7 Best Blogging Platforms To Make Money

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Blogging has so many benefits, whether you do it as a hobby or to earn income.

Blogging is one of the best ways to express yourself and drive traffic to your website.

It provides the opportunity to: -Provide consistent and interesting content -Stay up to date and be ahead of what is trending -Build credibility with your readers -Build rapport with your target audience -Engage with your target audience -Promote your business -Make money -Build your personal brand

When you plan to become a blogger, one of the things you have to consider is the best blogging platform to use.

You need a platform that has several features and one that is user-friendly at the same time. Some of the best blogging platforms for you are as follows.

Best Blogging Platforms To Make Money

Wix

Wix is the best platform for beginners who have never built a website before because the ADI software will help you solve the technical part while answering a few questions.

Wix is perfect for someone with a budget constraint because it has a free plan that one can use until you have some good capital to upgrade your blog.

After answering the few questions asked on the Wix platform, you only need to customize your new website, add your photographs and commence blogging.

Wix gives several templates and creative options to choose from.

You can also use the Wix mobile application to manage everything.

Pros

The drag and drop feature that comes with Wix allows users to design templates in a couple of minutes.
Wix has a valuable and intuitive interface ad gives you tips and guidelines for improving and perfecting your brand’s presentation.
Wix allows users to join shorter plans from five months, unlike other platforms that may bind users to long terms.
Wix protects your site security without affecting your site speed, allowing users to spend their resources on other site improvements.

Cons

Wix does not give you unlimited storage like other plans do, even with commercial programs that are expensive.
The starter plan does not remove ads from your website, and this will force you to purchase a costly plan to remove them.
The drag and drop feature can limit the user from becoming creative and may not even get the whole design to look the way you want.
Wix app store does not offer applications, and the ones that are there are not real applications, and they only add some functionality to what you are doing.
Wix combo plan goes for about fourteen dollars per month, billed annually, and unlimited plan that goes for eighteen dollars monthly and is suitable for larger websites.

Squarespace

Squarespace initially started as a blog hosting service back in 2004 and has flourished in the website industry of late. Squarespace is suitable for creating content that is compatible with online stores, and therefore, you can promote and sell products to readers without leaving the site.

The drag and drop editor that comes with Squarespace makes it suitable for an online store.

Pros

Square space offers many templates for publication and allows users to upload their designs.
Most Squarespace templates rely on photography which makes it easy for users to customize their templates.
Squarespace is easy to use for people who know how to use other platforms such as WordPress and blogger.
Squarespace is an all-in-one platform where you do not have to worry about plugins and widgets because Squarespace builder has everything built in it.
The platform offers support throughout the day through live chats and email making it reliable.

Cons

Lack of phone support can make Squarespace so inappropriate for use, especially when you need immediate feedback. Even though live chat is fast, it cannot be as fast as using a phone.
Squarespace is highly-priced and bills you every month, and may limit the number of products or pages you can have.
Squarespace has essential marketing tools but lacks advanced tools which can discourage people from joining the site.
Squarespace does not support functionality for other third-party applications, making it difficult for new users to customize their sites.
Adding primary content Squarespace is easy, but trying to edit templates and adding new blogs can be very difficult.

Pricing

Squarespace is usually available in four plans as follows

• A business plan that goes for twenty-six dollars a month

• A basic commerce plan goes for thirty-five dollars per month.

• The personal plan comes with a sixteen dollar premium every month

• Advanced commerce comes with fifty-four dollars per month.

Medium

Medium is one of the leading platforms for writers, bloggers, and journalists. It was founded in 2012 by one of the founders of Twitter, and this platform comes with some limited social networking features.

Pros

• It has an excellent user interface and great writing experience

• The focus is not on running and designing the platform but creating content

• The medium allows embedding content from other social media platforms like Twitter and youtube.

Cons

• Medium hardly has any customization options, which makes all blogs on it look the same

• Medium has no or few marketing features.

• There are no monetization options with medium

• You aren’t able to transfer your audience from medium to other platforms

• Medium takes control of your content which a massive undoing.

Pricing

Medium is a free-to-use platform that you can hook to individual stories provide you have your domain.

Although, there is now a premium plan you can upgrade to that allows you to view more “Stories” on Medium and gives you the ability to join “Subscription” forums based on the niche of your content which could be beneficial for brand/content exposure.

