The Best Blogging Platforms and Blog Sites of 2019

When it comes to creating your own blog, you have two options: build a website to blog on or use one of the best blogging platforms as your website. Building your own website and blogging on it — this is probably the “traditional” way to build a blog. To do this, you’ll need to use blog software, like WordPress.org, or a website builder, like Wix.

There are pros and cons to these: you’ll need to do a little more work at the outset and you’ll build your own audience from scratch, but you’ll own and control your site completely.

The other option is to use a pre-existing blogging platform, like Medium, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc. With a blog platform, you’ll be beholden to the platform’s choices, settings, changes, and algorithms, but you’ll also have access to a built-in audience and you can launch your blog in literal minutes. I’ll refer to these platforms as blog sites, as well.

In this guide, I’ll break down both ways to set up your blog and help you pick which blog site, software, or platform is best for you. Let’s get to it.

How to Choose the Best Blogging Platform for You

To point you in the right direction, I need to ask you two questions: one about money, the other about your blog niche.

Do you plan to make money blogging?

If so, go with WordPress or Wix.

If you’re not trying to make money blogging, use one of the best blog sites instead.

These blog sites are great if you aren’t trying to create an income: They have built-in audiences and you won’t have to pay anything. My recommendation of which one to choose is based on the outcome that you’re trying to achieve — what is your blog like and who do you hope will read it? In other words, what is your blog niche?

• If you’re in business, blog on LinkedIn.
• If you’re creative, start your “blog” on Instagram.
• The best classic blogging site is Medium, which can also serve as a syndication platform.
• The biggest audience, of course, still lives on Facebook.

If you hadn’t thought about creating your blog on anything other than WordPress or with a website builder, it might be kind of hard to wrap your mind around these blog sites. I’m not saying they’re best for every blog — they’re really not directly monetizable with SEO, for example — but if your audience is already there, why try to get them to move to a website or blog they’ve never heard of. It’s easier for both you and your audience for you to blog on one of those sites.

Pros and Cons of Blogging with WordPress

If you want to make money blogging, go with WordPress. There’s no better option. You’ll own your blog and website and you’ll have true flexibility. There is no argument here. It’s the default content option and runs 30% of the internet for a reason.

There is more set-up that you’ll need to do on your own, like buy a hosting plan, for example. This is the only downside in my mind, but you don’t have to be an expert — we have step-by-step guides on How to Start a Blog and How to Make Money Blogging. (And an entire blogging section with ideas for keeping the momentum going, gaining readers, coming up with blogging ideas and other pro tips.)

Pros and Cons of Creating a Wix Blog

You can also build your blog using Wix. It’s an all-in-one drag-and-drop website builder. It’s an easy option if you’re looking to have your blog on your own site, rather than on a blog platform or service like Medium or another form of social media.

The downside is you’ll be paying a subscription fee and you’ll be locked into Wix’s themes and tools. So, you’ll trade some convenience for some flexibility.

Pros and Cons of a Medium Blog

Medium is the best all-around traditional blogging platform. It’s where the majority of readers who’re looking to read classic blog-style posts are right now.

The downside is built into the choice of picking to create your own blog or build one an a platform — you won’t own the traffic and you won’t be able to do things like sell ad placements, for example.

Deciding to blog on WordPress vs Medium isn’t an either-or choice. You can also publish your site and re-publish some posts on Medium to take advantage of its benefits, just like you would any syndication deal. You can thoughtfully approach this, but there are some technical how-tos we’ll get into below. You’ll need to import your posts to Medium properly and set the canonical tag, so you’re not penalized by Google (at worst) or simply out-ranked by the Medium version of the post (at best). Overall, though, I prefer to see each channel as a separate channel and create and publish unique content for that channel.

Pros and Cons of Blogging on LinkedIn

If you’re blogging about business, or something related, like management, then I’d say to build your blog on LinkedIn. There’s a pre-existing community of people there talking about those topics and ready to read your posts too. You’ll be able to build business followers, which is different than a “connection.”

The audience on LinkedIn is premium: 45% of LinkedIn article readers are in upper-level positions: managers, VPs, Directors, and C-level. If you’re building thought leadership, brand value, or community, rather than trying to make money, I recommend going to where your audience is rather than trying to woo them over to where you are. Build content for them where they already are and they’ll love you for it.

You’ll be able to build your network and your business opportunities, but like all blog platforms, the cons here are that you’re beholden to the algorithm and don’t own the site or the traffic.

Pros and Cons of an Instagram “Blog”

If you’re a creative — especially in a visual field, then your blog should really be an Instagram account. You can post images of your work and use the caption field for your written post. If you’re not used to this idea, it might seem kind of zany: That’s not a real blog. But it is. People read Instagram captions of the accounts they follow like they’d read a blog — and your visual work will be well highlighted in your feed and the general feed. The cons are self-explanatory: you’ll have to follow the Instagram format, and are subjected to the feed’s algorithm. It’s not impossible to monetize your Instagram feed, but you’ll be limited to those that you can feature in an image or caption. All of the monetization opportunities will need to be natively integrated

Pros and Cons of Blogging on Facebook

Of course, Facebook is the juggernaut in the room. It has the largest audience of any of these platforms. Creating a Facebook page might be all you need to build a blog — post on Facebook like you would on your blog and build your audience right there on your page. The comments and interaction on Facebook are even better than a traditional blog. You can really focus on building true fans on Facebook.

The cons of Facebook have really been blasted through the media lately. There are privacy concerns, there’s the issue of an ever-changing and pretty secretive algorithm, and all of that. You probably already have an opinion of Facebook — let that inform your decision here.

There’s another warning due here. If you build your blog on a single platform that you do not own, well, then you’ve built your blog on a single platform you do not own. That means you’re beholden to another person’s business and their algorithm for your business. What’s good for their business and algorithm may not be what’s good for yours. That’s why I say if you’re here to make money, you should own your site. You’ll have more control.

In-Depth Reviews of the Best Blog Sites and Platforms

First, I’ll cover the best ways to build a blog on your own website. I’ll cover WordPress and Wix. If you’re going to use one of the top blog sites and you already know it, you can skip these first two reviews.

Best Blogging Software and Best CMS — WordPress

WordPress is the hands-down king of websites with content. It’s the default choice here for the best blogging platform overall. If you’re building a blog on your own site, that means you’re building with WordPress. (Quick Sprout is on WordPress.)

To build your own site, you’ll need to buy a domain name, get web hosting, and set up your WordPress account. It’s all pretty simple. There’s more information on our post The Best Web Hosting for Small Business and on The Best Web Hosting for WordPress, which is about selecting a managed host that’s designed for WordPress. It’s more expensive but also super premium. If you have the coin, go for it. If you’re budget minded, you can skip it.

You’ll pick a theme, apply it, and honestly you’ll be just about done. We have some recommendations on SEO WordPress plugins you’ll want to add. The backend of WordPress is pretty intuitive, and if you get lost there are so many tutorials out there to help.

Like I said before, the choice between WordPress and Medium isn’t either/or. You can build your own blog and then use Medium selectively as a syndication tool. It’s worth thinking about if you want to grow your audience, but ultimately build your own site.

Ready to build your own site with WordPress? We walk you through how in our posts How to Start a Blog and How to Make Money Blogging.

