I haven't started blogging yet. I think I'm overthinking it, but I've been doing a lot of research and I'd like to start a blog. I keep trying to look things up but can't get any clear answers: how feasible is it for me to start a blog for free and then migrate it to a better hosting service later if I want to start investing more into it? I don't want to start making monthly payments for a host and paying for a domain name for something that might not get much traffic to make it worth the investment. I have no problem writing for a while and building traffic, then start to pay later in order to have a more professional looking site with my own domain name, etc. Is that difficult? Can someone direct me to the best options for that? If there's a way to do it without worrying about migrating it to a new host that's great, if the best option is to migrate it I'm willing to learn but I don't want to overcomplicate things for myself.

I indexed my Google web stories through Search console yesterday. But when I go to pages tab, it doesn't show there. Does it take time to reflect? or When can I expect getting traffic on web stories?

I also really don't like WP delicious recipe cards but it seems like I am stuck with them since everything got wrecked when I tried importing to a new plug in. I really just want a better looking site, including a nice banner at the top with menu items and a newsletter banner. Advice??

Edit: here is my site for reference cookandcrumbs.com

I started a personal blog and would like to monetize it in the future. Name of blog is FirstName LastName, domain is firstnamelastname[.]com.

When I form the LLC, does the name have to be FirstName LastName, LLC? Or can I call it something like LastName Media, LLC or Sunshine Ventures, LLC?

Hi everyone,

I know that some bloggers are considering switching to newsletter platforms to generate income through subscription fees, in addition to affiliate marketing, because of the changes in Google's algorithms.

So, I am sharing the highlights of our report where we analyzed 75K substack newsletters as you may think about having a newsletter channel in 2025.

- First of all, 87.2% of the newsletters are in English, which is the biggest group. Portuguese came second.

- Monthly publishing is the most preferred frequency (24%) followed by weekly newsletters (21%) among 75k newsletters.

- 36% of the newsletters offer a paid plan, which makes up 27K newsletters among 75k newsletters.

- Among 20K active newsletters that offer paid subscriptions, the average subscription prices are:

• Avg. Monthly Price: $10
• Avg. Yearly Price: $96
• Avg. Founding Price: $310

- 82% of 75K newsletters have less than 10K subscribers.

- There are 212 newsletters with 100K or more subscribers.

- There are 4 newsletters with 1 million and more subscribers.

- Running a newsletter is a solo business. 95% of active newsletters are run by one person, which is valid for both paid and free newsletters. And same like blogging most of the time.

For more insights, you can check the report we created.

p.s.: You might be wondering how we found 75K newsletters. They are publicly available.

Hi everyone!

I’m looking for YouTubers or content creators who share genuine, no-strings-attached advice about blogging. I’m looking for people who focus on teaching and sharing their experiences without pushing you to buy a course or pay for premium content.

The one person I already know about is Adam Enfroy but I didn’t any value in his content so far

Thanks in advance for sharing! 😊

Still new at this, didn't do as well with my growth this past month but still wanted to share my progress. My blog is an elementary music education blog. I currently have 32 published posts. I share my blog posts on Pinterest, Instagram, Blue Sky and my Facebook page. If anyone has any suggestions or insight for me, I'm all ears! 🙂

September 2024

• Organic Search Traffic: 245
• Total Keywords: 176
• Domain Rating: 10

October 2024

• Organic Search Traffic: 1,152
• Total Keywords: 149
• Domain Rating: 10

November 2024

• Organic Search Traffic: 1,180

• Total Keywords: 219

• Domain Rating: 11

either adsense approved either payment after gets accepted

Hi, I got rejected by Raptive with no reason given. And it was within an hour of applying. Should I reapply again?

My traffic comes from all sources and mainly from USA. I reached 100k very quickly though but due to one or two viral contents but I'm still growing.

I've had many blogs over the years, with my best one (a travel blog) making me around $60k over 3 years. $25k fom affiliate income, $10k in freebies, and $25k from selling it. It's not all good though. I sold another travel blog this year for $250 after 6 months of posting. No good.

I also used to build AdSense blogs and sell for $1-4k.

It's much harder these days, so I've had to transition.

I got the idea while working on the blogs above. A few people started contacting me about cheaper, starter blogs. I ended up creating blogs for them with around 5 posts and a nice theme. I generally sold them for around $195-295 each. Not big money, but I always invest small amounts like that, so the eventual value is higher. Many people find it easier to start if everything is set up and looking decent to begin with.

