The 12 Dumbest Money Questions We’ve Ever Asked (and Why They’re Not Actually Dumb)

11 Outdated SEO Tactics You Need to Retire

Just like most aspects of marketing and technology, search engine optimization has evolved over time.

Marketing strategies that were effective for your company five or ten years ago may not be as effective today. The same applies to SEO.

Search engines have changed the way they rank websites.

If your company hasn’t been staying up to date with the latest trends, your SEO strategy is outdated.

I see this problem all too often in my consulting work. Many companies still employ old strategies that no longer work.

That’s what inspired me to write this guide.

The outdated tactics on this list vary in terms of how they will affect your business.

Some of these are ineffective but harmless, while others could potentially hurt your SEO ranking.

Every business with a website needs to read this guide. Use it as a reference to see if you’re still using outdated SEO tactics and possibly hurting your SEO game.

1. Exact match domain names

Exact match domains were popular for a while.

With this strategy, websites were able to move up their search rankings very quickly. In some instances, rankings climbed in just weeks or even a few days.

As the name implies, the whole idea behind an exact match domain is that your website matches the keywords you’re targeting. For example:

• detroitplumber
• garagedoorpartsmiami
• bestpizzanewyork

But Google adjusted its algorithm to make exact match domains obsolete. When it made this update back in 2012, the influence of exact match domains dropped nearly immediately:

Now, an exact match domain has the same chances of ranking as high or as low as any other domain name.

In fact, some of these exact match domains have a greater chance of being flagged by algorithms or manual reviews. Low-quality sites won’t be ranked high just because their domains are exact matches to the targeted keywords.

Furthermore, it’s difficult to brand a company with an exact match domain.

For example, think about Amazon. Imagine if it started with a domain like

“buyandsellbooksonline.”

That’s just not brandable. This strategy is less trustworthy, and it will make it increasingly difficult for you to build links.

Instead, you want to make it as easy as possible to increase your brand exposure by having a domain that’s brandable.

Don’t use exact match domains.

2. Link directories

For the most part, link directories are useless. There are some exceptions for niche-specific high quality directories.

This strategy worked before search engines become powerful.

People could find what they were looking for by using sites with directories.

These were easy for site owners to install and manage, and they increased in popularity. However, a link directory doesn’t provide actual value to website visitors.

That’s when search algorithms got adjusted to ignore link directories.

Now, having a link directory on your site can get you penalized if you have low-quality links. The same goes for article directories.

Marketers started to use software to submit articles to thousands of directories. But this low-quality content didn’t provide any value to people. It was a quick and simple way to build links.

Today, link and article directories are usually perceived as poor content, and they won’t help increase your search ranking.

3. Flat URL architecture

By default, WordPress will set up your pages with URLs like this:

https://ift.tt/2Q63kN4

It may look simple and clean for your visitors, but it’s not helping your SEO.

If you don’t change these defaults, it will be challenging for search engines to understand the hierarchy of your website. SEO crawlers and bots will rate all your pages with the same level of importance, but that’s not what you want.

You need search engines to recognize the importance of each page compared to its relationship within other pages.

You can manually change your defaults to something like this instead:

https://ift.tt/2RpW8YK

Then, the hierarchy of your site architecture will make more sense.

Removing the flat URL structure will make it easier for crawlers to index your site, which ultimately will improve your SEO ranking.

Search engines will be able to learn the value of each page within your site.

I recommend making these adjustments sooner rather than later. If you change your architecture, you’ll also have to change all of the redirects which can potentially hurt your ranking.

4. Automated link building

Links clearly play an important role in SEO.

Once this was discovered, many marketers tried to take advantage of link-building software to maximize their domain exposure on as many other sites as possible. They did this so their sites would be recognized by search engine algorithms.

As a result, their links got randomly posted on forums, blog comments, link directories, and guestbooks.

While I’m an advocate of using automation to improve your operational efficiency, this isn’t where you should be using that strategy.

Link building is only effective if it’s high quality. You can’t automate this process.

You have to build strong relationships and create valuable content.

For alternative methods that work, check out my post on the process of consistently building backlinks every week.

5. Keyword stuffing

When search engines weren’t as complex as they are today, keyword stuffing worked.

Sites would just put dozens and dozens of keywords throughout new content. The problem with such keywording is it’s unnatural because it was only being done to improve the search relevance of the page.

This doesn’t work anymore.

As algorithms became more advanced, keyword stuffing lost its power. Now it just looks like you have low-quality content.

You can potentially be penalized for keyword stuffing as well.

A recent study from SEMrush showed the most important ranking factors:

While keywords make the list, they’re not nearly as important as the other aspects of SEO are.

In fact, 18% of domains that ranked for high-volume keywords didn’t have any keywords in the body. Only 3% of backlinks had anchor text with keywords.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t include keywords in your content. But you need to make sure that you’re using them sparingly and that your content is written to read naturally.

You’re much better off publishing valuable content without lots of keywords than low-quality content with too many keywords.

6. Keyword variation pages

Do not create a separate page for each variation of a keyword you’re trying to rank for. This strategy won’t work.

Search engine crawlers are smarter, so you don’t have to do this in order to target these variations.

Google’s AI system, RankBrain, can even detect and rank sites for keywords not displayed within the content.

For example, let’s say you create a landing page dedicated to your B2B audiences about boiler services. RankBrain will understand that this page will also be relevant to users who search for things like:

• boiler cleaning
• boiler maintenance
• boiler inspection
• boiler repair

You don’t need to have a separate page for each one of these keyword phrases. Having too many pages on your site will make your site navigation more difficult than it needs to be.

For this example, you’d just need to have one page. Then, you’d include a subheader for each one of these variations.

This strategy will make your content more relevant and improve your site navigation.

7. Paid links

The last thing you want to do is violate Google’s webmaster guidelines.

Buying links can improve your ranking, but not if you get caught. For this reason alone, I don’t think paid links are worth it.

Some of you may have bought a few links without getting penalized in the past, but don’t think that means you’re invincible.

Sure, you might be careful with the way you’re conducting your operation, but what about the seller?

According to Google, both the buyers and sellers are guilty. It describes such practice as a link scheme:

If someone is selling to you, they’re probably selling to other sites as well.

All Google needs to do is catch one person, then follow the trail of links.

If an unnatural pattern of inbound links is identified and leads to another buyer, it can get traced back to the same seller you’re using. It’s very easy for you to get caught.

Build quality links the right way, and don’t try to take any shortcuts.

8. Building several interlinked sites

Some of you may own multiple businesses and websites. This seems like a good way to build links among them, right?

Not necessarily.

Interlinking sites need to be relevant to each other.

If you have a website selling camping equipment, it wouldn’t make sense to link to your other business offering credit loans.

You’re not rewarded for the total number of links you build. Relevant links hold more weight.

You might not be penalized for this, but it limits your opportunity and resources you can use for promoting your primary site.

However, there are certain times when this can be done properly.

For example, let’s say you have a commercial contracting company and a plumbing company. These are relevant to each other, so interlinking them would be fine.

I’ve seen some instances when people create multiple websites just for their link building strategy. This won’t work.

It’ll be difficult for you to manage this many sites for this purpose alone, so each one won’t have a high authority ranking.

Google will recognize this pattern, and your SEO ranking will suffer.

9. Prioritizing quantity over quality

Publishing ten pieces of new content a day is useless if they are all low-quality.

You’re much better off sticking to a publishing frequency you can handle without letting the quality suffer.