How to Repost Your Blog on Medium

1. Make sure your content has a long enough life on your own blog so it is solidified as the primary source in Google’s eyes. Two weeks is enough time.
2. Use Medium’s Import tool to publish the content. It’s as simple as plugging in your original URL, updating any wonky formatting, and clicking publish. The import tool will automatically set the canonical URL to your original post on your website. It’s very important to have the canonical in there. This applies to any type of syndication: you want to have a canonical in place so Google knows where the original article is located. Otherwise, at worst, you could get penalized; at best, the bigger site will outrank you.

Pro Tips for Syndicating Your Blog on Medium

• I wouldn’t auto-post all of your content to Medium. It’s weird. Why have a duplicate of your site living on their site? It doesn’t make sense for your readers, or you long term.
• You should thoughtfully approach each channel. Content on that channel is its own form. What someone wants to read on each platform depends a lot on the platform itself — What is the UX like? Why are they there? What types of interactions does the platform encourage?

Best Website Builder for Blogging — Wix

I like Wix for blogging because it’s one-and-done. If you want to go the easy route for owning your own blog, this is it. It’s an easy runner up to WordPress for the best blog platform.

The templates are great looking and you can customize them with a drag-and-drop editor. The blog manager is simple and intuitive, and you’ll get analytics and SEO built right in. It’s simple to add the basic features you might want on your blog: social tools, likes, comments, hashtags, categories, and a subscriber forms.

All of the SEO features you need are easy to access too: alt tags for your images, internal links, SEO titles and descriptions (that are different from you post title), and nofollow tags for external links. Wix blogs have an automatic email subscribe feature and a social media bar beneath each article for sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and more.

To build a blog on Wix, you’ll sign into your account and pick a template. There’s a Blog template category, which is a great place to start. Once you have your template selected, I suggest updating the font, colors, and logo to personalize your template and help it stand out from the rest.

Writing a post is as simple as clicking Create a Post, writing and adding images. You can save drafts, or even give other contributors writing privileges for you site. This is all just as easy from a mobile device as from a desktop — no app required.

Make sure that you update your SEO settings for every post: this is what’s presented in the search results page and is critical for ranking in organic search.

The resulting post will have an automatic read-time count, like a Medium post right next to the author’s name, which I also like a lot. I also like the ability to live-chat with your readers in the Wix app. If you build a real community in your blog or are open to answering reader questions in real time — say about an online course you’re offering or a webinar that’s coming up — then it’s a cool feature.

Best Traditional Blogging Site — Medium

It’s hard to pin down how many users Medium has — they focus on sharing how much time is spent on the platform reading instead. I dig it. The platform, was founded by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams as a response to the hyper-short limits of Twitter, hence the name Medium. At one point, there was some distinction between even longer blog platforms, but that’s dissipated by now.

In 2017, Medium had 60 million unique visitors. From personal experience, I know that when I read on Medium, I read with curiosity and intent. I’m ready to put in some time reading, and the read times on each article get me to commit to sticking it out for the whole thing.

Posting with Medium is super simple. There’s a clean, very white WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. Basically, as you type, you see what the post will look like when it’s published. There are a lot of tips and tricks to format your post that are a little hidden in the simplicity of the interface.

Don’t stop at this point though. Instead of just a profile, I recommend creating a Medium Publication. This gives you the option to add other writers and editors to your blog. More importantly, it gives you a lot more options for controlling what is essentially your blog homepage.

Take a look below at the difference between Patagonia’s basic Medium profile (top image below) and REI’s Medium publication (bottom image below).

 

Above, a consecutive stream of your posts. This is all you’ll get with a Medium profile.
Below, the more magazine-style layout you’ll get with a Medium publication. 

One is a simple chronological feed and the other is a designed page with useful menu options. When you create a publication like REI has you also unlock the ability to send a newsletter to all of your followers.

Pro Tips for Blogging on Medium

• If you are syndicating your actual blog, use the Import feature. This is essential for SEO.
• To start a bulleted list, simply type an asterisk or a dash.
• There are two types of quotes. Use a block quote by clicking the quote icon once. Click it again for a pull quote.
• Drop caps add a little editorial weight. To make the first letter of your paragraph larger, and give it that designed look, highlight the letter. The option will appear.
• Use TK to leave yourself notes. This is an old journalism trick — there are no words with TK in them in the English language. If you’re writing something that needs a placeholder, use TK and Medium will alert you if you try to publish with one still in place.

Publishing on Medium is so effortless. Formatting content and uploading images takes basically zero time. It’s really the best web-based publishing experience I’ve had to date.

— Josh Pigford of Baremetrics

Best Blog Site for Business — LinkedIn

There are 590 million LinkedIn users, 154 million of them in the US. And a lot of them are active: 44% are monthly active users. LinkedIn used to be basically a resume hosting platform. In a lot of ways it was like a job-hunting dating app: you’d go on if you were looking to hire or looking to get hired but not much else. In the last few years that has changed dramatically.

If you’re building a business blog, the audience on LinkedIn is premium: 45% of LinkedIn article readers are in upper-level positions (managers, VPs, Directors, C-level).

In an article for Forbes, “Is LinkedIn Poised To Be The Next Big Social Network … For Brands?”, Ryan Holmes nailed what’s great about the platform, “Hardcore LinkedIn users know that there’s a certain warm professionalism that underlies many exchanges on the platform. In short, LinkedIn offers a kind of stability, civility and real value that’s sorely needed on some social platforms.” I completely concur. The platform has a ready made culture and set of expectations that a business blogger would dream of creating on their own site. Why build it when it already exists?

LinkedIn is a social network. Your influence grows in proportion to the size of your network. The more posts you publish, the more connection requests and followers you’ll attract. Writing consistently not only expands your network, it also reinforces the message about the depth and breadth of your knowledge of the subjects that you write about.

— Glenn Leibowitz, “10 Tips for Writing LinkedIn Blog Posts That Expand Your Influence” for Inc.

Publishing doesn’t make you a LinkedIn Influencer, unfortunately. That’s a hand-selected group of people that rotates throughout the year “to include only the most engaged, prolific, and thoughtful contributors and to ensure that their expertise matches our members’ interests,” according to LinkedIn.

An article isn’t a post and vice versa. A post is a smaller update you’d share with your feed and connections. Think quick anecdote or pro tip. They’re limited to 1,300 characters, which is about 5 lines. Articles are longer and more in-depth. They’re something that the broader LinkedIn audience would be interested in reading. A person who reads your article can also follow you from there, so they’ll be alerted when you publish your next article. Any articles you publish will appear in the Articles section of your LinkedIn profile.

Pro Tips for Blogging on LinkedIn

• Be clear about who you are and what you’ll be talking about it. Stick to that topic and don’t stray. And post regularly. Even posting once or twice a month — consistently over time — will add up. Twice a month is 48 times a year. In five years, you’ll have nearly 250 posts. That’s huge.
• You can share a draft with a colleague or friend for feedback.
• Use the stats related to your posts as a tool: create more of what’s working, less of what’s not.

Want to improve? Check out LinkedIn’s own course on getting better at blogging on the platform, Writing to be Heard on LinkedIn. Because when they own the platform, what’s good for them is successful content that people want to read and engage with!

