• AcceptPay^® lets you electronically invoice customers and accept online payments—all in one place. You can give your customers the choice to pay with all major credit cards, eCheck or ACH, making it easier for them to pay you.

 

Obviously, you don't get this sort of sophistication with a blog platform.  Blogs utilize CODs and a lot of bank transfers.

5. SHIPPING

 

Yahoo can do these:

 

• You can use any carrier you'd like, including FedEx, USPS, and UPS.
• Encourage repeat business by providing free shipping.
• Set your own shipping rates by product weight, destination, order value, and more.
• Use integrated UPS functionality automatically calculate shipping rates, validate addresses, and insert package-tracking links into customer emails.

 

Blogshops miss out on the ability to integrate with logistic systems providers (in this case USPS or UPS) so a substantial amount of the benefits derived from automation and integration is lost out. Postal carriers can provide a lot of valuable services that streamline the processing and delivery processes, and hold much propositions for big businesses with a lot of orders to track and move.  But then again, blogshops operate on a small scale and they can dispense with this functionality.

6.  ORDER MANAGEMENT

 Yahoo can do this:

• Track and handle orders, returns, exchanges, and refunds with ease.
• Use our order and payment APIs to integrate your store in real time with external order-management systems, such as OrderMotion and the Stone Edge Order Manager.*
• Automatically print packing slips, and send emails to confirm orders, announce shipments, or notify customers of changes in order status.

 

These are order management functions that are not available on blog platforms.

7. MERCHANDISING 

 

Yahoo can do these:

• Cross-selling: Promote related items on product and shopping cart pages to encourage larger orders. You can define your own parameters or let our cross-selling tool determine which products to recommend.*
• Coupons: Create coupons to attract first-time shoppers, reward loyal buyers, and offer targeted promotions. Learn more
• Discounting: Offer customers sale pricing and volume discounts.
• Gift certificates: Increase store sales — particularly during the holiday season — by offering gift certificates on your site.*
• Reorder: Make it easy for customers to submit repeat orders based on previous purchases. [BETA]

 

These have marketing value which many blogshops do offer but are not automated.  I don't think this is such a big advantage over blogshops.

8. SITE STATISTICS

• Review data on web site traffic, sales, and referring sites with easy-to-read reports.
• Take advantage of Yahoo! Web Analytics for more in-depth, real-time reporting.* Learn more
• Use the information you gather to improve the efficiency of your ecommerce store.

 

These days there are so many free analytical tools out there that this feature can be quite easily substituted for by a blog user.  Google Analytics come to mind.

 9. MARKETING

• Search engine optimization: Get your site in front of potential customers by optimizing your pages for better ranking in search engine results.Learn more
• Search engine marketing: Enjoy exclusive discounts on search engine marketing campaigns from Microsoft ($75) and Google ($50).*
• Yahoo! Shopping: 20% discount off minimum bid prices for Yahoo! Shopping listings.
• Email: Drive new and returning customers to your site with custom email campaigns. Learn more

This is what blogshop owners lose out on.  They have a major problem with driving traffic to their blogshops and the Yahoo sites have SEO built in into these applications.

10. CUSTOMER SUPPORT 

Yahoo has these:

• Receive 24-hour toll-free phone and email support from our ecommerce experts.
• Access our comprehensive online help center for detailed instructions, tutorials, and more.
• Qualified merchants* can receive premium support from a dedicated account manager.

*Not available to all customers. Customers with more than $500,000 in annual online sales with Yahoo! Merchant Solutions can qualify. Qualification is subject to the discretion of Yahoo! Merchant Solutions.

These are available for bigger businesses, though, so they might not be a big deal for blogshops.

11.  HOSTING

Yahoo has these:

• Domain name and 1,000 business email addresses.
• Web hosting with unlimited disk space and data transfer. (Details)
• 99.9% consistent uptime for your store.*
• Data backup in multiple data centers to ensure your information is recoverable in emergencies.
• Servers across the globe for faster loading of your web pages.
• Proven ability to handle peak sales traffic.

