BarrazaCarlos.com Digital Marketing, Entrepreneurship & Professional Development

When searching for a job, either if it is for the first time, to find another one, or to get a new beginning in the professional journey, the resume ends up being the tool for professionals.

Honestly, I am not really passionate about creating a Resume.

At university there were guide courses that can help you to fill out a resume.

For the first time, I was kind of lost of where to start, if I didn't have any work experience.

So it was recommended to add any extra activities that I have done.

I faced writing resumes for the university to apply to international exchange programs, as well as for internships.

I remember that I tried a little when I was in Pforzheim to apply for internships.

Coming back to Mexico that time, I needed to find one so I sit down again to try to fill the resume.

What skills to I have to fill out my own resume?

As a student, I had experience with student groups, the international exchange participation and the extra languages.

So that was a start.

But to be "professional", of course there are companies who might look for a professional experience in the department that it is being searched.

And the eternal question arise for the new ones, how I will get experience if I don't get a job, and how I will get a job if I don't have experience.

I eventually got a non-paid internship that helped out to gain at least 5 months of experience.

It was a part-time internship, but it did helped to learn more about a consulting business.

When I aimed to go back to Germany, I needed to create a resume for the Hochschule Heilbronn.

So I did a simple resume.

Then, when doing my master studies, I eventually needed to find a job to be able to earn some money while living in Germany, of course.

So I went again back to the adventure and created a resume in German.

Quite a challenge, isn't?

Either at the start of the career or after some years on the same job position, some people might start thinking what would be the steps that I should take for my future.

And it is normal that when finishing the university or when a professional has the feeling of a career change, the unknown of the future comes by.

Why are people getting anxious about the future?

I also had the same anxiety of what decision to take when I finished my career.

In that time, I had the questions of either searching for a job at Monterrey, or coming back home and work at the family business.

Of course as a 24 year old, we are supposed to be a bit more mature, but the thing is that we actually are not.

And we might never really mature more than usual.

But as we get older, and different professional ways start to come out, we deal we the uncertainity.

Do we really have to decide what to do for our rest of our lives when we finish university?

Or if we back a bit more, does deciding what we will study will define ourselves?

Certainly, not.

That is why change exist.

But some might have the feeling that they have to decide now in order to follow a perfect career.

Unless you are fully aware of the future that you want at 18, then go ahead.

But as I have seen and lived by myself, change is a constant in people’s life.

And for me it is perfectly fine to decide a drastical change when you feel you need to make a change.

Sometimes it may be scary to take an unknown path on a professional level, but sometimes it is also a way where you can further develop yourself in new skills.

For some people who search for how to create a professional development plan, my recommendation is easy.

Visualize what are the things that you want and move forward to it.

If you want to be a writer, just start writing anything.

In my opinion, nobody has to tell you what are you meant to be.

But if you start working, behaving and developing yourself as if you are in the position that you want, you will slowly build up yourself to be who you want to become.

If you find obstacles on your way, either keep trying or go around.

Your inner person already knows what type of professional career you want.

It might be at certain industry, or a specific job position, or as well an entrepreneur.

Remember that a plan is worthless if there is no action.

So, when I graduated I didn’t knew that I was going to end up having experience in one of the top 50 companies in Germany.

But my actions of desiring having again an international experience, working at the family business and saving up money, applying for 3 masters, beind accepted in 1 and then landing in a student job where the ones who made possible to achieve one of the greatest proffesional experiences I had.

Another advice: yes, you can give up one day, but don’t wake up the next day giving up on the dreams that you have.

Life brings up changes, and we never know what the future brings.

How about now to aim into being an international entrepreneur.

That could be one of my new desires.

Work, faith and patience.

One taco dinner with a friend who works at a college, we were discussing about the whole pandemic situation and how it turned out to be a driver of technology.

Certainly, external situations could be strong drivers of change, and educational technology was not left behind.

As we kept discussing during dinner, she told me her experience about the youngsters having plenty experience creating Tik Toks, Snapchats, and Instastories, but when it come out to educational technology, they were behind.

So, does the coming generations are really being digital native.

Knowing the social media platforms is for sure not a certificate that people actually know how to use technology.

As technology keeps improving, and it becomes the major collaboration and working tool for businesses, it should also be properly taught at schools.

The current discussion if universities are actually properly teaching what businesses are requiring shows that probably universities should adopt the use of business technologies.

In my experience, the main and most common software that was used was Office.

At university, we all have used Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

But certainly, there are businesses that require advanced Excel skills that actually students don’t know.

If we start going further on more advanced systems such as ERPs, CRMs, POS, and more management software, then this ones are mainly only experienced when working at a company.

And in developer languages, then probably we don’t have to talk about Python, R, PHP and other programming languages that will turn out more difficult for non techies.

So, which technology should be taught at least in schools?

Certainly, I am in favor that universities should stop having too much theory, and start developing more tech skills in any kind of career.

At least the time invested during college or university, should not be spent to learn while already having a job or a business.

Technology in education is more than just file sharing softwares, it should build up collaboration between peers.

And it happen to me, and probably to many people who have studied his or her degree at an university, and then the question appears, what to do after university?

Certainly, at a younger age some might think that we must have our lives resolved that we already know where to aim at.

And the thing, it is not true.

Life brings some many changes, that it will be impossible to define our whole future just the next day of our graduation day.

Would the first job be the dream job, or should I am for starting a business, studying abroad or go for a master?

We might not know until you decide.

And I think, people might be afraid of giving steps because it could be a mistake, and for me its not.

We can change decisions on our way, when we are feeling that we are not in the correct path.

The only one that should and could decide if its right or wrong, it is you.

Of course, eventually time will show you if you took the correct decision.

In my case when I finished university, I had the opportunity to either work at the family business or find a job in the city where I studied.

I actuall got an invitation to an interview in Monterrey, but i rejected it because I was not sure about what I wanted, and at the end I decided to come back home and work at the family business.

Certainly, if I have decided to stay at Monterrey, probably my story would be different.

In that time, coming back home open me the path of learning about the entrepreneurial process, even if I started a second branch store of the family business.

I learned how to register at the mexican tax authorities and learned more about starting up your own small business.

Of course, I have to say I had the advantage of having a close mentor, who was my mother, but the process gave me the knowledge to learn how to manage my own business.

Nevertheless, I had the desire of going back to Germany, so I appliead to a master degree.

Decisions came time to time.

And I changed when I feel that it was the time to start a new path.

Thanks God I had a wonderful experience in Germany, where I had the opportunity to meat amazing people from all around the world and also I had my first job outside the family business.

Working at an international company was a grateful experience, that also helped me to expand my network.

If you have told me, the day of my graduation, how my professional path would go, I probably would not believe you.

So as a tip, don't hesitate on what to do after university, enjoy the day and take the decisions as the moment to take one comes.

If there is a resource that we all have counted, is time.

And time is a resource that we don’t know exactly how much we will have.

Time management could be a very subjective and complicated resource to have total control.

For sure, being in Germany had helped me to learn about a different cultural perspective about time.

If I compare between Mexico and Germany, time is a real significant difference between this two cultures.

Mexicans use the term “Ahorita”, which is a time adverb that can not specify actually at what time.

The normal adverb is “ahora”, which means right now, but saying “Ahorita” is were almost all foreigners will be confused, since there is no exact time to describe ahorita.

In contrast, german culture is more likely to be a more specific in time terms.

Although now different generations are having different aspects about time, specially in business, Germans are very good at planning their time.

I had plenty of german friends who actually had their Google Calendars fully scheduled, and sometimes setting up a get together with them had actually be considered with enough preparation.

Mexicans, and as well latin american cultures, might not be really specific when it comes out about time.

So is time a really crucial resource that countries like mine have to be more careful and really find a balance between the cultural “ahorita” and a specific agenda?

Personally, time management could be a useful skill to achieve any personal and professional goal.

Developing time management skills could be also a healthy aspect, to have the so called work-life balance, and know when to stop when you are a workaholic, or to know when to focus and be more productive if you are more of a distracted person.

Planning the perfect future would be impossible, but certainly following steps towards the main goal, could get you closer to become an achiever.

Since I started my times at ARP and Bechtle in 2017, the topics of Future of Work and Challenges of Mobility were almost my every day lectures.

