As a beginner, you can make use of the following blogging platforms. Because I recognize that one size does not fit all, I focus on a number of website tools, including Wix and Squarespace professional website builders, as well as

WordPress, Blogger, and Google Sites. We all have various interests and needs, as well as distinct use cases, thus when it comes to blogging, one platform may be superior to another.

What are the most effective blogging platforms? What are the various use cases? Why should you choose this platform over this platform, and so on… So let’s get started.

1. wordpress.com

The dot-com version of WordPress is a website builder because there’s the dot-org version so you see in a lot of tutorial videos like with buying for example oh start with Bluehost and build your WordPress powered website and people get confused that “oh we’re talking about wordpress.com no this is a website builder”. It’s terrible marketing to have these two services titled the same thing now that wordpress.com exists.

It is simply full admittance to WordPress yet you’re on their own particular common servers alright as that is the thing you’re somewhat paying for so it’s a mix of a web have an area name register content administration framework all incorporated into one thing it’s a web designer so that is the thing web designers are presently this is an beginning stage for individuals since you realize you can get you can bounce into WordPress you can utilize the Gutenberg block editorial manager you can sort of figure out WordPress yet my primary issue is that drawn out this is excessively costly so for instance we investigate their different valuing plans so we have individual premium business e-commerce now in my opinion as a content creator and as a professional blogger.

I’m not saying it sounds arrogant, but as someone who does this for a job, the only feasible choice is the business plan since the business plan come down let’s scroll down here so right here set up plugins and extend the functionality of your site so you have to pay 25 a month for one website just to be able to install any theme that you want in any plug-in that you want whereas right now you can just jump over to like Bluehost or site ground or name here or whatever and pay a much lower fee have multiple websites and use WordPress and have full featured full access to it so that’s why everyone always says like go with a shared host but it’s totally up to you like if you.

Where you don’t have to set anything up, wordpress.com is pretty good because the premium plan is all right here now you’re kind of limited with the you know plugins and themes like everything’s kind of built in the themes are all built in but this for me is a deal breaker because the main uh plugin that I like is uh Yoast SEO which gives you a little bit more control over the on-page SEO of your website and also enjoy using things like beautiful links to generate nice looking affiliate links and kind of cloak everything, but you can’t do any of that stuff with the premium plan because you can’t install plugins, which is a deal breaker for me, so this plan is fantastic.

If you’re just looking to have a casual blog that sort of thing and you’re okay with just paying a little bit a little bit of a small fee it’s just a personal website then I would maybe consider the premium plan but for most people who want to build an income generating web property you’re going to have to use the business plan and again for me that’s just a little bit expensive at 25 a month but again totally up to you.

In any case, I’m only attempting to assist you in making a purchasing decision. That concludes number one wordpress.com and number two wordpress.org.

Now, this entire page exists only as a sales page for WordPress, which is the open-source software that you install on a shared server, and to find a shared host, you must go somewhere like Bluehost.

2. Bluehost

Which is an independent web host, and you go here, click on get started, then over here you choose a hosting package, then you submit payments, and then you have your own server, and then you can install WordPress, and so right down here is why you’d want to do this because, like with Bluehost, this is why you’d want to do this.

You can start at $5.45 per month, which renews at $16.99 per month, but you can lock in this pricing for a 36-month term, which is ideal for several years and top features such as limitless websites, as with wordpress.com. It was literally for one website at that price point, whereas this plan allows you to pay 545 for multiple websites, and this is the plan I like the best because it allows you to really grow and scale your website up to over a thousand visitors per day, and then if you want to move away from Bluehost and go to a little bit more of a professional level web host that’s geared for like wire tie traffic websites.

You can do that, but Bluehost is the number one recommended web host because they are like the best they are one of the best shared hosts for just beginners because they make everything very easy and simple and intuitive setting up WordPress is easy the SSL certificate is automatically done for you very simple and then once you have everything set up you’re going to be on the back end of your website this is WordPress it’s functionally the same as wordpress.com okay so you’re going to be on the back end of your website and Most importantly, you can install any theme you want, so you can install any sort of theme or plugin you want, you’re not limited in any way, and so that’s number two wordpress.org and number three blogger.com.

