A free blogging site is enough?

This might be one of the most confusing questions for a beginner. The answer is simple, yeah! It's more than enough. I'm not simply saying, here is the proof, Do you know harsh Agarwal? He is a popular blogger from India, he started his blogging journey from a free Blogspot account and later migrated to WordPress. Now he makes more than $200K from his blogs. Sounds great, isn't it?

A free blogging platform is the best option for a newbie because blogging is not easy as you think. You may lose interest as it gets hard, there are many things to create a money making blog, you should have basic knowledge about things like SEO, keywords, backlinks etc. Otherwise your blogging career will be a disaster.

It's true that 'experience makes an expert' and a free platform is the best place where you can get the Perfect experience.

You can't become a successful blogger overnight, it needs time and patience. Always try to concentrate on a particular niche, which will make it easier to get good ranking in search engines. Here's the list of most profitable niches to make a blog.Definitely, these free blogging platforms have different  pros as well as cons

Why free blogging site?

• It's free, you don't need to spend any dollars, these sites will provide a subdomain and hosting which is completely free and highly secure
• Easy and basic technical skills are required, as we know it's simple to get begins with sites like blogger and WordPress.com. They are easy to use and No setup required
• Most of the platforms provide large storage space to save the post. Creating an article and adding media files are very easy on your blog

Why not free blogging sites?

• Lack plugins, for many bloggers availability of different plugins are the major reasons to use WordPress.org. The plugins make blogging easy and it also has an important role in creating an SEO Optimized content. Comparing to self-hosted sites free blogging platforms lacks plugins.
• You will be given free subdomains, but it looks ugly, for example, just think about a Web address like myblog.wordpress.com or myblog.blogspot.com instead of myblog.com, its look so bad, right? It also creates a negative impact on visitors because visitors may think you are not serious about your blog. But there is an option to add custom domain, but you will have to pay for that, there are many websites like GoDaddy or BigRock which will provide domain names. Try to buy it as early as possible because the age and number of backlinks to the domain have a significant role in the ranking of the blog.

9 Most Popular Free blogging sites

Here are the best free blogging platforms we’ll be discussing in this article. The list is completely from the professionals and they are not in any order.

9. Livejournal

Livejournal is an entirely different platform, it's a combination social network and blogging. Livejournal is free and you can utilize almost every feature without paying anything, but they also provide premium plan for those who want to expand their online presence. You can also interact with other users and participate in polls to build your network.They don't have different plugins and features to stand out from the modern blogging services.

8. Ghost

If you are searching for an alternative to WordPress you will definitely end up with Ghost. It's a pure blogging platform with so many features. Even many bloggers are converting their blog from WordPress to Ghost. While most of the above site's are concentrated on website building Ghost give more importance to their blogging service. You will get a different experience that's the main motivation behind switching from WordPress to Ghost. However, Less number of feedback from the real users and fewer number of plugins are the main cons of this new free blogging site.

7. Weebly

Weebly is more than just a free blogging site, they are a powerful website builder with drag and drop tools. Anyone can build a huge online presence with their awesome features and well optimized templates. Weebly was developed by David, Dan and Chris to help their friends to grow their online business. Now, every day 40 million Weebly websites are visited by 325 million unique visitors world widely.

They provide a wide range of premium plans and services to their customers. To ensure the satisfaction of customers they have a highly rated mobile application available in all popular App stores.

The problem while website backup is one of the main reasons for many customers to quit Weebly. You can backup all content into a zip file, but you cannot upload it back to the site. So when you lost your blog you have to start from zero.

6. Squarespace

Squarespace is one of the fastest growing free blogging site's which allows the small business owners to promote their online business and to create online stores. They are available both in free as well as paid version.

Every feature is owned by the Squarespace team even they provide website analytics, hence errors or troubleshooting are comparatively less which gives tension free blogging. Their other advantage is customer support, they give 24/7 customer support via chats, email and well-maintained forums with answer to your valuable questions. Squarespace also includes services like blogging services, hosting services, web site builder etc.

As we all know mobile-friendly has a major impact in better search engine ranking, here they will automatically change your desktop view to responsive mobile template.

Pricing and fewer plugins are the major drawbacks of Squarespace. Since every feature is owned by Squarespace there is lack of plugins. While expanding the website the pricing is also comparatively high when compared to similar blogging platform.

