If you want to start a blog as a beginner, a free blogging site is a great place to make that leap! If you’re still unsure, read on to know the benefits of choosing a free blogging site to start your blog.
Are you looking for some blogging platforms to help you start your blog and share your thoughts with the world? Whether you want to share your thoughts with just with your friends and family or you, wish to inspire a larger audience, choosing the right blog platform is important. This is particularly true if you are not a tech-minded individual and have no team to keep your blog up and running at all times. For a beginner, setting up a blog can be quite time-consuming and confusing if you don’t choose the right platform. Also if you hire someone for the job, it can be quite expensive unnecessarily.
In today’s time, setting up a blog is a lot easier than you might think especially if you use a free blogging site to start your journey. Whenever you plan to start a blog, most people advise you to go with a self-hosted blog. They believe that to create a professional image, the self-hosted platform is the only right way to go. Well, this isn’t true anymore!
There are now some free blogging sites and platforms. They are offering as much functionality and features as paid platforms. One example is of WordPress, which is now one of the widely used platforms in the global business industry.
Today’s free blogging platforms are not only easy to use but also offer you with all the customization tools that you want to provide the audience so that they can read as well as interact with the blog.
In this post, we will discuss the best reasons to go with a free blog site and some amazing platforms for it. We will help you compare these options so that you can decide on the platform that can finally have the privilege to host your blog.
Understanding Free Blogging Platform
A free blogging site or platform is one where one can sign up without making any payment. Creating an account on the platform, getting a domain, setting up the site is free. One of the primary things to understand about a free blogging platform is that your site’s files are hosted or stored on the servers of your blogging platform. However, in some cases, there might be some cost involved, just after the initial set up.
1. Free of Cost
When you are starting on a small budget, the open platform is certainly a good deal. You can save the money for other uses like paying for web hosting or buying a theme rather than using a free one to improve the site’s appearance.
2. Easy to Use
Most of the free blogging platforms come with a five-minute linstallation and extensive support guides that walk you through the entire process. Some so many people are running a successful blog site although they are not tech savvy.
All you need to do for understanding the free blog platform and using it for your benefit is reading the guide thoroughly. You may also join the conversations in their support forums and ask relevant questions. Speaking of which, this leads us to our next benefit of choosing a free blog platform, i.e. support community.
3. Vast Support Community
Do you know that almost 30% of all sites are now running on the WordPress platform? It holds a 60% share of the entire CMS market. There is an increasing number of people using such platforms, every day. This means that in case you have some technical question or problem, odds are there is an answer already waiting for you.
However, to get that answer, you would need to check the support or developer forum of the particular platform. This also means that if you wish to outsource the content, site maintenance or design, you can get the assistance of hundreds of writers, developers, designers and editors who understand the dynamics of the blog site’s CMS.
4. Better Budget Allocation
When you choose a free blogging platform, it helps you save a good amount of money. This means that you can use this budget to improve the aesthetics of your blog site. Since most blogging platforms are open source, people always find ways to make it more distinctive. For instance, if you are not satisfied with any of the free themes, you can use the budget to get a professional-looking paid theme.
A good theme plays a critical role in improving the appearance of your blog. When you incorporate a premium paid theme to your blog, it enhances the signage, virtual color scheme and the details of the layout of your site.
All of these are some of the many benefits of choosing a free blog site to start your blog. Now it’s time to look at the amazing features and functionalities offered by some well-recognized free blogging sites. But before we dig into that, let us first have a look at the significant factors that you must consider before choosing any of the blogging platforms.
Factors to Consider Before Choosing a Blogging Platform
As you decide which free blogging site or platform is best to start your blog with, here are the primary considerations to guide you.
1. The Budget
If you plan to earn through your blog site, it is usually difficult to estimate how much cash inflow to expect. Even though you select a free blogging platform, there might be some cost involved in signing up an account or at later stages of your blog creation. For instance, you might need to acquire some paid features or functionality to get as much customization as you need.
Similarly, some blogging site may charge a fee after the first year or so. This means that consideration of your allocated budget is inevitable in choosing the right platform.
2. Level of Control
Another critical factor to consider is the ability to control the type of posted content and who can view your blog. Before you select a free blog platform, you would like to know if you are getting the ability to access the backend of the blog to edit pages, posts, comments or change the status of different users.