Best Blog Site for Creatives — Instagram

Instagram is primarily visual — the feed is all the images or videos, and very little of the captions. You can use the caption field for your text, and users like a long caption. You’ll be capped at 2,200 characters or about 300 words.

Instagram is perfect if what you’re sharing is visual: a lifestyle, art, dance. Or if there’s some way to share it visually like in a how to mini-video.

In fact, in a lot of ways, Instagram has killed the entire genre of lifestyle blogging.

It’s become a lot harder for upstart “bloggers” in the crowded yet lucrative fashion, beauty, wellness, and lifestyle spaces to build a following centered around their own blog. At the same time, social media platforms have given influencers more and more tools—including e-commerce, groups, and direct messaging—to keep them (and their followers) from going elsewhere online.

— Rosie Spinks, “Instagram Has Killed the Art of Lifestyle Blogging” on Quartzy

Instagram is so good now that it’s hard to want to go anywhere else. The downside is definitely that you’re beholden to the algorithm and the feed, and the changes the platform makes. On the flip side, you also don’t have to be the product manager, hire a developer, or build an audience from scratch. You’ll have to weigh the pros and cons yourself!

You can also host vlogs on Instagram Live — simply tap the camera icon (top left of the screen, or by swiping right from the Feed) and tap Live at the bottom. When you’re ready to actually go live, it’s as simple as tapping Go Live. You’ll be able to see the number of viewers you have at the top of the screen and comments will pop in at the bottom. When you’re done, tap End. From here, I recommend tapping Save to save it to your camera roll, and tapping Share to add it to your story. It’ll live there for 24 hours to be replayed by anyone who wasn’t around when it was actually live.

Pro Tips for Instagram Blogs

• Pick a good name that’s catchy and easy to type — your name should make it clear what your whole feed is about.
• Stick to a niche.
• Have a visual point of view.
• Don’t stray. If you’re an artist, don’t post pictures of your salad for lunch. If you’re a food blogger, think twice before you post photos of your doodles.
• Post regularly! And engage.

You can only have one link in your profile, but with something like Linktree, you can add more links. I don’t think it’s a great idea to build a blog somewhere hoping to get your readers or followers to move from there to somewhere else on the regular. It’s feasible to get your Instagram followers to also subscribe to your newsletter, but it’s not really logical to hope they’ll leave Instagram after ever post and go read your blog. They’re scrolling through Instagram, not trying to read your website.

Think about your own behavior here — how much momentum does it take to get you to follow a link that leads away from the platform you’re in? For me, it takes a lot of work. There has to be something I really want to buy, or really, really want to read.

It’s more likely that I’ll follow someone on Instagram for a while and then one day I’ll buy something from that person, or follow them somewhere else. Instagram, and all blogging really, is about creating a relationship with the people who’re reading your posts. Once that relationship is strong enough, then people will be interested in going wherever you’re taking them. Until then, you’ll need to deliver on that relationship within the platform itself.

Biggest Blog Audience — Facebook

I mean, what’s 1.49 billion daily active users to you? It’s a huge number, and one that’s worth noting. How many of those active users will make it to your page or your post, now that’s another question.

Organic reach on Facebook was once not such a wild aspiration, but in 2016 there was a huge decrease in organic reach. SocialFlow found that brands saw a 42% decline in organic reach over Q1 and Q2 2016.

The easiest way to build a blog on Facebook is to create a group or a page for your business or brand. From there, your posts will literally be Facebook posts.

To make it easier to post and handle all your interactions in one spot, I recommend using the Facebook Creator Studio. It’s an all-in-one dashboard for publishing and analyzing your content. If you’re new to Facebook and are really using it as a classic blog platform, you’ll want to create Notes. These are the closest things to blogs: a header image, a title, and text down the middle.

From here you can also go live, post videos, gifs, polls, recommendations — any type of Facebook post you’ve seen you can create from this dashboard. You can even save, schedule, and backdate posts.

Recap of the Best Blog Sites and Blog Platforms for 2019

Best Blog Software and Best CMS — WordPress
I’d recommend going this route to anyone serious about building a blog that makes money. You’ll build and own your own site with complete control. (If you’re a beginner, this is still very doable for you.)

Best Website Builder for Blogging — Wix
If you want to have to your own site, but don’t want to build it, then I’d recommend you go with a website builder. It’s a drag-and-drop editor that’ll get you up and running quickly, and you’ll still be building your blog on your own website, not on someone else’s platform.

Best Traditional Blogging Platform — Medium
If you’re not creating your own site and your blog is a classic blog — long form posts about a topic that’s meaningful to you — I like Medium. It has a built-in audience that’s interested in reading and an interface that’s seamless.

Best Blog Site for Business — LinkedIn
Blogging about business or hoping to be a thought-leader in a certain industry? You could go with Medium, but a more rabid and useful audience might be waiting for you on LinkedIn. I know, it might not seem like a blogging platform, but LinkedIn users are really engaged and content hungry.

Best Blogging Site for Creatives — Instagram
If you’re doing anything with images, art, creativity, or lifestyle, you’ll probably find your audience on Instagram. There are already so many people there and it’s easy for new followers to discover you through hashtags, comments, and the other people you and they are following.

Largest Audience — Facebook
Lastly, the biggest audience is on Facebook. There are millions of people there, and though organic reach on the platform isn’t what it once was, it’s still a massive platform. It’s also a great spot for building a community page element to your blog.

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

The Best Ecommerce Website Builder

Our content is reader-supported, which means if you click on one of our links to a recommended ecommerce website builder, we may earn a commission.

Want to jump straight to the answer? — The best website builder for ecommerce for most of us, is Shopify.

Launching an online store and trying to decide among the best ecommerce website builders, but don’t know which one’s right for you? They all seem to promise the same things: gorgeous templates, robust analytics, effortless inventory management, wonderful customer support.

I’ve got you covered. I took a look at all of the options to find the best website builder for creating an online store.

In my research, I paid attention to the following criteria:

• Functionality — The major difference between an ecommerce site builder and a “normal” website builder is you’re going to be running your business off this platform. It needs to accept payments instantly and securely. It needs to have a useful dashboard to monitor traffic, sales, and inventory. It needs to keep have a cart the makes buying easy, and a system for calculating shipping.
• Ease of use — There should be an easy way to add and remove products, an easy way to see your analytics, and an intuitive sales dashboard that can serve as your home base.
• Design — The templates should look good out of the box and be easy to customize without expert (read: $$) help; and the designs should be pretty hard to mess it up or make worse.
• Customer support — When things get tricky, you don’t want to feel like you’re going it alone.
• Marketing — The pages should be SEO optimized, and the template should work work with your social channels and easily to connect paid ad channels.
• Add ons — Since almost no system will have everything for everyone out of the box, I made sure the website builder had a way to accommodate additional needs.
• Pricing — Sure, I get that an all-in-one solution like an ecommerce website builder will be more expensive than a DIY option, but we don’t want to pay through the nose, and we want what we get to be worth it. This includes the terms for payment processing. This is the last bullet on the list for a reason though: saving a penny here isn’t worth losing out on a dollar later on.

Which online store builder should I use?