Ghost.org

Ghost is available as a self-hosted or hosted version, and the idea behind building this platform was to streamline WordPress. Ghost is a publishing platform whose primary focus is blogging. Bloggers who are keen on testing their technical knowledge on new solutions can embrace it.

Pros

• It focuses on blogging and writing

• It has a live review of blogs

• Ghost is built on Javascript, which makes it very fast

• It has a clean, intuitive, and streamlined user interface,

• The hosted version of the ghost does not require any setup.

• It has built-in search engine optimization and social media capabilities.

Cons

• It has limited customization and configuration options

• It has a narrow number of themes

• The self-hosted version a very complex one to set up

Pricing

Pricing of the hosted version of ghost depends on the amount of traffic and the number of websites. Ghost comes with an uptime guarantee, additional premium features, and prioritized support.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a free blog site that was created by Matt Mullenweg, the software developer. WordPress.com is great for bloggers who are just starting out. The platform is easy to get the hang of, especially for people who are new to blogging.

There are plenty of features that are easy to use, so you’re not fighting with the system. It’s also convenient since everything is done through your dashboard.

There are many people that are not yet familiar with this website, but that is likely soon to change.

Popular bloggers like Perez Hilton and Carrie Akre are among the people that are using WordPress.com.

Pros

WordPress.com is free for anyone to sign up
Some of the most popular bloggers in the world use WordPress.com
The design of WordPress.com can be changed easily through themes
Anyone can start a blog on WordPress.com, without any financial investment

Cons

Automatic upgrades, for example, are enabled by default, which can lead to unexpected charges on your credit card. For bloggers who are just beginning, it’s best to disable this feature and not upgrade unless you’re sure you will need those features.
Unlike the self hosting version of WordPress (WordPress.org), there is a plugin limitation as to what type of plugins you’re allowed to install on your blog. This can be a BIG deal breaker for those who are looking for complete and total control of customization of their website.
Content can be removed without consent.

Tumblr

What is Tumblr?

Tumblr is a social media website which is mainly focused on blogs and photos.The website is very popular with young people because it focuses on pop culture, but often overly so.

Tumblr is a place for bloggers, artists, and just about anyone.

Pros

Tumblr is a fun social media website which allows you to post nearly anything you want.
Tumblr has a lot of customization, so you can create a blog which is about any topic you want.
You can use as many as 5 different themes as well as as many as 10,000 followers.
Tumblr is a free social media platform so you don’t have to worry about paying for anything.

Cons

People have criticized it for being filled with things that are not actually relevant to the theme of the site.
Tumblr has also been criticized for the lack of control its users have over their own content.
Users are unable to delete their posts or accounts.
The site does not give its users an easy way to ensure that their post will not be shared by people they do not want to share it with.
Users must also be careful about who they follow, because people can see who they follow and what posts they like.
Users may not be aware that someone they followed or liked.

Weebly

Weebly is a website for creating websites and business sites. Owned by Weebly, Inc, their goal is to make it as easy as possible to create and manage a website.

Weebly is meant for anyone who wants to create a professional or personal website.

They specialized in providing individuals looking to sell physical products for purposes of creating an ecommerce storefront for your products.

There is a strong comparison between Weebly, Squarespace, and Shopify when it comes to creating an ecommerce website to highlight benefits and features of physical products that you have to offer.

Like many of the blogging platforms discussed in this article, there are some pros and cons when it comes to Weebly and their blogging functionality.

Let’s take a look at both the benefits and drawbacks of Weebly:

Pros

You can learn how to use it in a few hours.
The interface is very user-friendly
You will be able to make a website to your liking in a matter of days.
Another benefit of using Weebly is that it offers a lot of space for your website.

Cons

Weebly does not offer intuitive typography choices like other blogging platforms like Tumblr or WordPress.
Weebly has only two fonts to choose from.
Weebly does not have an option to upload custom fonts or use Google fonts.
Weebly does not have a built in feed reader.
Weebly does not have a built in search engine optimization feature.

Final thoughts

Blogging is a great way to bring awareness to a product, business, or person. Blogging is a responsibility not only to yourself but to your readers. Blogging about topics is a great way to grow your personal brand and to learn about what topics interest potential readers.

Your choice of a blogging platform depends on your needs. The various categories ranging from site builders, self-hosted and hosted platforms have different capabilities, and you should conduct some due diligence before settling for one.

If you should know of any other good blogging platforms, be sure to provide your comments below.

Until next post!