Website Traffic – Using A Free Blogging Platform

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 12:12 am

For anyone starting out blogging, using a free blogging web site is a great way to get started in the blogosphere. Popular blogging web sites like blogger and Live Journal allow users to set up and host a blog without incuring any costs at all. This promotes blogging, because one of these platforms can provide you with all of the tools that you require to get your blog up and working without spending any cash, and means that you have nothing to lose by starting a blog. The fact that it is so easy to find a way to blog for free is one of the reasons why so many people who have never had any other kind of web presence before find themselves drawn to the blogosphere.

By signing up for a free blogging web site, you may find it easier to get listed in search engines than you would if you were starting your own blog from scratch. For example, google runs the free blog hosting site blogger.com and crawls its pages reguarly looking for updated pages, so if you have your site hosted by blogger you are almost guaranteed to be listed on google’s blog search engine. This easy access to search engines can take some of the work out of promoting your blog, and can give you an advantage in gaining a following with a minimum of effort.

If your blog pulls in a large readership, you may wish to consider moving your site. A lot of people feel that being hosted by a free blogging service gives a blog a sort of amateur feel that is fine for a new member of the blogosphere, but is not suited to a high-profile blog. Having your own domain and hosting can help you make your blog feel professional, and finding a company that will host your domain is not difficult or expensive. Once your blog takes off, you will in all likelihood be able to sell enough advertising space to be able to afford to purchase a domain and pay for a hosting package, and still have money left over. However, it doesn’t make sense in most cases to invest in these glossy luxuries before you have a respectable sized readership.

Beginning your blog with a free blogging site is a great way to build a following before you spend any money on your blog. If and when your blog becomes popular and you are ready to take the next step and purchase your own domain, your readers will follow you to your new home. The fact that it is possible to use a free blog host like LiveJournal.com, Blogger.com, or Wordpress.com as a kind of incubator for your blog is great news for bloggers everywhere.

If you decide at a later date to install your own hosted wordpress blog you will be able to import your posts into your new blog from some free blogging platforms. If it is likely that you will want to host your own blog eventually both Blogger and LiveJournal are capable of achieving this, although with LiveJournal you cannot import comments.

Consider using Blogger.com or Wordpress.com to start your free hosted blog today.