How to start blogging for free in 2020? Absolutely free!
Although starting a blog is easy, but it could be a little intimidating if you are wholly new to blogging. It is more confusing especially when you are looking to know how to start blogging for free!
I have
decided to make money blogging, which I am doing for a while. If you are
planning the same and looking to start blogging for absolutely free, it is the
right piece for you.
Here, I am
going to compare a few amazing platforms to start blogging for free, their pros
and cons, and above all, we will check if there are inherent costs or no cost
involved.
Before
proceeding, I am listing out the contents about some popular platform below,
which I will be discussing:
- My opinion
One - Wix
If you are
not into coding but looking to start blogging for free with a website like
functionality, Wix is one of the best platforms to start. It has a free website
builder with easy drag and drops features that are fully manageable from the
front-end! You don’t need any coding ability to customize it.
You could
choose from many free and premium blog themes, which are crisp, modern, and
amazingly designed. What’s more, you can also check and optimize your layout in
a live mobile preview. It also offers a library of nice royalty-free images,
videos to use, so you could make your
site more appealing.
Wix has an intermediate-level feature like Wix App Store. It allows you to integrate social
media apps, subscription forms, chat boxes, pop up help, and much more to your
blog to make it a really professional business website. It’s SEO features is as
smart as WordPress.
That’s all
good.
But, here is
a little hitch!
When I am
telling about how to start blogging for free, I mean something absolutely free!
Wix will give you free hosting, which is
great, allow you to build an amazingly professional website but it won’t allow you
to have a custom domain for your blog for free!
If you are
to make money blogging, a catchy custom domain is as important as the blog is
for you. A free Wix domain will look like username.wixsite.com/siteaddress.
And, it will put random Wix ads on your site. The best thing is to get rid of
it!
It has a few
premium plans, which start from as low as $ 4.50 per month for a year or $ 7.00
every month to start a domain with additional benefits. To get the best of
experiences, you can choose a plan according to your cut.
(image – Wix
price plan )
Two - WordPress
WordPress
basically draws its fame as a crown platform of blogging. It’s a free site that
allows you to customize it the way you like, the possibilities are unlimited in
theory at least. It probably has the highest numbers of amazing free and
premium themes to look from.
You could
customize it from scratch. Talk about layout, colours, features, functionality,
interactiveness you name it. That virtually makes it “the website platform” of
the world, with around 30% of the websites are powered by WordPress!
Come to
additional features, such as; plugin, adding advanced functionality through PHP
or Javascript, SEO support, the advanced algorithms, etc are bonuses that are
constantly updated and improvised.
These have
made WordPress eligible for any kind of business purposes from a simple blogging
to comprehensively advance e-commerce.
But it’s not
possible to start blogging for free with WordPress. You will need to find a
domain and a hosting service to publish your blog. None comes free!
Bluehost is
offering a very reliable hosting service that gives you a “free domain” at a very competitive $2.95 a month, with 30 days money-back guarantee.
If you think
you can afford it at this stage, go for it.
(image –
Bluehost)
On top of
that, WordPress is not easy at all for the non-techie kind. You can customize
anything, yes, but you need good knowledge about coding to any. Advanced
feature integration will demand advanced programming languages!
If you are a
coder, WordPress is for you to start. But if you are not, you need to outsource
the customization and integration work to a professional, which is costly to
say at least.
Frequent
updates of plugins are yet another potential hitch! Every time there is an
update, you have to update manually or have it done by a professional. So, it’s
another cost!
So, for a
non-techie who is looking to start blogging for free, WordPress at this stage
may give you some hard landing!
Three - Weebly
Weebly is
kind of a more basic version of Wix. It has a website builder like Wix, with
many easy customization options. You can drag and drop buttons, add sidebars,
mail subscription, newsletter, social media icons, and all that is essential
for a blog.
It also
provides a library for royalty-free images and videos to from, but compare to
Wix, it’s option is pretty basic. Its outlook is reasonably outdated, to be
honest. Weebly also doesn’t give custom domain for free, that means you have to
spend money on it.
You like to
start blogging for free but when you are looking into money blogging, you will probably
want to venture into a business or affiliate marketing in the future. With
these prospects in mind, Weebly will come as a 3rd or 4th
choice, I guess.