And one of the questions that arised was, how technology can be a solution when the rent of offices and places to live are rising in highly populated cities?

It seems that the times when people have to leave their hometown to seek education or job opportunities are staying in the past.

The rush of adopting the “Home-Office Experience” for many become true.

And certainly for some people who are able to work remotely, also meant that they don’t have to travel or move around the city, therefore there is less traffic, and less cars on the street has also meant less pollution.

With the rise of remote work in the last year, the IT industry has shown that it is the leading industry when it comes to work from home.

IT outsourcing has been a practice that many worldwide corporations have incorporated as part as their human resourcing plans.

Technology advancements, far for being a threat, has shown to open up opportunities that decades ago were unthinkable.

Technology has also been a bridge builder when it comes to create jobs all around the world.

On my first series of Thought Leaders, I invited Karina Toral to share her master thesis work on IT Outsourcing.

I met Karina for the first time at the Hochschule Heilbronn cafeteria.

Karina studied the same master as me, International Business and Intercultural Management, one year before.

Personal traits that I could say about Karina are that she is friendly, reflective and enthusiastic.

Same spirit she showed around the Hochschule Heilbronn community.

On a professional level, Karina and I have had the same interests regarding to Digital Marketing and IT, where she currently works at Cobalt as Senior Business Development.

In entrepreneurship literature, there is a point that it is recommended for all those who aim to be entrepreneurs, and it is the importance of role models.

There are people who are willing to become entrepreneurs, start their own business and work for a purpose.

How big should the business must be?

In my opinion, it doesn’t really matter if it is a small or a big business, as long that the mission of the entrepreneur is fullfilled.

The bigger the mission, eventually it will show how the business can grow.

But as entrepreneurs, it is needed sometimes to follow a path and obviously create a new path from those that were already created.

Successful and famous entrepreneurs already reached a point to become who they are, because they set up the work first in the attempt to reach their goal.

Using famous entrepreneurs examples it is useful for all those new entrepreneurs to learn more about different and common people who achieved to build up a business or organization.

Having role models as one start developing its own venture, helps to get inspired, but also to learn how they resolve the issues that came across.

In my personal experience, I had the opportunity to have a first role model in entrepreneurship and that was my mother.

In family businesses, the second generation have the opportunity to add that entrepreneurial spirit from the founders.

The brief story of how my mother started her business was really simple.

As I asked her, how did you started your business?

She answered, “basically I started to get my first money while doing secretary jobs.”

“I started to save a bit money until I bought some shoes that I could sell.”

“And eventually, I just kept selling and buying, until the money was getting multiplicated.”

It sounds a simple story, but after nearly 40 years of business, she handled how to build 5 different businesses, and staying with a furniture business that keeps going and growing.

Of course, there might be entrepreneurs who don’t have directly a father or mother who can teach them directly about business, but role models and even coaches can help.

In the following part of this article, we would like to share you some famous entrepreneurs examples that can help you to know different business stories.

If you have a brilliant idea, perhaps reading about these examples of famous entrepreneurs will help you realize that’s all it takes to not only become a billionaire, but also to leave your legacy in history.

During my time at Hochschule Heilbronn, one of the requirements for graduation was to do a Master Thesis.

The thesis period for bachelor or master students would become for some a stressful time.

As a difference from a regular studying semester, the thesis time is basically a work between the student and himself or herself.

As a student, one might have the thesis supervisors, but they are merely as support.

There is a thin guidance, since it is the student work to to figure it out what topic to write about the master thesis, how to write a master thesis, where to get the references, which methodological approach to use, where is the best spot to write the thesis and so on.

And of course, there might be lots of students where they might not have any clue at the beginning.

Questions and doubts keep rising.

Probably all master students pass this phase.

In my case, I already knew I was interested in a topic related to entrepreneurship.

But entrepreneurship itself, just that term is too generic, and for a master thesis you should create a fancy title.

You can start checking out many thesis, and find out very long titles that would also try to be very specific and go to the point of what you are going to write about.

And actually, this is recommended because there is already plenty information on internet, books and journals where you can get the information that you are looking for, so it would be better to target just what you are looking for.

So in my case, to find out a supervisor, I got to know that one of my professors was already working on entrepreneurship.

In content marketing, defining the Buyer Persona is one of the first steps done before starting a content marketing plan.

The buyer persona is expected to follow different paths under their buying decision.

The objectives in content marketing is to attract the potential leads, that eventually would be nurtured and converted to customers.

Overall, this concept is called the customer journey.

One relevant concept that is mentioned in the following thesis written by Victoria Mendoza is the empathy journey.

Key concept that I think it takes importance to also have into consideration while analysing the customer journey, since it also adds what the user might be thinking and feeling on his journey.

Understanding the impacts of a backpacker at a micro-level is easy, since as backpacker, I was usually thrived to live the adventure, and explore new places, people, cultures and customs.

The use of Virtual Reality among different countries is increasing.

When it comes to strategy, defining where we are, it is an anchor point that we could set as the start.

What we already have done in the past has brought us to this exact moment, and in the future we set the objective we want to achieve.

Sometimes, we as individuals or as business managers, have life events that set us up to ask ourselves if what we are doing is the right or wrong thing.

Change is normal, and the desire for our own concept of reaching success will also be.

So, what is your strength, weakness, opportunity and threat?

Defining strengths might be easier than weaknesses.

For sure, you have to kill your own personal or business ego, to see itself as a third person, and to be the observant of that weakness.

In my opinion, there is too much flow towards the idea that you have to be strong, you have to be positive, you have to be perfect, and it’s not.

Especially now that Social Media is sometimes being measured by the amount of great pictures and likes.

The influencer or business that is successful is the one that have reached millions of followers.

And this overall idea of success or showing up strengths are just making up or covering the weaknesses, that when it comes to fill up this SWOT analysis templates, no matter that if it is for a company or a personal analysis, it is sometimes hard to describe.

Therefore, we go out for answers.

Why searching out for ideas or how to fill out SWOT Analysis templates?

Information visualization is helpful for managers to understand concepts in a faster and memorable way.

When there are tons of information to be filtered, a SWOT analysis would become helpful to visualize your business or yourself.

I could consider a SWOT analysis as a jump diving activity into the personal or business energy flow, to start observing the present moment.

Getting inspired in the moments of feeling down it is important.

Words are words, and sometimes words can be taken by the air, as some said.

But usually words are a powerful weapon to be used, that can either motivate or unmotivate someone.

That is why we should be careful sometimes with the words that we use.

Getting motivated in the moments that we feel down is not neccesary something that we always have to go to.

It is fine to feel sad, angry, unmotivated, and even depressed.

In my opinion, being over optimistic and overly enjoyful and happy might bring also negative consequences.

I think that running on a perfect way, migh leave someone out of having the experience of how to recover from tough times.

If someone doesn’t feel how it actually feels to be left alone, to be let down, to thrive under adversity, then how the person will actually appreciate when he is on the other side where things are finally running as wished.

When we read succesful quotes from Entrepreneurs that are famous, we only see the tip of the iceberg, and we might also think, I want to be like X or Z, but the question is, do you really want to go through to reach their point?

What deep stories are not being told around from entrepreneurs, what fights they have to win, what paths they created and more important how they solved their problems and were able to push themselves to reach their goal.

Entrepreurship quotes from famous people will give us that tiny push, but the energy for all of us who are willing to become real entrepreneurs come from the inside.

This is a reminder for myself, and hopefully for you too, remember that when the wind blows you down, let the spark inside you, light you up.

As one starts in the WordPress World, one important factor to generate traffics is to aim for search engines.

And years ago, the main and principal WordPress SEO plugin was Yoast.

Since that time, using Yoast has been really easy to use.

Adding and changing the Meta Data titles and descriptions have helped to improve just a certain part of a WordPress website.

But as it get improving, Yoast started to have new features that made it even better.

I still don’t consider myself a SEO expert, but as I learn more about it, I enjoy working on my blog and work on the efforts of improving it.

Eventually I found Rank Math.

Rank Math 2 years ago was under development, as I remember.

The plugin had similar features such as Yoast, but it started to grow, and as a sky rocket, it improved its performance.

Rank Math had what I was looking for, Schema Generator.