Write for people, not for bots. Writing for bots is unnatural.

As I said before, these new algorithms and site crawlers are becoming so advanced that they can distinguish between poor quality and high quality content.

Look at your blog for example. How long are your posts?

These are the average lengths of blog posts published over the last four years:

As you can see, the majority of these posts have 500-1,000 words.

But that doesn’t mean that’s your sweet spot. Longer blog posts are slowly trending upward each year.

For the most part, I would recommend going longer over shorter.

But don’t force a long blog post for the sake of increasing your word length. By nature, some topics will be longer or shorter than others.

But it’s definitely better to publish five 1,000-word posts a week as opposed to 50 100-word posts a week.

Those 100-word posts won’t be high quality. You can’t possibly address a topic properly in that length.

10. Irrelevant guest posts

Guest-blogging is another great way to build links, but you need to make sure you’re doing it properly.

Irrelevant posts won’t help you.

Instead, you should only be guest-blogging on sites that will increase exposure for your brand. You want to reach a new audience that falls within your target market.

The only way to do this is by publishing relevant content.

For example, I’m a content marketing expert. I have no business submitting my posts to cooking magazines.

It’s irrelevant to my personal brand, website, and target audience.

As I discussed earlier, Google will identify irrelevant links and potentially punish both parties.

Take this into consideration when managing guest posts on your site as well. You won’t want to publish irrelevant guest submissions for the same reasons.

11. Ignoring local SEO

It’s a misconception that you always need to focus on the big picture.

Many companies are just trying to get traffic and ranking by targeting mass audiences as opposed to their actual target market.

This is especially important to local business owners. If you have a local business, you should be prioritizing traffic from people in the area.

Don’t put too much emphasis on generating traffic from people out of your market.

Sure, traffic can improve your site ranking, but local SEO will be much more beneficial to your overall strategy.

Here’s a recent study from Search Engine Land looking at the factors of local SEO:

Use this graph as a reference.

Are you making the right effort to improve your local SEO strategy?

If you’re ignoring these areas, it’s a big mistake.

Conclusion

SEO has changed. It’ll continue changing in the future.

If you are still using the outdated tactics on this list, it’s time for you to put those behind you.

You need to start implementing new tactics.

I’m referring to things such as voice search and mobile-first indexing. I’ll be coming up with more in-depth guides on those topics in the near future.

But for now, just worry about retiring the strategies on this list. They’re a waste of your time and could potentially be hurting your ranking.

What are some new SEO strategies your website has had success with?

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My Husband Died and Left Me With Debt. I Want to Use My IRA to Pay It Off

Dear S.,

No, no, no, no, no. Like all the others, I will tell you not to do this.

But you want to know why? I can tell you that, too.

I’m sure you feel like wiping out those student loans quickly would relieve some of the weight on your shoulders. But what happens if you hit age 65 and don’t have any retirement savings left?

If you can let that IRA grow as long as possible, it will continue to earn, even while you take distributions when you hit the minimum age. It will provide necessary income when you retire, or in the event that you can’t work anymore before your ideal retirement age.

I want you to consider a couple factors about your husband’s student loans, if you haven’t already.

First, make sure they aren’t federal direct student loans, which are typically discharged if the borrower dies. Second, if they’re private loans, consider contacting the lender for what’s called a “compassionate review,” which in some cases will result in a loan being discharged if the lender deems you unable to pay.

It sounds like you’re on the right track paying down credit cards during a no-interest period, even if you’re dealing with new bills right now. Your debt is not insurmountable. But when it’s finally paid off, you need to make sure your future is secure.

Consider meeting with a debt counselor who can take an objective look at your situation. To find someone near you who’s qualified, visit the online directories of the Financial Counseling Organization of America or the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. Brief debt counseling would have been part of your bankruptcy process, but it’s often just a cursory session; what you need now is someone to tell you if there’s a way you haven’t considered to ease your debt burden without putting your future financial security at risk.

Are you dealing with difficult financial choices made by someone close to you? Write to Dear Penny at https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/dear-penny/

Lisa Rowan is a personal finance expert and senior writer at The Penny Hoarder, and the voice behind Dear Penny. For more practical money tips, visit www.thepennyhoarder.com.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

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The Baboon and the Salt

Earlier this month, I watched a wonderful excerpt from an interview with the semi-retired comedian Dave Chapelle (I think semi-retired is the best description, having read up on him a little). Chapelle walked away from his hugely popular Comedy Central program Chapelle’s Show at the height of his popularity, leaving $50 million on the table. People questioned his sanity at the time.

After the interviewer asked him about how his decision to quit really wasn’t about the money, Chapelle offers this anecdote.

I watched one of these nature shows one time and they were talking about how a bushman finds water when it’s scarce, and they do what is called a ‘salt trap.’ I didn’t know this, but apparently baboons love salt. So, they put a lump of salt in a hole and they wait for the baboon. The baboon comes, sticks his hand in the hole, grabs the salt, the salt makes his hand bigger, and he’s trapped and can’t get his hand out. Now, if he’s smart, all he does is let go of the salt. The baboon doesn’t want to let go of the salt. Then the bushman comes, grabs the baboon, throws him in a cage, and gives him all the salt he wants! And then the baboon gets thirsty, the bushman lets him out of the cage, the first place the baboon runs to is water, the bushman follows him, and they both drink to their fill. And in that analogy, I felt like the baboon, but I was smart enough to let go of the salt.

Let’s break down this wonderful analogy a little bit.

Dave sees himself as the baboon, obviously.

The salt represents short-term pleasures – a burst of money and wealth and so on. It sits in the hole and he wants it and reaches in for it.

The television executives are the bushman in this analogy – his bosses at the time, in other words.

The cage is the contract that Chapelle would have to place himself under. His creative choices, his personal freedom, all of that would trap him – but he’d have plenty of salt (short-term pleasures)!

The water is what they both want – long-term security.

Dave makes the astute point that he was the baboon, but he saw the bushman and the cage and he chose to drop the salt. He reached in for some short-term pleasures and rewards, but he saw that if he didn’t let go of it, he was going to wind up in a cage for a very long time. Sure, he might eventually get to the water, but he’d have to be in a cage for a long while to get there and he didn’t want to do that.

So he dropped the salt lump. He walked away from his popular show and the all-encompassing fame and the prospect of wealth to forge a path with a lot more freedom. He’ll get to the water eventually, but on his own terms, without being trapped in a cage.

I Am the Baboon, Too

I could not help but see myself in this story, too.

Much like Dave, there was a point in my life where I was the baboon, so let’s start there.

The salt was the short-term pleasures of the world, all of the stuff I kept spending my money on that was bringing me short-term pleasure but almost no long-term joy. Things like the latest gadgets or new clothes or going out for drinks or playing golf… on and on and on like that.

The cage, of course, was the career track that I would likely have been on had I kept holding onto the salt. I would have likely worked until I was in my seventies at a job with crushing bureaucracy. I did enjoy my actual work, but there was so much bureaucracy around it that it was soul-crushing. But I could have pretty much all the salt I wanted!

The bushman represents all of the forces that wanted me to be in that cage. In a broad sense, it represents society in general, of course, which encourages people to follow traditional career paths and nudges people to want an endless train of short-term pleasures. Think of all of the companies out there that exist to encourage people to buy things for the short term.

The water is what we actually want out of life, our long-term goals. We gorge ourselves on salt (the short-term stuff), thinking that’s what we want, but we end up thirsty for water, the long-term stuff.

I am the baboon. You are the baboon.

