It could be readers, customers, fellow enthusiasts—whatever your blog audience, you can build it bigger with these solutions.
Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder, like Wix. However, it’s famous for aesthetically pleasing templates, making it perfect for visual-based businesses like photographers, designers, and artists.
And if something does go wrong, Squarespace has highly-responsive customer service available 24/7. The relatively small monthly fee for the sitebuilder is probably a lot less than keeping a professional designer on retainer.
That said, you can monetize your Blogger page very easily using Google Adsense. Fill out a quick form with your payment information, and Blogger will put relevant ads on your site, bringing you income based on how many people visit.
And if you are an on-the-go person, don’t worry. The Wix mobile app lets you design and blog right from your phone.
Is your blog part of your brand? This is important when looking at blogging platforms, as some of your free options are going to limit the branding control you have.
In terms of getting a great looking blog off the ground quickly—with zero web development experience—Wix should be a top choice.
Wix will even let you start editing a sample blog right on their site, to get a feel for how the designer works. If you like it, you can begin working on your own Wix blog immediately.
Website builders can do a whole lot more, though they aren’t free like the traditional platforms.
All of this through your own blog, which you don’t have to pay for or maintain.
Blogger and Medium, on the other hand, don’t run ads. So if you want a free blog to promote your business, I’d start with one of those two.
If you aren’t super worried about aesthetics, Blogger is a good choice. The template selection is relatively sparse and you have to know HTML in order to customize beyond the basics.
Start using Medium today for free, and who knows, maybe you can generate a little cash on the side.
#5 – Blogger Review – The Best for Sharing Your Story
Think of Blogger as a low-stress, near-zero maintenance blogging platform. It works well for people that have a story to share, but aren’t willing to invest significant time and resources into their blog.
You can get plugins and themes to take your site wherever it needs to go, and if you can’t, there is probably someone working on a solution right now.
In order to read a lot of the premium content on Medium, you need to pay a monthly membership fee. Some of that money goes to sustain the site, but some goes to the writers whose stories are being read.
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Plans start at $16 per month for Combo, which is good for personal use, and range up to $45 per month for the VIP plan, which has a lot more storage space and tools to grow your brand. This price includes web hosting, which normally costs around $10 per month. Really, Wix includes everything you need as part of the premium package.
The Business plan lets you accept secure online payments and further customize your site with premium integrations. Take reservations, book appointments, or sell products and services. Choose the features you want and leave the maintenance to Squarespace.
If you start building out a really complex site with a lot of plugins, sure, it’s going to be more work to maintain, but you’ll also have a blog that’s much more unique than what you could assemble on Wix.
Your story could be about your life, your product, your community, whatever you want. Blogger gives you a venue to broadcast your message, and Google handles all the technical legwork. You don’t have to worry about backing up your site or getting hacked.
Squarespace is a fantastic option that keeps improving. The company is constantly adding features and upgrading the interface.
In terms of free blogs, I highly recommend Medium to people looking to broaden their audience without investing too much time. The built-in readership is unlike any other platform and offers a great way to connect without spending more money.
This is a potentially monster avenue for targeted outreach within your niche. And a way to gain clout quickly by publishing alongside some bigger names in your topic of choice.
If you are just starting off, this isn’t too much of a concern. But performance can suffer once you start to see a lot of traffic or add a lot of features to your site. No one reads blogs that take a long time to load.
Branding Your Blog Your Way
For some bloggers, turning a profit isn’t the main focus. If they can make a little extra cash on the side, it’s a bonus, but they’re not depending on blog income to live.
Do you want to skip the read and get right to my top pick? The best blogging platform for most people is WordPress with Hostinger hosting.
You also can’t make a million dollars on Medium, like you can with a website builder that has more ways to monetize your content.
WordPress is my top choice if you are trying to deliver a unique blog experience for your readers. There are no limits to what you can create, and if you pick a reputable cheap web hosting option like Hostinger, it may cost you less than the all-in-one website builders.
Everything looks crisp with very little configuration on your end. Your final product is going to make a professional impression, whether visitors are on a laptop or mobile phone.
Blogger also integrates with popular email marketing services, which turn your blog into a newsletter.
It’s one of the reasons that Squarespace is the website builder of choice for many artists, architects, photographers, and the like.
You don’t have a techie bone in your body to start drafting, editing, and embedding your own pictures or third-party media.
Since WordPress is open-source and ridiculously popular, there is an active community that is constantly building new features for today’s challenges. These are just some of the reasons more people choose WordPress for their blog:
- 55,000+ plugins to extend the functionality of your site
- Thousands of free and premium themes
- The Gutenburg block editor
- Advanced user roles and permissions
- Powerful media management
- A massive community of experts
- Infinite design control
Is your blog going to have videos, plugins, or other resource-intensive features?
WordPress lets you broadcast your message and engage your audience along any conceivable vector. Use plugins to turn your website into an SEO powerhouse or double your blog’s traffic. There are thousands of plugins and a giant community of users building new solutions every day.
The premium blogging platforms give you a lot more control and design flexibility, allowing you to build a complete website and brand around your blog.
You also want to get your own domain name to build your brand. Free blogs give you a subdomain with their company name in your web address. On blogger, your URL would be yourusername.blogspot.com.
Premium Wix plans are broken down into three groups: Websites, Business and Ecommerce, and Enterprise.
Medium lets you connect with a curated audience for free, and gives you the ability to share posts across social media with ease.
What you’ll find, though, is that hosting your own WordPress site often winds up being cheaper than getting everything bundled.
Get everything you need in one place and let Hostinger take over some of the basic maintenance.
Tools for Growing Your Audience
To add more functionality to your blog, there are tens of thousands of WordPress plugins you can use. These will help with SEO, site security, setting up newsletter subscriptions, and so much more. Lots of useful plugins are free.
Choose Blogger if what you want is a traditional blog. With minimal effort and oversight, you’ll be able to get a readable blog off the ground.
But WordPress.org is completely free forever. It’s just about keeping in mind the associated costs.
Alternatively, you can download the platform for free at WordPress.org and use it on a site you host yourself. Hosting isn’t free, but if you go with a high-quality WordPress host like Hostinger, the whole thing winds up being less expensive than going with a similar website builder.
Business and ecommerce plans start at $27 per month and allow you to accept payments online and sell products and services directly from your blog. Even for more complex sites, the Wix set up process will still be very user-friendly.
This is why I recommend that people starting their first WordPress blog use Hostinger. For less than $4 per month, you can get WordPress hosting that comes with automated WordPress updates and a free domain name for the first year.
Getting things set up is as simple as using the drag-and-drop editor to design your site. There’s no code necessary.
How does it look? They are using their own platform, likely pushing it to the edge of possibility in order to show off new features.
While the Squarespace interface isn’t as intuitive as Wix, it’s not hard to get the hang of it. And once you do, you’ll find that you have more control over what you can do with the color palette and layout.
Most blogging platforms offer templates, themes, and designs that you simply have to add to the blog on the backend (in the CMS).