The short answer: You should probably go with Shopify, especially if you plan to do more than $5,000/month in sales. It’s the industry leader for a reason. It has the level of in-depth analytics, inventory management, POS, shipping options, and every other ecommerce feature that you need (and that you really need at the $5,000+ level. If you’re not thinking that big, it’s time to get started.

New digitally-native and niche brands are the future of retail. — “Small Is The New Big,” Forbes

If you’re running more of a professional portfolio with some sales or subscription offerings, then hen you should check out Squarespace. Price wise, they’re basically the same. Squarespace wins for design; Shopify wins for ecommerce features.

The other online store builder worth recommending is Wix, which has a pretty cool AI-builder that’ll turn your social media into a website with a coordinating color palette and pre-populated photos. If you run a bookings-based business, or a music business, then there are features in the Wix stores that are definitely worth checking out. It’s also one of the cheapest options, though if you’re picking your ecommerce platform by price alone, we need to have a side conversation about how you need to get your head in the game. There are some flaws I discuss further down in the in-depth reviews you should take into account — and see if they’re dealbreakers for you during your free-trial period.

Side note: No matter which website builder you pick, you should use the free-trial period as a test run. What features are missing and can you live without them? What’s it like to actually run your business from that platform?

I also reviewed WooCommerce which is an open-source, subscription-free way to sell things through your WordPress store. If you’re running a content site, I wholeheartedly recommend building your site with WordPress; it just wins in the content management space. Simple as that.

Finally, Weebly, which was recently acquired by payments processor Square, is fine, but not impressive. The standards set by Shopify, Squarespace and the other contenders are just too high for Weebly to hit them. I’ll keep an eye out though.

The top 5 ecommerce website builders compared

Shopify

• Best ecommerce platform for most businesses
• Drag-and-drop store builder
• 70 themes: 10 free + 60 paid
• Competitive pricing

Shopify is my favorite ecommerce software — and the one I recommend to just about everyone. It’s the leader in the industry and rightfully so. The most important ecommerce features are ready to go without any customization, and Shopify makes it easy to customize anything else with its super robust app store. If you run into any issues, there’s 24/7 support.

The worst thing about Shopify is the price point — and it’s generally competitive. The subscription, which starts at $29/month is right in line with what you’d pay with any hosted option, and so are the payment processing fees, which start at 2.9% + 30¢ credit card rates and only get better from there. I just don’t like the 2% additional fee for non-Shopify payment processors. I get that Shopify wants you to stay in the Shopify ecosystem, but offering multiple payment options is better for customers and one of our 8 quick wins for ecommerce sites.

Pros

• Robust app store
• Clean, modern themes
• Intuitive product pages
• Easy-to-use drag-and-drop store builder
• Competitive payment processing rates
• Safety and security
• Speed
• Can create landing pages
• Optimized for SEO
• 24/7 Support

Cons

• Additional fee for payments from non-Shopify payment processors, like PayPal for example
• Blog feature is minimal — it’s technically there, but it’s not enough to run a content site on
• Majority of the apps in the Shopify app store aren’t free, so you could also increase your monthly spend there
• Liquid set up, not PHP
• Lock-in feature — it can be challenging to move your store away from Shopify. It’ll export as a CSV file, but it’ll be time-consuming to rebuild where you go next

Shopify pricing

It’s competitive, but like I said charges an kind of annoying fee for external payment processors. All in all, I think the price is worth it.

• $29/mo for Basic Shopify — 2.9% + 30¢ credit card rates + 2% for non-Shopify payment processors
• $79/mo for Shopify — 2.6% + 30¢ + 1% for non-Shopify payment processors
• $299/mo for Advanced Shopify  — 2.4% + 30¢ + 0.5% for non-Shopify payment processors

The difference between these packages:

• Increase in number of staff accounts: 2, 5, 15
• Unlock gift cards, reporting, and advanced reporting
• Unlock third-party shipping calculations
• Better rates on shipping and payment processing as you increase in the plans

Shopify themes

When choosing a theme, I suggest skipping filtering by price point. None of the themes on Shopify are going to break the bank — the most expensive themes are $180. If a theme has what you want, that’s the theme for you. Go to the all themes and ask yourself a few questions.

The first question is the most important:

• How many products are you selling? Just one? A few? A lot? If you are selling one item your site will be very different than another online store that’s selling hundreds. In fact, set this filter and see if that’s enough to bring the templates down to a reasonable number.

If the number is still large, then you can filter even further:

• Do you need a size chart?
• What social media do you want integrated? Instagram? Twitter? Pop-up email form?
• Would you like a “related products” feature?
• Do you need video capabilities?
• What layout and menu option will be easiest for your user to navigate?
• What’s your store’s style? What’s your business like? Which theme reflects your business and creates the feeling or idea in your customer that you’re looking for? If you don’t have a clue where to start with this question, I recommend filtering by Industry. You’ll get a sense of the types of designs Shopify considers in line with most businesses like yours.
• How are you going to tell your brand story? Is it in video? Writing? Photos? Are you running a crowdfunding campaign and the goal tracker is part of that story?

Find one you think you like? Check the theme reviews.

If other people have this theme and are frustrated, that’s a little peek into the future for you too.

Back away from themes with frustrated customers who haven’t had good luck with customer service.

Take a look at the demo sites both mobile and desktop versions. Then take a look at the actual stores using the theme. Are these in line with what you want to make?

If everything checks out, choose your theme. Don’t worry — you don’t have to buy it now. You’ll pay for it later, after you have a chance to test it out. Do check out the different versions of the theme — these will control the overall look and feel of your site, and you’ll want to decide which one you like best at this point. It can be hard to tell which one is best when you have only template content to look at.

I went through this process with a hypothetical business that sells one, and found a theme I like for this business. I chose the Showcase theme because I like the full-page photography. I picked the theme, answered a few questions from Shopify and then got to my dashboard.

From here, I can add merchandise, or I can customize my theme. I’ll do a little bit of both, of course.

Key changes to make:

• Change the font — this ensures your store will look different than other stores, even stores with the same theme
• Layout, content blocks — you’ll drag and drop these in the menu on the left side and the preview will update to the right
• Attach your social media feeds
• Customize the cart experience

Shopify app store

If there’s anything your theme doesn’t have, like customer reviews, there’s the Shopify app store. Basically the apps are little snippets of code that will add a feature to your Shopify store. It’s like having a dev build something for you, but because Shopify is a huge ecosystem, you don’t have to pay them the real price of custom building you something. They’re going to sell this same code to thousands of other stores. I love this about Shopify. According to the Shopify app store, more than 80% of stores use apps — and I’ll bet if you filtered that number by the number of live, active stores that are really making sales, then the percentage would be really really close to 100%.

Squarespace

• Stunning templates
• Professional look
• Ideal for portfolio sites
• Has a learning curve

Squarespace has a reputation for beautifully designed templates. That reputation applies to its ecommerce store themes as well. They’re handsome, I must admit it. There are a few things you should know going in: I recommend Squarespace more for professional portfolio sites than true ecommerce stores. It’s just set up for those kinds of stores better.