The Trick Is Letting Go of the Salt Before You Find Yourself in a Cage

When I look back to where I was before our financial turnaround, I was definitely the baboon standing there with my hand in the hole, fiercely gripping the salt and refusing to let go.

It’s not that I was unaware that I was well on my way to being tossed in a cage by the bushman and find myself stuck on a career path of debt and financial dependence on constant employment at a high salary. I knew that it was going to happen.

It’s that I could not bring myself to let go of the salt, and that went on for years. I kept holding onto an expensive standard of living, one where I outspent my income and added to the debt load I already had from my student loans and my car loan.

I wanted the salt. I felt like I needed the salt. The salt made me feel good. Buying things made me feel good. Going out for dinner made me feel good. Having nice things made me feel good.

The thing was, those good feelings were fleeting. I might feel good buying three books at the bookstore, but then I was left late at night feeling worried about my financial future. I didn’t see a clear path to owning a home. I didn’t see a clear path to providing for my son or for any other children I might have. I certainly didn’t see a bright path to retirement or to the other big goals I had in life.

All I could really see was the short term and those short-term bursts of pleasure. So I gripped that salt with all of my might and I stood there with my hand in the hole, watching the bushman build my cage.

One day, I realized that I was going to soon be in that cage, if I wasn’t already.

I realized that those big dreams I had for the future were actually fading away and becoming even more distant.

I realized that all of the stuff I’d accumulated and all of the little expensive experiences I’d had didn’t bring me any real lasting happiness.

What I wanted from that salt – and what I thought it was bringing me – was lasting happiness, but what it was actually bringing me was short, smaller bursts of happiness that would fade.

I was holding onto that salt, but what I really wanted was water.

Water is lasting happiness. Water is a sense of financial security. Water is a life that bubbles up consistent joy without having to spend money for it. Water is a life filled with possibilities.

The salt I was holding onto? It was delicious, but only for the first lick or two, and it didn’t quench my thirst. It only made it worse.

So, I dropped the salt. I stood up and stretched and began the journey toward water.

It wasn’t easy. The journey was long. I often missed the salt. Along the way, however, I found little puddles of water here and there to sate me and keep me going. My immediate thirst was quenched and I felt better without the salt at all.

In other words, I began to discover that I didn’t need pleasures or expensive things or costly experiences to have a joyful life. Joy comes far more reliably from good relationships, from time spent on things you’re passionate about, from having some semblance of security in your life, from living a virtuous life. Fill your life with those things – the real water of life – and you’ll find happiness bubbles up naturally.

Now, I see that river before me. The bushman and his cage are long behind me. A little salt once in a while is nice, but I know it’s easy to drop it whenever I feel trapped by it and I also know it’s not the real source of happiness. A bit of salt enhances the flavor of life, but too much of it ceases to be a good thing.

May you find the courage to let go of the salt and to walk away from the bushman’s cage.

Good luck.

More by Trent Hamm:

• Hyperbolic Discounting and You
• Personal Finance and Life Contentment
• Planting Seeds for the Future

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Switching to Low-Flow Toilets Could Save You Hundreds Each Year

Making money isn’t all real estate investing and promotions It’s not always sexy. In fact, one of the easiest ways to make money at home is to get up close and personal with your toilet.

How? By replacing your old toilets that are heavily reliant on water with new low-flow (also called low-flush) toilets.

What Are Low-Flow Toilets?

Before the 1990s, the toilet game was like the early American West — untamed, with little to no regulation. But in the early ‘90s, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandated that new toilets use no more than 1.6 gallons per flush (gpf). Before this standard arrived, toilets could use anywhere from 5 gpf to 7 gpf, making them inefficient and expensive to use.

The original 1.6 gpf toilets were not perfect. Toilet manufacturers were forced to quickly comply with the new regulation, and their original designs were often unsuccessful at whooshing away all the waste with a single flush, meaning you had to flush them multiple times to do the job. Pretty crappy, right?

Over the last two and a half decades, however, toilet designs have become more advanced and efficient. The new gold standard is 1.28 gpf. Though 1.6 gpf still meets federal guidelines, some states, like drought-stricken California, have moved to a 1.28 gpf requirement. The 1.28 gpf toilets are called “high-efficiency” and earn the EPA’s WaterSense seal of approval.

Are They Worth the Investment?

If you’re renovating your bathroom and a trusty toilet from the 1980s is still your throne of choice, you should consider an upgrade. Why?

According to the EPA, toilets account for 30% of the average family’s indoor water consumption — and don’t forget that a portion of your water bill is actually sewage costs, or what you spit back out of your pipes. Upgrading from an old model to a 1.6 gpf or 1.28 gpf model can reduce water usage for your toilets by 20% to 60%.

Each upgraded toilet can save $110 on your water bill each year — and more than $2,000 over the life of the toilet — according to the EPA.

“They pay for themselves, and fast,” says Brian Moore, owner and master plumber of The Plumbing Express (and my dear old dad). “Even people on a well system would benefit from reduced electricity costs from the well pump not working as hard.

“I have several customers who live in a condo community who have had their condo fees rise sharply because of the cost of water and sewer fees in their county,” Moore continues. “The management office is currently trying to convince all of the residents to change out their 3.5 gpf toilets to the new low-flow toilets to cut their condo fees or keep them from rising more. There are real cost consequences of not switching.”

Some cities even reward you for switching to a low-flow toilet. St. Petersburg, Florida, for example — home of The Penny Hoarder — offers a $100 rebate when you replace a pre-1995 high-flush toilet with a high-efficiency WaterSense model.

So what’s the investment? A basic 1.6 gpf model averages $176 without installation. High-efficiency models can climb between $300 and $400, depending on the model. So if these toilets save you roughly $100 a year, they can pay for themselves in two to four years.

If you are going the federal mandate route (1.6 gpf), Moore recommends the American Standard Cadet Pro 1.6 gpf. He sees great results from Toto’s 1.28 gpf models if you’re after high efficiency. “Toto has been making low-flow toilets for a long time and was the industry leader when the federal government came out with the new mandate in the early ‘90s.” Any toilet with the EPA WaterSense label will optimize your savings.

Other Ways to Save on Your Water Bill

Low-flow toilets are one of the greatest ways to lower your water bill — but they’re not the only way. Aside from simply reducing the amount of water you use around the house, Moore has a few solid recommendations to lower your water bill.

“Changing the aerators on bathroom and kitchen sink faucets can reduce water consumption,” Moore explains. “Newer construction homes can also have greywater systems installed. A greywater system utilizes water from bathtubs, showers, laundry tubs and washing machines that have a separate drainage system that routes the water into a holding tank. The water is then pumped from the holding tank and used for flushing the toilets, therefore recycling the water.”

If you are doing multiple home renovations, you can also purchase high-efficiency washing machines and dishwashers. These are large financial investments, but if it’s time to purchase a new appliance, look for one that will net you more savings over time.

Not ready to replace the toilet? Here are some ways to save on water costs while keeping your current porcelain throne.

Timothy Moore is an editor and freelance writer with a real passion for toilet humor. It took everything in him not to dump a bunch of toilet-themed puns into this article.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

The Penny Hoarder Promise: We provide accurate, reliable information. Here’s why you can trust us and how we make money.

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How to Save Money on Everything You Buy for Baby Without Clipping Coupons

Biggest Rally in Eight Months: Dow Jumps 600 Points After Fed Hints at Fewer Interest Rate Hikes

There's encouraging news for the US economy as stocks had their best day in eight months Wednesday...