As I have learned about SEO, the Structured Data helps crawlers to understand better a website.

It is not only a matter of creating a sitemap and indexing it to the webmasters tools such as Google Search Console, Bing or Yandex, it also requires a more structured information that could be readable for crawlers.

Rank Math offered that, and eventually added more features to the plugin.

Between Rank Math vs Yoast, I was fascinated by using Rank Math.

It had more features that Yoast didn’t offered.

Also, Rank Math has an analytics area where you can keep track of your keywords.

I don’t use it that much, but certainly, checking out your keyword winners and loosers it is good to know what is working and what is not.

It also supports quick Bing indexation, a search enginge that has really high click to rates and must be considered.

Between Rank Math vs Yoast, both have a SEO score, that could help with tracking what has worked good in your page.

But if you ask me, what is the main advantage, I will repeat it, Rank Math Schema generator.

It is easy to add, but I do still need to learn more about improving it.

When it comes to creating a WordPress Website and we want some support on our SEO work, we use to go for Yoast, since it has been the most known WordPress SEO plugin.

Of course, years ago the best and easy option to work on SEO for WordPress was Yoast.

It was easy to install, and easy to add the Meta Data.

It helped to create the sitemap and it seem that it was fine.

But as I kept learning more about SEO, Technical SEO, On-Page and Off-Page SEO, Backlinks, and so on, I understood a bit more that SEO was more than just adding a plugin.

Creating content for the user is the main aim that will help your website to attract visitors.

As you gain more traffic, and you improve your content, it would be higher the possibility to rank better on search engines.

But I kept learning more and I got to know more about Structured Data and Schema Markup.

As search engines still read content on a structured way, there are elements on websites that help those crawlers to understand better your website.

So when I was aiming to add the structured data on my blog, I found out that Yoast was not supporting this side.

At least on the paid version that I got.

I searched for other plugins that could support this area of Schema Generators, but didn’t found anything really good.

It was a matter of time until I find out about Rank Math.

They had a free plugin that was similiar to Yoast.

Rank Math seem to be a good option to test out, since all the reviews out there were positive.

I decided to give it a try, and by my surprise it was similar and even better than Yoast.

Among the multilingual plugins available out there, I had to give it a try to Polylang.

For my website I use WPML, but for a dummy website I installed Polylang.

The big advantage that I saw on Polylang was that it is free, although for extra features you have to buy extra add-ons.

So for sure, this would be recommended for all those small WordPress Websites that have just a few pages.

You don’t have to spend a cent at the beginning, you just have to spend time installing it.

At first it was a bit confusing, since it users experience at the beginning seem a little bit to old, in comparison on the User Interface that plugins such as WPML or Weglot have.

Polylang also offers an automatic translation, but for this you have to install Lingotek.

You can have up to 100,000 characters for free, but you could also do a manual translation.

5 years as blogger, and could I really say which is the best translation plugin for WordPress?

I would rather say, which has been the one that have worked better for me as a blogger.

I have been focusing my blog to have written content.

So how to convert the content in different languages? Which plugin is actually helping me achieve goals of internationalization? Which one is good for SEO?

I might consider myself a bit good on languages, but certainly I am not a fully polyglot. Plus, it would take a lot of time to really translate the texts by myself.

My path of multilingual plugins have gone from Google Translator, to WPGlobus, to WPML, to Weglot, and back to WPML.

Why? Well, I have tested for myself first which one has been the one that have worked for me.

I will put it to you like this. I have to ask myself, in which position am I, and what are my objectives.

In my case, I consider myself as a low budget blogger who is focusing on content creation. Now with my experience, I am looking to share it and help others to make better decisions.

Also, I am focusing to monetize through affiliate marketing. So this turns out to be a win-win-win, of course if the last decision maker is happy with his purchase.

Now that I have my standards and goals, which of the plugins can I afford and which translation plugin would be the good one for me.

The negative sides I saw on the plugins. Google translator doesn’t offer high quality translation

WPGlobus has a complicated page structure, which might affect page duplication.

WPML requires manual work.

Weglot has a higher price in comparison with the other plugins.

The positive sides I saw on the plugins.

Google translator has automatic translation and free.

WPGlobus is affordable and easy to use.

WPML now has automatic translation with Deepl and it is also affordable.

Weglot has a fast and accurate translation.

Decisions, decisions.

One of the things that I didn’t like about WPML was the amount of work, and copy paste that I have to do if I wanted to translate content.

The easiest and cheapest way to translate content with WPML was using Google Translator and copy the text to the translation manager.

That was time consuming and a repetitive work.

WordPress Blogger life is a path with lots of work, questions and learning.

Creating a website for yourself, for your business or for any reason you want to have a website might sound an easy thing now a days.

Being a blogger for around 6 years, had made me learn how exciting this digital world can be.

As a solopreneur, and creating my website, learning WordPress and how it works is one of the most important skills I have developed for myself.

Learning about WordPress eventually helped me on my student job.

WordPress development has been a highly demand skill that many companies are looking for.

Of course, WordPress is one of the main content management systems used all around the world.

And in order to improve a WordPress Website, there are the useful WordPress plugin.

Finding out which are the best WordPress plugins for SEO, for Web Design, Security, internationalization and so on, has not been a short path.

Creating websites on WordPress is a test and fail, test and success path.

There is no right or wrong way, there is only the WordPress Way.

Of course, there are strategies that could help your WordPress Website to sky rocket and improve.

In this article, we share some of the best wordpress plugins that could help you on your website development.

Creating content is actually not a difficult thing.

How many people upload different types of content on internet and have different success rates.

From highly produced videos to simple memes, and which are the ones that end up with more views or likes?

It is not a secret that now a days even the less produced or thought content is the one that might actually get better results.

So, is there an actual real game plan or the perfect content marketing strategy?

Certainly, Internet has shown us that there is no perfect path to follow that will ensure results.

Lets take as example the Godzilla and Kong Meme in Spain, where Burger King and McDonalds where added, and then KFC made its adapted version, adding a dog with a bat.

Can you call that design? Probably not.

Can you call it smart and result giving? Definitive!

Are images like that one inside their content marketing plan? Probably not.

But businesses have to react quick.

People who search on social media and on internet want fresh and relevant content.

If companies are not creating up to date content and that is relatable to the current narrative, for sure companies might be swimming against the stream.

So what could be one of the best content marketing strategies out there to follow?

Just Try!

For me, there is no actually right or wrong, until you try.

The audience is the one deciding.

And if you are spending up time, just planning and trying to figure out what could be the best of A or B before executing, then you are wasting time.

A-B Testing is for that, for trying.

That is why Content Marketing is a cycle.

Listen, decide on themes, decide on topics, create, promote, measure, evaluate and re-purpose.

Practice makes the master.

And as you keep working and as you keep observing what is giving results and what is not, you will be tuning up your content marketing.

So what is the strategy that I prefer.

I prefer to aim for evergreen content and for the “symptoms” of the solution.

If you want to aim for content that also aims for low volume keywords, your blog posts would be just there, sitting down in the lonely spot of the internet.

Finding the perfect color match could be a difficult mission for some marketers.

People that doesn’t come straight from the design world have to learn on the way to sort out tasks that are asked for the marketing.

And it is sometimes at it is.

On companies, there are mixed positions that will require to have different skills.

Now specially on the digital marketing area, where there are companies that are asking for e-commerce manager, community manager, copy writer, video producer and post producer and designer in one job position.

For some companies, for sure, they could have the budget, but for some others, probably not that much.

That is why they try to hire someone that could help the company to fill out the blank spaces.

Is it good or bad to multi-task in digital marketing?

In a solo-preneur venture, there is no other solution, you usually go straight forward to solve every issue that comes up in order to grow, but when it comes out to bigger companies, probably it goes way up too much to ask for multi-tasking.

Startups and small teams face the challenges of growing, and if they need someone who can develop multiple tasks, then it would be a resourceful team addition, rather than just choosing a task oriented collaborator.

Colore Palette Generators are a good tool for those solopreneurs, startups and small teams that are facing the challenges of improving the look and feel of their designs.

Certainly there are teams that don’t have people who might have gone to design school, but in digital marketing, a good visual is also key for success.

