Gone are the days when blogging was used to be only a hobby or merely a matter of interest of the writers. Today it has become a good earning source.
With the growing number of bloggers, competition for SEO and ranking is becoming hard. Blogging is not an easy task. Today, when you want to start your own blog in order to earn from it, you have to learn many things about blogging.
Blogger is a nice and free place for starters. You can create a free blog on blogspot.com and start blogging today.
Free Blogger's Blogspot VS Custom Domain
Many of the bloggers come with great passion and are soon tired of this boring job. Anyhow, blogging for money and only for money is the thing that makes them feel exhausted as they do not start earning in the early few months.
Well, I have written many posts on blog monetization and how one can start earning from your blog in a short time. I have to explain the advantages and disadvantages of the free Blogspot service.
What is Blogger and Blogspot?
Blogspot.com offers free hosting space, a unique subdomain, and a variety of free themes for your new blog. Everything is free. Blogger is a CMS (content management system) that is really simple and cool and is probably designed for beginners. This service is free of cost. All you have to have is a Gmail account.
You can create a free blog on the Blogspot blog as soon as you have a Gmail account. It is a good place to learn experience and test your skills. Once you learn some technical things, you can jump into professional blogging.
Why Blogspost is a free domain?
Blogspot is a domain owned by Google. Google allows its users to have a free subdomain on this main domain. For example, a user can have ‘www.mynewblog.blogspot.com”, where “mynewblog” is the subdomain name that a user creates.
You have seen a lot of blogs with the “blogspot.com” main domain. They all are the subdomains of ‘blogspot.com’.
A user with a Gmail account has access to create a free blog on this domain. Google has provided a very useful and free blogging platform to its users. This post explains the pros and cons of this free blogging service.
I have read many posts about the comparison of WordPress and Blogger. I have not compared here the two blogging platforms. I have made an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of a free Blogspot blog.
Blogspot VS Custom domain Name
Let me start with the benefits that a user enjoys with a free Blogspot blog. I must say that Blogspot is the most popular and most widely used free blogging platform. It has the following advantages
1. Cost and Charges
Blogspot is free of cost. It’s absolutely free. All you have to have is a Gmail account. Google provides many free and paid services to a single Gmail account. Go and Create your free blog in blogspot.com.
Once you create, select a theme from given themes and publish your blog in less than a minute. Google allows almost 30 GB of free disc space for Google Drive.
On the other hand, a custom domain is not free. you have to purchase your domain and you have to pay annually to renew your domain. It will cost you around 5 to 20 dollars depending upon the extension.
2. Hosting and Bandwidth
both with free blogspot and custom domain, you get free hosting and unlimited bandwidth. You can use upto 15 GB free hosting space provided by Google Drive.
You can save your images and files on Google Drive and insert a link to those files. There are no bandwidth limitations. No hosting, no paid tools, and plugins. You can change your theme later at any time. Not any website offers such a professional platform free of cost.
3. Variety of themes
Blogger has many inbuilt free themes but you can upload your own HTML themes files too. There are many websites that offer free Blogger themes.
You can use any theme with both free Blogspot and a custom domain name.
You can choose a theme, download it to your computer and upload your themes to your Blogspot blog. You can customize the theme by editing the HTML of the template. Popular websites that offer free themes for Blogspot are:
Gooyaabi Templates
This website offers free themes for blogger blogs. It has a variety of themes. You can choose by category, by style, by topic, by layout, by SEO tools etc. All the themes are free except a few ones that are paid. Go and choose a theme of your choice from Gooyaabi.com
Pro templates Lab
Pro Templates Lab is another free themes provider. The user can choose from the collection of free themes. You can select your theme by features, by style, by topic, by the sidebar, by color, and by columns.
Along with this, you can as any third-party functionality into the HTML of your template. It means you have full control of your template and themes. You can add and remove any themes feature and part. You have access to the whole HTML code of your template.
Many third parties give you HTML code to be inserted into the HTML of your blog if you want to run their service on your blog.
Sora Templates
Sora templates provide free themes only a backlink in return. It means you cannot remove the credit link of Sora Templates from your theme. But that is of no importance.
A link to their website that is placed in the footer section of the themes is hardly noticeable. This is again a very little thing as compared to the theme you get from Sora templates.
4. Security and Protection
It is still nice to know that this free-of-cost blogging service is 100% secured. There are no security issues and spamming on your free blog. As the domain ‘Blogspot’ is owned by Google, it is hard for hackers to break into your admin panel.
Google has its own spam filtering that prevents spam comments on your blog. I have heard the praise of security of this free service from many of my friends and clients.
5. Search Engine Optimization
Blogspot offers limited SEO to your blog. This is because when "Blogspot" is added to your website address, it becomes lengthy. So, with a custom domain, you have the control to keep your home URL as short as you can.
We all know that there is a restriction on the length of HTML URLs for blogger posts. So, a custom domain helps you choose a short URL making space for more keywords in the post URL.
6. Monetization
Blogger has a nice feature that it supports Google Adsense by default. No hard integration efforts. Apart from Google Adsense, you can also monetize your blog with any other ad network.
With a free Blogspot URL, you hardly get approved. But the process of approval is faster with a custom domain. Adsense prefers websites with custom domains. Moreover, free Blogspot indicates a lack of professionalism and less valued content.
Make sure you have completed a checklist before applying for Google Adsense.
If your Google Adsense has been disapproved or disabled, don’t worry. You can try alternatives to Google Adsense that are other networks similar to Adsense for monetizing your blog. Or you can use various other monetizing methods for your blog.
7. Transferable to other users
With free Blogspot, you can easily hand over your blog to others. Simply make them admins of your blog and remove yourself as an admin.
But with a custom domain, you have to transfer the ownership of your custom domain too. Or you have to manage the domain yourself.
If you want to know how you can change the owner of a free Blogspot blog go and read this post.
8. Branding and Professional value
Although Blogspot gives you full administrative access and privilege, you are not the owner of your blog- the owner is Google.
Everything you write and how much you promote your blog, the benefit goes to Blogspot ranking. As Google is the host, you have no access the hosting databases with administrative privileges. You can only use a dashboard to write, delete, edit your posts and customize the theme, layout, properties, identity, and user interaction of your blog.
You cannot remove the extension “blogspot.com” with this free service. For this, you have to purchase your own domain and point your blog to it. Extension “blogspot.com” gives an unprofessional look to the URL of your blog.
It does not mean that search engines will ignore this type of URL but the users will. The true sense of ownership comes when you have your own domain and hosting account.
Conclusion
Having a free blog on Blogspot is a nice thing to start your blogging career. It is both free and easy. So, a blogger can learn many new things and step in his/her professional career.
For an advanced user, free Blogspot is not the right place. Professional blogging needs many things including a unique brand name. I myself use a custom domain on blogger for its simple and organized CMS.
In the end, if you are already using a blogger blog and have experience of blogging, I would recommend you a custom domain for your blog.
There are many benefits of a custom domain name for your blog. If you plan to have one, please read the following list of cheapest domain registrants.
If you don’t know what to do, simply contact us and we will buy a domain and design a blog for you only in “50/- USDs” within a week.
Thinking to start a free blog? Read this step-by-step guide for starting your own blog. Best of Luck!