It’s not a bad idea to run your online store with Squarespace; Shopify is just easier when it comes to managing inventory and customizing every little nuance of your store. The Squarespace builder is a module-based builder. It’s not drag-and-drop — but you can get the hang of it pretty easy. Don’t get frustrated by the “demo” content or “sample” pages. You’ll have to copy the page before you can customize it, a silly step but not one to deter you from getting your work done.

Pros

• Gorgeous templates
• Incredible looking result
• 24/7 support
• 15-day free trial

Cons

• Tabbed interface that’s not super intuitive
• Design requires high-quality photography (which you should get)
• Only integrates with Stripe, PayPal, and Apple Pay
• No app marketplace

Squarespace pricing

• Basic online store: $26/month billed annually
• Advanced online store: $40/month billed annually

What’s the difference between these plans?

The Advanced plan includes flexible coupons, subscriptions, abandoned cart auto recovery, gift cards, and advanced shipping. Unless you want one of these features, you’ll be good with the Basic online store. There are also two other plans that aren’t aimed at ecommerce stores — Personal website for $12/month billed annually, and Business website for $18/month billed annually. With the Personal plan you can’t sell anything. With the Business plan you can, but you’ll pay a 3% transaction fee. If you’re doing more than $275 in sales each month, there’s no question between the two plans — you’d be paying in fees the difference in the price without unlocking any of the online store features like inventory, tax, coupons, and shipping labels.

You can also upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time. Unless you know you want one of the Advanced features, I’d start with the Basic online store and go from there.

Squarespace templates

All of them are beautiful. Let’s start there. To find one that fits your store, I’d start by sorting into Online Stores. You’ll see your options are narrowed to 11 templates. Then ask yourself:

• How many products do I want featured on the homepage?
• What amazing photography do I have?
• Do I want to use video backgrounds?
• Does the quality of my images stand up to the quality of the Squarespace design?
• Do I have much to say in words? Do I want those words over the top of my images or beside them?
• What kind of menu do I want?
• Do I want anything specific: Grid layout? Scrolling features? On-hover effects?

I suggest you preview the theme and notice what it’s like to use the example layout. To be honest, your site is going to be at best like this one, so if there’s anything you don’t like, take note. It’ll likely annoy you even worse in your own store.

Once you find a layout you like, click Start with “Theme Name.” You’ll create an account at this point. Don’t worry, you don’t have to pay yet — you have a 15-day free trial to customize the store and make sure it’s what you want.

To make changes to the pages, you’ll need to make copies of the sample pages. The interface is minimal and soothing, but not very helpful. Just get in a meditative mindset and keep clicking to figure things out. There are a lot of tabbed sections, which I don’t love. But it’s not challenging.

I wouldn’t call the builder drag-and-drop — it’s more of a module based style to build and go. You’ll get use to it the more time you spend with the system. Though, I’ve gotta say, if you’re using Squarespace, I suggest you take your cues from the design that’s ready-made. It’s one of the things you’re paying for.

Wix

• 500 templates
• Drag-and-drop without limitations
• Quick-start with the help of an AI designer
• Unique templates for booking, music, events and restaurants

I really like the way Wix has used AI to automate the design decisions. It’s the exact opposite of the Weebly approach of making you pick a theme based on your first glance. If you already have some web presence — maybe in your Instagram or Facebook — Wix will take the work you’ve already done and create a website to match. You can also start from scratch. That’s one of the things I like most about Wix. It’s pretty much down to help you build your online store the way you want to: with help or without, from scratch or from a template, in the drag-and-drop builder or deep in the code.

Pros

• Cheapest website builder in this list
• Dozens of payment gateways including Square, Stripe, and 2Checkout
• VIP Priority Callback support option

Cons

• Limited reporting and analytics
• No way to automate or integrate tracking numbers
• Product pages don’t have a sort filter

The biggest drawbacks for Wix are its store features. Some very basic things you’ll want to do if you’re actually shipping products may become very irritating. I’m talking things like attaching tracking numbers to orders or downloading your reports.

If you’re making the choice on which ecommerce website builder to use simply on price, I implore you to stop using that as your methodology. There is a false logic at play. The $6 you’d save by choosing one website builder over the other will not be worth it when you’re wasting time trying to make the software do something it’s simply not built to do. Give the website builder you do select a thorough test run during your trial. This is the software you are using to run your business — don’t let a few bucks stand in the way of getting software that’ll really support you.

Wix pricing

• Business Basic for $20/month
• Business Unlimited for $25/month
• Business VIP for $30/month

What’s the difference between these plans?

• Storage: 20GB, 35GB, 50GB
• Video hours: 5 hours, 10 hours, unlimited
• VIP plan also gets VIP support with Priority Response
• There are also 4 non-ecommerce plans that won’t allow you to accept payments

If you’re interested in learning how to make a Wix website for your online store, I have a whole tutorial on it, so I won’t repeat myself here.

WordPress with WooCommerce

• Complete control over your ecommerce site
• No subscription fees
• 1 theme, with variations and customizations

WooCommerce is a little bit different than the other ecommerce options we’ve looked at so far. It’s a self-hosted option, which is the more DIY version. A website builder like Shopify is like living in a hotel where everything is already included: there’s a coffee maker and coffee grinds, clean towels, and shampoo. If anything breaks you know you’ll have help. But it’s also more expensive and you have less control and ownership. You can’t take the towels from the hotel home with you, for example. With WooCommerce, you’ll build your own site on WordPress and use the free WooCommerce Storefront theme. It’s not a drag-and-drop website builder, but you can customize the look and feel.

Pros

• Free theme
• Works with WordPress blog
• Great for content-heavy sites
• Easy to customize with add-ons

Cons

• Not a drag-and-drop builder
• Not an all-in-one solution

WooCommerce pricing

• Free
• Common add-ons range from $10–$60 a year

With WooCommerce you can get started for free. You’ll need to buy a domain name and set up web hosting. We have a how-to guide on all those steps here in How to Start a Blog. When you get to Step 6, choose a theme, you’ll choose the WooCommerce Storefront theme. There are a few different “child themes” to choose from — these change the look of the theme the way a new coat of paint changes the look of a room. Some child themes are free; others are $39.

I recommend also checking out the WooCommerce extensions. Most sites will benefit from the customizer bundle. You may also need features like the pricing table, a contact section (yes, you definitely want this), and maybe a hamburger menu. Some extensions are free, others are paid. The price points are reasonable.

Weebly

• 35 ecommerce themes
• 348 apps

Weebly was bought by Square in 2018, and though Weebly is run as a separate business, it’s clear to me that Square is attempting to bolster it’s full-service suite of offerings for small businesses — with the cornerstone of that suite being in-person POS systems and payment processing. The drag-and-drop builder is intuitive, but the set-up and guidance isn’t all there for me. For the price point — $4/month less than Shopify — I don’t think it’s worth going with Weebly.

Pros

• Intuitive drag-and-drop builder
• Includes memberships, forums, support

Cons

• Not very useful in helping pick a theme
• No way to sort themes by feature
• Cluttered page system that’s not good for more than 10 pages
• You’ll need to manually copy blog posts if you migrate

If you’re launching an online store, you can skip right over the Starter and Pro plans — you’ll be pay a premium of 3% on every transaction and you’ll be limited in a lot of ways. You won’t be able to modify your cart, for example. For the price, I think you’ll get a better store from Shopify’s $29/month plan.