If companies are running out there without a Brand Manual, then choosing the colors could be question to answer.

One of the skills that are being on demand for digital marketing is the use of software for video editing.

There are advanced Premiere Pro, After Effects, Davinci, Final Cut pro users that are really good at it, and also there are other people like me, that are built up by practice.

As more and more videos are created, the experience is learned to create videos.

From the pre-production, to production and post-production, the creator must visualize the end results of his or her creation.

When I started my path on the different programs of Adobe, I started learning about animations with the use of Flash.

That was nearly 16 years ago, so it sounds like far away, and it is!

OMG, I am getting older.

Back then, there were no much options to create videos, or even smartphones and apps for making videos.

You had to be more creative with the software that you had.

But as the different software have improved, there are better quality videos, and they could be easily created.

When we are on a hurry or when we just make that last retouch to the photo before posting it to social media, we try to use easy apps for editing photos on Android phones.

I have been a lover of Android since it beginnings.

And you can ask me, what about Apple and iPhones, well I am not fully against those ones, but I feel more comfotable using an Android Phone.

One thing that probably most of people, including me, want from a phones are good pictures.

We can say that the use of those pocket cameras are left in the past, and now we can easily use our phones.

Even using the smartphones as a replacement of big camera equipment.

I have been a fan of Google Pixel since it release.

Back then I moved on from a Samsung 5 to a Google Pixel 1.

Of course, I wanted better pictures and better battery.

The improvement on the image quality was a big jump.

When taking pictures, I also sometimes wanted to d0 fast photo edition, and uploading the picture to the laptop to do a retouch on Photoshop takes time.

Therefore I aimed to use different apps for editing photos.

On the Google Pixel, I found out about Snapseed.

It was a very easy and intuitive app to make editions on the images.

Up til now, when I have the need to do photo edition, I still use Snapseed.

There are other apps for editing photos on Android phones that are really useful as well.

There are Adobe Photoshop Express, Adobe Lightroom, Canva and Pixlr.

The good thing about those apps are that they are for free, or also if you want and need more features you might need to get the premium version.

But for simple tasks, those apps for edditing photos are pretty useful.

I have sticked with Snapseed, even now with my Google Pixel 3, because it is easy to use.

I also have Canva, but instead of using it for photo edition, I use it more for visual content creation.

But I also prefer Canva on computer, and also Photoshop.

The current trend of podcasts and the use of Spotify has also make it easier to do a Podcast.

To do a Podcast on Spotify you can simply download the app Anchor, and start creating your podcast.

As easy as that.

If you have a smartphone, you don’t have to get too complicated and fancy when creating a podcast.

It is a matter of will power to do a podcast.

I wanted to give it a try on doing my own Podcast on Spotify.

I figure out different platforms that already exist to help you on the process.

One of the main interests of new and current podcasters is to be on Spotify.

As well as in Apple Podcasts, but still, personally I prefer Spotify.

It is cool to have your on Podcast, because you can use it as a tool to let your ideas flow.

I do recommend to have your topics a little bit more in order, and not like me, that probably I am a bit disordered.

I am currently recording my blogs opinions on my Anchor Podcasts.

I just seat down, and start talking to the phone.

Other platforms such as Breaker, RSS and Spreaker offer different alternatives to create your own Podcast.

It is just a matter of knowing exactly what you want to do with it.

Start talking and share your voice to the world.

My experience at Bechtle also included me to learn about public relations.

I was part of the Corporate Communications for a year, and in that year I also learned from top experts in the theme.

Certainly, my time there was an attempt of the mix between corporate communications and marketing.

We aimed to merge to areas that might seem similar, but do have different objectives.

From one side, Corporate Communications aimed for brand positioning, as in the case of Digital Marketing, the aim was lead generation.

So certainly, the adaption was complicated to structure the new team.

But that is what Digital Marketing is bringing on.

Corporate Communications, Marketing and even Sales, should work together to work on their overall communication strategy.

When one goes to any business social media platform, they will barely distinguish if the content was created by Corporate Communications, Marketing or Sales.

Probably, by the sort of message, the difference can be noticed, but it is hard to know from a consumer perspective to know which department is working on a certain area.

Public Relations in Marketing is bringing that human interaction between the parts.

Marketing is not anymore a fancy ad, it is going further deep on the understanding of the audience.

And how to really understand the audience?

In my opinion, the work done to build relations is also a work done by a team, independently of the area where they are.

5 years as blogger, and could I really say which is the best translation plugin for WordPress?

I would rather say, which has been the one that have worked better for me as a blogger.

I have been focusing my blog to have written content.

So how to convert the content in different languages? Which plugin is actually helping me achieve goals of internationalization? Which one is good for SEO?

I might consider myself a bit good on languages, but certainly I am not a fully polyglot. Plus, it would take a lot of time to really translate the texts by myself.

My path of multilingual plugins have gone from Google Translator, to WPGlobus, to WPML, to Weglot, and back to WPML.

Why? Well, I have tested for myself first which one has been the one that have worked for me.

I will put it to you like this. I have to ask myself, in which position am I, and what are my objectives.

In my case, I consider myself as a low budget blogger who is focusing on content creation. Now with my experience, I am looking to share it and help others to make better decisions.

Also, I am focusing to monetize through affiliate marketing. So this turns out to be a win-win-win, of course if the last decision maker is happy with his purchase.

Now that I have my standards and goals, which of the plugins can I afford and which translation plugin would be the good one for me.

The negative sides I saw on the plugins. Google translator doesn’t offer high quality translation

WPGlobus has a complicated page structure, which might affect page duplication.

WPML requires manual work.

Weglot has a higher price in comparison with the other plugins.

The positive sides I saw on the plugins.

Google translator has automatic translation and free.

WPGlobus is affordable and easy to use.

WPML now has automatic translation with Deepl and it is also affordable.

Weglot has a fast and accurate translation.

Decisions, decisions.

One of the things that I didn’t like about WPML was the amount of work, and copy paste that I have to do if I wanted to translate content.

The easiest and cheapest way to translate content with WPML was using Google Translator and copy the text to the translation manager.

That was time consuming and a repetitive work.

Therefore, I went out to try Weglot, a fast and accurate multilingual translation plugin.

But after testing Weglot, I noticed that the plugin could be expensive to maintain for me due to the amount of written content that I have in my blog, and also I wanted to have at least 5 languages.

5 languages multiplied by the number of words that I had in my website, made me reach pretty soon the word limit of the Weglot’s Pro Plan.

I faced myself into the decision, paying more for another Weglot’s plan or go back to WPML.

Paying almost €2000 per year was not an option.

I changed back to WPML and I noticed that WPML was starting to improve their automatic translations.

Couple months after I changed, they announced a big deal for the WordPress Automatic Translations, Deepl arrived to WPML.

Early 2020 I wanted to improve my blog translation, so that I could have a faster translation in multiple languages.

I decided to give it a try to Weglot, although at first I considered it a high price for just a blogger.

I bought the Pro version, since I wanted my website in Spanish, English, German, Portuguese and Italian.

Installing it was really easy and simple. I was amazed of how good was the translation.

It was fast and accurate, so in that side I was happy with Weglot.

The first challenges I encountered were that since I had around more than 50,000 words,  Weglot’s word count was limiting.

Also, it roles out the translated content depending on that amount.

Some of my content was not being translated, and in that case I had to contact their Support Service to have a faster outcome with the translation limits.

They set up some word count limits prevent an overage on the machine translation, something like that.

In terms of SEO, it was compatible with RankMath, so your Metadata is translated.

And also your HREF Canonical Tags are properly set up.

Another issue I found was that sometimes the URL control is not really accurate.

It might translate URLs that you don’t want, and even if you set it on the translation blacklist, it will translate it, and consider it into the words.

So you will have to ask again for their support.

Also, if you are focusing your website in too many text content, their word count would result stressfull, since there is no really good control on how much text is translated.

In terms of WordPress Translation, I recommend Weglot in the case that you are basically looking for a fast and accurate translation, want to translate to 1 or 2 languages, don’t want to mess up with your wordpress code, you have WooCommerce and if you don’t have time for translation.

Images are everywhere.

Images are needed.

An image say more than thousand words.

And I can keep going on on phrases that give the importance to images.