3. Blogger.com

I love blogger obviously because I use it and have a tons of tutorial videos on it, but is it the perfect blogging platform? Absolutely not, so a blogger website will not rank as well as a WordPress website, so if you want to build an income-generating web property, you should definitely go with a host like Bluehost and install WordPress and go that route, but if you want to set up a casual personal blog that makes a little bit of money on the backend as just a creative outlet, blogger is just wonderful and to get started is really easy you just come over here just click on this orange button that says create your blog then all you have to do is sign in with a Gmail account and that is it and then once you’re signed in all you have to do is buy a domain name from like Namecheap then set it up on so I’m paying for my domain name but I’m not paying for web hosting like this website and also I’m not paying for web hosting at all.

You can check it out, but it’s a full-fledged website with no limitations. It’s not like wordpress.com, where you have to pay four dollars a year to set up a custom domain name; instead, you can do it with blogger for free and engage in various monetization strategies, such as the ads you see over here, which are populated by Google auto ads and so on.

I’m making like a dollar a day nothing much but hey okay I’ll take it a dollar a day from a completely free website free in the sense that I’m not paying for web hosting not the domain name and that’s it you can engage in other monetization strategies so we come over here we have this blog post where I talk about a vlogging camera that I really like and it runs ads within the post over there so it gets clicks over here we have affiliate links for the you know specific camera that I’m talking about etc.

So that’s why I kind of want to just mention this because it’s a full website you can engage in affiliate marketing so what I mean by that is you can’t make it like edge of david.com product and then have it redirect to the product you have to use the raw affiliate link unless you want to use something like Bitly in order to like cloak it you could guess you could do that but again this is just for personal use that’s why I would recommend blogger so it’s really helpful and really fun little creative website that I’ve been able to build over here and I would recommend blogger to anyone who just wants to have a you know a casual blogging outlet and you’re not trying to build this big massive website and it’s just fantastic because you just have to pay for the domain name and you get free web hosting number four is Wix.  

4. Wix

Wix, that website builder, they actually have vastly improved their blogging aspect of their website builder to rival WordPress to be honest with you I’m quite impressed because I checked out Wix years ago and I wasn’t that impressed it was really focused on design and layout and the look but from a technical standpoint the blog was pretty weak not anymore it’s really good so here I’m logged into my account let’s go over here and create a new post, this is the blogging aspect so you can create a title paragraph we come over here to click add very intuitive and easy to add in galleries videos gifs images just drag and drop into place but also you also have granular control over your SEO so you can oh it’s x out of that you have your granular control over your SEO so you can change the page title the URL slug SEO title all those essential little things that you need to do that you can do within WordPress you can do with Wix and even like categories and tags they’ve included.

Now social shares, so when people share your blog posts on Facebook or somewhere else, you can change how it looks specifically anyways one thing I really like that doesn’t get enough attention in my opinion is the ability to content lock your blog post and create some kind of subscription service and this is just integrated within Wix.

You have to subscribe to his site in order to read this blog post, and with Wix you can do that right here you can set up your own little payment plan and content lock everything so you have private blog posts people have to subscribe to the website now the only issue that I have with the blogging aspect is that they don’t have any type of like redirection functionality built in so you can’t have something like mywebsite.com product name and have it redirect to the affiliate link.

If that makes any sense, you have to use like Bitly or use straight affiliate links, so that’s something that they really need to add. They need to add in that ability to set up redirects and if they just did that, it’d be perfect. It’d be literally like a perfect blogging platform for a website builder. Let’s just take a look. So here’s the website. So let’s navigate over to the blog aspect and there you go. Okay, so it’s a blog, nothing fancy, and with the Wix website builder you can just completely change the layout, the look, and feel of your website as you want. So if we open up this blog post right here, we have our content and you have specific control over how everything is displayed. So if you, for example, come up with the author name and the date, if you just want to get rid of this and hide everything.

