You’ve heard it often that you should start blogging to express and share your passions, to help other people learn, and ultimately to make money from the blog. But apart from financial strains, you don’t have coding or any other website building skills necessary to build a blog from scratch. You just want to start writing. How?
Luckily there are companies that provide free websites and hosting so you can just build your blog within minutes. It is as simple as signing up, answering their basic questions to help determine which templates suit your blog best, and the rest, like choosing colors and fonts are straightforward and easy to understand.
The downsides of free blogs are as follows:
Domain Name: Less Professional Feel
The domain name may not be as professional as it sounds if you buy your own domain and host it yourself. The domain name will always come with the free blog’s name. For example, if you want to have “CarolsGarden” on your blog’s address, your domain name will be “CarolsGarden.Wordpress.Com”, instead of “CarolsGarden.com”.
Limited Options for… everything
The free websites come with limited options for customisation such as space, themes, structures, composition, and fonts.
If the company decides to charge the users, sell or simply stop operating the whole service
Usually, when a company decides to provide their service for free, it comes with advertisements and the advertisers pay the company to advertise their products and/or services. That’s one of the methods used for a company to survive financially.
But some companies these days don’t display random ads anymore, they simply charge other users who want more: more options, more space, more personalised help, etc.
However, things are not always smooth. Companies come and go depending on their profitability. When they don’t make enough money, they either close down their service or sell it to another company that sees its potential. Tumblr, for example, was owned by Yahoo, and Verizon lately acquired Yahoo, and therefore, Tumblr is now owned by Verizon, too. So far the sign has shown that Tumblr will still operate for free.
Here are my top 5 FREE websites
Here are my top 5 FREE websites that you can use to start your blog, showcase your artistic creation without having to pay a single cent, and have any website building skills.
1. Blogger.com
This site belongs to Google, one of the oldest. A very simple site but compared to Wix and Weebly, Blogger is a bit ‘behind’ as not only they don’t have drag and drop features, but the options to customise their templates are not as wide as Wix and Weebly.
2. WordPress.com
This website is also one of the oldest yet the most popular free sites for bloggers. It has no drag and drop feature, but if you just want to write and add pictures with no fuss about customising the themes, colors, fonts, etc, then this site suits you.
3. Wix.com
This website builder asks you simple questions and your answers will help you build your website accordingly with their easy drag and drop feature.
4. Weebly.com
This site is best for you who want to showcase your artistic creation like paintings, photography, and handmade crafts.
5. Tumblr.com
Recently bought by Verizon (from Yahoo), this free site is used by mostly teenagers.
How to Choose
When it comes to choosing, you will need to ask yourself the following basic questions before making a decision:
What Is My Blog About?
It’s better to focus on topics that fall into one category. For example, if you want to write about holiday, it’s advisable that everything you write for that blog relates to holiday, such as pricing, places, reviews of places and products/services, tips and tricks etc. You wouldn’t want to suddenly review pet food, unless you can relate this to holiday, which of course, can easily be done by telling your readers how certain pet food makes your pets more satisfied when they’re not able to join you for holiday.
Who Will Read My Blog?
The more targeted, the easier it is for you to produce contents. For example, you target people aged around 40-50 who are childfree to read your holiday blog. This means you won’t be writing about holiday places that are child friendly. In fact, you may want to inform places where childfree people and couples can enjoy without much noise.
Based on the above basic questions, you can then decide which theme suits your blog content and readers.
Conclusion
Free options are always there even though they’re always more limited than the paid ones. But if you want to have a taste of what blogging is like without any financial constraints, of course the free option is the best option.
To choose which free website suits your blog, you’ll need to know what your blog is about and who your readers are to determine what theme you want to use because each free website has their own free themes.
