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Choosing the right blogging platform is the first step to making money with your blog.
Your blogging platform will affect search engines optimization, traffic and sales.
What blogging platform should you use for your blog?
There are many blogging platforms you can choose from to create a blog but having many choices can be confusing.
So, read on to find out what blogging platform is best for you.
If you want to set up your first blog, you may want to read my other article first:
How to set up your blog to make money and make your blog profitable.
4 popular hosting choices:
- wordpress.com – free hosting. WordPress.com is okay for personal blogs but not for money-making blogs.
- wordpress.org – self-hosted. You pay for a domain name and for hosting. WordPress.org is the most popular and the best option for beginning bloggers who want to make money with their blog.
- blogger.com – free hosting. Blogger.com is okay for small personal blogs but not for money-making blogs – your blog url will look like yourblog.blogspot.com
- Drupal – Drupal is a good system that is more suited for people with coding knowledge.
Free blogs
WordPress (WordPress.com) and Blogger (blogger.com) are the two most popular FREE blogging platforms. You don’t even need to buy a domain or hosting as they provide a FREE subdomain on their site (e.g. yourname.blogspot.com) and free web hosting on their server (free hosting).
These are good options if you’re don’t want to spend money to create a blog and are not interested in making money with your blog. If you are just looking for an easy way to build a small personal blog, then both WordPress.com and Blogger can offer you the basic platform to start your blog.
But if you’re using the free hosting options offered by free blogs, you’ll have limitations that will severely limit your money-making opportunities. And free blogs don’t give you any credibility with your prospective customers.
Do you want to make money with your blog?
If you plan on building a professional blog or want to monetize your blog, you should use WordPress.org., avoid a free sub-domain and invest a small amount of money for a domain and hosting.
To make money online, you’ll want to have your own domain name and pay for hosting.
The cost of a domain is only around $20 a year and you can get hosting from Bluehost for around $3 to $10 a month. These small fees are well worth it because they’ll give you more opportunities to make money with your blog.
Getting your own domain is essential to get credibility and promote your brand.
You can register a domain at Godaddy or Namecheap or many other domain registration services. If you’re a new blogger, the easiest option is to get your domain through your hosting company. Bluehost will even give you a free domain name for the first year.
For hosting for new bloggers, I recommend Bluehost. Most bloggers should start with the lowest plan which cost as little as $3-$4/month. If needed, you can easily upgrade later.
WordPress.Org
WordPress – WordPress.org is the best choice to create a blog if you want to make money online
It’s important to understand the difference between wordpress.org and wordpress.com.
WordPress is free open source software to build websites. The WordPress software is free and is built by hundreds of community volunteers.
WordPress offers a hosted option (wordpress.com) and self-hosted option (wordpress.org).
You want to use wordpress.org and get your own domain name and pay for hosting to build your money-making blog.
WordPress.com is a free blog hosting service that is very limited when compared to self-hosting with WordPress.org.
Blogger
Blogger is owned by Google.
Disadvantages of Blogger:
- A big disadvantage of using Blogger is that Google is in control of your site and they make up the rules about what you can and cannot do.
- Blogger doesn’t provide plugins and automated SEO features like WordPress does.
- Blogger has less templates, less flexibility and limited potential to add extra functionality.
- Changing/editing a template requires knowledge of HTML.
Drupal
Drupal is better for more complicated CMS (content management system) but most bloggers don’t need advanced CMS and prefer WordPress. Drupal is more suitable for experienced users who know coding. I found a good article about Drupal in case you want to find out more about it.
Summary:
If you are just looking for an easy way to build a small personal blog, then both Blogger and WordPress.com can offer you the basic platform to start your blog.
If you plan on building a professional blog and want to monetize your blog, go for WordPress.org, invest a small amount of money for a domain and hosting.
Need help setting up your blog? Check out my blog worksheets and templates that will tell you exactly what to do to make money blogging.
BLOGGING RESOURCES
- Checklists, Worksheets & Planners to Set up a Money-Making Blog.
- Hosting: Bluehost & SiteGround.
- WordPress themes: ElegantThemes/Divi, GeneratePress, Genesis theme from StudioPress & DIYThemes.
- Popular email marketing providers: Aweber, GetResponse, ConvertKit, and MailChimp.
- The best online spelling and grammar checker: Grammarly.
