Think of your website or blog (same thing) as opening a storefront. You want to hire a freelance blogger that’s like a manager, not just a counter clerk. Your Web team fulfills several positions:

• writer
• community manager
• salesperson
• customer service agent
• online marketer

Like my partner Will Chen, editor of the personal finance site WiseBread.com, likes to say:

“You want to hire a blogger, not just a writer. There’s a big difference.”

Basing Compensation on Performance Metrics

When you use performance metrics to pay your blogger, you’re incentivizing them to grow your blog, not just churn out posts.

There is no one-size-fits-all blogger compensation model. As you think about these blog metrics and how you can pay blogger, keep these tips in mind:

1. Align performance bonuses with your business goals. If you don’t care about getting lots of commenters, you don’t have to pay a bonus based on that metric.
2. Keep payment structure as simple as possible. This will seem like contradictory advice after I mention over a dozen metrics below. You don’t have to (and probably shouldn’t) use every metric mentioned here. Pick the ones that are important to you. Keep your blogger compensation fairly simple so they know what to expect.
3. Use maximum caps on the performance bonuses for cost control.

3 Types of Blog Performance Metrics

I’ll present three major types of metrics you can use to measure the performance of a blog (and blogger), explain what each type of statistic tells you about performance, and show how you can use these metrics to pay your bloggers.

1. Base pay: Consistency metric
2. Bonus: Internal metrics
3. Bonus: External metrics

Base pay: Consistency metric

You can also call these the “post count” or “word count” metrics. These metrics track the baseline responsibilities of your blogger. They ensure that your blog has a consistent publishing schedule.

Consistency is especially important to a business blog. When readers (potential customers) know what to expect from your blog, they’re more likely to come back tomorrow.

What you’re counting:

• number of posts per week
• minimum (and/or maximum) post lengths

If you have no idea where to start, use the following numbers as a guide. Adjust them up and down based on your specific business goals and your budget.

How Much to Pay for a Blog Post

• $5 – $10 per 100 words. So a mid-length blog post of about 300 words is worth about $30. A long, in-depth article (usually around 1,000 words or so) is worth approximately $100. You can find cheaper rates, but you won’t be happy with the quality.
• Aim for 1,000 words per week. That’s the equivalent of 3-4 shorter blog posts or 1-2 longer articles.

Again, these numbers are just starting points. There are no hard and fast rules in terms of pay or weekly word counts that will make your blog a success.

Quick tips about the consistency metrics:

• Pay per-post, not per-word. It’s a lot easier to manage that way. So your contract might require something like “3 blog posts of at least 300-words a week for $30 per post”.

Bonus #1: Internal metrics

Internal metrics are the ones that determine how well your blog is doing on its own.

Paying a bonus based on these metrics incentivizes your blogger to build a better blog, not just chase word counts.

Internal blog metrics to measure:

• number of new comments
• number of new feed or email subscribers
• sales directly generated by the blog

You can use the following numbers as a starting guide for offering a bonus:

• Comments bonus: $1 per new comment is a good rate. Obviously that shouldn’t include the blogger’s own comments. If you have a WordPress blog, you can use the GeneralStats plugin to quickly count comments.
• Subscribers bonus: Subscribers are more important than commenters. Subscribers are giving you permission to push your marketing message to their feed reader or email inbox. $2-3 per new subscriber is a good starting rate.
  • RSS Feed tool: FeedBurner is the best service for tracking the number of RSS feed subscribers you have.
  • Email newsletter services: AWeber and ConstantContact are two of the best email newsletter services available.
• Sales commission: A commission for any sales directly generated by the blog is probably the best way to incentivize a business blogger. And it directly aligns with your business goals. If you already have an affiliate program, make your blogger an affiliate so they can earn sales commissions.

Bonus #2: External metrics

These external metrics measure the success of your blog compared to the rest of the Web. By offering performance bonsues based on these metrics, you’re encouraging your Web team to market your blog to niche neighbors and the Web at large.

What to measure:

• page views, unique views
• search referrals
• inbound links

Content publishers like About.com make money by selling advertising based on the number of page views the site gets. So as an About.com guide, I get paid based on page views.

For a small business that does not depend on page views, it makes more sense to pay based on unique views or unique visitors. You care more about the number of unique people your blog/website is reaching. Use a Web analytics service like Google Analytics (free but very powerful) to measure the unique visits to your site. A bonus of $0.25 – $0.50 per unique visit is reasonable — it’s less than the comments bonus, but not so low it doesn’t matter. You can either set it to the absolute unique visits count, or based on an increase from the previous month.

Search referrals are a great way to measure the success of your blog. However, because it might take a few months for actions to turn into search engine referrals, it’s not a good metric to use to pay for blogger performance.

Instead of directly paying for search referrals, paying based on the number of new inbound links is a good proxy. Generally, more inbound links will turn into more search referrals. Technorati is a good tool for measuring the inbound links to your blog.

What makes Technorati unique is that it only measures inbound links from the last 90 days. This forces your blogger to continually build inbound links and not just stop after a good month. I like paying $0.25 to $1 for each month-to-month increase in inbound links.

There’s a ton of info in this article, and I realize it can be very confusing for a small business owner trying to create a reasonable compensation model for their bloggers. Email me at onlinebusiness@aboutguide.com if you have any questions about this topic or anything else related to your online business.

So you’ve decided you’re going to create a blog? Great!