There are plenty of agencies and website developers who need image resources for their social media or websites.

Of course, you can find out free images out there, it would be just a matter of fact of typing in google and searching for creative commons results.

I have tried different image stock websites, and to say which one worth paying, which one are just worth mentioning and so on.

As a blogger, I need images for the thumbnails or any other area, but I would prefer to avoid having repeated images on it.

I have noticed recently the use of a business man picture that had appeared on different webpages and social media all across internet.

The abuse of image stock has its risks, and it would be that if you and your competitor have the same image stock website as database, than you can find out those ackward repetitions.

That is why I would recommend to choose different image stock websites to source your image needs.

From Pexels and Pixabay that are free, to subscriptions like Freepik,  Envato Elements, MonsterOne, Adobe Stock and Shutterstock.

Read more about the different image stock websites that can help you to create content.

As a content creator, and having access to different royalty free music, I was curious to try creating a podcast.

Now that there has been a trend on creating podcast, I also jumped myself to it.

Podcasting isn’t a new thing, and for WordPress, it had the availability to add podcasts since its earlier versions.

But why is it that podcasting has turned out recently to become popular again?

Well, for sure Spotify has been a driver to “make podcasting great again”. 😛

There are different tools where you can upload your podcasts.

Going from Anchor, Spreaker, Breaker from Twitter, to building up your own RSS feed on your website and distribute it to the known distributors, such as Apple Podcast and Spotify.

There are different tools that a podcasters need for sure.

You may need a good microphone, a recording device, that could be your smartphone, laptop or if you are more high-end, then professional equipment, plus an editing software.

Of course, it will depend on your needs.

As in most podcasts, there is also another element that has been important, the music for podcasts.

It is sometimes needed the intro music for podcasts, to give that welcoming part to the episode, or also as background music to give an environment.

There are several websites where you can find different resources that can help you to find royalty free music for podcasts.

Some websites are for free such as Facebook Sound Collection, Youtube Audio Library and Pixabay.

Or even Anchor has music library integrated to ease your podcast editing.

If you want more of a different selection of music for podcasts, then there are subscriptions such as from Envato Elements and PremiumBeat that could help you find more music for podcasts resources.

I am part of a family business that has run for nearly 40 years.

The business has mainly been “running as we always have done”.

And when it comes to the development and further improvement of a small business, the inner family fights start with the new generations ideas of “better ways of doing things”.

It is not a secret of family businesses, that some of its main struggles are the ideas that we, the second generation, bring up to the table so that the business can change for better.

Or at least, we the second generation, think those ideas are for better.

In my experience, change will bring up discomfort, specially for older generations, since they have been working for years in the same way, and it might take some time to adapt or they might even refuse the new ideas, even if you give projections on income increase or savings.

How many times have you heard, “if your business don’t adapt or innovate, it will get stuck or disappear”.

Probably, plenty of times.

One of the pain points that I have lived for sure in my own family business is the control of inventory.

We have used from manual scorecards to keep control, to later move on to the inventory management in excel.

Does an inventory management in excel is effective in the long run?

I don’t think so, but it was the quick and low cost solution for a small business to have control on the inventory.

If you are looking for how to do your inventory management in excel, here the team and I, created this article where you can learn about inventory management and how to create an inventory management in excel.

But I would also recommend you, that if you are planning to digitize your business and improve your inventory control processes, then analyze the use and implementation of an ERP System.

I tell you a bit more of my experience.

I needed a solution that helped me with a Point of Sale system, to keep track and control of inventory on an easier way, but also a system that was also connected to an e-commerce platform.

Therefore, here in Mexico I decided to use Bind ERP.

As a small business, Bind ERP was an affordable solution that I started to use.

In just a matter of 2 weeks, I set up all the nearly 170 products of the branch store that I am in charge, and in one week I built up the Shopify store to showcase online the products of my store online and on social media.

Now, everytime I receive new inventory, make a sale or change up the price of a product, the ERP system updates automatically as well on Shopify and Facebook Shop.

As a small business, there are already affordable ERP solutions that can help you have this integrations and help you to save time on updating your Excel Spreadsheets everytime you do a sell, or also to save time on the uploading and managing of products on your e-commerce store.

So I would recommend, if you prefer to still save up costs and keep using excel, create your inventory template.

But if you are like me, that besides just managing your business locally, and also want to have an e-commerce platform that helps you on the digitalization of your business, then go for ERP systems like BindERP (if you are from Latin America), Odoo & Quickbooks that also have integrations with WooCommerce and Shopify.

One of the things that I didn’t like about WPML was the amount of work, and copy paste that I have to do if I wanted to translate content.

The easiest and cheapest way to translate content with WPML was using Google Translator and copy the text to the translation manager.

That was time consuming and a repetitive work.

Therefore, I went out to try Weglot, a fast and accurate multilingual translation plugin.

But after testing Weglot, I noticed that the plugin could be expensive to maintain for me due to the amount of written content that I have in my blog, and also I wanted to have at least 5 languages.

5 languages multiplied by the number of words that I had in my website, made me reach pretty soon the word limit of the Weglot’s Pro Plan.

I faced myself into the decision, paying more for another Weglot’s plan or go back to WPML.

Paying almost €2000 per year was not an option.

I changed back to WPML and I noticed that WPML was starting to improve their automatic translations.

Couple months after I changed, they announced a big deal for the WordPress Automatic Translations, Deepl arrived to WPML.

Deepl is a german based service that has a pretty accurate translation, better than Google Translator.

For now Deepl has a few number of available languages they could translate.

For WPML automatic translation you have to pay an extra fee depending on the credits that you use.

WPML automatic translation is based on credits and not in the word count, as in Weglot.

Actually, it may sound as word count, but there is a technical difference.

The difference relies that with WPML you can have more control in which content you will spend your credits, and which translation service will you use for it.

For example, Microsoft translation costs 1 credit, Google translations costs 2 credits, and Deepl translations costs 3 credits.

So, you can choose which translation service you want to use and how will you spend it.

In that, WPML has more control than Weglot, nevertheless it is worth mentioning that it is still time consuming, but way much better than in the past.

I wanted to get deeper into the price comparison between Weglot vs WPML, I’ll try to get the exact price of a word, of course if I am not wrong.

In the monthly Weglot Business plan, you pay $23.38 dollar for 50000 words, which is $0.00046 per word.

In the yearly Weglot Business plan which gets cheaper, you pay $233.77 per year, which per month is $19.48 for 50000 words, which is $0.00038 per word.

In a monthly payment for up to 100,000 WPML credits you pay $17, which if you use Deepl 3 Credits, that means it is 33,333 words, which is $0.00051 per word.

As you keep using higher number of credits in WPML, the price gets lower.

Nevertheless in that comparison Weglot shows better price per word.

The big BUT cames when Weglot establishes a Word Limit, and in WPML when you pay again for the credits you have new credits that you can use to translate new content.

Actually there is no word limit in WPML.

And even so, for now I am using free Deepl Windows Plugin to have a faster copy-paste of selected phrases, and combining the automatic translation.

If you have decided to turn your online business or startup into a multilingual WordPress website, then I will recommend you WPML, but of course there are some questions to do to you first to really say go for it.

WordPress is one of the most useful content management system to create websites.

There are multiple forms to create websites, and there is no perfect solution to do it.

WordPress is one of the most known and also easy to use, therefore it has been the preferable platform to use.

As a business, we all have endlessly heard, you must have a website or you don’t exist.

And if you are aiming to build up a startup, then a website is just the first milestone.

Once defined that you want to use WordPress, and that you also want to reach international customers, there are multiple multilingual plugins to international customers.

I have a post in my website that I talk about the different multilingual WordPress plugins.

If you are considering to dedicate time to the translation, or have a multinational team of translator, then WPML could be an option as a multilingual plugin.

WPML is an easy to use plugin that has helped me to turn my website into a multilingual WordPress Website.

I focus on content creation, and I have a big word count, therefore that has been the main reason to choose WPML.

If you are a Startup that is going to focus on content, then go for it. Since you might need no limits on your word count.

WPML is improving its automatic translation with Deepl, therefore it is now competing better against the other translation plugin that I also recommend, Weglot.

When to use Weglot, rather than WPML?