 

Blogs provide FREE HOSTING and Blogger can pretty much match Yahoo on most of these.

 

Software to build blog stores

Blogshops hosting

This is something worth investigating.

If the costs to host an online store is so cheap now, why do people still hang on to their blogshops?  Pay a little and you could have shopping cart facilities, as well as the professional ambience of a proper dotcom.

From: http://www.vdo-uniserv.co.cc/2010/08/netfirms-promo-code

Netfirms Promo Code

August 20th, 2010

 

I visited an online fashion fair last week where small businesses with an online presences only came together bazaar-like at the shopping mall to promote their goods. I was quite surprised that even though these are probably serious entrepreneurs, since they took time, money and effort to participate in fairs like these to promote their store, that a lot of them, though with net presence, do not run a proper online store. A lot of them are still running blog shops. While blog shops work, they don’t give a sense of seriousness to the business, in my opinion.

I managed to talk to a few business owners and they said they are not willing to fork out too much on their web hosting. Well, if they use promotional codes, they wouldn’t have to pay the full price. I have on hand a netfirms.com promotion code that would save a new Netfirms hosting subscriber up to 33% on business web hosting.

I personally feel that if an online store is hosted professionally, it would make a tremendous difference from the customer’s point of view. It would give visitors confidence to shop. Granted, a business hosting package is more expensive than running a blog shop but then one can really see the difference in terms of sales.

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Blogging softwares- do they make a difference (2)

Here is another article on the importance of blogging softwares.

Like the previous one, it makes some comparisons between the Blogger, LiveJournal and WordPress, but this article is better written.

There is also mention of other softwares like Drupal which looks to be a more advanced type of push button web publishing.  This is important becuz it shows a continuum of possible site types- from simple Blogger sites to more sophisticated ones that resemble dotcoms.  Thus we can suggest that the complexity of a blogshop business may go hand in hand with the type of platforms used, since we have observed that many blogshops have evolved into full e-commerce sites or dotcoms.

From Blogshop Magazine website: http://www.blogshopmagazine.com/different-types-of-blogging-platforms-for-blogshop-owners/ 

Different Types of Blogging Platforms for Blogshop Owners

by: aidan in Resources // No Comment

There are many blogging platforms available today that are suitable for Blogshop. Some of them are free, while others have a price if you want specific customization. Let’s discuss some of the most common blogging platforms that are used in Blogshop around the web and see which one you prefer.

Livejournal (Free)

LiveJournal (often abbreviated LJ) is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source[4] server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community. LiveJournal's blogging features include those found in similar blogging sites (multiple authors, commenting, calendars, and polls). However, LiveJournal differentiates itself from other blogging sites by its WELL-like features of a self-contained community and some social networking features similar to other social networking sites.

Blogger/Blogspot (Free)

Blogger is a blog storage service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It is funded by on-screen ads. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003.The service itself is located at www.blogger.com. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at subdomains of blogspot.com. Until May 1 2010 an FTP service allows pages edited through Blogger to be published to other hosts. If this service ceases, all blogger blogs will be hosted by Google, though domains other than blogspot.com may be used.

WordPress (Open Source)

WordPress is an open source CMS, often used as a blog publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL. It has many features including a plugin architecture and a templating system. Used by over 2% of the 10,000 biggest websites, WordPress is the most popular blog software in use today. It was first released in May 2003 by Matt Mullenweg as a fork of b2/cafelog. As of September 2009, it was being used by 202 million websites worldwide.

Drupal (Open Source)

Drupal (pronounced /ˈdruːpəl/) is a free and open source[2] content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It is used as a back-end system for at least 1% of all websites worldwide[5], ranging from small personal blogs to large corporate and political sites, including whitehouse.gov nand data.gov.uk. It is also used for knowledge management and business collaboration.

Joomla (Open Source)

Joomla! is an open source content management system platform for publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets as well as a Model–view–controller (MVC) Web application framework. It is written in PHP, stores data in MySQL and includes features such as page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, search, and support for language internationalization.