I don't do this as much now though, maybe one or two a month. I stick to what I know and write the posts myself. In my case that's blogs about travel, side hustle, business, personal finance, self-improvement, lifestyle, etc. I enjoy writing, so this is quite fun for me.

As this sub is about blogging, most of you would also be able to do this for some extra income. You could make more if you found a way to market it.

I am also currently doing this with Substack. I recently sold a newsletter with around 400-500 subscribers. I got paid in bitcoin the equivalent of $300. That's now worth over $400. This will continue to rise.

While $200-300 doesn't see like much, when invested it can grow substantially over the years.

Give it a go.

Hi everyone,

I currently use the free version of Image EWWW, but I'm considering switching to Short Pixel's yearly plan. My images on my site are still around 150kb to 200kb, and that's after reducing the size in Lightroom and running through Tiny PNG, then with Image EWWW (switching to WebP)

My site passes CWV, but the pages come up slow on Page Speed Insights (at least on mobile), so I'm wondering if it's worth switching to Short Pixel. I've heard a few people say it's a lot better and more efficient, but it would be good to get your thoughts.

Has anyone else done the switch? Also, is it easy enough to switch over? I don't want to break the site haha.

Thanks

please share!!! i'd love to read :D

I'm writing today because the sale of my niche site that I've been working on for the last 4 years has finally been paid out and this journey has come to an end.

I wanted to share my experience of creating a niche site in the recent climate, as well as what decisions I made along the way. I know that for most people my site is unremarkable and the amount I sold it for is modest, but as a first time business owner who "just started," with no other experience in entrepreneurship, internet or otherwise, I feel that this was an excellent learning experience and I'm proud of what I accomplished and achieved along the way. Hopefully this post is instructive and inspirational for those who are also first timers on a bootstrapped budget and want to know whether this is really possible for someone who, for all intents and purposes, doesn't really know what they're doing.

General stats upon sale:

• Sold for $102,000, listed at $145,626 (39x)
• Monthly revenue $4,450 and monthly profit $3,735 (over 12 months)
• Monetized primarily through AdThrive (80%), with the remaining 20% comprised of digital products on Etsy, YouTube Adsense, Online Course (Teachable), and Affiliate.
• Traffic sources were primarily through Google search (71%), direct - email newsletter (16%), and social media - Pinterest (9%)
• When sold, I had 2 freelance writers, a Virtual Assistant, and Pinterest manager, and had outsourced almost all work except for the core craft tutorials that I alone could produce
• The sale did not include my likeness, and also did not include the 2 book deals that I had signed and continue to work on
• The only money I ever invested into the business was $300 up front. After that, I never spent a penny of my own money and only re-invested profits from the business (aside from sweat equity of course)

Year 1 ('20): Beginnings

I began learning my craft in January of 2020, and conceived the idea of trying out blogging on March of 2020, when I started creating and designing tutorials for my craft and posting them on Instagram. In June of 2020, I purchased my domain name, and bought a $300 course from a fiber arts blog that I looked up to about "how to become a craft blogger." Keep in mind that I was a 20 year old at the time, to whom $300 was actually a substantial amount of money (I believe my bank account had about $800 in it around then).

Key skills gained in Y1:

• I became an expert in my craft! This seems like an overstatement, but during this first year I designed, photographed, sent out for testing, edited, finalized, and published so many tutorials, that I was able to iterate on my process and level up my professionalism. This helped me greatly when I reached out to brands, magazines, and eventually book publishers in Y2-4
• I learned the basics of SEO and set up my blog — I ran into many technical difficulties, but my boyfriend was a software engineer and helped me with the backend.
• I learned the basics of marketing and how to present myself on Instagram (photography is everything!), as well as managing an audience when I ran giveaways, Q&As, etc

Y2 ('21): Slow Growth

During year 2, I continued my work from year 1, but just more efficiently and with higher returns. At this point, I was focusing really hard on creating good, original content with the goal of getting to Mediavine, but I was writing all the articles on my own so it was slow going.

It was about this time that I also got really into email marketing. I switched to Flodesk after hitting the maximum free number of subscribers on MailChimp (about 1000), and loved the beautiful templates. I optimized my sign up forms, ran several campaigns to build subscribers, and built out my welcome sequence workflows and ran several sales that generated a couple hundred dollars at a time. This was extremely exciting to me because at this point I had become pretty burned out on Instagram and was looking for ways to move away from social media — I quit Instagram at the end of 2021, the source of the majority of my income so far (brand deals).