If your startup is a Woocommerce Website, I would recommend better Weglot, since Weglot doesn’t get involved too much with your code.

This reduces the risk of some problems between the plugins.

Although Weglot also has its negative aspects, that you can read more about in my WPML vs Weglot.

When it comes to SEO, Shopify is not my favorite e-commerce platform.

I started to use Shopify, because I needed a quick solution to showcase my furniture products with social media, and that also was connected to my ERP system.

Shopify gave me a fast integration between the platforms that I use.

Living at the border with the US, also requires to have my website content in english.

I found Translation Lab app, and it seem quite similar to WPML for WordPress, but I was not planning to dedicate time on the translation as I do for my blog.

I needed a good and reliable Shopify translation app that could help me to have some of my content in english.

Therefore, I decided to install Weglot Translate app.

With Weglot Shopify app was really easy and fast to translate the first page content.

Weglot does all the work at the instant, and the translation is very accurate.

If you are aiming to translate to just one or maximum 2 languages, I do recommend Weglot.

As I have mentioned in WPML vs Weglot, Weglot has its advantages and disadvantages.

But since Shopify is a more rigid platform with a lower number of apps in comparison to WordPress, Weglot is mainly the best translation app for Shopify.

WPML is not available for Shopify.

And in terms of content, Shopify is quite limited to be very creative.

But if you are already using Shopify and need to translate your products, then go for Weglot.

You will save time and get accurate translations.

Local SEO is one good strategy for small businesses to aim for SEO.

You already have a niche, your city.

In contrast to an International SEO Strategy, that is broader, Local SEO is a niche oriented strategy.

With Local SEO, local businesses have the opportunity to rank faster on Search Engines, since they are only competing with their actual local competitors.

Why? Because when it comes to certain types of services that are merely aimed to be offered on a local basis, websites that have a Local SEO Strategy can come up first.

The differentiation of a local service is already given, the place.

No person from Germany would be searching for a local service such as plumbing in Mexico. Or even from all around Mexico, people from southern states would be searching to solve their plumbing problems and wait a norther plumber to come.

But how does local businesses can take advantage on SEO, and how they can improve their websites so that Search Engines start to love their sites?

Well, there exists services that give support on Local SEO services.

What you should consider before hiring a Local SEO agency?

Ask first for proven results, or also what is the strategy that a Local SEO agency would follow to achieve results.

I do recommend a mix of Youtube and Website Local SEO content mix.

This way local businesses could showcase just a few of their services or products and could start appearing on local search results.

As well, don’t forget that business directories such as Google Local Business are a free tool that can help you appear online for free.

Plus, it is important for local businesses to get REAL Reviews. There are many new services around the internet that can offer paid reviews, just to give your local business a “look of success” on Google Reviews. This would just hurt your future reputation, and you actually ask why are customers not coming.

There is already a Google Local Guide Community around the world, try to contact people who would give a real and honest review, remember that some ways to improve is to listen what is been working good, and what is working bad.

There is a kind of a sort not written ethic code between the real envolved Local Guide Community to write their review as they feel it, but of course there are some higher levels who sell their opinion, so that their badge appear on the business review.

So to sum up my tips on Local SEO:

1. Create localized content for Youtube and your Website.

2. Add your business to Google Local Business.

3. Get real review, or contact Google Local Guides and ask them for a honest review.

As a blogger, once you keep walking on this path, one big question that arisses for the website builders is, which Hosting is the best one for WordPress?

The thing is, that as you start, you have no clue to decide which WordPress hosting to choose.

There are hundreds of different hosting service providers, that all offer and say to be the best one.

Well, just reading their websites is not the best way to decide.

They all proclaim to have fast connection, good prices and so on.

I am not a full web developer engineer, but certainly I have learned what has worked and what has not worked among the different WordPress Hosting Services.

I will talk about Godaddy vs Siteground vs Kinsta vs Cloudways, since those are the hosting services that I have used. Of course there might be another good and better services, but probably at different prices.

When I started in this WordPress Blogging world, I started with Godaddy.

Godaddy has been one of the most known services for domain and hosting for websites.

Godaddy had also very cheap hosting services, and as a small blogger this might be one thing to consider, the price.

But eventually, as I kept learning, and as I kept knowing more about WordPress, Godaddy hosting was really slow.

It was getting frustrating, the speed that I was achieving. So eventually I searched for more wordpress hosting reviews, and found about Siteground.

I bought Siteground 3 years GoGeek plan since it was offering multiple website hosting, email hosting and they had a good discount. I think it was during cyber-monday.

Godaddy vs Siteground, it was easy to win the fight here by Siteground. With Siteground, my website increased in speed, and I hosted more WordPress websites on it.

I started to use Elementor on my website and that affected my website speed. The good thing of Siteground was that most of their Customer Service Tickets resolve pretty fast any issue, or they guide you.

That is one of the best things I consider about Siteground, Customer Service.

Eventually, I learned about what was the meaning of shared hosting, and how this can affect your speed.

Many cloud services were starting to become popular. Plus, also listenting too much about Google Cloud Platform made me to have the desire to try Google Clouds Platform for WordPress Hosting.

Since I am not any high tech guy, going into GCP was a bit confusing, and there were some Youtube tutorials that showed you how to use Google Cloud for one Year for free.

Even Google Cloud Platform website recommended the managed services for WordPress, WPengine and Kinsta.

I liked Kinsta website, it seem a good service. So I choose to try the first simple plan that costed around $30.

The WordPress website speed was fast. And even to consider that I didn’t have it properly optimized, but for sure it could have even better numbers.

I was happy with Kinsta, until I got to know their business.

Kinsta counts the number of visits that you have on your website. If you exceed the number of visitors they will charge you. Of course, this will make you to consider jumping into a bigger plan.

The thing is that I didn’t like that in that number of visits, Kinsta also take into account Bots Visits so this was a really pain in the ass.

You have to pay for fake visitors. So I would say that don’t go for Kinsta. As I noticed this, I contacted their support, and of course they helped me to reduce the number of bots visits so that they are not taken into account. Eventually my website exceeded the number of visitors month after month, so I dropped Kinsta and went back to Siteground.

I was being curious on using Cloudways.

I have read many Cloudways reviews and many recommendations through Facebook groups.

I was using Siteground and I wanted to change my shared WordPress hosting to a dedicated WordPress hosting.

I saw some Youtube Videos by WPCrafter that recommended Vultr in Hiqh Frequency through Cloudways, since it was a cloud-based WordPress Hosting Service at a low cost.

The starting plan offered 1GB RAM, Processor 1 Core, Storage 32GB and 1TB Bandwith for $13.

So it seem to be a good offer, and I decided to give it a try.

The results of changing my Siteground Host to Cloudways with Vultr High Frequency are these ones.

As you can see, stated by Gtmetrix, my website improved in better seconds.

And I have to say, my website is not really optimized. My following steps are to look for a WordPress speed optimization service that helps me to improve my numbers, and reach less than 1 second.

But in terms of the First Contentful Pain from Siteground to Cloudways the difference is of 1.5 seconds, which it is a good result.

There are some blocking resources that I still have to fix for the Homepage that are affecting it.

But so far, I have noticed also better loading times on the backend, specially because I use plugins such as Elementor and WPML, which are not really known for improving speed. Actually, their codes slow down your WordPress Website, but they are easy and useful to use.

In terms of setting up WordPress in the Vultr High Frequency of Cloudways was really easy.

Probably the DNS configuration from Godaddy to Cloudways took a bit of time, until the change of IP address updated, but it was quite simple.

Cloudways has a migration service, but I actually used a Backup plugin to save all my files from Siteground, and then uploaded them again when I was already in Cloudways.

Quick and easy, Cloudways so far hasn’t showed me any complication, and their support team solved my only problem, that was about a WPML folder that was not able to been changed.

For now, I do recommend Cloudways with Vultr in High Frequency to have a fast WordPress Cloud Hosting service at low cost.

If you want event more speed, you could also try Google Cloud Platform or AWS through Cloudways, but they have a higher cost.

When it comes to easy and faster website building in WordPress, then a comparison between Elementor vs Divi would be a good starting point to decided which one is better.

I started to learn more about website builders such as Elementor since I was a working student.

Elementor actually was pretty easy to learn fast.