You can hide everything at the click of a button, so you have full control over the way your blog looks and how each individual blog post looks and that’s why I really like Wix. My only issue with Wix is just the lack of ability to set up any type of like URL redirects for link managing your affiliate links. Otherwise, it’s a fantastic blogging platform and something that you should be aware of if you’re considering going with Wix to create any type of like blogging website. So anyway, that’s number four Wix.

5. squarespace.com

Squarespace and Wix are similar in terms of blogging, but they are quite different website builders. I would characterize Wix as an unstructured editor where you may move the on-page items wherever you want. Squarespace focuses a little more on templates and altering items inside templates.

Also changing colors is very simple but very effective and nice for a beginner you have a title of the blog specific description of what people can expect your different categories let’s take a look at a blog post the URL structure is really nice we have slash blog slash post title one column design looks great so it’s a very minimalistic blogging experience but it’s very effective so that’s number five squarespace.

6. Tumblr

In the sense that it’s a free blogging platform, you can set up a website, you can set a custom domain name and then it’s really not that hard just to publish content. It comes with a lot of helpful tools that just make everything easy, so from text to photos, quotes, audio, video, etc., like they said, you can put anything you want here really easily. It’s really nice for videos, audio chat, etc. and so a good example of a Tumblr blog is this, which is a simple Tumblr blog that includes everything that is fascinating.

If you simply want a casual little creative outlet where you’re not trying to make money from it and just want to share things, et cetera, maybe grow a following and have some type of blogging platform where you can set a custom domain name, then Tumblr is the place to go.

7. ghost.org

This is very incredible. It was founded in 2013 on Kickstarter, of all places, and it was primarily designed to focus on creating a platform for journalists. Let’s jump over here to the about page, creating the future of independent publishing. A non-profit organization building open source technology for journalism. That’s how this site got its start. That’s what ghost.org was founded on, but over time they’ve really kind of pivoted away from that and they’re more about just making for independent publishing and as it says over here, ghost.org is all about writers; it’s like having your own small publishing firm with a primary focus on subscribers.

We have a bunch of different options to subscribe to the website and that’s it. All of this is powered by ghost.org, so let’s go back to the resources and they have a bunch of helpful aspects like integrations with thousands of apps and services for their website, product updates, themes, marketplace, etc., so let’s just jump over here to the integration section and they have a bunch of popular integrations with numerous companies very easily and So let’s look at their pricing. How much does this all cost? So pretty affordable. Actually, we come down here. The starter plan is just nine dollars a month. Keep in mind that this is for one website at a time, so it’s not like a shared host like Bluehost where you can have multiple websites, one website per plan, but you can start a 14-day free trial to see if Ghost is for you. But anyway, I really like this as a unique alternative blogging platform with more of a personal touch. ghost.org.

8. medium.com

I believe many of you are familiar with this website because it integrates well with Twitter and I’ve used Medium in the past. It’s always been like a subdomain of a medium, just a place to share thoughts about, like, whatever I wanted, but Medium has definitely changed over time. The first thing that they now have is a type of membership, so you can upgrade to a membership for five dollars a month or fifty dollars a year and So it’s kind of like a Skillshare revenue model because over here you can sign up and become an actual content creator and earn money for your writing. Let me just back out of this a little bit. We can come over here and we can set your ideas in motion. You can start writing, creating free accounts and get going. Then when you’re ready, you can go ahead and apply to the partner program and so you get paid based on how many people read your ad.

 So if those people are paying members and you get you know you earn credit towards getting paid exactly like Skillshare if anyone’s on Skillshare it’s like as a creator and Skillshare you make money by the premium minutes people watch same type of deal not necessarily minutes but like if a paying member over here is reading your content that’s how you get paid and last you can set custom names so this is great because now you can actually use this sort of like as a blocking platform you have that back-end ability to earn money from your writing through the partner program and you can set a custom domain name so it doesn’t have to be like mywebsite.medium.com it could be whatever you want to be so overall I think this is a very unique offering uh for you know anyone who wants to just blog you’re a writer and you’re not don’t want to get into design I think medium is an interesting website to look at and it may be the right blogging platform for you so anyways that’s number eight medium.com.

Okay, here are the best blogging platforms and their unique use cases to assist you in picking which one to use.