6 Best Blogging Platforms to Make Money (Paid & Free Blogging Sites)

What up crew ?

What's up everybody ?

My name is Alex Nerney with Create and Go .

And today we're talking about the six best blogging platforms , both paid and free versions right now today on my tour of the 50 states , I'm out here in Michigan .

Thanks to the kindness and generosity of a good friend .

Uh He's allowed me to stay at his family's lake house for a couple of days .

It's absolutely beautiful here .

It's been pretty sick .

All right , let's get into the content .

Let's talk about the six best blogging platforms .

Um We're gonna list them off from what we think is the absolute best , uh , and trickle down and it doesn't matter whether you're starting like a hobby blog or if you want to make an income , we're gonna go over all of those things .

All right , I'll see you on the side .

All right , squad , here's the six best blogging platforms to make money .

So some blogging sites are probably gonna feel better on your wallet .

Uh Even if they're not ideal for monetizing your blog , while the best blogging platforms to make money are going to differ greatly from the free options out there we want to give you a detailed comparison so you can have a better understanding of this topic and so that it will help you choose the best blogging platform for you .

OK .

In the basic overview , we're gonna be covering what is a platform for blogging ?

What is a blog hosting site ?

How do bloggers make money , the best blog and the six best blogging platforms ?

We'll also talk about some other free blogging platforms and how you can start a blog and get started making money .

If that's what you're into , it's very important when considering all of these blogging platforms to begin with the end in mind , when you start the process of choosing the best blogging platform .

So for some of you , you might be wondering well , what is a platform for blogging ?

OK .

So what are blogging platforms ?

Let's talk about that really quickly .

First , all websites are composed of a ton of lines of codes written that work together to build the appearance of a website .

So when you load a website , so when we load avocado , the this is just loading code right now , lines and lines and lines of code that produce this image that we see here in front of us .

A blogging platform really serves as the bones are kind of the foundation of your blog .

So it contains like pre coded templates that allow you to avoid the coding , grunt work of putting your blog online blogging platforms .

Don't technically cost money because they offer free ho uh because all they all offer a free hosting plan , but you must be aware , be aware of starting a blog with a free hosting site .

Um And we're gonna get into this a little bit but just understand that a platform is sort of it contains , it's sort of like the box uh where you will put your code and some of it will come with prebuilt code inside of it .

Um So that your blog , so it will be easier for you to build your blog correctly .

That doesn't mean that with any of these blogging platforms that you have to know code , you most certainly do not , it can help , but it's not a big deal anymore because uh most blogs have their own platforms .

So the next step is to understand what is a blog hosting site .

All blogs and websites must be hosted by a server to take your blog online blog hosting companies contain tons of these servers that exist solely to make sure that your blog is online and that people can um access it .

Just think of a server room , right ?

Like a like you want one that you would see in the movies where there's tons and tons of these servers , these guys right here .

OK .

So like your blog is , you know , maybe the on this server somewhere uh in the middle of a warehouse full of thousands and thousands of servers So you have to actually have that server for your blog to be online .

So there's kind of two parts to this , right ?

You have the blogging platform where you build the actual blog , where you uh where you take this code and you write and you put things in it .

But the server is where the blog lives , it's its home , it's its domain .

So there's two components um when you have to consider , especially when considering the best blogging platform .

So the question you might ask um yourself here at this point is um OK .

So if there are free options and there are paid options uh for something like blog hosting , uh why wouldn't I just choose the free option ?

Well , in general , free blogging hosting sites and uh free blogging platforms are better for people who want to start a hobby blog or something very simple .

Uh But have little desire to monetize their blog and you'll , you'll understand this theme as they get more in depth in the content .

The reason for this being is that there are several limitations that come with free blog sites .

The first is the ability to make money with ads , uh ownership of the domain name , access to plugins and ways to customize your blog storage space .

Um As you grow and as your blog go grows , you'll need more and more storage space um for your blog access to premium themes and more you can read more about this in our differences between self hosted uh between free and self hosts and self hosted blog hosting on our article on wordpress dot com versus wordpress dot org .

