As you’ve already arrived on our website, we probably don’t need to ask whether you’re interested in blogging. You clearly are, and you might already own and operate at least one blog. Instead of telling you how to blog or what to blog about, today we want to focus on an increasingly important question – where to put your blog. No matter how great a writer you might be, or how exceptional your content is, your blog is only as good as the platform it’s hosted on.
The good news is that when it comes to answering that question, you’re spoiled for choice. Blogging has evolved from being a niche hobby to a full-time career for thousands of people, and so because of that, there’s no shortage of blogging platforms who want to provide your services to you at a small cost in the hope of helping you reap a larger financial reward. Knowing which to choose and where to start can be tricky, so we’ve identified the major options for you. If you’re thinking of starting a new blog or moving your current blog to a more suitable platform, we hope you’ll find it useful!
Tumblr
Depending on which internet news sources you choose to read and believe, you might be under the impression that Tumblr is in decline. If you’ve heard that opinion, don’t listen to it. It might be true that Tumblr has fewer users than it did a few years ago, but there’s a very good reason for that. In late 2018, Tumblr decided to ban pornography on its platform. There’s been a dip of around 20% in Tumblr traffic since then, but the net result is that it’s a safer, cleaner place for everybody.
Even with that reduction in traffic, Tumblr claims to host more than 450 million blogs (although not all of them are active). The big advantage of Tumblr is that it’s free. The downside is that it’s hard to monetize content, and there’s a definite focus on short-form blogging. In many cases, ‘blogs’ consist of nothing other than a single image and a caption. This is a place for light-hearted entertainment blogs, but probably not the best choice for business.
WordPress
If WordPress has any flaws, it’s that the site is so easy to use that people wrongly assume that it’s too basic. Nothing could be further from the truth. WordPress is so flexible and ubiquitous that it’s increasingly becoming the default site-building tool for online slots websites. Despite their appearance, online slots are far from simple to build or to host. Aside from the complex mathematics that drives UK mobile slots, they have to be ultra-safe and secure when it comes to handling financial transactions. If WordPress can host online slots websites, it can host your blog.
Although the claim is hard to verify, it’s said that up to 30% of all websites built in the past three years were made with WordPress. It isn’t free if you want to monetize your blog, but for a small fee, WordPress will take care of securing a domain name for you and provide you with a powerful range of development tools that can personalize the appearance and function of your website with the touch of just a few buttons. It’s popular for a reason.
Blogger
Blogger is old. For many people reading this, it will be the place they started their first-ever blog. If you have a Gmail account, you have access to Blogger even if you don’t realize it. So long as you don’t mind having a yourname.blogspot.com URL, you can own and operate a Blogger account free of charge, although you can remove the ‘Blogspot’ aspect if you’re willing to pay a small fee.
From a monetization point of view, the big pull of Blogger is that it comes with automatic access to the whole raft of Google marketing optimization products, including Analytics and AdSense. You can see how many people are using your site, what they interact with, and how long they stay online with you. This also means you can easily incorporate adverts onto your blog pages and start making money quickly – so long as your content draws in an audience, of course! The only drawback is that it’s simple. You can’t customize it as easily as you can a WordPress account, for example.
Squarespace
You don’t need to know anything about coding at all to use Squarespace. It’s operated by clicking on things you like from the menu and dragging them into place. Squarespace was designed for small business owners who might not have an in-house IT department or web designer, and so simplicity is its watchword. The templates are elegant, and so long as you use them correctly, your site’s visitors would never know that they were using something designed by an amateur.
With all this simplicity comes a downside. Squarespace doesn’t ‘plugin’ to any other apps or websites. That means the only tools you can use are the ones that Squarespace comes with, and they’re a drop in the ocean compared to what you’ll get with one of the more expansive platforms. The lack of integration might make it difficult to expand your site. When you’re paying up to $50pcm for an online store, you might be entitled to expect a little more.
Typepad
Somehow, Typepad manages to operate largely below the radar despite being online since 2003. Even though it was designed specifically for bloggers, it isn’t as popular or universally recognized as any of the other services we’ve mentioned so far. That’s a shame because it’s exceptionally good.
When you’re working with Typepad, you get a range of features that make your life as a blogger much easier. You can publish new content directly from an email, or any web or mobile browser. It plus directly into Google Analytics, and it even offers its own affiliate plan. It doesn’t just allow you to make money – it actively helps you to do so. For less than ten dollars per month, you get a full support facility, storage for four different blogs, and a set of templates to help you with the layout. We struggle to find a bad word to say about it.
If you’re serious about blogging, we’d suggest that Typepad is well worth your time. If you’d like your website to be more than just a blog, though, perhaps WordPress might be more suited to your purposes. That being said, there’s no harm in checking all five of them out and seeing which one appeals to your tastes the most!