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How We Flipped an Ugly House and Made $27,000

Biggest Rally in Eight Months: Dow Jumps 600 Points After Fed Hints at Fewer Interest Rate Hikes

There's encouraging news for the US economy as stocks had their best day in eight months Wednesday...

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The “After Holiday” Strategy

After each holiday season, it’s pretty easy for me to write an article about how much you can save by taking advantage of huge markdowns on items related to that holiday. After a holiday passes, most department stores and grocery stores mark down items related to that holiday to get rid of that inventory, and a smart consumer can take advantage of that.

Of course, I can write more or less the same article after each holiday because the overall strategy is the same. The only thing that changes are the items you’re seeking and what you might do with them.

So, rather than write one of those typical post-holiday articles where I highlight the things you can do in the aftermath of that specific holiday, I’m instead writing a general article that focuses on one overall strategy: when a holiday passes, take advantage of the markdowns on specific holiday-related food and merchandise and save it for next year or utilize it over the coming months.

It’s an incredibly effective strategy. If you hit the store in the two or three days right after a holiday and look specifically for seasonal items, you’ll often find them on steep discount, and bargain hunters will clear the aisles like locusts at that point, buying them by the cartload. Of course, that’s probably not the wisest move for a truly cost-conscious person who doesn’t want to waste money, but it’s often worthwhile to buy a few items on discount to use out of season or to stow away for the next year.

To illustrate this, I’m going to go through some of the most common strategies I’ve used over the years to do just this. There are several holidays throughout the year where you can save quite a bit of money by going shopping a few days after the holiday, and here’s how to really take advantage of each one.

Valentine’s Day

This romantic holiday typically finds two items on deep discount afterwards, both of which can be snagged for very different reasons.

Greeting cards can be bought and put aside for a future year if you’re the type that exchanges cards on Valentines Day. Since the sentiment remains the same, it’s not too hard to buy a card that’s 50% to 75% off on February 17th or so and put it aside until next February 14th.

In fact, this is a good strategy to help you establish a pattern of having a “card box,” something I picked up from my great grandmother. She had a small box of greeting cards for a wide variety of purchases and would stock it with new ones when they were on sale. Then, whenever she needed one, she’d just turn to that box and there would always be one available for her purposes.

Chocolates aren’t going to last for a year, but they can often be used throughout the year for other purposes. A bag of Hershey’s Kisses or Dove Promises or even bars of chocolate can be used for all kinds of baking purposes, and chocolates, of course, can be a nice occasional treat.

Easter

For many families, Easter is a celebration of coloring eggs, hiding them, searching for them, and enjoying a bit of candy. Naturally, that means some items are carried heavily in stores just before Easter and go on deep, deep discount right after Easter. Two such items really stand out from the pack.

Candy, particularly seasonally-targeted candy like cream eggs and marshmallow candies, goes on deep discount right after Easter as the items need to be cleared out. Most of these candies can be bought and easily stowed away until next Easter, as they last for a long time in a cool, dark place. Stow them away with some Easter baskets until the next year.

Easter egg dye kits are also incredibly cheap right after Easter, as much as 90% off in the few days right after Easter before they disappear from shelves. Again, buy the kits right after Easter and put them aside until the following Easter. You’ll spend pennies instead of dollars, and the dye tablets in the kits will work just fine.

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day

This one’s simple. There’s really only one thing that goes on sale after these two days.

Greeting cards are the most common item sold to celebrate these days, and naturally you can take advantage of this. The absolute best time to buy a Mother’s Day card is two or three days after Mother’s Day. The absolute best time to buy a Father’s Day card is two or three days after Father’s Day. You’ll often find those cards on deep discount for a few days right after the holiday, and then they’re gone. Take those freshly bought cards and hold onto them until next year. The sentiment remains, but the price is far less.

Back to School

While this isn’t strictly a holiday per se, many stores effectively treat it as such, putting out a bunch of items related to the back to school season in August and then aiming to clear it off of their shelves in early September.

Office supplies are the big winner here, as most office supplies can be found on sale during September. I often pick up pens, composition books, and index cards during the winding down of back to school sales. My wife tends to buy piles of composition books for her classroom, along with other school supplies.

Backpacks are also often on sale in mid-September, as stores often accumulate a big stock of them in August and early September and then need to get rid of that stock for the rest of the year. While you usually can’t find a great backpack, it’s not too hard to find a sub-$10 backpack for specific purposes, like having a bag for the car in the winter that contains some spare clothes and a first aid kit, or having a bag for your gym gear.

Shoes are often on sale at the end of the back to school period, even adult pairs. Many stores often put all of their shoes on sale during that time, so it’s an opportunity to buy a pair for yourself and to buy a pair in a larger size for your children as they grow into them.

Halloween

Halloween offers a wide variety of items that wind up on deep discount in early November as they’re being pulled off the shelves to make way for Thanksgiving and Christmas goodies.

Costume makeup can be had for pennies on the dollar at this time of the year, so if you often use costume makeup for your own costume or for your children, this is a great opportunity to pick up a variety of colors and types at a very cheap price. My daughter has used Halloween makeup bought in this way in the past for her costume the past two years, and we used it for a sports themed dress-up day as well.

Costumes are often on discount, too, so if you have a young child who will be going out for beggar’s night next year or if you want to buy costume elements for yourself for next year’s Halloween, this is a great chance to do that on discount. Just be sure to put it in a place where you’ll easily find it next year.

Candy, particularly large bags of many small pieces of candy, is super cheap right after Halloween, though this often vanishes by two or three days after Halloween as it’s very popular with bargain hunters. You can always buy it to stow away for next year’s beggar’s night, or you can simply enjoy it yourself by tossing a piece or two into your lunches that you take to work or as a quick snack around the house.

Pumpkins are often harvested by the ton during October so that they can be used as jack-o-lanterns, but after October passes, there’s usually still a supply but almost no demand, so the prices drop through the floor. They do make a good decoration (uncarved) for the harvest season, plus if you can find inexpensive pumpkins that are good for cooking, you can make some amazing pumpkin-flavored dishes for a very low price.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a very food-centric holiday, with particular food items heavily associated with the celebration. These items, unsurprisingly, find themselves on heavy discount shortly after Thanksgiving weekend is over (and sometimes even before the weekend is over). This is a great time to stock up on some specific foodstuffs, particularly if you have space in the cupboard or freezer.

Turkeys are typically on discount after Thanksgiving, but they’re also often on discount before Thanksgiving as well, as many stores use turkeys as loss leaders to get people into the store before Thanksgiving, so while you can get cheap turkeys after Thanksgiving, they’re sometimes even cheaper beforehand.

Buying a few turkeys to freeze or to use for other recipes can be a wise idea. Simply cooking a turkey, cutting up the meat, and saving it for things like turkey tetrazzini or turkey pot pie can make for some very inexpensive meals later in the winter. You can also use the carcass to make turkey stock, which makes almost every soup and many casseroles more flavorful; just put a turkey carcass into a slow cooker, add some peppercorn and vegetable scraps, fill it with water so that all of the turkey carcass is covered, and cook it all day or all night. Strain it and save the liquid. The liquid is turkey stock, and it’s amazing.

Cranberry sauce is often found on extreme discount a few days after Thanksgiving. It can be served with lots of meals to add a tart and sweet element and it can be used as an ingredient in many different dishes. There are tons and tons of recipes out there that use leftover cranberry sauce as an ingredient, particularly desserts. It’s a great way to come up with some very tasty desserts to bring to December holiday potlucks, for example.