OK .

So then some of you still might be asking .

OK .

So how do bloggers make money ?

Well , there are very , there are several ways of the four main ones be are being a revenue sponsored posts , affiliate marketing and selling your own products and services .

Um And so the blog host that you choose can hinder some of these processes to actually making money , right ?

So on creating go , we take people from not only from starting starting a blog all the way to making money blogging .

So , so we have to think of the whole process as an A to Z thing .

So this is why uh this stuff matters is because if you are planning to put ads on your site , um which is one of the first ways most bloggers monetize their site , you cannot do this on a free blogging site or a free blogging platform .

That's why we bring this up because if your end goal by any means is to make any amount of money with your blog , uh we want to put you in the best direction possible to do that .

OK .

So that's sort of explaining some of the bones of this article .

Now , let's let's get into the actual meat and potatoes , right ?

What are the best blogging platforms ?

What are the best platforms to hold your blog .

There's six really big and popular ones and we've organized this by the best ones to start with .

Number one , by far , the best place to start is with wordpress .

Wordpress is not only the number one most widely used blogging platform in the world , it hosts what I believe is over , I think the last time I checked it's over 30% of the internet .

So 30% of all websites that you visit um online on the internet uh are hosted on a wordpress dot com platform or wordpress dot org platform .

So that's a massive massive , massive chunk of the entire internet .

Terabytes , terabytes , terabytes , you know , terabytes on terabytes of information hosted on , on wordpress .

Uh This is by far there's so there's a free version called wordpress dot com and there's a paid version called wordpress dot org .

Um By far the best part about using wordpress dot org .

Uh And the reason why I recommend it is you get access to thousands of plugins that allow you to customize your blog in a variety of ways .

You will learn that using um other platforms or other places that you will be limited in your ability to customize .

And that is a problem , especially if you want to make money because making money is about optimizing your website for better conversions .

And if you're not optimized for those better conversions , well , then you will make less money .

And have less of a chance of succeeding and making a full time income blogging .

Um Other blog platforms are not as widely used .

So they have less plugins , right ?

They're gonna have less um Wordpress was kind of the og as far as um blogging platforms and still is to this day .

And the reason being is that it not only does it provide tons of plugins and um templates , but other users provide plugins and templates so you can use the creations of other users um on wordpress .

So it provides all of this variety .

So you can you know whether you're starting a fashion blog , whether you're starting a health and Wellness blog , whether you're starting some other type of blog wordpress will have the solution for you because it has such a massive variety and a massive user base .

So let's look at the pros and cons of wordpress .

The pros .

You have more control over your blog design .

You have access to thousands of plugins and themes to customize your blog .

Great customer support , plus tons of articles written on using the platform , articles and videos everywhere on how to use wordpress .

And it's also easier to integrate with most Softwares as you grow your blog .

The cons of using wordpress are , well , there's a little bit of a learning curve compared to other blogging platforms .

Uh And the second thing is that you need to handle your security and backups .

So uh uh the learning curve compared to other black blind platforms is because of the complexity that wordpress allows you , it allows you to custom build this entire thing from scratch .

And because of that , um there's a steeper learning curve .

But that being said , if you want to make an income blogging , wordpress is by far the best place to get started .

And I'm gonna explain why later on when we go through the cons of using other blogging platforms .

So wordpress offers the best price for customizations including themes , plugins and software integrations .

We always recommend that people pair uh Wordpress as we said there with their server um on blue host .

Uh And we have a actually a special discount for anybody who comes through us and uses us um that you cannot find really anywhere else uh which you can start for as low as $2.75 a month through a discounted link .

Then you do have to pay um a chunk of that upfront , I think for a year or a year and a half .

But because of that , I mean , you have a blog for incredibly cheap .

It comes with a free domain name .

So you have your , your domain name handled .

So that's uh by far the number one place that we recommend bloggers who are interested in starting a blog and making money blogging .

That is the best place to start .

Now , let's get into some of the other options though because I do want to cover them .

The second option we have is Wix .