Custom CMS

A content management system (CMS) is a collection of procedures used to manage workflow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based. The procedures are designed to:

• Allow for a large number of people to contribute to and share stored data
• Control access to data, based on user roles. User roles define what information each user can view or edit
• Aid in easy storage and retrieval of data
• Reduce repetitive duplicate input
• Improve the ease of report writing
• Improve communication between users

In a CMS, data can be defined as nearly anything - documents, movies, pictures, phone numbers, scientific data, etc. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, revising, semantically enriching, and publishing documentation.

Selection Dilemma?

If you wanted to set-up a blogshop quickly and readily, my advice to you is to use the free platforms that are available to you. You can start and play around with the free platforms until you have earned money or are ready for expansion. You can then move on to either hire a professional freelancer/web company to set up your own domain site with your own CMS to start your eCommerce shop, or you can do it yourself if you’re web savvy enough.

Blogging softwares- do they make a difference?

Since blogshops are created from free blogging softwares, then it begs the question of how important blogging platforms are to blogshop businesses.  The essential motivation to for this practice is cost-cutting, that is, blogging platforms are FREE, and EASY to use.

It does seem that a lot of the blogshops use Blogspot.  generally, Blogspot is easier to use, so that probably explains most of it.  However, WordPress and LiveJournal have features that are beneficial to blogshop businesses as well.  This article makes a comparison (warning- the writing is not exactly great):

From: http://blogsss.com/is-livejournal-blogspot-or-wordpress-better-for-building-blogshops-in-singapore.aspx

 

Is Livejournal, Blogspot Or Wordpress Better For Building Blogshops In Singapore

In this article, we will try either Blogspot, Livejournal or wordpress is befitting for we when it comes to office building your Blogshop

Livejournal

The pass value of Livejournal is the amicable height resolution where blogshop owners can emanate their amicable space inside of LiveJournal in the internet as well as encounter their probable customers.

Pluses: As referred to above, LiveJournal has the small most amicable networking facilities as well as communities where blogshop owners can publicize their sales object to the community. It is really easy to find brand new friends there as well as lane their blogs.

Minuses: If we have been meditative monetizing your blog, Livejournal will not concede that – all advertisements there have been combined by Livejournal company.

Categorizing your sales object is differient as well as the series of themes is limited. There have been no plugins during all.

More importantly when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) The poke engines do not similar to Livejournal: It is doubtful we will ever be upon the initial page of Google , so all you’ll get is the same Livejournal users as you.

Blogger

IMO, Blogger is the easiet height for any one is starting off. Compared to Wordpress, it is most most easy. This is the height for beginners, who only begin off formulating the Blogshop.

Pluses: Yes, we can monetize your blog with Adsense: the advertisements can be combined in singular amounts as well as positions

Plugin is accessible in creation your blog some-more entertaining, as well as some-more themes.
Another value is it authorised we to make use of your own domain (without blogspot) whilst regulating their template.

Minuses: It is not SEO friendly. Many beginners consider that if this height is warranted by Google, afterwards their blog will be in the Top 10 upon each page of the poke engines as well as have thousands of visitors each day. It is not true: Although there is the probability to be upon the initial page of Google, it will take most some-more time to get there as upon Wordpress.

Blogger doesn’t demeanour nice: doesn’t concede to supplement categories that is critical for the Blogshop.
With the large of thesis available, It does assistance Blogshop who needs to emanate the veteran image. However tweaking is limited.

Wordpress

This is the most appropriate resolution for Blogshops who wish to have veteran as well as good seeking web-page. However be rebuilt to sense the bit some-more about wordpress as it is elementary as Blogshop. Also for wordpress, we need to have your own hosting so it does take the small programming if we confirm to select wordpress.

Pluses: There have been most veteran themes as well as plugins, Code programming can be finished with most plugins that is beneficial for blogshop.

Minuses: Hosting is required, the cost is not costly as well as can be lonesome by gain from your blog.
Excellent height for everybody who wants to set up the veteran picture though the small knowlege of web programming is required

Kelly Chan
www.blogshopcity.com
Singapore #1 Blogshop Directory as well as Online Shopping Forum

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.