Pie filling, particularly pumpkin pie filling, is usually on deep discount right after Thanksgiving. While it’s useful for making pies, of course, there are a lot of uses for pie filling, from things like pumpkin pie cookies to making pumpkin flavored smoothies (yep, just puree the filling with some milk and whatever else you’d like to add).

Christmas

The days immediately after Christmas are a great time to stock up on winter holiday supplies, even if you celebrate Hanukkah or other holidays near the end of the calendar year.

Wrapping paper and ribbons are almost always on discount, and while many of the paper patterns are directly tied to Christmas, others are very secular (depicting winter patterns or simple colors). You can often find enormous rolls of plain paper on deep discount and it’s easy to just put those rolls away with the holiday decorations so that they’re ready to go when you pull out your holiday decorations next November or December.

Scotch tape is often on discount because it’s a hot item in the days leading up to Christmas and other winter gift-giving events. Many stores sell three packs at a very steep discount, often far less than buying a single roll at other times of the year. Again, buy a three pack of tape and toss two of the rolls in with your holiday decorations so they’re ready to go next winter.

Holiday lights tend to also be on steep discount during the week after Christmas and often into the first week of the new year. Stores simply want to purge them off their shelves, so if you’ve noticed that your lights aren’t twinkling any more or you have some failed strands, pick them up just after the holidays are over and stow them away for next year.

Gift sets are prepackaged sets of items meant to be given as gifts as a complete package. Often, gift sets are just a bit below regular price for the individual items, so it’s not really a bargain. However, just after the holidays, gift sets go on massive markdown to get them out of the store. You can buy them for your own use or, even better, buy them as gifts for future gift-giving events as long as they’re not obviously marked for Christmas use.

Toys also often go on sale right after the holidays, as many retailers drastically inflate their toy selection for the holidays and then put lots of things on clearance as they reduce their toy inventory. This is a great way to pick up toys and games that your children might enjoy or, even better, buy items to stow away for birthdays throughout the year.

Final Thoughts

The point of this article is simple: right as a holiday passes, think about what items from that holiday might be on sale because the stores need to unload them, and then stock up on those items if it makes sense for you. For us, things like school supplies and tape get bought when the prices are super low right after the associated special occasions.

Remember, you don’t have to use these items immediately. Most food items can be frozen. Other food items are shelf-safe, which means they’ll fit right in your pantry. Non-food items often have uses throughout the year, and those that don’t can be stowed away until next year. Just make sure you put those items in a place where you’ll easily find them. One good way to remind yourself that you have a holiday item stowed away somewhere is to add a calendar reminder for yourself about eleven months from now, reminding yourself of what you stowed away and where. That way, when that time of the year comes around again, you’re reminded of what you have and where you stowed it away.

If you plan it right, you can save a ton of money on holiday-related supplies and even repurpose some of those holiday supplies for other purposes in your life at a very low price.

Good luck!

The post The “After Holiday” Strategy appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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Wear Pants — and Other Advice on How to Prepare for a Virtual Job Fair

Parents Are Spending Twice as Much on Their Adult Kids as Retirement

There are some parents out there who have a hard time letting go of their adult children.

If only they had similar difficulty letting go of their money.

According to a new study by Merrill Lynch and Age Wave, parents in the U.S. spend $500 billion annually on their 18- to 34-year-old adult children. That wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t twice the amount they contribute each year to their retirement accounts ($250 billion).

Though nearly two-thirds of parents say they’ve sacrificed their own financial security for the sake of their children, more than 90 percent also say parenting is the most rewarding aspect of their lives.

“Parenting can be one of the most fulfilling and identity-shaping experiences of a person’s life – and with it comes a lifelong financial commitment,” says Lorna Sabbia, head of retirement and personal wealth solutions for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “Planning ahead for the major financial costs can limit surprises down the road and help parents safeguard their own financial goals.”

Of the 173 million parents in the United States today, just 76 million have children under 18. As a result, 89 percent agree there is “no normal” when it comes to parenting, though 52 percent say the infant and toddler stage is the most rewarding part of parenting. Middle school and high school are considered the most difficult times, thanks largely to increased financial dependence. Perhaps that’s why 73 percent of people now consider finances before becoming a parent – compared to just one-third in the 1980s.

The average cost of raising a child to age 18 is now estimated to be over $230,000. Nine in 10 parents say they’re surprised by how much money they spent after becoming a parent, and nearly two-thirds (63 percent) say they’ve had financial difficulties as a result of parenting.

Yet it appears that getting your kids to age 18 is hardly a financial finish line. Nearly four out of five (79 percent) of parents of early adults say they provide them with some kind of financial support. Roughly 31 percent of adults ages 18 to 34 live at home, which is a greater percentage than those who live with a spouse. And according to a separate survey by NerdWallet, the majority of parents (87 percent) of children 18 and older had their adult children living with them for at least some period of time.

Even if their adult children live independently, today’s parents often contribute to food and grocery bills (60 percent), cell phone service (54 percent), car expenses (47 percent), school (44 percent), vacations (44 percent), rent (36 percent), and student loans (27 percent).

And a survey released Thursday by CreditCards.com found that nine in 10 American parents would help their grown children pay off debt. The average parent is willing to fork over $5,705 to their child for debt repayment, without any expectation of being reimbursed — and nearly $8,000 if they expect to be paid back. (The big exception being gambling debt, for which 57% of parents say they would never foot the bill.) 

In addition, according to Merrill Lynch, 59 percent expect to help pay for their children’s weddings, 26 percent expect to contribute to their children’s first homes, and one-third plan to contribute to their grandchildren’s college costs.

“In this new era of delayed financial independence of young people, financial planning is no longer a solo or coupled activity,” says Ken Dychtwald, CEO and founder of Age Wave. “It’s become an ongoing family project with longer and different social, housing, and economic interdependencies than we’ve seen before.”

Unfortunately for parents, this is putting their own retirement plans at risk. Seventy-two percent of parents tell Merrill Lynch they have put their children’s interests ahead of their own need to save for retirement, and 82 percent say they would be willing to make a major financial sacrifice for adult children, including drawing down savings (50 percent) or curtailing their lifestyles (43 percent). One-fourth would even take on debt or pull money from retirement accounts.

As the NerdWallet survey revealed, every little contribution that parents make adds up. When the average parent borrows $21,000 for their child’s tuition, and student loan payoff plans are around 10 years, it’s potentially costing these parents almost $80,000 in missed retirement savings to send their kid to college. And on average, NerdWallet estimates a parent covering a child’s living expenses for five years and borrowing money for college tuition is missing out on $227,000 — almost a quarter of a million dollars — in retirement savings.

A higher cost of living or supporting multiple adult children could drive that number even higher. For instance, if a parent gives an adult child an allowance of $200 a month for five years, that $12,000, invested in a retirement account earning 6 percent interest, would have grown to almost $40,000 by the time the parent retires.

“As parents, we tend to want to do everything we can to help our children succeed,” says Andrea Coombes, NerdWallet’s investing expert. “But sometimes we focus on the present at the expense of the future.”

It doesn’t have to be that way. Voya Financial’s head of customer solutions, James Nichols, suggests that parents should have a clear understanding of financing and their retirement savings goals, be as honest as they can with their financial situation, bring a third party in to look over the details, and then put it all in writing and check on the plan every so often. However, if a financial advisor isn’t in the budget, there are simpler options available.