• Starter $8/month annually
• Pro $12/month billed annually
• Business $25/month billed annually
• Performance $38/month billed annually

What’s the difference between these plans?

• Weebly transaction fee: 3% on Starter and Pro, 0% on Business and Performance
• Number of products: 10, 25, unlimited, unlimited
• Features only available on Business and Performance: Shopping cart, digital goods, product reviews, coupons, inventory manager, shipping calculator, among others

Weebly themes

When you create a store, Weebly will ask what you’re selling and if it’s online or offline, or both. After just two questions, it’ll pop you into a store for you. This seems kind of curt, and it is. When you click customize your store, you’ll be able to choose a new theme. How will you decide? Weebly doesn’t make it easy — there’s a page of themes offered, but you can only sort them by the top-of-the-fold look and feel.

Weebly pricing

The first few options are pretty and white.

Take note of a few things:

• How large are the photos?
• Is there a border?
• Is there text on the photos?
• Is there a CTA?
• Where is the menu?
• How many products are featured in that first view?

Since there’s no filtering, your best hope is to choose one you think looks like your store should look.

It’s pretty intuitive to add products and personalize your store. Keep checking back with the preview and you should do fine.

In sum: How to choose the right ecommerce platform for your online store

For an online store, you can’t go wrong with Shopify. It’s the industry leader, easily one of the best ecommerce website builders, and it’s well worth the price point. I like it a lot — particularly how much you can customize it with the app store. It’s got the analytics you need to run a real ecommerce shop. I also like the designs from Squarespace. They really do make it possible for a total beginner to create a professional looking site.

The other contenders for all-in-one builders are Wix and Weebly. I found them to have limitations, so they’re not my top picks. I did like the Wix AI creator and the features it boasts for booking businesses and other speciality stores, like music or video creators. It’s worth checking out (there’s a free trial period) if one of those things intrigues you. I’ll keep tabs on Weebly. However, right now it doesn’t come close to competing with Shopify and Squarespace.

If you want to run a WordPress site, then look into WooCommerce. You’ll find it is very familiar and has all the things that are great about any WordPress site: nearly limitless customization, great content management, excellent SEO, all subscription-free and open source. Granted, you’ll probably end up spending some on customizations and will need to throw down for your domain name and your web host. But if you’re the type that’s curious about building a self-hosted site, you already knew all that.

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The Minimal Day: Rethinking the Little Things You Do Every Day

As I see it, there are two different modes of frugality. One mode is the big action, the one where you do one thing and it saves you a lot of money going forward. I’m talking about things like cancelling a bill or moving to a more cost-effective place to live or making a big energy improvement to your home or switching to a far more fuel efficient car or ditching a car entirely. Those moves are great things to do and they can make a huge and immediate difference to your finances going forward.

In the end, though, there are really only so many of those big things you can do. You either have to start looking at progressively smaller and smaller “big moves” or just say that it’s good enough and move on with life.

A much different approach is to optimize those repeated little things you do that have financial impact. Rather than doing one big thing that will save $200 this year, you focus on modifying something that will save you $0.50 each time you do it, but you do that thing every day, so that it adds up to about $200 a year in savings.

I use an approach that I like to call the “minimal day.” The “minimal day” simply means that on an ordinary day, I try to keep my expenses and resource consumption as low as possible.

This serves a couple of purposes.

One, it means that most days, I’m not spending much money at all. My “minimal days,” which are most days, are quite inexpensive in terms of how much money I’m spending and how many resources I’m using.

Two, it means that on days where I am doing something out of the ordinary, it feels genuinely special, even when it’s something that might feel ordinary to others. I eat a really simple lunch at home most days, for example, so when I actually go out for lunch, it’s usually with someone and it feels like something special, even if it’s just a fast casual lunch with a friend.

One big part of making this “minimal day” idea work is that I look very carefully at things that I do every day, or almost every day, and then I try to figure out ways to make that element as inexpensive and smooth as I possibly can. I take very ordinary life routines, things that I do over and over and over again, and I try to hone them down to make them as cost-efficient and time-efficient and resource-efficient as possible.

For me, it is well worth investing an hour or two now in deeply investigating a normal routine and finding everything I can tweak about it in order to shave 30 seconds off of the task and $0.50 off of the cost of the task every time I do it forever afterwards. I will take that trade every time, because if I can do that across all of the ordinary things that I do in my life, then I’m going to wind up saving a bunch of money and a bunch of time in my ordinary life compared to how I used to do things.

What kinds of normal routines am I talking about? I’m referring to things like doing a load of laundry, doing a load of dishes, my morning routine with my kids before school, my workday routine, the lunches I eat, the family dinners we have, taking kids to activities, taking a shower and doing basic hygiene, cleaning a room, doing a “meal prep” (where I make a meal and then make three or so extra copies of it to freeze for the future), go grocery shopping, and so on. I could make a very long list of these routines. Ideally, if I can squeeze 10% of the time and 10% of the money out of each of those routines, it’ll make a profound change in my everyday life.

I actually rather enjoy doing this as a project when I have a couple of spare hours. First, I break that routine down into the tiniest baby steps I possibly can. I go through the routine step by step, taking note of every little thing I do. What buttons do I push? Where do I do sorting? What modes do I select? I try to spell all of it out in detail.

Then, I do some research into each of those things. I look into things like the effectiveness of cold water versus warm water versus hot water, and the cost of each. I look at the manual for any appliances I’m using to see what they recommend as the most efficient use of the machine. I make sure I’m following the maintenance routine for each of those appliances, too, and I do it if I haven’t done it lately. I look at all of the materials I’m using for this, particularly anything that gets used up (like soap or water or heat), and I make sure I’m using the right amount of that material.

In the end, I usually end up finding ways to shave off a few steps from each routine, which saves time, and also how to use fewer resources in doing so, which saves money. I might have burnt two hours really looking at the details of how I do some mundane daily task, but now I’m doing it in significantly less time and spending significantly fewer resources in doing it, so going forward, that routine is going to be cheaper and more efficient forever.

If I do that with every routine in my life, then I’m making my “minimal day” require less resources and money and time, and since most of my days are “minimal days,” that adds up to a real impact on my finances and my life. I spend less time doing mundane tasks, spend less money doing them, and thus have more time for the things I want to do and more money with which to build my financial future. Even if it’s just a minute or two and $0.25 or $0.50 for each routine I evaluate, that routine is repeated each and every day, adding up to several hours and a couple hundred bucks over the course of a year, and if I can do the same with every routine, that’s a life-changing difference.

Let me give you a few examples of the kind of analysis I do of ordinary routines at home.

Washing a Load of Laundry

The basics of this routine are simple. I bring a basket of laundry down to the laundry room, dump it in the washer, add a bit of soap, start a load, and wait forty minutes, then move it to the dryer and let it tumble dry for an hour, then I carry the basket upstairs and fold the clothes and put them away. Easy enough, right? That’s a normal routine.

Yet, in that routine, there are lots of little steps that can be tweaked.