There are
premium price plans from Weebly with added benefits.
(image –
Weebly price plan)
Four – Medium
If you are
not right into money blogging and like to just write and share your experience,
Medium is The Best Option for you by far. The key difference between Medium and
the other platform is, you don’t need to build your page.
Just open an
account in Medium and write about any subject you like. It is Facebook of
blogging! You will find a vast array of diverse topics to write about and that
too to a readymade audience.
More than 60
million visitors visit Medium per month and the number is growing. So, if you
just like catering to a ready audience and make a name for yourself, go for
Medium.
Five – Joomla
Joomla is
similar to WordPress but its offerings are much much basic. Like WordPress, it
doesn’t give free domain and hosting. So, you have to find both elsewhere in
this case too.
Joomla site
editor is a bit old-styled, tab oriented, and looks like word processing
software. You have to select the
categories of the blog first and, then need to link it appropriately to get
things to order.
There are
different page builder options for Joomla, such as; Joomshaper, SP builder,
Joomshack, etc.
(Image – SP
page builder)
To enhance
the functionality and overall experience it has different tools to integrate
just like WordPress plugins.
In all, you
could get an excellent functional website out of Joomla. To take it to the next
level, Joomla users can tap more
professional resources from Jumerix at different prices.
Six – Blogger
Blogger is
another free hosted platform owned by Google. Its page builder is basic, has
limited no of themes, plugins, widgets. So, the scope of customization is rather
limited! It’s drag and drops feature is very simple and doesn’t need coding in
most cases like others, except in a few cases.
The main
advantage of start blogging for free on Blogger is that it is free and flexible
to both ends. Like Wix and Weebly, you will get free hosting on Blogger with Blogspot
subdomain, but unlike others, Blogger will let you choose a custom domain and add
it with the subdomain.
This is a
big plus to start blogging for free!
With
absolutely no cost needed to set up, it offers several other advantages:
1. Since it is owned by Google, Adsense
integration and approval is easy.
2. Its admin panel is minimal, so
contents and templates are manageable from one place.
3. It is SEO friendly, can be integrated
and tracked with Google Analytics.
4. Free hosting on Google servers means
100% uptime.
5. Blogger is compatible with HTML/CSS
and could be customized with a little knowledge of simple coding.
The main
disadvantages are that your custom domain will come with the Blogspot subdomain
and a limited number of plugins/widgets for enhancing the user experience.
But, here we
are talking about to start blogging absolutely free, right? So, there will be some trade-off naturally!
Seven – My Opinion
We have
discussed some of the popular platforms out there for a beginner. Now, let’s
consider three following scenario:
1. A wannabe blogger has some learning
curves ahead about successful money blogging. It will take a while to be at
ease and start having some income. You need Google Adsense approval, which also
takes some time.
2. An intermediate level money blogger
may want to experiment with other options like Affiliate Marketing, Online
Business, Paid Online Course, etc, to broaden income envelope. It will not be
easy with a simplistic platform like Blogger.
3. Your blog will be your brand tomorrow!
Your Brand will bring money, reputation, trust, opportunities, and influence.
Without proper branding, your blog will not grow up to its potentials. Your
website will correspond with your brand value. Thus, a very professional
website is needed.
So, regarding
these above scenarios, if I am gonna start blogging for free today, I will
initially adopt a 2 step strategy.
Step 1 - I
will start a blog free with a logo and a custom domain. I will work very hard for
3 – 5 months to have at least 25 decent optimized contents, have my Adsense all
set up and approved, and gain some valuable experience of slip-ups along the
way with an absolutely minimal cost.
Here,
Blogger.com will be a huge help.
Step 2 – Being
a bit more experienced and confident after 5 months of research and hard work,
I will be considering my overall situation to move out to a more professional
platform, such as; WordPress or Wix.
This is just
an opinion, though! Personally, I don’t like the idea of spending on fancy
staff while I am at darkness altogether about the world of professional
blogging.
Conclusion
Whatever way
we start blogging, we must remember that blogging is really about passion. If
you are not passionate enough or struggle to keep your passion burning, try to
get a grab of it first!
And, fast!
More than
money, being passionate is the real investment we could put into our effort. If
one can do that, success is just a formality.
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