5. Wix

Wix is a cloud-based website builder with easy drop and drag tools. The simplicity and low cost attract more people,  as of 2014 Wix.com had more than 50 million registered users and thousands of peoples registering each day to promote their online business. You don't need a website designer everyone can build a website using Wix.com

The free blogging site needs to upgrade to the premium version to utilize features like e-commerce, adding custom domain, extra storage facilities, etc. Even though hundreds of stylish templates are available you cannot change it but you can customize to different styles.

Wix is not the best blogging platform when it comes to making money from it, They are freemium platform, which means they are making their earning through premium plans. So, if you want to remove their advertisement from your account you should pay.

As we know twitter has a range of 140 characters when it comes to publishing a post. To overcome this limitation Twitter co-founder Evan Williams developed Medium which allows you to longer posts or documents and now they have more than 60 million unique visitors.

If your vision is to make money, Medium is not a good idea for you. But you will get more time to make good contents because you don't need to waste any time to design the blogging platform.

Medium provides a neat and better place for writing, which enables you to write good content. You can easily track the status like how many people read the post, location of the visitor, etc. Unlike other blogging services, you only need a Twitter, Facebook or email address to sign up with medium.com

3. Tumblr

Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking website which allow users to publish multimedia and other contents. Tumblr isn’t right for every blogging niche, but for some niches it can drive huge traffic. Blogs which are concentrated on pictures, videos, infographics etc. are most suitable for this free blogging site.

By using mobile application, it's very simple to post from anywhere. With Tumblr you can select a theme and customize it completely according to your taste. Recently Yahoo purchased them, now this free blogging site has over 349.3 million blogs and more than 149.3 billion posts in total.

Though there is some limitation to Tumblr as well, they perform badly for longer posts, even the templates are designed for shorter posts and to make blogging easier no plugins are available.
Here is the List of few blog types suitable for Tumblr

     1. Photography Blogs
     2. Blogs based on videos
     3. Blogs with short post
     4. Linkblogs

Some features of Tumblr.com

• Easy to insert images from the Web, after pasting the URL of the picture to the post area, the actual image will appear
• Users can subscribe to your blog to get new updates, it will increase the traffic
• You can convert your post to audio post
• You can add custom domain to your blog
• So many attractive themes
• You can customize themes to make your own theme

2. Blogger

Blogger is the oldest and widely used free blogging site and undoubtedly the best available option for a beginner. The search engine giant Google owns the platform, I think which is enough to understand the power of blogger.

Using Blogspot is simple as using a social media website, you don't need any knowledge about the platform. The simple tools allow you to create posts without any problem. You only need a Google account to start a blog on Blogspot. You can utilize many Google services such as Adsense, Google Analytics, Google console etc. without any risk. It's possible to migrate from Blogger to WordPress if you want to extend your site.

After creating an account, you will be given a free subdomain with blogspot.com, if you don't want the free subdomain you can simply replace it with a custom domain

Benefits:

• Easy to use admin panel, even a first-time blogger can create and publish blog posts easily
• It's in the cloud, so you don't need to worry about getting hacked
• For a starter blogger is the best option to make money, you can monetize your blog with different program like Adsense, Amazon affiliate etc.

Limitation:

• After the introduction, very few features and upgrades are added to the Blogspot which means Google is giving less importance to their blogging platform
• Lack of extensive template library, but you can upload different custom template. Here's the list of Top 10 Blogger templates to improve SEO and design of your blog
• Google can delete your account anytime if you violate their terms and conditions, even a fashion blogger has lost his 20-year-old blog without any notifications
• Lesser number of plugins and widgets and Media files like PDF, word doc, etc. can't be uploaded to your blog

1. WordPress.com

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system based on PHP and MySQL, they have a free blogging site (WordPress.com) as well as a self-hosted blogging platform (WordPress.org), Most of the professional bloggers are using self-hosted WordPress.org for their blogs and websites.

According to Wikipedia, As of January 2015, more than 23.3% of the top 10 million websites use WordPress. Easiness and SEO advantages are the main reason for the popularity of this blogging site. If you have a plan to earn more, go with WordPress.com, it's easy to migrate from a free account to a self-hosted WordPress.

If you migrate to the premium version you will get many plugins and features to write a perfect article. For example, Yoast is a powerful plugin which makes it easy to write a better search engine optimized article.

