Should I Start a Paid or Free Blog?

Once you have decided to go with a blog, you have to decide if you want to go with a free blog like Tumblr or a paid hosting site. There are 3 questions you have to answer before you decide free blog or paid blog. First do you want to make money from your on your blog? Second how much control do you want over your blog? Third how much are you willing to learn?

Do you want to make money on your blog?

This is the most important question to ask about your blog. You may have many other question, but answer this one first. Most people would say yes, but some people say “I don’t care.” If you don’t care, if this isn’t a really big commitment for you, the easy route is the free blog. It can gain you traffic and some sales of your books. I don’t think those sales will do as well as if you own your own site, but there are always exceptions. Also, you can’t earn your maximum money possible from advertising or affiliates if you have a free blog.

If you go with a hosting company you can use affiliate marketing, pay per click ads, and sell ads directly to your readers. I also think you earn more respect and trust by having your own site and not having a per-built free blog (again options differ).

How much control do you want of your blog?

Do you want to control completely how the blog looks and feels? Do you want to be able to say whatever you like on your blog? If these things are important to you, I strongly recommend having your own paid site. Free sites will limit you in your speech. They might have profanity limitations, or other terms of service that you must be careful about. They also have limited options on how you can make the site look. With a paid service you are really talking about the sky being the limit. You can make a paid site, through millions and millions of templates, look just about anyway you like.

The last thing you have to ask yourself about control is, what happens if your free blog goes under? What if that very popular free blog site decides to pack up and call it a day because they can’t turn enough profit? Say you have created 100s of blog entries, you have a fan base, you have readers who comment, can you transport your info to a paid site? Will your hard work be deleted? I’m not familiar with all the options or terms of service of all free sites, but I can say that some are very limited on your options of transporting your information to another site. If they fail, you fail. It might be hard to imagine if it is a huge popular site that gets millions or even billions of users, but it is possible. We’ve seen the unthinkable happen when it comes to websites. Myspace, Excite, Digg, we’ve seen sites that were on top of the world fail before, so anything is possible.

How much are you willing to learn?

Building your own blog is not hard, but there is a bit of a learning curve. With tech today though it is easier than ever. You can install a blog quickly with once click installations like Simple scripts or Softaculous. These do exactly what the name says, install a web software application in one click. I’m not going to say that there is no learning curve, there is, but you have to decide how much it matters to you. If you want to have a true web platform and you are dedicated to the cause of being independent on the web, selling books, gaining a readership, it is more an important than ever for you to have this knowledge. It is not overwhelmingly difficult. You will have to invest a little money, and you will have to be dedicated to the cause and learning, but it’s not out of your reach. Years ago it was very difficult, now it is not so hard that you cannot do it.

Recommendation:

I would highly recommend building your own paid blog. There are a lot of options for this. We will talk about them. You can still have free blog too, but with your paid blog you will own and control the information, the monetary benefits and the most valuable thing from running your own site, the knowledge.

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Richard

Richard Everywriter (pen name) is the founder of EveryWriter and a 25-year veteran of the publishing industry. With degrees in Writing, Journalism, Technology, and Education, Richard has dedicated two decades to teaching writing and literature while championing emerging voices through EveryWriter's platform. His work focuses on making literary analysis accessible to readers at all levels while preserving the rich heritage of American literature. Connect with Richard on Twitter Bluesky Facebook or explore opportunities to share your own work on ourSubmissions page. For monthly insights on writing and publishing, subscribe to our Newsletter.