Wix is probably best known as a drag and drop software .

This makes it incredibly user friendly and has a much smaller learning curve .

As opposed to a wordpress .

There is a free version as well but it is uh even more limited than the free version of wordpress .

There are very few customizations offered on the free version and you are stuck with Wix ads on your site .

Those big beautiful ads going Wix Wix start your website today with Wix .

The paid version is really the only way to go if you're looking to make money with a blog using Wix .

So the pros are like I said , easy to to drag and drop software makes it incredibly beginner friendly less of a learning curve when building your the site yourself because it's a drag and drop because you can take pieces of information , drag and drop it to one place to the next , the learning curve to making your site look good is going to be less than a wordpress .

But this comes with a bunch of cons .

The first con is that there are much fewer options and themes for third party plugins than wordpress obviously because wordpress is such a massive company .

Uh the plans are less flexible due to lack of hosting options , it costs extra if you want to build an e-commerce store on your site , the free version .

So if you ever want to sell physical products , it's gonna cost you even more free version is very limited , includes Wix ads .

There are fewer software integrations than wordpress .

The the bottom line is that while Wix is going to be easier to use than wordpress , it's going to be quite a bit more expensive for a paid plan and ultimately more limited as far as customizations are available , uh as well as it is going be slower .

All of these dragon drop Softwares that we're going to talk about whether it's Squarespace or Wix or um we , the problem is how the coding loads uh because it's a drag and drop software , the coding load is load time is going to be much slower than if you start with wordpress .

And if you know anything about the internet , the speed at which something loads is very important to people .

It's much easier to get started and design your blog on Wix , but you will ultimately hit roadblocks in your growth due to limitations of plugins and other software integrations .

So that's just the truth if you want to make a big income blogging , uh that's what you're going to face .

So , Squarespace , you've probably heard about Squarespace .

Uh Right now , Keanu Reeves , A K A the most likable guy ever is one of their spokes uh spokespeople love Keanu .

Uh Let's talk about the pros and cons though pros is beginner friendly , drag and drop software .

Uh And it's also great for a small business .

This cons are gonna be pretty much the same is that there are far fewer options uh for themes and third party plugins , especially when compared to a wordpress plans are less flexible and more expensive to add e-commerce storess and other add-ons .

Far fewer Softwares and integrations and wordpress and significantly more expensive than the previous options discussed .

The pricing of a squarespace website starts at $12 a month .

So that's much greater than say a blue host at $2.75 .

The bottom line is , this is a great option for those who are less tech savvy , but you will still find yourself with limitations .

So , Squarespace ends up being pretty ideal for people who are looking for like a brick and mortar business looking for like an online presence , but not somebody who's trying to build in massive traffic by bringing in um by full time blogging and getting tons of articles to go viral on Pinterest or viral on or , or get to the top of search on Google .

It's just not the ideal way to do it again .

This is for a variety of reasons , but it's because of how the coding loads on a Squarespace website that at the end of the day if you are bringing in big traffic , like avocado does our health and wellness website brings in , you know , half a million or a quarter of a million monthly visitors that coding that lag time is gonna create a lot of lag time between when your website loads and when it comes and um when it , when it loads and when it should be loading , uh again , ideal though for a small brick and mortar business .

Um just because of its ease of use .

Weely comes another fourth spot .

Yet another dragon drop software seeing a trend , uh beginner friendly drag and drop software .

Now we believe comes with very few software integrations and it's significantly more expensive than again , a thing like wordpress because it starts at $8 a month for a very , very limited plan .

This is actually a website platform that I built my very , very first website on back in 2012 .

So it is uh uh it was nice to have at the beginning just very , very limited .

OK , let's talk about some other free blogging platforms .

So we're gonna go over some of the uh free platforms that you can use in blogging .

Uh Number one , we have blogger .

Uh Many people have heard of blogger .

It's actually owned by Google .

So it's one of the only free blogging platforms that you can install Google ads since and earn a revenue on .

That is an advantage of blogger .

Unfortunately , you'll still say running the same problems as , as mentioned before .