I remember that even at the training, the one who was in charge of telling me how to use it was actually surprised I catch really easy how does Elementor worked.

As many other tool, as you keep using and using a tool, you become more trained, and eventually your designs are better.

When starting web design with WordPress, one can usually just go with the WordPress Themes and then make the adjustments.

Those who build websites from scratch with HTML, CSS and Javascript, my respects, but honestly there are already tools that make simple and faster ways to build a website in WordPress.

Elementor for me was the go place, since I learned how to use it.

But one day one new eventual client contacted me because he needed help with WPML plugin to translate his website.

I did give him support with WPML, but he also asked me if I could help him improving his web design, and that he had Divi.

That was my first direct contact with Divi.

At that time, Divi was only for back-end web design, so in comparison with Elementor, it was a bit harder to see in real time the changes in front-end.

Eventually, Divi improved and you could build the website from the front-end.

But still I was not really getting used to Divi, but mainly because I was more used to how Elementor worked.

Divi had also some templates, but I found out that Elementor was starting to have more growth than Divi.

For example, the plugin from Envato Elements was really helpful to build up a website, and it was mainly compatible with Elementor.

If you are looking to build WordPress Websites with better designs for free, then, that combination could be perfect for you.

So, the main reason I am choosing Elementor, is because it is easy to use. The drag and drop is intuitive. It has compatibility with plenty other plugins and they are updating constantly their code.

Of course, a wordpress website builder such Elementor or Divi could add code that affect your loading speeds.

Elementor has turned out to be the go to plugin when we talk about WordPress PageBuilders.

Elementor is really to install and really easy to use.

I have used Elementor for more than 3 years now and I can say that it is way better than just using WordPress Themes.

One of the problems that I dealt while building websites in WordPress, was that I used to buy WordPress Themes on Themeforest, and then build from there the WordPress Website.

Since I am not a real Programmer or I don’t have full knowledge about HTML, CSS or Javascripts and so on, modyfing a WordPress Theme seem complicated for me.

Of course, you might not really need too much about IT skills, but at the beginning it was complicated.

As I learned about Elementor, it changed my way of building up websites.

With elementor you can build up your homepage in just minutes.

And if you mix it up with Envato Elements plugin, the work turns out easier.

The good things about Elementor are that it is compatible with multiple WordPress plugins, but sometimes the use of multiple plugins could make your website crash.

So it is recommended to go easy on the use of plugins, otherwise you will eventually have to deactivate and activate plugins, but this could also bring some issues in between.

Plus it is known that Pagebuilders add extra code to your website, so you might get a slower website, but with still loading times below 1.5 seconds.

When I started blogging in 2015, I started with the platform Blogger.

Blogger helped me to learn a bit of HTML and content creation.

Eventually, I wanted a better website, so I learned about WordPress.

WordPress has a huge jungle of themes and plugins.

So where to start a WordPress website that is good looking?

I did my research back then, and I found Themeforest.

Themeforest is Envato’s Marketplace of Website Themes.

Back then, I used to search among the big amounts of WordPress Themes, and start to learn about which could be a WordPress Theme that is good for my webiste.

Questions arised. Which one is good for SEO, which one is fast, which one is realiable and will have updates? And the amount of questions came on a wave.

Time passed and I bought around 5 different themes for different websites.

If you are familiar with Themeforest and Envato Market, you may realize that spending on themes have been a pain point.

They cost around $50 on average. So, I could imagine that even for agencies this could have been also a pain in the ass.

Eventually, time passed and I learned about Elementor. One of the best WordPress website page builder available up til now.

Using Elementor has been really easy, and have saved me money on WordPress Themes.

Having Elementor Pro version includes the WordPress Theme Hello, which is free to install.

But eventually, I saw that Envato rolled out now their subscription service called Envato Elements.

The good thing that I saw on Envato Elements is the price.

If you pay around $200 per year, you can have access to unlimited downloads of WordPress themes, stock images, stock video, illustrator and after effects files and more.

So actually I was getting more for what I paid.

I understand that Envato might have got the question, what are we going to do with old files. So they also combined new and old files on their subscription.

Not all of their thousands of files are good, there are also crap files.

If you ask me, does it worth better to spend on the Envato Elements subscription rathen than one single file on Envato Market, I will answer you, yes!

But of course, if you are looking for something more specific, then choose Envato Market.

But if you are looking for WordPress Themes, just don’t spend more money on Envato Market. You could also try the free plugin of Envato for WordPress and mix it up with Elementor.

You can have access to free WordPress Templates easy to install.

There are other subscrition services that are growing up such as MonsterOne, who are also offering WordPress Themes with a cheaper price, or even one time fee. I still don’t try it, but probably after I finish my Envato Subscription I would try for other solutions.

While working on Digital Marketing and creating content, one thing that it is needed for websites and social media advertising is image stock.

There are many websites that offer free stock images, but the thing is that sometimes the licenses of those images might not be for commercial purposes, or they are already been used a lot by many other websites.

So I have worked with Adobe Stock, and used images from Getty Images.

I have to say that for Adobe Stock, I got to know their credit system for images. You have to use one credit for one image.

The thing is that it might get expensive if you are going to use a lot of images.

One issue that I saw, was that sometimes high quality images are not a must in some projects. So why spend too much money on an image that will be in a webpage that might not receive high traffic.

Does the investment worth it? Certainly, for me not, and I don’t think that as well for the company.

When you are trying to build a brand, there might exist brand images or core images, that I think having a high quality image will worth the use.

So what solutions are there for the websites that are not willing to spend or have a high budget to fill out their websites with images?

Well, Envato Elements is one example.

I have used Envato Elements, and I do think is a really useful digital asset subscription for nearly $190 per year.

I consider it a low cost investment in comparison with the costs of Adobe Stock or Shutter Stock. 5 Credits in Adobe Stock cost $50 or their cheapest monthly plan costs $30. Shutterstock 10 images monthly subscription costs $50.

Well, as I said, does it really worth for you high quality images on the webpages that are not visited?

If I do talk merely about the quality, I have found better images in Shutterstock than in Adobe Stock or Envato Elements.

The subscription of Envato Elements aslo includes videos, wordpress themes, music, sound effects and more. So you are actually getting access to more digital assets.

I have also found about MonsterOne, which is a service that I haven’t tried yet, but it seems they offer to just have the image and video stock for $82 per year.

It is not a secret of me, how I enjoy Envato Elements, but of course there are many aspects that could be considered to be negative about it. Such as the big amount of useless files, since they were created like many years ago, or even files that I don’t requiere, like Joomla Templates.

Of course there are Envato Elements alternatives to consider, if you have another needs for your projects.

One question that I have receveived too much on my Youtube Videos are that “What about Envato Elements Licenses, can I download and stop paying and keep using the files for another projects?” and the answer is NO. If you want to keep using and creating new end products with the Envato Elements, you must be subscribed.

Another thing that you can do with Envato Elements, as an example, is to get the subscription for one month, download the file that you will use for the project, finish the project during that month, and stop paying the subscription. You will still have the license of the end project that you created, but the file that you downloaded, can’t be used for another project.

So what is a solution for that? Well, you can use Storyblocks.

If you are looking for an option that gives you the posibility to get the subscription, and then download the files and keep using them again for another projects even if you stop the subscription, then Storyblocks is the recommended for you.

With Storyblocks you can have access to Video, Audio, & Images, but as well, you don’t have access to WordPress Themes or Fonts, that Envato Elements has.

Also, Storyblocks has a bit more flexibility on the type of plans that you can choose for selecting a certain type of content.

Now let’s talk about Freepik. Who hasn’t heard about Freepik. One of the coolest digital assets marketplaces where there are many creative things.

I was used to use some files for them because mostly they are free if you only add the author in the description.

So it seem to be a very good place.

For personal projects, it seem ok, but I don’t think that on commercial projects having that Freepik “Watermark” so can I say, was a good thing. So the option was to start paying for Freepik.

Freepik is mainly focused on Vectors, PSD and Illustrator files, and Stock Photos.

So if you are also a WordPress Web Developer, then Freepik might not be an option.

But in comparison with the price between Envato Elements vs Freepik, Freepik has a monthly price of 10 euros, which is cheaper than even chosing the yearly subscription of Envato Elements, that it ends up around 14.5 euros.

