How do Beginners Blog for Free?

Blogging is currently rampant, and people are delving into the industry with full energy. With the rise of bloggers, and the rates increasing each year, how can one start blogging for free? 

Using Free Blogging Sites: There are several free blogging sites out there. Thank your best, this article goes into detail to list out these sites. Some of these sites are a little bit technical and might require minimal coding skills from you, even though they're free. While some others are just user-friendly. No coding required, no payment as well. These could be a good start for you as a beginner. 

Social Media Handles: Not having a social media handle is like not breathing, that's how serious it has gotten. As a beginning blogger, you can start via your social media handle. There are so many social media handles out there, and most of them are completely free to use. Facebook posts, Instagram posts, LinkedIn posts, YouTube videos, Tiktok etc., can be avenues for you to begin your blogging. All you have to do is determine the best social media platform where your target audience is hanging and connect with them. 

What is the Easiest Free Blog to Use?

Generally, it's difficult to tell, but the easiest free blog to use should give you all it takes to start blogging even if you have no money, coding skills, or audience. And on that regard, I think Medium is the easiest free blog to use amongst others. 

Pros

1. Easy to Learn and Publish: Medium is not technical. Just sign up, write a blog, and publish. As simple as that. Very user-friendly. No hosting, website setup etc.

2. Completely Free to Use: You can use the medium for free. No upgrade tiers, and no hidden charges.

3. Free Traffic (Audience): Medium already has traffic. It already has people flooding the site. So, you don't need to stress yourself over who is going to read your content, there are already people waiting for your content. 

Cons

1. No Customization: You can't stand out from the crowd on medium with personalized themes, plugins etc, while on medium. Every blog post is all the same except for the different embedded images, videos, and writing styles of each blogger. If not, everything I virtually the same. 

2. No (Real) Monetization: One of the aims of starting a log in the first place is to make money. Monetizing the medium is impossible. You might HD.to cut corners by using affiliate links, or sell eBooks, by outright monetisation is impossible. 

3. You Don’t Own a Blog: Yes, it's a free blogging site, but it's not yours. I mean, you don't control what's going on. It's not your site. The medium might decide to delete your account, or your blog posts, or something mischievous, and you really can't do anything about it. It's a different ball game you have in your blog. 

What Tools Do I Need to Start a Blog?

1. Tools For Content Ideas: Having a blog means you have to keep coming up with content for your audience - and interesting ones at that. One way to get around this is by using tools that can give you insight into what your target audience is already searching forum the internet. When you know what they're searching for, it will be easy for you to get ideas on the type of content to create, knowing that your audience will like them. Examples of such tools are Google Trends, Quora, and HubSpot Blog Topic Generator.

2. Keywords research Tools: Keyword research tools help you come up with specific keywords that your audience types on search bars on the internet when they're looking for solutions to their problems. By using these keywords, it'll be easier for your audience to find your content. Although there are thousands of keyword tools out there, here are a few that I trust: Ubersuggest, SEMemrush, and Ahrefs.

3. Tools for Tracking Blog Analytics: Analytics tools help you as a blogger to track the progress of your blog. It tells you what blog post or content is performing better, or worse. It gives you insight into which content your audience is consuming the most, how your audience moves on your site etc. The aim is so that you can know what's working and what's not, so you can improve and optimize your website for success. Examples of such tools are Google Analytics and Crazy Egg.

Which Free Blogging Platform is Best?

There are thousands of blogging platforms out there. Each comes with its peculiarities, advantages, and disadvantages.  Hence, it's better off to have a vision of what you want your blog to be like, and go to the blogging platform that helps you achieve that.

Starting as a blogger, you'll need a platform that requires little or no effort for coding. A platform that won't take you weeks and months to learn how to use and set up before even running your blog proper. Coupled with that, you would want to consider the now and the future of your blog.

Over time, you might want to adjust some things on your site; the looks, the organisation, features etc., and thus implies that the platform you want to use should be flexible. Starting with the wrong platform might have negative repercussions later on.

To this end, if you have no intentions of making money via your blog, you should have an opening for it because you may never tell what the future of your blog will be - you might decide to change your mind. 

However, just to give some context, some of the best free blogging platforms are: 

1. WordPress (Self-Hosted)

2. Wix

3. WordPress.com

4. Weebly

5. Medium

6. Blogger

7. Ghost

8. Tumblr

9. Joomla

10. Yola