The size of the load What’s the most efficient size of a load of laundry in our washer that makes sure it all gets properly clean? For this, I need to look at the manual for the washer, which gives clear recommendations. Our manual actually gives diagrams for the optimal amount of clothes for each setting and suggests that if you have a lot of clothes, you should use one specific setting and put in clothes that fill the basin up to a certain height to get the most clean clothes for the amount of water and energy used. We use the “large load” setting and fill the basin with clothes up to a particular level.

The temperature of the water Is there any reason to use warm or hot water for the wash or warm water for the rinse? Those choices cost money – you have to heat up that water, after all. Is there any reason not to use cold-cold for the water setting? In general, there are only three reasons not to just use cold-cold for everything: when clothes or other items are deeply dirty, when a particular clothing item requires a particular temperature, or when the weather is well below freezing. Outside of that, use cold-cold and you’ll be just fine, saving you a little money on every load.

The type of soap The choice you make here can make a difference of as much as $0.25 per load. For most of our laundry, we use a homemade mix that’s equal portions of washing soda, borax, and soap flakes, mixed together in a small tub with a tablespoon-sized measuring spoon. On occasion, we use store-brand laundry detergent, but the homemade powder is significantly cheaper. The only side effect we’ve noticed with the homemade soap is that

Drying the clothes The most cost-efficient thing to do is to hang clothes up to dry, but that only works if you have space to do so and some extra free time to hang them. We sometimes hang lines across our laundry room to hang some garments, but we often just use the dryer. It turns out from studying our manual that for most clothes, it’s most efficient to use the permanent press setting, which gets clothes dry but doesn’t leave them overly warm when you pull them out of the dryer. It balances the actual purpose of the dryer – getting them dry – with the energy cost, shaving off about 20% of the cost of a tumbled load.

The fabric softener We simply don’t use it. The benefits of it compared to using nothing or using a few wool dryer balls is small enough that we simply don’t bother with any form of fabric softener. Part of this may be due to the water quality in our area, but you should experiment with not using fabric softener or dryer sheets and decide for yourself.

The efficiency of the appliances Both the washer and the dryer have suggestions for maintenance and efficient running in their manuals, so it’s worthwhile to take the time to actually follow those instructions. Tasks like getting behind the dryer to make sure that the blower outtake is completely free of lint are not only going to extend the life of the dryer, but also make each load more energy efficient and water efficient. I keep these kinds of maintenance tasks on a schedule in my calendar, reminding me regularly to do them.

The efficiency of folding I actually worked quite a bit to become super-efficient at folding clothes. I do things like using the two second technique for folding t-shirts, which takes some practice to pick up but makes it a breeze to fold a big pile of t-shirts once you have it down, and I basically just tuck pairs of socks together. To make my laundry as efficient as possible, virtually all of my socks and underwear and jeans are identical, so making pairs and folding clothes is about as efficient as can be. Most other clothing is simply put on inexpensive hangers and hung in the closet. I learned that doing this on the large table near our laundry room is about the easiest place in the house to do the folding, and simply having a good technique down has cut the clothes folding time down to a fraction of what it was years ago.

These tweaks, all added together, have shaved significant time and significant money off of the normal routine of a load of laundry, and most days at our house involve at least one load of laundry (yeah, that’s part of having two adults, three children, and a messy puppy in one house together).

I may have spent several hours of my life optimizing that routine (research, maintenance, and so on), but it now saves me a good 5-10 minutes per day and probably $0.75 per load compared to the methods I used to use. If I repeat that daily for ten years, the time and money savings are tremendous, and I haven’t reduced my quality of living in any way.

Doing a Load of Dishes

In many ways, the efficiency of doing dishes has a lot in common with the efficiency of doing laundry. Many of the same specific elements come into play.

Keeping the dishwasher running efficiently This means doing basic maintenance on your dishwasher, as per the owner’s manual. This means occasionally running an empty load with two cups of white vinegar, making sure any food traps are empty, and making sure that the holes on the sprayer aren’t clogged (and unclogging them as needed with a toothpick or pin). Your manual will tell you what to do. Doing this will ensure your dishwasher lasts a lot longer and also will ensure that when you run it, it runs well.

Optimizing the modes used Your dishwasher likely comes with an array of different cycles. Again, simply knowing what those cycles are and figuring out which ones to use depending on what’s in the dishwasher is worthwhile. Do you need things like a heated drying mode? Maybe, but probably not.

Loading the dishes effectively In most dishwashers, knowing how to load the dishes efficiently and directing them so that they’re going to get clean is going to save you time and effort in terms of re-washing and also enable you to run the dishwasher fewer times.

Using cost-effective dish soap As I mentioned before, I like using homemade dish soap tabs when I have a few minutes to make them. They’re far cheaper than the ones at the store and do a great job. Here’s what I wrote:

Mix a cup of baking soda and a quarter of a cup of salt. Add two teaspoons of liquid dish soap, then a teaspoon of lemon juice. This should form a thick slush that you can easily mold – if it’s too dry, add a bit more lemon juice, but if it’s too wet, add a bit more baking soda. Push this mix into the wells of an ice cube tray, then let it dry for 48 hours. After that, just pop out a “cube” and use that to wash your dishes.

They’re dirt cheap, and using them regularly eliminates the need to run a “cleaning mode” in your dishwasher because of the lemon juice. However, it does take a bit of time to mix up a batch and you do need a place to store them that won’t get wet.

If I don’t have time for those, I honestly don’t see much difference between the different types of dishwashing detergents at the store, so I just buy the cheap store brand detergent. As long as the dishwasher remains clean and there’s no soap residue buildup (meaning I either use homemade soap sometimes or I do an occasional “vinegar load”), they work great.

Having efficient places to store dishes Unloading the dishwasher is a lot faster if most of the items you unload are close to the dishwasher. Things that you wash in the dishwasher frequently should be stored close to the dishwasher, with other items stored further away. A few quick changes in kitchen cabinet arrangement can cut a surprising amount of time off of dishwasher unloading.

Again, little tweaks like reading the manual for proper operation and efficiency, performing maintenance on the item, using inexpensive soap options and keeping the cost of the water and the heating low, and practicing efficient methods for loading and unloading make every load of dishes more cost efficient and time efficient, meaning you have more time and money for other things. If you can shave a minute off of each dishwasher load and $0.20 off of the total cost (by optimizing soap and heat and water usage), that adds up to six hours and $70 over the course of a year and 60 hours and $700 over a decade (not including extending the life of your dishwasher). That’s worth an hour or two of figuring out best practices.

Buying Groceries

The number of tweaks you can do to make grocery shopping more efficient is almost infinite, and they add up to a huge impact on your food costs.

For example, my old routine of going to the grocery store would involve stopping at an upscale grocer after work with a vague notion of two or three meals I might want to make, loading up the cart with a bunch of things bought on more or less the spur of the moment, grabbing a lot of unplanned snack items along the way, and spending a bunch of extra time in the store.

That can be tweaked all over the place.

Do I have a meal plan?

Did I use a grocery flyer and the bulk items in my cupboard when putting together that meal plan?

Am I planning meals that can be efficiently prepared in the time I have available for them?

Am I shopping at a discount grocer where the average prices are low? Am I sure the store I use is the one with the best average prices in the area? (Aldi and Fareway are two discount grocers near me and they’re the two I use most of the time.)

Did I make a grocery list from that meal plan with only the stuff I actually need on it?