Pros:

• No worry, you do not have to worry about your account because they will give better security and protection for your account
• They provide storage space up to 3 GB after that you should upgrade to a premium plan to use their service

Cons:

• You do not own your blog and they can shut down your account anytime if you violate their terms of service
• Less opportunity to make money, this free blogging platform does not support many advertising programs, you can apply for their advertising program if you have a high traffic blog where you have to share revenue with them
• You cannot use any free or paid plugins, but there are a lot of built-in plugins
• Limited number of themes, WordPress.com users cannot upload a custom theme but can use the free theme's which are limited in number and design

0. Blog.com ( Bonus )

As its name indicate, blog.com is a perfect site for blogging. Like any other free blogging site, blog.com also provides features like adding a custom domain, high storage space, themes, etc. Blog.com have free as well as premium plans. To avoid ads from your site, you'll have to pay them.

You cannot test all the given platform to select the best blogging platform for you. If you have basic blogging knowledge and want to earn money, then there is no free blogging site better than WordPress.org. Otherwise, if you don't know anything about blogging and don't want to spend any dollars, then Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, etc. will be the better choice. If you're confused between Blogspot and WordPress, Here is the detailed comparison between Blogger vs WordPress

What other site are you using to build blogs?I'd love to know more about it in the comments.

The answer is simple, the most popular social network has more than 1.94 billion active users. This huge number of active users are the best source to get exposure.

Like social media, we know email marketing is one of the popular ways to reach customers, every blogger should start collecting email from day one. The major limitation of email marketing is that your mail may not reach its audience because of spam filter and even there is a minute chance to shut down your website if several customers report your mail as spam. Due to these reasons, Facebook can dominate email marketing.

A well maintained Facebook page has following benefits:

1. Building the Brand, if you continuously provide valuable and informative articles, people's will follow you without considering how popular your website is. By consistency and responding to visitors queries you can earn trust, this is the basic step to building a brand.

2. More traffic, Facebook page will definitely increase your blog traffic if you use it properly. Sharing increase exposure, more exposure means more traffic. By using attractive images and description number of clicks can improve.

3. Boost SEO, we already know the importance of social signals when it comes to SEO. Facebook enhances the social media interaction to boost SEO, which will bring more visitors via search engines.

How to Add Facebook Popup Like Box to Blogger Blogs

1. From Web browser log into your blogger account and select the blog you want to add the widget.
2. Now from the dashboard navigate to 'Layout' and click on ' Add a Gadget' in the sidebar.
3. When the popup window came, select 'HTML/JavaScript' and paste the below code.

<script src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js' type='text/javascript'></script>
<style>
#fanback {
display:none;
background:rgba(0,0,0,0.8);
width:100%;
height:100%;
position:fixed;
top:0;
left:0;
z-index:99999;
}
#fan-exit {
width:100%;
height:100%;
}
#fanbox {
background:white;
width:420px;
height:270px;
position:absolute;
top:58%;
left:63%;
margin:-220px 0 0 -375px;
-webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 0 50px 0 #939393;
-moz-box-shadow: inset 0 0 50px 0 #939393;
box-shadow: inset 0 0 50px 0 #939393;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
border-radius: 5px;
margin: -220px 0 0 -375px;
}
#fanclose {
float:right;
cursor:pointer;
background:url(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NRmqfyLwBHY/T4nwHOrPSzI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/8b9O7O1q3c8/s1600/fanclose.png) repeat;
height:15px;
padding:20px;
position:relative;
padding-right:40px;
margin-top:-20px;
margin-right:-22px;
}
.remove-borda {
height:1px;
width:366px;
margin:0 auto;
background:#F3F3F3;
margin-top:16px;
position:relative;
margin-left:20px;
}
</style>

<script type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[
jQuery.cookie = function (key, value, options) {
// key and at least value given, set cookie...
if (arguments.length > 1 && String(value) !== "[object Object]") {
options = jQuery.extend({}, options);
if (value === null || value === undefined) {
options.expires = -1;
}
if (typeof options.expires === 'number') {
var days = options.expires, t = options.expires = new Date();
t.setDate(t.getDate() + days);
}
value = String(value);
return (document.cookie = [
encodeURIComponent(key), '=',
options.raw ? value : encodeURIComponent(value),
options.expires ? '; expires=' + options.expires.toUTCString() : '', // use expires attribute, max-age is not supported by IE
options.path ? '; path=' + options.path : '',
options.domain ? '; domain=' + options.domain : '',
options.secure ? '; secure' : ''
].join(''));
}
// key and possibly options given, get cookie...
options = value || {};
var result, decode = options.raw ? function (s) { return s; } : decodeURIComponent;
return (result = new RegExp('(?:^|; )' + encodeURIComponent(key) + '=([^;]*)').exec(document.cookie)) ? decode(result[1]) : null;
};
//]]>
</script>
<script type='text/javascript'>
jQuery(document).ready(function($){
if($.cookie('popup_user_login') != 'yes'){
$('#fanback').delay(10000).fadeIn('medium');
$('#fanclose, #fan-exit').click(function(){
$('#fanback').stop().fadeOut('medium');