It's lack of customization is due to the fact that , you know , it's not like a wordpress , it's not sort of an open source software where people can make their own plugins and create their own templates and , and uh make a collaborative effect to building a big beautiful website .

Aside from the ability to earn ad revenue , it is so much harder for you to monetize with a blogger .

There are no paid hosting options and you also can't have your own domain name using blogger , right ?

So you're , I mean , nothing looks less professional than uh your name dot blogspot dot com or create and go dot blogspot uh in the URL .

Um But if you just wanna blog for a hobby or , you know , just want to make some uh hobby posts or something like that , blogger can be a good , good solution for you .

Tumblr uh as well as a great place to network with other blog bloggers and content is shared regularly in this form of uh tumbling or reposting this as an additional way to get exposure to your content for other plot uh platforms because uh it is somewhat social .

Uh it is somewhat of a social media platform itself .

If you're a younger person , I would think twenties , you'll probably know what Tumblr is , especially if you're still in your teens .

Tumblr is gonna be something you're pretty familiar with .

Um the design and software though is limited uh in Tumblr and obviously makes it more difficult to monetize your blog .

Each of these free blogging platforms are not for those of you who want to make a serious income blogging .

It's just not um not the way to go .

So , um but there are upsides , especially if you just are doing this as a sort of a hobby , one upside of Tumblr compared to bloggers that you can purchase your own domain name with use of your site .

So , blogger , you have to have dot blog spot .

But um you can have a domain like create and go dot co on .

Well , you can't have ours but you can have create and go dot go , I guess probably dot com .

It's probably not used .

Uh And you can um purchase that on Tumblr and have your own domain name .

Medium .

Medium is actually a very interesting new play in this mix is that medium is a much different blogging platform from all the other options we've described because it's actually a community of writers and bloggers .

While medium is easy to get started and set up a basic web page , it's not ideal for those looking to build an online business .

It's really just a place to write the thoughts in your head .

Like so if you um I don't know , you have something you're passionate about or , or something you just kind of want to get out there .

Medium is kind of an ideal place for this because you don't really have to build up anything .

You um you can just kind of blurt your thoughts out there .

And sometimes if it it can go viral .

People can give you lots of feedback , it might not go viral .

Um But medium is more of a place to write .

Uh Just your own thoughts , your heads on a traditional blogging platform , you need to drive traffic to your blog , uh own your social media accounts , build an email list with something like media medium .

You don't have , you don't own any of these sources of traffic and do not .

Um And do not have the usual building tools available to you because that's not really kind of the purpose of medium .

The purpose of medium is just to kind of expound on your thoughts and materials and share them with the world .

Um And it's not really a place where you monetize a website , it's just more of a place to just share your , share your thoughts .

So again , if considering being a hobby blogger or just kind of wanna blurt out your thoughts and , and your feelings in the world , well , then it's not a bad solution .

OK .

So your question might be now ?

OK , how can I start a blog and make money ?

How can I get started ?

Um Well , we have a simple tutorial on how to start a blog that you can see on our website at any time .

It's this big red button here .

Uh When you click on it , I'll take you to our post on how to start a blog , uh which is just kind of a step by step uh training uh on starting a blog .

We also have a youtube video online um on how to start a blog .

If you type in how to start a blog CRE create and go into youtube , then our video will pop up right here and it is me walking you through starting a successful blog .

All right guys , uh that's gonna be it for this video .

So um kind of as stated before , it really just depends on your , your needs and wants .

If you're kind of a brick and mortar store , then something like a square space is pretty good .

If you just wanna put your thoughts out into the world medium can be good .

Um If you just want to share like fun images , Tumblr can be a good place to start .

Uh But if you want to start a blog and make a serious income , uh there's no better place than wordpress to do it just because the way the coding loads , but more specifically because of the customizations and plugins that wordpress provides you at the end of the day .

And it is the same platform that Lauren and I built two successful six figure blogs on actually $1 million blog and the other uh six figure um blog on .

So pretty cool stuff .

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All right guys , I will see you on the next one .