Insurance: Keeping adult kids on the family insurance plan as long as possible might help them save on health care costs, but Coombes suggests asking children to reimburse you for at least some of those costs, and maybe ramp up the amount they contribute over time. “That’ll help get them ready to pay their own bills down the road, even as it keeps you on track to save for retirement — which is when you’re really going to need that money,” she says.

Student loans: Parents can always ask adult children to contribute to student loan costs, but they can also refinance loans or speed up repayment to reduce interest charges. If parents haven’t taken out loans yet, it’s best to have a child borrow first, since federal student loans tend to have better interest rates and terms than parent PLUS loans.

Living at home: It’s best for everyone if parents ask adult kids to pay some rent and their share of the bills, like utilities. It helps them learn to build a monthly budget, and helps parents get that much closer to retirement. “One way to help out with your adult children’s finances is to let them live at home and thus avoid the major monthly cost of rent,” Coombes says. “But letting them live at home doesn’t mean you have to give them a free ride.”

• Read more: Back to the Nest? Tips for Living in a Multi-Generational Household

At the very least, parents should calculate the potential costs of retirement before committing to helping their kids. Both parents and their adult children can plan ahead without sacrificing one’s future for the other’s.

“When emotions and money become intertwined, parents risk making financial decisions that can compromise their – and their children’s – financial futures,” says Lisa Margeson, head of retirement client experience and communications at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “Parents can navigate this difficult balance by setting clear boundaries about their level of support, fostering financial independence in adult children, and reconciling spending on children with long-term savings goals to avoid jeopardizing their own financial security.”

Related Articles:

• Avoiding the Trap of Financially Dependent Children
• Three Reasons New Parents Should Stress About Saving for College
• When and How to Stop Paying Your Kids’ Bills
• Don’t Repeat These Five Mistakes Boomers Made on the Road to Retirement

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Rogue landlords let off the hook after councils fail to prosecute

Despite councils being dealt new powers to prosecute rogue landlords a majority of local authorities are failing use them.

In 2017, the government introduced tough new rules to help crackdown on rogue landlords that flout the rules and improve safety and affordability for renters.

• Swift justice for landlords and tenants? Government unveils proposals for dedicated housing court

Landlords can now be fined up £30,000 for offences such as harassment of tenants and illegal evictions.

However, a majority of local authorities have yet to make any prosecutions.

According to the Residential Landlords Association, two-thirds of councils in England and Wales have brought no prosecutions against private landlords since they were introduced.

Its research also revealed that since the introduction of the powers to issue civil penalties against landlords failing to provide acceptable housing, 89% of councils have not used them.

Worryingly, half of all councils reported that they did not even have a policy in place to use these powers.

The research also found that nearly a fifth of councils have not even issued improvement notices which order a landlord to carry out repairs or improvements to a property.

The figures were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

• Landlords urged to let tenants have cats as owners who move into rented properties are forced to give up their pets

The RLA analysed the results from 290 local authorities and found that there was no clear link between a council operating a licensing scheme for landlords and levels of enforcement.

It says tenants and good landlords are being “failed by a system unable to root out criminal landlords” and is calling for a renewed focus on enforcing the powers available to councils.

This includes sustainable funding for enforcement departments, using council tax returns to help identify landlords and doing more to find and take action against criminal landlords.

David Smith, policy director for the RLA, says: “These results show that for all the publicity around bad landlords, a large part of the fault lies with councils who are failing to use the wide range of powers they already have.

“Too many local authorities fall back on licensing schemes which, as this report proves, actually achieve very little except to add to the costs of the responsible landlords who register.”

• Are you a 'pension pot' landlord or an 'accidental' landlord? Nearly half of buy to let owners use property to fund retirement

He adds: “Instead of policing licensing schemes, councils need to focus on finding and taking action criminal landlords.”

The Department for Communities and Local Government has been contacted for further comment.

 

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• Home & mortgage
• Renting

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• landlords
• but-to-let
• rent

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The Best Website Builder

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The best thing about using a website builder is knowing that, in a world where an online presence is absolutely mandatory, the technical proficiency to build and publish that presence isn’t.

Sure, you can sign up for web hosting, implement a template, and launch your own WordPress website. But there is an easier way. We should know: We’ve built some of our own business sites with website builders. It’s easy, fast, and unobtrusive to use an all-in-one tool.

Every one of our picks for the best website builders will help you get your site up beautifully and simply:

• Wix
  Best for: Automating the tough choices
• Squarespace
  Best for: Beautifully designed templates
• Ucraft
  Best for: Building a one-page site for free
• Onepager
  Best for: Quick set-up

What we look for in a website builder

• Ease of use: everything’s all in one place, and it lets you get on with your real business. No technical proficiency required. No need for a designer or other outside help.
• A beautiful final product: a professional, well-designed website that reflects your business.
• Customer support: It’s there if you need it, but everything is intuitive enough that you don’t feel like you do.

We also ask questions in 5 key areas

1. Style and templates
   What do the templates look like?
   How customizable are those templates?
2. Usability
   How easy it is to get started?
   Or, how long does it take to build a nice looking site?
3. Ecommerce and business needs
   Can I sell things on my site?
   Can I add a menu?
   A form?
   A map?
   Reservations?
4. Pricing
   How much does it cost?
   Which tier should I start on and when will I need to upgrade?
   If it’s free, what’s the trade-off?
5. Domains, emails, and other bonuses
   Does it come with a free domain?
   Does it come with email addresses?
   Any other extras I should be looking for?

Our top picks for the best website builder

Wix

• Quicksprout Pick
• Best for: Automating the tough choices
• Paid plans start at $11 / month (billed annually)
• Free trial period: 14 days
• Sign up

It’s easy to choose Wix as a website builder. It truly takes on the name. Wix’s artificial intelligence asks you a few questions and literally builds your website before your eyes — unique color palette, features, and design all in one. It’s the best tool we’ve seen to get a site that matches your vision, even if you don’t know yet how you’d articulate that vision. Honestly, building a site with Wix’s AI felt a little like getting our minds read.

Wix has been at the forefront of this revolution, and is looking to closely combine AI and website building.

—Why AI is the best tool to help build your next website, TechRadar

To start, click create site. You’ll be asked a question: What kind of website do you want to create? From there, the AI will help you build your website. (You can opt-out and go it alone at this point, too, but we appreciated the AI’s help.)

One of the first screens you’ll see when you build a website with Wix.

We loved how easy it was for us to find a template that matched our vision. The AI stayed with us as we edited the page, a little pink square in the bottom (it looks like a chat pop-up) helping us pick the next thing to edit and showing us how to do it. The Wix AI matched our business to its online presence, used our logo to create a color palette for our site, and gave us a template pre-populated with our logo and address. Connecting images from existing social media accounts made it easy to pull in all the assets we already owned.

As AI progresses, it will be harder and harder to know which site was built via AI and which was built via a designer. You can think of it like passing a “design turing test”, i.e. in the future humans will not be able to differential between the two. Then, it’ll have to get innovative. Instead of mimicking what it is learning from what’s created, it will get better and more experimental. It’s easy to see how soon most websites that are created use AI in some way.
—Wix VP & GM of Consumer Experience Nitzan Achsaf told TechRadar

There’s a lot of variety between the Wix themes, and the personality of each theme matches its name well. The Business Advisor had a spot-on graphic of an analytics dashboard, while Astrologer features an astral hero image.

Some of Wix’s business-centric themes.