When we talk about free royalty audio, there are multiple websites that can offer different soundtracks to be used.

Videos without background sound are almost just a few.

And creating Youtube Videos without adding that extra sound that makes it more special, seems to be quite difficult.

There are some sound libraries from Youtube and Facebook that can help you to find free music, but the music there is quite limited.

Therefore sometimes it is needed to pay for more extense music libraries.

Shutterstock has PremiumBeat as their sound library.

And as in the comparison of Envato Elements vs Shutterstock, Shutterstock aims to be a bit higher content quality website.

Premiumbeat offers different soundtracks that seem to be good quality, but the price is a lot higher than Envato Elements.

So again, the question is, which would be your need for content creation and what audio are you looking for?

Envato Elements has a wide variety of audio that can be used for different digital projects.

The negative aspect that I see on Envato Elements, that some of the audio content is already preregistered, and you will have to keep showing the audio license on Youtube for certain files.

So that means, that yes you have the license, but have to show it again to Youtube. It is double work.

When I use Envato Elements audio, I search for those soundtracks that are not registered on Youtube, to avoid this extra work.

Getting 5 tracks per month for nearly $65 is not an option for me, therefore price is a decision breaker for not choosing PremiumBeat.

For almost the same price, I am getting besides audio, also WordPress Themes, Image and Video Stock, Graphic Design Assets, and more.

Visual content creation needs time, and marketers and designers know that.

That is why we search for websites that can be a support to create content.

There is no perfect solution to create content, original self created content by artists might be out of the budgets of people.

Or also marketing teams have to deal with limited budgets that creating amazing content seem to be an impossible mission.

Therefore, sometimes it is required to look for creative alternatives that give a faster and accesible solution to those challenges.

The options that I have been mentioning are the use of Envato Elements and similar platforms to create visual content.

From Storyblocks, to Shutterstock, to Freepik, those have been solutions to access digital assets.

But now comparing Envato Elements vs Canva vs Placeit, are they worth it?

For whom it is meant to be Envato Elements when you compare it with Canva or Placeit.

Envato, released Placeit as their online creative solution, where it is supposed to be easier to use the different assets that Envato owns.

But in my shor test of Placeit, I was not really convinced to use it, when we talk about creating content direct from an online tool.

If I think about Canva vs Placeit, the most known tool for non designers has the win.

Canva has been improving and adding more features to its tool.

Placeit seem to be more focused for Mockups, but I do think that when designing a Mockup it might be better to use Illustrator, and in that case, it might be better to use the Envato Elements templates.

So which of those platforms are the best for content creation for non designers.

Well, quick and real answer is Canva.

Even Canva is adding Video templates that might be a good and easy solution.

I have been critized for a video tutorial that I created about how to use an after effects template from Envato Elements, and honestly, I do prefer fast and direct content, and that video might have been 3 to 4 hours long.

So if people are going to Envato Elements without any knowledge of After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, they might be lost. Since it is required a minimum of knowledge to really take advantage of those digital assets.

So as a summary, avoid Placeit, go for Canva if you are non Video or Design expert and use Envato Elements if you want to save costs and are intermediate user.

Also there is MonsterOne, another digital asset subscription option that I will talk about in future posts.

One of the things that I like about Envato Elements is the different amount of categories they have.

Envato Elements offers a variety of WordPress themes, audio, video, image stock, and also after effects templates, illustrator templates and so on.

I was contacted by MonsterOne, so that I can have a look to their tool.

For now I just have seen the free setup, but I can see that they offer almost the same digital assets as Envato Elements.

TemplateMonster has been another website that I knew when I think about WordPress Themes.

And as well as Envato, they created their own new subscription platfrom MonsterOne.

What could be a decision breaker between Envato Elements vs MonsterOne?

And as I can say, the decision will be based on the subscription plan and if you want the Envato Elements plugin.

The positive side I saw from MonsterOne is that they offer different types of plans.

One of their plans is that they have one just for stock material like images, and photos, graphic design assets and presentations for for less than $8 per month.

This actually makes a difference between Envato Elements and MonsterOne.

If you are a content creator, and actually you are not aiming for WordPress themes, than it might not be worth for you to spend double that price for files that you won’t use.

But if you want all the assets that MonsterOne has, then it might be a little bit higher than Envato Elements.

MonsterOne all-in-one plan costs $19 per month.

And if you are planning more like in a long them, MonsterOne has a one-time payment for $749 for unlimited access.

This I would recommend it if you want to stick with them and don’t worry about future file licensing.

As many different services, there are advantages and disadvantages.

As I have said, I enjoy Envato Elements because it has different categories that I actually use, and I find it as a good price.

As well, there is the Envato Elements WordPress plugin that helps with templates and images, making easier the process of building a website.

One of the aims of my website has been to go global.

Speaking several languages has also given me the opportunity to meet people from all around the world.

So the same question arises when it come to International SEO, how to reach international readers or customers?

Easy, be multilingual.

There are differenty type of international seo strategies that you can use.

Which one is the perfect one or the best one?

Well, it will depends on your budget and your focus.

If you are a big company and big resources, then the best way to do International SEO is to have several domains, and each serving the respective marketg.

You can just see the Amazon International SEO Strategy.

They are localized with a ccTLD.

If you are not deep diving into analysing domains, give back again a look to the different Amazon domain names.

They have a different domain for the US, for Mexico, for Germany, etc.

This would be the best and optimal way of doing SEO, since the content is already focusing on the country.

But what will happen if I don’t have the big budget or team to manage different websites.

Well, as blogger or small e-commerce shop, you can focus on having your main generic domain at .com, and then aim to other countries using folders.

It has been already recommended by MOZ that using subdomains are not the best way for aiming to international markets. That it is better to have the subfolders for each language.

As I have been working on developing my blog for international audiences, I have focused on that strategy.

It has been just a couple months since I reactivated my blogger profession with more time, and I can say that it is starting to increase in numbers of worldwide visitors.

There are different aspects to cover that in this article will tell you see the International SEO Checklist to take care about.

Of course, I will mention the importance of having WordPress Multilingual Plugins, like WPML or Weglot, which I already have mentioned previously their main differences.

One of the new services that are being developed is to use better cloud services as IT Infrastructure.

The big players like AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure are cloud services that seem to be focused for also bigger size companies, or at least bigger than just a freelancer or a blogger.

As a blogger, I wanted to have a place where I can write my content, and also a place where I can monetize my blog.

As one keep learning about the importance of website loading times, one understands how important is to have a fast hosting providers.

There is an increasing number of websites starting to use Text to Speech online software tools to generate another content format inside their websites.

Text to Speech online software tools are really useful to create different contents such as animated videos, audiobooks, or audio blog posts.

When creating an animated video, is understandable that some people either are shy to use their voices or it would be cheaper to use artificial intelligence text-to-speech voices to have a better audio.

The problem that has been time ago, was that the text-to-speech online tools available sounded very robotic.

But as technology has advanced, there were also improvements on how the text-to-speech online tools sound.

One of the projects that I wanted to give it a try and to develop different animated videos was the use of Text-to-Speech.

I found several free text-to-speech online software tools, but they actually sound pretty bad.

As I kept my research I learned more about Google Cloud Platform and AWS services for text-to-speech.

The thing was that both tools needed more advanced tech knowledge. I am not a programmer, so for me it required more time to figure it out how they work.

So eventually, I found Speechelo. It is also a text-to-speech online tool built up in AWS.

As I heard the voices of Speechelo, I was amazed.

It is an online tool that I would recommend, since it is easy to use and also the voices themself sound quite human.

I also share another text-to-speech online software tools that you could use for videos, audiobooks or Wordpress.

With CyberBukit you could also build your own SaaS with Text-to-Speech from AWS. Of course, this could be helpful if you want to start a Text-to-Speech online business.

As well, there are Speaker and Voicer, both were created by the same author Merkulove, and they use Google Wavenet.

You can get Speaker from CodeCanyon, and Voicer from Envato Elements, which in this case I would go for Envato Elements, since you could also get more resources on their subscription.

Remember, with great power comes great responsibility. As I see the advanced of AI in video and image, these tools must be used for a better world.

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