I also started trying to outsource low-level content to various places. I tried a few content mills during this time and it was expensive and not very high quality.

Y3 ('22): Focus on SEO & Mediavine!

Throughout 2022 not much changed in terms of revenue, but I was zero-ing in on my goal to reach Mediavine. The bulk of my revenue was still in commissioned posts for the brand. I was putting out a lot more high quality blog posts that ranked really well — a highlight was when I dug into an academic article and translated French, all in the pursuit of creating original content, and all that paid off when I qualified for Mediavine in October of 2022.

Qualifying for and being accepted into Mediavine was a huge turning point for me. It represented the goal that I had been working towards for 2 years at this point, and also tripled my revenue in one fell swoop. I went out to omakase to celebrate!

Y4 ('23): Fast Growth, Diversification, and AdThrive

I qualified for AdThrive in December of 2022 (on Christmas!) and was onboarded with them by February. This was incredible growth for me and was the culmination of all the SEO work I did in 2023.

At the beginning of 2023, I embarked on a massive plan to scale up by hiring a total of 5 writers, and outsourcing Pinterest to a new VA. This increased my expenses by 10x, but I had seen that outsourcing had worked to get me onto AdThrive and I wanted to continue to grow.

I had only been on Mediavine for 3 months, but from what I saw, it seemed like AdThrive provided a 30-50% bump on my revenue (in exchange for more intrusive ads).

Several other things happened this year:

• Chat GPT went mainstream in March of 2023, and that heavily rocked the MV/AT community. Personally, I began to feel some anxiety about generative AI, and started to look into sources for diversification.
• I started filming YouTube videos in early 2023 and was monetized in August, to the tune of around $150/month right off the bat
• In June of 2023, I created, filmed, tested, and published a beginner course on Teachable. I ran a pre-sale through my newsletter only and earned $800 in revenue before the course went live. This was very successful and I ran another sale around the holidays.
• In the fall of 2023, a publisher reached out to me to write a book of tutorials in my niche. This was hugely exciting to me and one of my main goals that I had had from the beginning. I accepted the deal even though revenue was negligible and I knew it would be a time-consuming project (deadline mid 2024).

However, in my personal life, things were going south quickly:

• In July of 2023, I achieved my goal of replacing my income at my full time corporate job (>4k a month net profit) and quit my job. This was hugely validating and one of my primary goals from the beginning.
• However, in September, my parent had a second, much more severe stroke (similar to the one in 2020) that landed them in the emergency room for over a month. During this time I was the primary caregiver and power of attorney. Needless to say, I did not do anything productive for the remainder of 2023, even though my revenue/profits in Q4 were record breaking (hit 200k pageviews in Sept and 6k revenue in Dec).

Y4.5 ('24): Passive Income + Sale

Given the family medical crisis that did not/has not abated, I was unable to work on the site, which caused me considerable stress. Even though it was cashflowing enough to more than cover all my expenses, my site was hit in the March update (had never been hit in an HCU update). Additionally, Google rolled out their AI snippets and I was aware that I needed to take action to continue growing.

During this time, I was also working on my book project and taking care of family (e.g. fighting insurance companies, hospitals, and assisted living facilities).

I made the decision in April of '24 to list the site on Empire Flippers since my traffic had been falling steadily (down to about 100k pageviews a month in April). Empire Flippers was incredible to work with and made the entire process so easy for a first time business owner. I received an offer at 70% of the valuation within a week, I did some negotiating to increase the up front payment, and it took about a month until the close.

Initially, I was hesitant about forking over a full 15% of the sale price to a broker, but after this experience, I've realized that the value Empire Flippers provided was truly invaluable and worth every penny. If I could do it again, I would go with EF 100% of the time. The last reason I found EF to be so helpful is that they administer the migration, which actually took almost 3 months (very unusual for a business this small), mostly due to a disorganized and slow to respond buyer. Without a broker to add a little extra pressure, it would've been very stressful for me to push the buyer when I needed their go-ahead to get the funds released to me from the escrow account.

Overall Thoughts post Sale:

I feel very happy with the result I got with the sale. As the year progressed in 2024, it became increasingly clear that I wasn't going to have the time to devote to the business like I had in previous years. It also became clear that I didn't really want to continue working on it. This is mostly because of the anxiety that came with AI, as well as general burnout from managing a business where the win conditions are moving targets.

