Setting up a free blog is something I never recommend to my clients or friends who are wanting to get online to share information and hopefully crack into a niche to make some money. Platforms like Blogger, while they're technically "FREE" they can actually cost you a good amount of money in the long run and make you a very angry person.
The top 3 reasons you shouldn't use a free blogging platform
- Your blog can be taken over by a troll or thief. This doesn't happen very often, but it's possible for them to do so. Your username is easily found when posting to your blog because it shows up in the authors section. And if someone has a key logger they can set it to run an unlimited number of instances to try and hack into your blog. Once they're in they can change all your settings and take over your blog. I'm not sure if Blogger has changed their settings or not, but I know in the past you didn't have to verify the change of your secondary email from your secondary email. If you lose your blog like this you could be losing a good amount of income, readers, and possibly all your pages because the person deletes a bunch of stuff.
- The free blogging platform you choose to use can actually shut you down for any reason they want. They can do this because you're not paying them anything and you're basically using their name to post content. They could shut down your blog simply because they don't like you, which sucks.
- You don't really have 100% control over what you post. Sure you can post whatever content you want usually, but you can't place ads in certain spots of your choosing because it isn't pre-coded into the blogging platform. Now you could put the ad in the content, but if you already have 100's of pages, you'll have to edit all of them which will take an extremely long time.
Having a blog that you pay a monthly fee for isn't expensive at all. You can buy your own domain for $0.99 to $25 depending on where you get it and if you get privacy on the domain. You can also get a decent hosting plan set up for anywhere from $3 to $14 depending on if you want your own dedicated IP for SEO purposes. So if you went the "Expensive" route you would be paying $39 for your first month and $14 a month after that. It's basically the same price as if you went out for lunch with a friend.
What's your experience with free blogging platforms? Have you ever had a bad time with them?
Thanks,
Razzy
Cristian
1. I never knew free platforms like Blogger can be hacked. I had a lot of blogs in my lifetime on Blogger and none got hacked, ever. Maybe if you use some custom script or theme but that's virtually possible for any blogging platform, no matter if its paid or free.
2. Yes, they can shut down, but I doubt Google will close Blogger anytime soon, maybe re-brand everything into something similar, but not close. And even if they choose to shut down completely you'll still get a notice and you'll have time migrating everything from Blogger to Wordpress (it's pretty easy actually).
3. I think Blogger is pretty versatile, especially when it comes to placing ads. But I agree, you don't have the liberty wordpress haves when it comes to new functionalities or custom stuff. On Wordpress you have a huge range of plugins and themes. On Blogger everything is very limited and you need to use them at the fullest. I think free blogging platforms are great, especially when you want to test a website or a niche first to see if you are capable of producing views and quality traffic. 1. I never knew free platforms like Blogger can be hacked. I had a lot of blogs in my lifetime on Blogger and none got hacked, ever. Maybe if you use some custom script or theme but that's virtually possible for any blogging platform, no matter if its paid or free. 2. Yes, they can shut down, but I doubt Google will close Blogger anytime soon, maybe re-brand everything into something similar, but not close. And even if they choose to shut down completely you'll still get a notice and you'll have time migrating everything from Blogger to Wordpress (it's pretty easy actually). 3. I think Blogger is pretty versatile, especially when it comes to placing ads. But I agree, you don't have the liberty wordpress haves when it comes to new functionalities or custom stuff. On Wordpress you have a huge range of plugins and themes. On Blogger everything is very limited and you need to use them at the fullest.
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