});
}
$.cookie('popup_user_login', 'yes', { path: '/', expires: 7 });
});
</script>
<div id='fanback'><div id='fan-exit'></div><div id='fanbox'><div id='fanclose'></div><div class='remove-borda'></div>
<iframe allowtransparency='true' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' src='//www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?
href=http://www.facebook.com/326511797720823&width=402&height=255&colorscheme=light&show_faces=true&border_color=%23E2E2E2&stream=false&header=false'
style='border: none; overflow: hidden; margin-top: -19px; width: 402px; height: 230px;'></iframe>
</div></div>

4. After adding the code correctly and click on 'Save' button to complete it.

Customizing Facebook like box:

You can make some changes to this code according to your wish.

• To insert your Facebook page URL, replace http://www.facebook.com/326511797720823 with the URL of the page that you want to show.
• Currently, the widget will show 10 seconds after loading the page. You can increase or decrease the delay by changing '10000' in .delay(10000)
• Do you want to show the like box every time new page loads? Remove $.cookie('popup_facebook_box', 'yes', { path: '/', expires: 7 }); from the above code.

Hundreds of blogs are creating every day, it's sad to say a lot of newbie bloggers are stopping their carrier because they can't earn anything from their blog. Some even say " Blogging is over". But it's not true, By the innovation of new techniques blogging has changed a lot and became very different than it used to be.

Many platforms are there to start a blog. Choosing a right blogging platform and a most profitable niche are the two important steps before starting a blog because it affects your journey.

Blogger vs WordPress, this is one of the most asked questions when it comes to choosing a blogging platform and it's a most challenging and confusing topic because many users prefer Blogger while others choose WordPress and both of them have their own reasons. I'm pretty sure that you will definitely get the best answer after reading this article.

Currently, there are two WordPress blogs one is self-hosted WordPress.org and another one is free blogging platform which is WordPress.com. Here we will discuss the self-hosted WordPress vs Blogger.

Blogger vs WordPress: Understanding the free Blogger platform

One of the oldest free blogging platform developed by Pyra labs, which was brought by Google in 2003 and It has redesigned multiple times to introduce new features. They allow multi-author blog which is hosted by Blogger with a subdomain blogspot.com. Blogger is always the first choice for beginners because maintaining a blog is very easy and you doesn't require any skills. Let's have a look at the Pros and cons.

Pros

• Do you know the best part? you don't need any skills to create a blog on blogger, it's simple as creating a social media account.
• Since Blogger is owned by Google, they nicely integrated some features like Adsense, Google+ which avoid the complications. 
• You don't need to pay anything to build a blog, which means you don't need a domain name or hosting platform. They will provide a subdomain with blogspot.com, if you want your own address you can purchase and add a custom domain later
• Blogger provides 1 Gb disk space to store your images
• New blog posts get indexed instantly in Blogger this will helps to get good results from search engines like Google
• Today Spam comments and website hacking are two common things but they are highly secured and the chance of getting hacked is very rare. Blogger does its best to filter spam comments
• You can turn your passion into profit by different monetizing methods. Adsense is the best PPC advertising program and a Google product, hence it is integrated into blogger dashboard to make it easy to use

Cons

• The worst thing about Blogger is that Google owns your blog. There is a possibility to delete the blog at any time even without a notification. So, if you are planning to go with BlogSpot always try to keep the backup of the contents
• Blogger lacks plugins, blogging platform like WordPress provides different plugins which simplify the writing and helps in search engine optimization
• A limited number of Templates are available, SEO ready Blogger template is the first step to creating a successful blog. But the number of Templates available in blogger is less and they are not good when it comes to customization

We discussed the Pros and Cons of Blogspot. Now let's learn about WordPress to understand Blogger or WordPress is the best choice for you