In the last 4 years, Instagram has completely changed and the strategies I used to grow rapidly in 2020-21 are completely obsolete, and the SEO tactics I used to grow rapidly in 2022-2023 are likely going to be obsolete in the near future. Additionally, a big part of the burnout was the fact that trends changed rapidly in my niche, with a new style of craft that I personally did not like absolutely dominating. It was very exhausting to stress about whether I should make a new project in the new style versus the one that I personally preferred, for years on end. This was part of the reason why it was a welcome relief to work on a years-long book project, where all of my projects (in the style I preferred) were set in advance without the need for my deliberation.

TikTok was also a huge reason for burnout - I never got on TikTok, but the effect it had on other social media like Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest was very stressful to me as someone who does not like creating short form video content.

In the future, I'm definitely planning on pursuing entrepreneurship again, though perhaps through a high value service based business rather than a model of mass content creation. I also deeply value the book deals I got and continue to work on (just signed the second book deal a month ago) because it allows me to continue pursuing my craft creatively even past the sale of my business.

In addition, through the sale, I essentially earned over 2 years of net profit from my business all at once. Personally, I don't believe I would have been able to sustain the business at its level throughout the next 2 years (who knows what the online publishing space will even look like at that point), so it felt like a good payout to me. Most importantly, it gave me peace of mind while I continue to attend to family matters without having to stress about pageviews and volatility in the SERPs.

https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/

I have several platforms that I write on, about dog behaviour. Mostly WordPress, Substack and Medium.

I am bored of Facebook and hate X so thought I would give Reddit a look - but I have no idea how best to promote my work - if at all - on here.

How do other Reddittors create traffic? Or are other platforms better for directing traffic to content?

Is Reddit useful for this?

How do you see that idea? I have a big experience in legal field , and i made that blog as i want to brand myself and make some side money from my blog

Hi all,

I have a small blog that I run as a hobby, not for monetization. As such, I have not signed up with any ad networks or anything like that. I recently noticed on Google analytics that my blog has begun to monetize unexpectedly? This is coming in as “publisher ads monetization” and is literally only a few cents. It looks like it’s coming from Admob (which I have never heard of until now).

Does anyone have any insight into this? What is this and should I be aware of anything/concerned? Or do I ignore it? Thanks in advance!

The Holidays is upon us. Now is the PERFECT time to start a Christmas blog and get locked into the income stream of the nearly ONE TRILLION usd Christmas economy.

Yes, you heard that right. One. Trillion. Dollars. It's a big one and that's what she said.

And that's not counting the Christmas adjacent spending like Thanksgiving and Halloween and New Year's Eve.

Your Christmas blog could have articles about those holidays too.

The article ideas are ENDLESS. You will never run out of ideas.

Plus each year, new traditions and trends emerge. You are chasing an endless pool. For instance, there's always a hot toy each year that every kid must have. It's different each year. Write about it. Link to Amazon. Free money for your Booze Cruise in July when you can start up again with Christmas In July.

You got this!

I want to learn more about SEO and what's working in 2024 with all these changes.

I'm not a "beginner" with SEO, but what I struggle with is discerning what advice is relevant compared to what advice is outdated.

What are good, free places to learn the fundamentals of what's working today that doesn't have outdated advice?

Looking for your favorite sites, Youtube, free PDF guides, etc...

Thanks for your help

I thought it was always good to have more insights via data; that's why I created the tool.

It is free: https://www.medium-insights.com/

Also it is kinda fun to look up famous accounts like Barack Obama or Netflix technology blog.

Hi all. I have a blog centered around vegan travel basically a map of countries with vegan restaurants I’ve tried globally but also posts like … How to Eat Vegan at Taco Bell and how to get enough iron as a vegan etc. I still haven’t been approved for ads on mediavine or google Adsense and wondered if anyone had ideas on how to make $ besides ads. Based on what I focus on, I added affiliate links to vegan friendly hotels etc but still nothing. If I had a vegan recipe blog I’d do an ebook on vegan recipes so I’m interested in selling something like that but I can’t think of any other good ideas. Anyone have any? Thanks!

Hi everyone, a few hours ago, I received a notification from Google Console regarding an issue with unparsable structured data. [Screenshot]It’s marked as a critical issue and is affecting my homepage. I also noticed that my homepage isn’t loading images. I’ve tried to fix it but haven’t been successful. I could really use your help. I suspect it might be related to the Rank Math plugin, as I recently updated it using a ZIP file.

If an article shows up in Google Discover, how long does it stay there? Is it for a fixed time period? Or does it remain a mystery?

I'm trying to create an efficient workflow for my posts, the images for the posts and website.

I purchased a license to Eagle as a start.

But I would really like to know best practices.

