Super Ghost Blogger

Free Blogs – The Easiest Way To Get Your Internet Business Moving
By Steven W Johnson

A free blogging platform is one of the most turn-key, user-friendly tools for establishing a presence on the Internet today.

With just a few mouse clicks, no out-of-pocket expenses, and a bit of typing, you’re in! You have a home on the Internet. In the past, this required learning HTML. Or downloading, installing, and suffering through the painful learning curve of a site building application. Free blogs cut out all that. Even your Grandma can have a blog! All it takes is 5 minutes, and a decision: what to call the blog. The rest is easy.

Two of the most popular free blogging platforms are WordPress and Blogger.

WordPress – http://wordpress.org

This one is the more advanced of the two. It carries a steeper learning curve, but with a bit of friendly advice from a web-based mentoring community or help from a friend who knows their way around the WordPress platform, it’s pretty easy. It’s also totally free. While the vast majority of WordPress blogs are self-hosted (on fee-based hosting you pay for), this is not a requirement. You can have your WordPress blog hosted at WordPress.com to start, and migrate to your own hosting as you find your groove with it.

Blogger – http://blogger.com

This dominant blogging platform is owned by Google. It is more simplistic to operate, and suitable for most of the basic techniques and procedures you want a blog to perform. It’s extremely easy to get off the ground, but a whole lot less “extensible” than the WordPress platform. This just means there is less room to grow into more advanced logic and functionality than with WordPress. It is, however an excellent platform for someone brand-new to blogging.

Joomla and Drupal – http://joomla.org  http://drupal.org

These platforms, while also 100% free, open source offerings, are far more technical and “geeky” than Blogger or WordPress. They are comprised of entire site development systems that allow you to build membership web sites, article directories, social networking communities, and hundreds, if not thousands of other popular online tasks and functions into your online presence.

Both can be used for blogging, but are less popular (at least for pure blogging) than the above two powerhouses, simply because they are much more than mere blogging platforms. Still, if you anticipate the need to go beyond a highly-targeted blog-only approach, you might consider them. Many people are doing just that.

Some considerations

If your blog is going to grow rapidly, choose a host wisely. Nothing kills a blog faster than downtime or technical difficulties. Free hosting doesn’t get the job done. Spend some money on a good host.

If you are doing video blogging (Vlogging), you will need bandwidth. Unless you are prepared to piggyback your feeds on the YouTube video infrastructure. This sounds tempting, but has many issues you will want to consider.

If you are making large downloads available to your blog’s consumers, consider one of the more advanced architectures, and not just a pure blogging platform. There are amazing free scripts and components that support file sharing these days. Put them to work.

If you have a talent for graphics, and intend to build your own custom blog template, the free platforms generally won’t suffice. You will need standalone blogging software and a real host. It’s silly to cut corners if you are an advanced designer.

Don’t confine your planning to just the blog itself. Think about how the blog fits into your overall online business strategy. What functions does it perform? How does it work in conjunction with your other online assets? Take a broader view of things. You won’t be sorry.

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