Editing your desktop site with Wix requires some patience. To change the text on a text box, you’ll need to hover precisely in the right spot. We did some deep breathing and were able to find enough inner zen to make all the changes we needed. The mobile editor has the serene helpful feel we wish the rest of the editor maintained. It’s super easy to click through the options for how your menu, quick actions, and scroll options work on your mobile page. What you change in the mobile editor doesn’t affect anything that happens on the desktop.

Wix’s editor requires patience — and some clicking around.

We prefer its easier-to-use mobile editor.

Wix does have a free tier, but we don’t recommend it. It has some of the most in-your-face “this was not paid for” company branding we’ve seen — an instant trust breaker. Wix free sites also have one of the most cumbersome domain structures: yourusername.wix.com/sitename so we’d be QuicksproutEditorial.wix.com/Quicksprout. Connecting your actual domain also allows you to attach a Google Analytics profile and add email accounts if you’d like ($5 / account / month, or about half that with an annual plan). Unfortunately, none of this pricing is very upfront. Wix wants you to connect your domain before you see the email pricing, for example. We found answers to pricing questions in the support center, not the user flow.

Take note: all of Wix’s plans are automatically set to auto-renew. Sticker shock is real, especially if you signed up with an introductory promo pricing (at the time of publish, premium plans were a full 50% off, for example). There are many frustrated customers on TrustPilot who’re unhappy with this. It is possible to turn off your auto-renew, but you’ll need to do it more than 14 days before your plan’s anniversary — and if you do it during your 14-day free trial, your trial will be cancelled immediately.

As for which paid plan to pick, you have 7 options: 4 “regular” and 3 “ecommerce.” The difference really boils down to whether you’ll be accepting payments on your site or not. If you’re not sure about how much bandwidth you need, you can always start with a smaller subscription: if you go over the limit, you’ll get a notice from Wix (with no penalty) and use that as your signal to upgrade.

Squarespace

• Quicksprout Pick
• Best for: Beautifully designed templates
• Plans start at $12 / month (billed annually)
• Free trial period: 14 days (plus an additional 7-day extension)
• Sign up

“Build something beautiful” is right. There’s no doubt that Squarespace wins the design and beauty contest here. The user interface has a bit of a learning curve and there’s not much of a Squarespace community to help you out, but the page you’ll end up publishing will be phenomenally good-looking.

Squarespace’s templates are all modern and beautiful.

But, building a website with Squarespace can feel a little like building IKEA furniture: in the showroom it’s all so beautiful and simple, but somehow it feels a little more complicated to put together than it promised. It can be hard to understand where exactly you are in the editor. We kept getting notifications that we were editing demo content, or that we would see the social logos once we connected our social media, or that we could unlock this or that feature with a paid subscription, but Squarespace didn’t go the extra step to make it easy to make that required move. It was a lot of fumbling through a beautiful interface, not exactly sure what changes were real, or where to head next. We also had some issues saving changes — an error message popped up and we had to move on, without our changes.

Editing a site in Squarespace has a bit of a learning curve.

Unlike IKEA, Squarespace is pricier than other website builders. That all being said, we love the way sites built with Squarespace look, and think it’s one of the simplest ways to create a beautiful, contemporary site.

Ucraft

• Quicksprout Pick
• Best for: Building a one-page site for free
• Paid plans start at $6 / month (billed annually)
• Free trial period: 14 days
• Sign up

We love the free Landing Page option from Ucraft: create a single, mobile-ready page and connect your domain for free. The free version doesn’t get rid of the Ucraft branding but it’s minimal and not invasive. The template has all the features we’ve identified in our anatomy of a high-converting landing page. You can drop the branding by upgrading to a $6 / month Basic Website plan, and sell up to 50 items on the $14 / month Pro Website plan. If you have more items to sell, upgrade again, but note that once you upgrade, you can’t drop back down to a less expensive plan.

Ucraft’s themes are elegant and streamlined. It’s one-page free sites are designed to be a long scroll with anchored sections.


Build a Ucraft site using drag-and-drop blocks and elements.

We’re also impressed with the $229 Lifetime plan. If the subscription set up (and realization that if you love the site you build, you’ll be paying that monthly fee for… forever) isn’t your favorite, then this is a nice compromise. You still get the easy-to-use editor and tools of a website builder, and the one-and-done payment.

Onepager

• Quicksprout Pick
• Best for: Quick set-up
• Paid plans start at $8 / month (billed annually)
• Free trial period: Unlimited free editing; simply pay when you publish
• Sign up

We were so surprised to name Onepager a top pick. The templates look dated and the product tour video hasn’t been updated in six years. But Onepager is so dead simple and easy to set up that we were able to publish a workable website for a local pizza shop in minutes. Yes, every webpage builder claims you can get started that fast, but with so many options, templates, and features, we’ve found that we’re distracted and deep in the weeds of perfecting our site, not publishing it. That wasn’t the case with Onepager.

Onepager is a simple website builder with a simple interface.

The Onepager templates aren’t very modern, but they’re straight-forward and the user interface is helpful, and we were pleased with the overall look of our super-quick site. (And, as we written about before, websites with simple homepages convert better.) For a small business that just wants to stake out its territory online — as opposed to, say, building an online empire — we think Onepager fits the bill.

We’d also recommend it to anyone who gets asked all the time to build a website for a friend, a family member, so-and-so’s neighbor who has a family business. For $15 a month, you can build up to 5 sites. With the $199 per month agency plan, you can build up to 150 sites with a white-labeled version of Onepager’s editor platform.

The 26 other website builder platforms we considered

• Adobe Muse

  As of March 2018, Adobe has stopped releasing updates to its website builder software, acknowledging that simpler site builders like Wix and Squarespace have taken over: “For simpler websites, we’ve seen the emergence of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) website creators that use customizable templates to quickly create responsive websites that can be easily modified by the designer or a client.” — End of service for Adobe Muse

• Cargo Collective

  Honorable Mention Amazing templates and designs perfect for artists and art galleries, but definitely not for everyone. If you’re after templates designed for displaying images and image galleries, definitely take a look.

• Cindr

  True to its slogan, Cindr is very fast to use: add in new “blocs” and move them, but want to do much customization (say, if your team doesn’t have exactly 2, 3, 4 or 6 people on it…) and you’ll quickly get frustrated. We certainly were.

• Duda

  There were too many deal-breaker annoyances on Duda’s own website (broken links, unclear organization, scroll bars on pages that don’t scroll, and typos) for us to recommend building your site with theme. And it’s just as well, as its primary focus is on white-labeling and reselling web designs, not on creating and building your own site.

• GoDaddy GoCentral

  We’ve never loved the customer support from GoDaddy and GoCentral is no exception. There are only 8 templates, and you can only make extremely limited font and color changes on them. No moving or resizing. The GoDaddy forums are full of frustration and confusion. Case in point: GoDaddy updated live templates so their headers no longer looked the same. Support recommended changing themes if you didn’t like the new header. What a nightmare.  

• Homestead

  The Homestead website itself looks like its from a different era. And the 27 featured templates from its collection of hundreds! have that same late-90s look.

• Jimdo

  We really like using an AI questionnaire to launch our website, and we adore the ease of pre-populating the images from our Google Places, Facebook, and Instagram feeds. But, Jimdo’s editor was glitchy (images would appear as blank boxes, then reappear) and the design customizations were super limited. (Is it impossible to have a full width image header without a color filter? Seems so.) Wix makes all the same promises, and delivers.