Thank you

I'm trying to use Google keyword planner but every time I try it takes me to setting an ad campaign.

I googled Google keyword planner and selected the first result, then was taken to Google ads dashboard where I selected "go to keyword planner" from there I went on to sign in with my Gmail account. Once I signed in it requested for my card details but even though I didn't give it, it took me to starting an ad campaign.

Please what should I do?

Was I suppose to create a new account?

After recent Google updates, many website owners report losing up to half of their traffic. I'm wondering - if some sites lost traffic, shouldn't that traffic have gone somewhere else? I see lots of people complaining about traffic losses, but haven't seen anyone praising these updates. Are there any website owners who actually saw traffic increases after these updates? The traffic couldn't just disappear, right? Or is that not how it works?

Non monetized starter tools site with 400+ monthly organic traffic for sale.

Price: $100.

Age: 11 months.

URL: wordladdersolver.com

Registrar: Namecheap.

I'm offloading my portfolio, reason for selling.

Come DM if you're interested for a quick deal.

However, I keep getting rejected in interviews since my profile isn't very strong candidate (specially in this current market where seniors with 8-10 years of experience are applying for mid-level/junior jobs).

So, I brainstormed few ideas.

• What about blogging some of the stuffs that I learnt last year?

However, the moment I start to think about it, I feel bad. Because there are bloggers who are expert devops engineers and they write some serious quality stuff. And who am I? A support engineer? What can i write? I face low self esteem in real life as well and taking therapy for it since 2 years. Can anyone guide me if I should start blogging. And if I should buy a domain? I am asking because my salary is low, savings are not even 50$/month. So...

Because this comes up quite frequently on the subreddit, I'm going to adapt some pieces from my blog into one long post for people to peruse. I generally run through a checklist of what I'm looking for in most platforms when reviewing them, so I do the same thing here on all the free options. That checklist is below:

Core Requirements:

• No required coding: we don’t want to make you deal with coding or anything particularly technical to get a website set up
• Easy to host: really the same as the above point, ideally the time between deciding to start a blog and writing your first post should be minutes as opposed to hours
• Platform longevity: we don’t want to host on a platform that will disappear next year – ideally we want a platform that a) makes money and b) is under active development
• Value: if we’re starting a blog, we’re not going to want to spend tons of money per month on it – <$10 per month is ideal but it depends on the platform. In this case, we're looking for free.
• Site Speed: we don’t want to be hosting a website on an incredibly bloated platform that takes seconds to load – it can be fine, but its a much better experience if it’s fast
• Media Support: we probably want support for images, video, and audio – you may have a use case that doesn’t require those, but I’d say that’s not the standard

Nice-to-Haves:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): for me, this is important, but for many blogs this isn’t as necessary to your goals
• Customization Options: ability to easily change themes / design options can be incredibly useful
• Exportable: this is more of a nice-to-have, but being able to change platforms in the future is definitely a plus
• Image Optimization: this comes back to the “speed” point, but it’s nice to have
• Newsletter Functionality: a nice feature to have available
• Monetization Options: at some point, you may want to add this to your site
• Analytics: this requirement may be closer to a need-to-have for most people given its important to see what’s working and what isn’t

Choices for Free Blogging Platforms

Here are the blogging platforms that have a free option that we'll be talking about:

• WordPress**.com** (Note: this is not WordPress**.org**, it is a slimmed down version)
• Bear Blog
• Write.as
• Mataroa
• Substack
• Wix
• Blogger

There are a handful of other free platforms that are not discussed here as well and probably a handful more that I'm missing:

• Medium
• Lykhari
• Pika
• If you're technically inclined, there are tons of static site generators you can host on Github Pages / Cloudflare Pages / Netlify / etc for free

Initial Considerations – Custom Domains

Before we go any further, many people are looking to answer the question: “what’s the best free blogging platform I can use with a custom domain (e.g. myexamplesite.com)?”. That question actually has a specific answer – Blogger. Blogger is the only free option that supports that, as the rest of the platforms require a subscription. Substack is another outlier here – it requires a $50 one-time fee for a custom domain – which is pretty reasonable.

Back to the Platforms

WordPress.com

Don’t confuse wordpress**.com** with wordpress**.org**. WordPress.com is a slimmed down version of the WordPress software that provides free and paid hosting plans for blogs and websites. It is a great tool for starting a blog, but if you want to use any advanced WordPress features, you’re going to be better off eventually moving off the platform. That said, its simple to export a site to .org if you move off the platform.