Am I stocking up on nonperishable staples that are on sale at the discount grocer?

Do I have a list of things that I’ll buy at the warehouse club the next time I go there?

Is my list organized to match the layout of the discount grocer that I always use and am familiar with?

Am I synergizing my shopping trip with other errands that need to be run outside the house?

Am I using the ten second rule when putting anything in the cart that’s not on the list? (The ten second rule just means I pause for ten seconds and think about why I shouldn’t make an unplanned purchase.)

When I put stuff in the cupboards and refrigerator and freezer, do I group items by meal so the stuff is easy to grab when I need it for food preparation? Spending a few seconds here can save minutes in a few days.

Stepping back and looking at your grocery shopping routine like this not only makes the whole process much more efficient in terms of time and money, it actually improves the efficiency of your meal preparations later in the week.

Final Thoughts

When you look at optimizing the routines of your “minimal day” with things like optimizing your laundry washing routine or your dishwashing routine or your home temperature or your grocery routine or your morning routine or your lunch routine or any of the other routines that make up an ordinary day, it can seem like you’re worrying about a minor detail. And the truth is, you are.

What makes the difference here is that the little detail you’re worried about is repeated countless times, far more than you probably realize, and figuring out how to tweak that little detail just a little bit can make a huge difference over the longer scale of your life.

I genuinely believe that part of the reason I’m able to spend big blocks of time on my hobbies most weekends is because I made my normal routines more efficient in terms of time. The elements of my “minimal day” take up far less time than they used to, which means I can take on more things in a typical day, which means I have less things clogging up my weekends, which means a nice leisure block on Sunday afternoons.

In terms of cost, I don’t see the savings directly. Rather, what I notice is that over a long period of time, my energy bill and water bill and food bill are lower than they used to be and that shows up with a gradually larger surplus in our checking account. It’s not a miraculous sudden change, but rather a gradual thing, one that leads us to the ability to automatically contribute to a Roth IRA when we were just unable to do so before.

The thing is, those positive changes really have no negative impact on my quality of life. Getting six daily chores done in two hours rather than just getting five done in two hours doesn’t change the fact that I’m spending two hours on chores – it just means that I now have one fewer chore to worry about this weekend, which gives me more free time.

Doing the laundry in a way where the cost of water, soap, and heat costs $0.25 less but it doesn’t impact the results or the time spent just means that we spend $5 less a month on household supplies and our energy bill is $2 less each month. Over a year, that means about $100 more in our checking account, quietly building up over a year, and that money makes it easier to make a nice end-of-the-year contribution to a Roth IRA or a 529 plan that wouldn’t have otherwise happened.

It’s all about making the minimal day as efficient as possible in terms of resources used, and that requires breaking down all of the things you do in an ordinary day and asking yourself what it is you’re trying to achieve and how you can get that thing done as efficiently as you can. Sometimes you’ll save money, sometimes you’ll save time, often you’ll save both.

Make your default day into a minimal day. Not only will you save a lot of time and money, you’ll also find yourself greatly appreciating the trappings of the days that aren’t so ordinary.

Good luck!

The post The Minimal Day: Rethinking the Little Things You Do Every Day appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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5 of the Best Checking Accounts for Business Owners in 2019

This App Showed a Busy Mom How to Save $44K on Her Mortgage

A busy working mom, Molly Moorhead spends every hour of the day juggling her job and her family. She doesn’t have a lot of spare time to explore all of her financial options. Seriously, who has time for that?

“Life can get pretty crazy. Kids get sick all the time. They have a lot of needs,” said the mother of two young boys. “In the meantime, I want to come to work every day and do a great job.”

It’s a lot.

That’s why she downloaded LendingTree’s new app.

“It asked for my income, it asked for my monthly expenses, and then it spun its magic,” said Moorhead, a senior editor at The Penny Hoarder.

In one window on her phone, the app shows Moorhead her credit score, cash flow and potential financial future.

How the LendingTree App Can Boost Your Financial Future

Through the free LendingTree app, you can:

• Monitor your credit score and find places to improve it.
• Keep an eye on savings, investments and home equity to see how you’re keeping up with your goals.
• Be alerted of opportunities to spend less on big expenses, like your mortgage, insurance and student loans.
• Shop around and compare financial products, including loans, insurance and credit cards, to get the best rates and save money.

It paid off quickly for Moorhead: In no time at all, the app found a way for her to save $44,000 by refinancing her mortgage. She was floored.

“I was thrilled,” she said. “There’s a lot I can do with that much money,” like save it for retirement or her two sons’ college educations.

“When I get home at the end of the day, my kids want my attention,” Moorhead concluded. “This app has been great for me because it’s done so much of the work that I don’t have time to do — and that’s time that I can spend on my family.”

You can download LendingTree’s app here.

This represents one person’s experience. Results may vary.

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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Should you be Corbyn-proofing your investment portfolio?

Should you be Corbyn-proofing your investment portfolio?

The prospect of a Corbyn government has long spooked investors, private and institutional alike

Tom Bailey Thu, 09/19/2019 - 10:45

With Brexit still stuck at an impasse and the government now unable to command a majority, a general election at some point soon looks likely.

While the Conservative Party is currently leading in the polls, the prospect of a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn is not totally out of the question.

This possibility has long spooked investors - private and institutional alike.

Below, we run through some of the strategies and threats of a Corbyn-led Labour government, identified by Kames Capital’s investment team.

One of the biggest threats to bond and equity holders in UK utilities, according to Colin Dryburgh, investment manager in Kames’ multi-asset team.

Members of Labour’s shadow cabinet have repeatedly warned that they plan to bring certain utility firms back under state ownership.  

Dryburgh notes: “Corbyn’s nationalisation policies pose an obvious threat to several parts of the UK equity and corporate bond markets, such as water, energy supply and Private Finance Initiative (PFI) related investments.”

Meanwhile, Adrian Hull, head of fixed income at Kames, says: “Corbyn’s higher tax takes and dilution of share register to give away to employees isn’t the stuff of higher share prices.”

When it comes to bonds, however, the picture is less clear. It is now widely expected that yields would rise in the event of a Corbyn government on the back of expected large increases in public spending.

However, says Hull, there are reasons to believe that bonds valuations may hold up. First of all, he argues that gilts already look cheap compared to the European counterparts.

At the same time, he argues: “Increased fiscal spending may be done quantitative easing style in conjunction with the Bank and may not pull the rug on valuations. Mainstream concerns around the flight of capital from the UK and a subsequent weakness in the economy could also actually support gilts.”

What might do well

“Finding potential investment beneficiaries from a Corbyn government is harder than identifying assets that could suffer,” notes Dryburgh.

However, there are still some sectors which could see some uplift. Dryburgh says: “One area would be construction and civil engineering related investments that would likely benefit from higher levels of public spending.”

At the same time, both Dryburgh and Hull note the potential for a run on the pound to benefit global facing companies.

Dryburgh notes: “A weaker sterling would likely benefit large companies with a high proportion of overseas earnings.”

As has been widely covered since the Brexit referendum initially sunk the pound, weak sterling is good for the FTSE 100, which derives roughly 70% of its earnings from abroad.  

This article first appeared on our sister website Money Observer

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