Blogging For Free: Here Are Popular Options
I have a blog which I have been running for more than 4 years. I have been consistently making money and receiving payment for my blogging activities for the last 3 years. If I had to start a blog again, I would focus on a couple of things. The most important thing is I would choose a topic that has high traffic and high CPC rate. By doing so I would be getting a lot of traffic on my blog and I would be earning really well from my blog.
Well, blogging is one of the most used content marketing method. Businesses and marketers use blog to market their products and services, build a brand and reach customer base. While it might be really difficult for an online store to rank on the top of search results because of the competitors like ebay, Amazon, etc. with a blog as a part of online store, you can easily rank well on searches and make sales for your blog
Even though blogging is a popular way to make money, not everyone can do it. If this is happening to you, here are some tips to help you make money as a blogger:
First of all you need to have a clear objective. In our case, making money is the objective. So, we need to choose blogging niche that meets our objective. You also need to check how competitive is your niche. If it is very saturated, choose something different.
You also need to choose a popular blogging platform. You can either start on third party sites (article sites), free blogging platforms, or self hosted sites.
You can start a blog for free and still make money from your free blog. You can either try a free domain and free hosting, or a free blogging platform like blogspot.
How to Start a Free Blog on Free Blogging Sites
You do not have to spend money on a domain and hosting, or subscribe to website builders, to start a blog, you can use free blogging sites and there are multiple options. For example, you can join sites like Hubpages, Medium, Vocal, Substack, Publiosh0x, Hive Blog and start publishing your blog posts and make money. Even though there are options for free blogging platforms like wordpress.com, blogspot.com, etc. you need to keep in mind that it is really hard to make money from these platforms because most ad networks will not accept free blogging platforms. Therefore, the best alternatives are the free blogging sites where you can start making money.
If you want to try your hands on free blogging, there are multiple options, however, before you try, you will have to do a thorough research and see if the site suits to you or not. For instance, Hubpages sis a reputed free blogging site, however, you need Paypal to get paid, and you need to make at least $50 to get paid. That’s very high payment threshold. Medium and Vocal, are good sites for free blogging, however, they pay with Stripe and you must see if Stripe is available to you or not. Publish0x or Hive Blog pays through crypto and if crypto is not the payment you prefer, you will have to avoid these sites.
Steemit is free blogging, or article writing, platform was very popular a couple of years ago. However, people began to abuse the upvote system so much that the earning potential on the site dropped substantially. These days I don't hear anyone talking about this platform, let alone making money on this site. If you want to try a free blogging platform just like Steemit you can try Hive Blog, Publish0X, or even Read Cash. Among these free blogging platforms I am using Read Cash and I am making some money by publishing on Read Cash.
How to Make Money Through Free Blogging
In order to blog and make money, you need to invest money on a domain and hosting. However, there are also methods to blog for free and make money. There are multiple ways to do it.
Free blogging platforms: You can create blogs on free blogging platforms like blogspot, wordpress, etc. You can run ads to make money
Free blogging sites: You can join free writing sites and publish your articles to make money where you can earn from views, engagement, and ads.
If you ask me which one is better for making money, I would say free blogging sites are better than free blogging platforms.
How Much Can You Earn With Free Blogging?
If you have never done free blogging you might be wondering whether you can actually earn or not, even if you can earn how much can you earn? Well, the answer depends on your ability to draw traffic and engagements. If you can bring a lot of traffic, you might earn well, for instance on Vocal you can earn $4 for 1000 views. If you can bring a lot of engagements on Publish0x, you can easily earn a dollar per day. Therefore, just like with self hosted blogging, or even free hosted blogging, making money through free blogging sites also depend on traffic, and traffic on your blog posts entirely depend on SEO and digital marketing.
Free Blogging Sites vs. Self Hosted Blogging
One of the most common ways to start blogging is by joining free blogging sites. You can start publishing immediately and even earn from day one. These sites offer different kinds of earning opportunities, you can earn from tips from other users, tips from the site, page views, ad impressions, paid subscriptions, etc. Self hosted blogging means you create your own blog site by buying a domain and hosting. You have better earning opportunities with self hosted blogging, for instance, you can earn from ads, affiliate product sales, as well as selling digital and even physical products. However, it takes a long time to earn through self hosted blogs.
Self Hosted Blogging Vs. Free Hosted Blogging
Self hosted blogging offers a lot of earning opportunities but you will have to invest money to create the blog. Free hosted blog on the other hand does not cost any money, yet you still get a chance to earn. However, earning from free hosted blog can be really difficult because there are limited earning opportunities. For instance, except blogspot, you might not be able to use Adsense on any free hosted blogs. Another major problem is getting traffic, since most people do not trust free blog site, they avoid visiting free hosted blogs, therefore, getting traffic can be very difficult. When traffic is rare, income is also rare.
Free Blogging Vs. Freelance Writing
Using free blogging sites relieves you from investing in your blog and spending time to manage your blog. That’s because you can just join free blogging sites and then start publishing articles. However, there is no much earning opportunities with free blogging. Freelance writing on the other hand can earn you a lot of money but getting freelance writing jobs can be very difficult, and even if you get freelance writing contracts, you might not be able to get writing contracts on a regular basis. One of the best strategies you can utilize is combine free blogging with freelancing, and even use free blogging to promote your freelance writing services.
Is Free Blogging Really Good For You?
Creating a blog costs money and running a blog requires a lot of technical skills, therefore, for a lot of people using free blogging sites comes as an easy way to start blogging. Therefore, if you want to blog but do not want to spend money or time to create a blog or manage the blog, free blogging is for you. If you are a prolific writer, you can join multiple free blogging sites and star publishing your blog posts. For instance, you don’t just have to restrict yourself with Hubpages, Medium, or Vocal, you can also join other platforms like Publish0X, Hive Blog, etc. This is another benefit of free blogging.
Things to Remember as a Blogger
Content writing is a part of blogging activities. A blog means a website where you can read online articles. Without content blog does not exist., Therefore, content writing is an integral part of blogging activities. However, when the evolution of generative AI tools, you might not have to write your own blog posts. There are even a lot of tools that help you automate your blogging activities by creating blog posts through an AI tool
You need traffic on your blog, when there is no traffic, you cannot generate revenue and your blogging activities will go futile. Even though search engines are should be the primary source of traffic, getting traffic from search engines can be very difficult because you need to do SEO and SEO is not everyone's cup of tea. Therefore, you can use social media for traffic. You need to create social pages for your blog and start building followers and sharing content
The primary idea behind blogging is making money, you can make money only when you have a lot of visitors and your visitors engage with your content. That will happen only when you have a lot of unique content. Unique content means content that has never been published else where. Unique content has high chances of ranking on search engines. Unique content is not only liked by search engine bots but also human readers.