Blogs are a great way to share your thoughts and ideas with the world. Today it is fairly easy to start a blog even without any special technical knowledge thanks to easily customizable platforms like WordPress. Some blogs are real money-making machines that allow their owners to make money with blogging and become full-time bloggers. In this post, we will reveal the best websites where you can start blogging for free.
To start a blog is also cheap and you can do it for less than a hundred dollars a year. The step by step process of starting a blog is as follows:
- Choose a niche for your blog. This is what you will blog about, the topic and your area of interest
- Pick a domain name and register. The domain name needs to be suitable for the niche, and easy to remember also it should be available, meaning no one else has registered it yet. The domain name registration will cost you around $10 a year.
- Buy webhosting. You need to buy web hosting with a hosting provider company. There are many to choose from and the monthly cost is few dollars. Many web hosting companies will even give you a free domain name when you buy a hosting package.
- Start publishing blog posts. Once you have domain name registered and web hosting you need to start blogging. Write about your ideas and things that is of interest to your readers.
If you are not sure if blogging is really for you maybe you should first start with a free blog. There are many online platforms or websites where you can start a blog for free and with little or no experience. Here are some of the best you can choose from:
Wix
Wix is a website where you can build a blog for free. It offers good and functional platforms you can use to create a website or a blog. You can create the layout of your blog as well choose from many free themes that you think it is best for your blog. You will also get free hosting and a platform that is very easy to use regardless of whether you have some experience or you are a complete beginner.
First of all, you need to do is to open your account on Wix. The next step is to create your website. As we mentioned earlier you can choose the template you like the most and use WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor to create your site or you can go the even easier way and answer a few questions after which Wix will generate a website for your based on your responses.
You can create the blog to your liking and launch it with the press of a button once it is complete and looks the way you like it. To make the blog you like you can customize it easily by adding video boxes and widgets, various forms, changing background, typography, menus and you can have a live preview of all the changes even before you click publish.
WordPress
WordPress is the number one platform used to power millions of blogs online. Bloggers choose and love WordPress because it is very easy to use and customize. With WordPress, you have 100% control of your blog. You can customize anything from themes to social media sharing buttons using many different plugins.
When choosing to use WordPress for your new blog you should know that you have two options. You can use it to create your own stand-alone blog by using your domain name and paid web hosting or you can create a free blog on WordPress.com and use a subdomain and free hosting.
The free option is used to create a personal blog and comes with many limitations. One of the most important is you can not monetize your free blog while on the other hand, you can turn your WordPress blog into a money-making machine by displaying advertisements, promoting affiliate programs, or selling your own products.
Blogger
Blogger is one of the best free blogging platforms and is also very popular. It is a platform that is very easy to use and to start your free blog you will need a Google account to log in and choose your own subdomain name.
Blogger is perfect for first-time bloggers to give blogging a try before they go and create their own self-hosted blog. The platform is extremely easy to use. You can choose templates, colors, easily add widgets and even monetize your blog by adding advertisements.
Weebly
Weebly is another platform you can use to create your blog for free, but also you can use it to create a website to promote your business by showcasing your portfolio if you are a freelancer. It is easy to use because it has a WYSIWYG editor you can use to easily customize every element on your site by simple drag and drop.
You can add and customize buttons, ad spaces, galleries, forms, social media buttons, widgets, etc. Just as with other free blogging platforms the free account comes with a number of limitations. With Weebly, you get a subdomain, 500 MB disk space.
When we think about blogging platforms we usually don’t think about LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social media network used by professionals and businesses to connect to target audiences.
There are millions of businesses that use LinkedIn and are very active and the audience on LinkedIn. There are mostly professionals and business owners and this is a reason why LinkedIn is a good option to publish blog posts. This mostly applies to digital marketers who target professionals and businesses.
To publish a post on LinkedIn is simple. If you already have an account you can go to Write an article on LinkedIn and this will get you access to the built-in editor. You can write your post and even add images and change the format of the text.
Although LinkedIn is not used primarily for blogging you can still publish blog posts and use it for blogging especially if your target audience is businesses.
Medium
Medium is another platform where you can blog for free but unlike other websites mentioned here you will not have your own domain or subdomain but all your articles will be published on Medium. The pros of why you should write on Medium are that there are millions of readers that visit Medium every month.
To join Medium is easy. Just join and start writing and publishing your articles. You can write on any topic of your choice and not worry about the technical issues of running your blog. You can even start making money by publishing on Medium.
Ghost
Ghost is another modern platform for blogging. Ghost is in many things similar to WordPress but also keep in mind that setting up is not as easy and straightforward. It will require some technical knowledge about how to set up your servers but once you’re done publishing your posts is very easy. There are many settings you can adjust to make your blog fit your preferences. Ghost platform is free and you can use free hosting to create your blog.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a platform that is free to sign up and use and is more oriented to personal blogs rather than the business. Tumblr is a platform that is for those that want to focus on writing and posting. It has some very basic customization options and is also more oriented towards rich media content. in some things, Tumblr has much in common with social media platforms compared to other blogging platforms.
To write your first post on Tumblr you need to sign up and start writing. The user interface is simple and intuitive and you can choose the post format you like.
Webstarts
Webstarts is a great and free way to build your blog. Webstarts offers many features for its clients like free-to-use tools, images, icon libraries, and more. A free account at Webstarts will offer you an unlimited number of pages, 1 GB cloud storage, and 1 GB bandwidth.
However, just like with most other websites that offer free blogs, there are a number of limitations on free accounts. With your free account, you will not get among other things a custom domain name and you can not remove ads from your blogs.
Joomla
Joomla is another blogging platform that is free to use but still, you will ned to provide the web hosting yourself. The Joomla platform is great for bloggs but also other types of websites even very complex ones.
Joomla platform is very customizable and you can choose everything, text font, background, tables, etc. But the editor is not simple to use and is not for beginners. If you don’t have experience with old-school editors it is best to look into other platforms on this list.
Jimdo
Another free platform you can use to create a free blog is Jimdo. You can use the free version to create your blog which is recommended because it is very easy and simple. The first step you need to do is answer a few questions and then based on your answers you will have your blog created.
Jimdo does have some customization options like text formats, images, buttons. To publish your first post is easy although a bit different from other platforms that use a text editor. One of the downsides of having a free version is that you can not remove ads and you can’t have a custom domain.
Conclusion
If you want to get a feel about and don’t want anything to do with technical stuff and the hassle of creating your own self-hosted blog one of the options in this list might be a great way to start blogging for free. If you have already used one of these platforms please leave a comment and tell us about your experience.
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