I started my first blog for free, and what happened? It failed. You can read more on why my first blog failed here. For someone who is trying to be frugal, I understand why you would want to start a money-making blog for free. This post is meant to give you heads up on the downsides of attempting to start a successful blog for free, and what will work.
These are three reasons why you should not start your blog for free if you have plans of monetizing it.
1. You do not OWN your blog
If you start a blog for free, chances are that you are starting it on a free site like blogger.com or wordPress.com. This means that even though it is your blog, technically you do not own it. Google or whichever platform is hosting your blog for free may decide at any time to take your blog off their platform and your blog could disappear without notice.
What would you do if all the hard work you put into building your blog goes down the drain? It has happened to some bloggers and you do not want to be caught in that situation.
On the other hand, you can pay for hosting and prevent the possibility of losing your blog. If you invest in an affordable hosting platform like Bluehost, you are assured of the safety of your blog. If you want to start a money-making blog on a budget, I recommend Bluehost. This is because it is one of the affordable yet credible hosting services you can go for. Bluehost also registers your domain name for free.
When I was starting my blog, I was broke and had little money, so I opted for Bluehost, and their services have been good. Most importantly, Bluehost is the most recommended blog host by many experienced bloggers. You can check out Bluehost here.
Another reason why it is important to pay for hosting is that a unique domain name gives you some level of credibility. People will most likely take a blog whose URL is beautyforbliss.com more seriously than one which is beautyforbliss.blogspot.com. Good thing is, when you sign up for Bluehost, you get a domain name for free.
Read: How to Start a Money-Making Blog the Easy Way
3 Traits you Need to Succeed at Blogging
2. Monetization may be difficult
Advertisers and potential customers may not trust a free site or a site which does not look professional. If you want advertisers to trust you, you must be willing to invest in your blog and position it for success. Advertisers may find it difficult to trust a blog which looks sub-standard. You can start a money-making blog even when you are broke. I have written about it here.
If you want to be a successful blogger, you must be willing to invest in blogging education and products. Blogging products are good in helping you learn new and effective ways of monetizing your blog from experienced bloggers. Many new bloggers have made their first Affiliate sale from the e-book, How to make your first Affiliate Sale in 24 hours.
A blogging product I personally love is an e-book called Pinteresting Strategies by Carly Campbell. This e-book helped me put together my Pinterest strategy and position my Pinterest account for success. I know a lot more about Pinterest and Pinterest SEO (Search Engine Optimization) than ever before. It would have taken me ages to figure this out on my own.
3. Getting traffic may be hard
Social media is a good source of traffic for most bloggers. While the use of social media platforms is good for traffic, you may need to pay for some services. Pinterest is one of the great sources of traffic for bloggers, and Pinterest works with scheduling tools (which you would have to pay for). This makes it convenient and easy to manage your Pins and get more traffic to your blog.
Even if you do not want to pay for scheduling tools, you would need some good information on manual pinning, which I learned from the same ebook I mentioned before, Pinteresting Strategies.
You see, even to pin manually you need some lessons 😊. If you can afford it, I highly recommend you get this ebook. Carly teaches you how to set up your Pinterest account properly and how to pin manually the right way. For now, the e-book costs $32. Honestly, I sometimes suspect she may increase the price in the future. You can check out Pinteresting Strategies here.
These are three of the most important reasons why you should not start your blog for free. Even if you do not have money to start a blog, you can find a post on how to start a blog on a budget here. Check out three traits you need to have to become a successful blogger and lessons I learned from two months of blogging.
I encourage you to start a blog today and not put it off to tomorrow. Take a step and you will be on your way to becoming a successful blogger. Nothing is impossible. Check out my how to start a blog post and get in touch if you have any questions. I will be glad to respond. Happy blogging!
1 comment
Every helpful post. Thanks dear