• Moonfruit

  We really wanted to love this Moonfruit. It’s clean, it’s modern, it’s easy to flip into mobile view as you edit, it has a helpful dashboard that lets you know how much of your 500 free MB storage you’ve used. And maybe it’s worth considering. But we found that the template-free starting point left us feeling more confused than empowered. The result: a lot of haphazard clicking and website that looked more amateur than any other we’d built.
  

• Simvoly

  Not recommended. We were intrigued by the marketing lingo Simvoly opens with: funnels, analytics, A/B testing. Oh my! But, this platform shows lots of sloppiness that keeps it out of any competition for the best: typos in the animations on the Simvoly homepage are just the beginning. The builder doesn’t have an undo/redo function, or any way to save a draft page without publishing it. Simvoly knows the right buzzwords but doesn’t back it up with its product.

• Site123

  We wanted to like the AI assistance for building our theme, but didn’t. We answered one question about our site (we’re a DJ, or a Diner) and got sent to a pre-built page for us to customize. There’s no sense of adding your own personal style or browsing through templates to pick the site structure you’d like. Want to change templates? You’ll need to go back and answer that one question differently. To get a design we liked, we felt like we had to cheat the quiz.

• SiteBuilder

  You have to sign up before you can even browse the templates. That’s a dealbreaker for us, but they also have no free plan and once the promotional pricing wears off, your cost will double.

• SiteZulu

  Not much to love here. Only 31 themes, the mobile version of our test site was buggy, and its the ecommerce “upgrade” is the free PayPal embed button.

• SnapPages

  SnapPages is one of the most expensive website builders on the market. For the price, it doesn’t offer anything you can’t get elsewhere. Recently acquired by Subsplash, we expect SnapPages to focus on selling its services as part of the Subsplash service packages aimed at churches and nonprofits.

• Strikingly

  This Y-Combinator-backed one-page web builder shouldn’t be compared to a full-fledged website builder like Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace. It’s in the simplicity of getting something launched where single-page builders work best. But, Strikingly just isn’t as good as uCraft, which lets you connect your own domain for free and has a more beautiful and user-friendly interface, or Onepager, which is so dead simple you can literally publish a complete (albeit super simple) site in minutes.

• uCoz uKit

  uCoz has a clean and modern interface, that is intuitive and easy to use (though noticeably slow to load). We didn’t love that we needed to sign up to see the templates, that most of the templates are very similar, and you’re extremely limited in editing the templates. Once you’re in a template you can’t change things like text styling and can only choose from one of three colors. This keeps you from making bad design choices, but also makes picking a template a much more important choice.

• Virb

  We don’t recommend Virb, the MySpace competitor that pivoted to become a website builder in 2010 — while the one $10 plan is simple, but there’s no way to preview the editing tool, and honestly we couldn’t even figure out how to sign up. We clicked log in (but were told we didn’t already have an account…). Let us know if you can figure it out. By watching the Virb tutorial videos on its Vimeo account, which were uploaded six years ago, we got a sense that the tool hasn’t been updated recently, and here’s the deal breaker of deal breakers: it’s not WYSIWYG. To add social buttons, you’ll need to go to a menu, click add widget, and who know where they’ll show up on the page. We live in a world with the ease of drag-and-drop editors and can’t go back.

• Vistaprint

  Vistaprint does offer some limited templates you can build yourself under its “Digital Marketing” offerings, but it’s still a business-card first business. In fact, one of the major selling points it offers is just that: your website can match your business card.

• Voog

  Voog advertises that it’s the simplest multi-lingual site builder, that is you can build your site in one language and then add all of the copy in up to 10 other languages. Your user will choose the appropriate language with the little flag logo in the corner (you can also pre-select language based on user location). But, this is a feature Wix, Squarespace, and others also offer. We think it’s better to go with one of those bigger names for a few reasons: Voog’s site itself loads very slowly with noticeable lag on pages with more than one image, and its own pricing page doesn’t automatically notice the country you’re in. When your big claim is matching content to the user country, this is a big miss.

• Web.com

  A hard no from us here. Before you even get to browse the template, you’re signing up for introductory pricing that’s $1.95 for the first four weeks, then bumps up to the “current rate” which is $22.95 a month right now, with no promise that it won’t be more later. And the fine print asserts there are 4 weeks in a month, so there are 13 “monthly” billing cycles in a year. No thanks.

• Webnode

  A simple (almost too simple) designer with a super high price point. For no ads, you’ll pay $11.95 a month on the required annual plan. At that price, you can do far better.

• Webs

  Built by three brothers and then acquired by VistaPrint in 2011 for $117.5M in cash and stock, Webs looks like it hasn’t been touched since. The editor is slow, and the templates are dated — the default “line” has the scrollwork of a fancy wrought-iron fence, for example — and the templates, which are arranged in an awkward horizontal scroll, don’t respond to the system’s filter so premium and free templates are intermingled. Can’t recommend.  

• Websitebuilder.com

  A strong no. Uninspiring templates, buggy interface, a support chat portal that doesn’t work (and legitimately suggests unplugging your router to solve the problem), and terrible customer reviews that call out inaccurate billing and incorrect charges. We don’t doubt it: the terms of service say in order to unsubscribe from auto-renewals, you’ll need to turn to phone or chat, not simply update your account settings.

• Webstarts

  There’s so much freedom with Webstarts: you can literally move anything you want anywhere on the page. The problem with this is that it’s easy to move something on the desktop editor in such a way that it won’t show up on mobile. For a website builder, it’s freedom to a fault. We like to see when the software stops us from making bad decisions we don’t even know we’re making, without any fuss. Mobile-optimization doesn’t click in until the Pro Plus level, which is $14.32 a month, billed annually (~$172).

• Weebly

  In Q2 2018 Weebly was acquired by Square and has been increasingly geared towards entrepreneurs and online store owners (really gunning for online shops like Shopify). At least in its marketing, that is. When we checked out the one-star reviews on TrustPilot, we knew we couldn’t recommend Weebly. Another dealbreaker? There’s no undo button. Once you exit a module in the editor all of the changes you made are permanent. Delete a module, and want to undo it? Sorry, you’re simply out of luck.

• WordPress.com

  We love WordPress and run our site on WordPress, but an easy-to-use website builder it’s not. Dive into WordPress.com and you’ll be quickly launched into a world that feels like you need technical expertise. (You don’t really need much, but the menu layout and wiki-style simplicity feels much more demanding than others. And it most certainly is not drag-and-drop intuitive.) If you’re up to using WordPress, we recommend picking a great web host, registering a domain name, and going through WordPress.org’s “famous 5-minute installation.” You won’t pay the monthly subscription you’d pay with WordPress.com and you get all the same features — you’ll just need to do some of the hands-on work. Read more about the difference between self-hosted WordPress.org and fully hosted WordPress.com on the WordPress.com blog.

• Yola

  Yola is expensive and wants to upsell left and right. You’ll need Silver ($119 annually or $14.99 monthly) to ditch the Yola branding, and they’d like you to get Mobile Plus (an extra charge to make your business phone number and address show up on the bottom of mobile pages — this is free with Wix) and the $10/month ecommerce upgrade is simply a free Ecwid plugin Yola would love to charge for. The editor is a bit buggy, you can’t add a blog (Yola suggests embedding a Tumblr page…) and we don’t think the high price point and upselling are worth it for the mediocre product.

Recap: The best website builders

• Wix Best for automating the tough choices
• Squarespace Best for beautifully designed templates
• Ucraft Best for building a one-page site for free
• Onepager Best for quick set-up

 

 

Source Quick Sprout https://ift.tt/2KGN4Mh