• No required coding: Check
• Easy to host: Check
• Platform longevity: Check
• Value: Check
• Site Speed: Check-ish
• Media Support: Check

Nice-to-Haves:

• SEO: No
• Custom Pages: Check
• Customization: Check
• Image Optimization: Check
• Newsletter Functionality: No
• Monetization Options: No
• Analytics: No
• Exportable: Check

Bear Blog

A new entrant to the web hosting block – Bear Blog excels at simple blogging. Your blog will be fast and very easy to get up and running, but the lack of easy media support may be a turn-off for some.

• No required coding: Check
• Easy to host: Check
• Platform longevity: Check-ish – the platform has been around since 2020, charges for its premium service, and the developer has been active in development
• Value: Check
• Site Speed: Check – very fast
• Media Support: Check, although requires you to externally host files on the free plan (via Dropbox, Imgur, etc)

Nice-to-Haves:

• SEO: Check
• Custom Pages: Check
• Customization: Check, custom CSS
• Image Optimization: No (on the free plan)
• Newsletter Functionality: No
• Monetization Options: Limited
• Analytics: Check – very basic
• Exportable: Check – via csv

Write.as

A writer-focused platform that is very easy to set up and get started on. The platform looks great with very little work, but is somewhat limited on features such as SEO and custom pages.

• No required coding: Check
• Easy to host: Check
• Platform longevity: Check – has been around since 2015 and charges for the product
• Value: Check
• Site Speed: Check – very fast
• Media Support: Check, but would required external hosting

Nice-to-Haves:

• SEO: No
• Custom Pages: No
• Customization: Check, although somewhat limited.
• Image Optimization: Seems limited from what I can tell
• Newsletter Functionality: No
• Monetization Options: Somewhat limited
• Analytics: Check
• Exportable: Check

Mataroa

A similar option to Bear Blog – the platform itself is simple and barebones, but it has almost all the features that you would want. Limited SEO options are probably the major missing piece here.

• No required coding: Check
• Easy to host: Check
• Platform longevity: Check-ish – the platform has been around since 2020, charges for its premium service, and the developer makes the financials public (though, to be fair, it only generates ~$1k/year)
• Value: Check
• Site Speed: Check – very fast
• Media Support: Check

Nice-to-Haves:

• SEO: No
• Custom Pages: Check
• Customization: Very limited
• Image Optimization: Seems limited
• Newsletter Functionality: Check
• Monetization Options: Limited
• Analytics: Check
• Exportable: Check

Substack

A very good option if you are comfortable publishing everything on a platform (as you are subject to business model changes). They have features for effectively everything you would want and you can have a custom domain if you pay the one-time fee ($50). If you want to start a newsletter, this is the platform that you should be using.

• No required coding: Check
• Easy to host: Check
• Platform longevity: Check
• Value: Check
• Site Speed: Ok
• Media Support: Check

Nice-to-Haves:

• SEO: Limited
• Custom Pages: Check
• Customization: Limited
• Image Optimization: Check
• Newsletter Functionality: Check
• Monetization Options: Check
• Analytics: Check
• Exportable: Check

Wix

A very common option for creating free blogs. I personally am not a fan of the user experience to create a site, but they do have almost all of the features you would want if you’re willing to spend the time and dig in here.

• No required coding: Check
• Easy to host: Check
• Platform longevity: Check
• Value: Check (Free)
• Site Speed: Bad, especially on mobile
• Media Support: Check

Nice-to-Haves:

• SEO: Check
• Custom Pages: Check
• Customization: Check
• Image Optimization: Check
• Newsletter Functionality: Check
• Monetization Options: Limited
• Analytics: No
• Exportable: Check

Blogger

One of the oldest blogging platforms around, Blogger still does it all. And it does it all for free! The site leaves a lot to be desired in terms of design and overall customization, but you can update your blog to look ok pretty easily.

• No required coding: Check
• Easy to host: Check
• Platform longevity: Check – has been around since 1999 and Google keeps it going
• Value: Check
• Site Speed: Ok enough
• Media Support: Check

Nice-to-Haves:

• SEO: Check

• Custom Pages: Check

• Customization: Very limited, but there are preset themes to choose from

• Image Optimization: Check

• Newsletter Functionality: No

• Monetization Options: Check

• Analytics: Check

• Exportable: Check

If anyone has any comments on the features, would very much welcome them. There are probably quite a few workarounds available on each platform to deal with any shortcomings.

Website speed optimization is the ranking and indexing factors these days! i'm here to help you guys!