Thus, take your time and determine the level of control you need to have over your blog visitors. Make sure that your chosen blogging platform fully supports these features. Don’t forget the cost of using a platform increases with the level of control. Most of the people like to go with WordPress because it provides maximum flexibility at a much lower cost.
3. Ease of Use
Many common blogging platforms come with a decent CMS. Most content management systems offer original features like bold, underline, font style, italic, and some more styling options.
Even though they are enough for some people, other people may require simpler to understand features like editing images, switching between visual view and HTML code, inserting tables, highlighting text, etc. The more options your CMS offers, the more chances you get to make visually appealing content.
4. The Skill Level
Are you a tech-savvy person? Do you know what it takes to code in PHP or CSS? If yes, you will face an easy time when searching for a blogging platform. However, if you are new to the world of blogging and have no idea about coding or technicalities involved in blog creation, it is better to search for a user-friendly blogging platform.
Avoid selecting a platform that you may find difficult or confusing to work with. Don’t follow the trend but choose the one that best meets your skill level.
The Popular Free Blogging Sites to Start Your Blog
Now, it’s time to discuss some free blogging site or platforms that can help you start your blog right away. For each of these platforms, we will;
- Quickly summarize the type of use it works best for
- Share the valuable information about getting started with your blog
So let’s dive in!
1. WordPress.Org
WordPress.org is a favorite self-hosted version of WP. It is the most widely used platforms in the entire world. The platform works great for people who wish to own their blog with multiple customization options completely. It is a great platform to set up a blog site that you can work on long-term.
This platform is mostly used for managing personal blogs as it is much easier to set up, customize and maintain. Some of the pros and cons of selecting WordPress.org include:
Pros:
- Free software
- Quick install
- Self-hosted
- Beginner and advanced friendly
- Flexible
- Constantly improved/updated
- SEO-friendly
- Thousands of 3rd party plugins/themes
Cons:
- Not completely free
- Offers steep learning curve
2. Wix
Wix offers the best solution for professionals and businesses to instantly build a high-quality site with plenty of great features. The platform is best for all those people who are not tech-savvy and need regular site functionality along with the blog.
This free site builder can easily be handled from the front-end. The most prominent characteristic of the Wix platform is that it offers a drag-and-drop option, so you don’t need to tackle anything in the back-end. Wix provides an entirely modern and intuitive design that is liked by both professionals and beginners.
The reason why most bloggers prefer Wix platform is that not only offer free hosting but it also has the most comfortable setup. Just pick a template, arrange the layouts, and you are all done. You can choose the theme that best meets your blog’s requirements from its excellent collection of premium and free templates and themes.
To launch a blog using Wix, sign up and make your choice. You may either let Wix create an excellent site for your (based on a questionnaire) or build your blog on your own that include arranging the layout and selecting the template via the WYSIWYG editor.
Pros:
- Free software
- Ad integration
- Drag & drop site builder
- Professional designs/themes
- E-commerce tools
Cons:
- Limited customization options
- Changing templates/themes isn’t easy
3. Weebly
This is another site builder that can not only be used to create a blog but also to showcase your portfolio or to sell products. Just like Wix, this also offers a WYSIWYG editor along with drag-and-drop elements. For instance, to add a particular button on your blog, drag it on the page and customize it. The same goes for slideshows, photo galleries, and other multimedia elements.
The platform offers built-in analytics and allows you to create your customized domain. When you go with a free plan, you get a Weebly subdomain, custom pages, and spaces, and 500MB storage. In brief, Weebly is one of the best e-commerce solutions.
Pros:
- Drag & drop website builder
- Free software
- Simple and easy to use
- Unlimited storage
- E-commerce tools
Cons:
- Limited themes
- Weak platforms for blogging
In a Nutshell
Now you must know how big of an impact a blogging platform makes on your business. This means that you should make this decision by considering all the above-discussed factors. Never be in haste while making this decision. Take your time and find all the implications of the potential judgment.
Choosing a free blogging platform does not mean that you should compromise on other factors like support, storage, mobile friendliness or others. Thus, choose the blogging platform wisely so that you can easily set up and maintain your blog in the long run.
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