Now, which blogging platform are you going to choose?

Learn about the ten best blogging platforms and which one is best for your goals.

The majority of these platforms are free and very easy to use. Some require different levels of technical ability and others required that you purchase web hosting. Many of the free options come with built in social communities that help promote your blog and its content.

Here are the ten best blogging platforms:

1. WordPress Blogging Platform

WordPress comes into variations: WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

Learn the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

• If you’re starting a blog you might find WordPress.com to be the simplest and least expensive option.
• However, if you are planning a growing your blog into an actual business or to generate leads for your existing business I recommend using WordPress.org.

The primary difference between the two versions of WordPress is blog hosting. With WordPress.org you’ll have to find and pay for your own web hosting. With WordPress.com your blog will be hosted on their servers. Cost is also a factor. You can set up a blog that is completely free on WordPress.com. With WordPress.org you have to buy web hosting and your own domain. Expect to pay from $40-100 to purchase a domain and hosting.

It should be noted that worldwide the majority of blogs run on the WordPress platform.

While there are many options for blogging, serious bloggers almost always choose WordPress as their blogging platform.

Other platforms are catching up with Google analytics integration, custom themes, and plug-ins – but there is no other option is powerful as WordPress.

Because of the huge number of WordPress themes available (both free and premium) bloggers are able to make WordPress do just about whatever they wanted to.

Themes exist for the following functions:

• photography blogs
• e-commerce
• real estate listings
• classified sites
• forum items
• travel blogs

Checkout this huge set of free WordPress themes. You might also enjoy this comparison of two premium themes.

WordPress Features:

• Cost: Free (premium options available)
• Ability to use custom domain: Yes
• Integration with Google Analytics: Yes
• Ability to Use Custom Themes: Yes

There is a third option when using WordPress as your blogging platform. Choosing a managed WordPress host will eliminate much of the maintenance and technical side of using self hosted WordPress.org, while still getting the flexibility of custom plug-ins and themes. While managed WordPress hosting is more expensive then shared hosting, it is a good choice for bloggers who don’t want to invest time in technical aspects of their site maintenance.

If you don’t want to use this platform, check out these 3 WordPress alternatives.

Check this set of 5 free blogging platforms.

2. SquareSpace Blogging Platform

The feature that stands of the most inside of SquareSpace is their LayoutEngine technology. Longtime users of WordPress, or any other blogging platform, will notice this amazing feature right away. Click and drag images, re-size them, and adjust placement faster and smoother than any other blogging platform allows.

Everything is laid out inside a perfect grid so everything is always properly aligned. Text, images, or blocks can be dragged to the exact location where you want them.

Another key feature of SquareSpace is how multiple site components are pulled together all under one platform. Typical website components such as pages and galleries along with blogs and e-commerce stores all work smoothly together. Add a custom template for unique look and you have a dynamic web site with e-commerce and blog functionality.

SquareSpace is a premium-only blogging platform. In fact they also offer a complete and dynamic e-commerce solution starting at just $24 per month. Easily build your website from scratch or using one of their numerous free templates.

Sites and blogs with SquareSpace are hosted in the cloud.

Cloud web hosting is scalable and stable meaning is no downtime and no maintenance required by the blogger.

Benefits of blogging with SquareSpace:

• All annual accounts get a free domain name
• True 24/7 support: there are no call centers or outsourced help. Everyone on the team is an experienced user of square space.
• Apps for iPad, iPhone and android allow post creation review and editing along with comment management and access of web stats available on the go.
• No need to worry about the mobile version of your site – every square space template includes a mobile design so that your site will display properly on any device all the time.

Content created on other blogging platforms can be seamlessly imported into SquareSpace. These blogging platforms include WordPress, Tumblr, and Blogger. Content created inside of your SquareSpace blog can be set auto publish to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Tumblr.

Choose from three options:

• SquareSpace Standard: 20 pages, galleries and blogs
• Limited bandwidth, storage and contributors
• Includes free domain name
• $8/month (billed annually) or $10 month-to-month
• SquareSpace Unlimited: Unlimited pages, galleries and blogs
• Unlimited bandwidth, storage and contributors
• Includes free domain name
• $16/month (billed annually) or $20 month-to-month
• SquareSpace Business: Fully integrated E-Commerce with mobile store, inventory tracking and unlimited physical and digital products.
• Unlimited pages, galleries and blogs
• Unlimited bandwidth, storage and contributors
• Includes free domain name
• $24/month (billed annually) or $30 month-to-month

3. TypePad.com Blogging Platform

TypePad is a strong contender a business blogging platform: stable, flexible, and offers strong analytics.

The platform offers promotion of your content across its network. This means increased exposure and traffic to your blog.

Benefits of using TypePad:

• published easily via PC mobile or email
• ability to sell products and services
• earn revenue with ads on your blog
• join the TypePad affiliate program to generate more revenue
• ability to tweak or even build your own blog theme

Drawback to using TypePad: it isn’t free. Cost range from $8.95 to $29.95 per month. Each account comes with a free 14 day trial.

Popular bloggers using the TypePad.com platform:

• Seth Godin
• Amazon Associates
• Paris Hilton
• Geek Week

4. Tumblr.com Blogging Platform

Tumblr is a free microblogging platform. You can easily create attractive functional blog in a matter of minutes – and you can forward your own domain to your Tumblr blog.

From Tumblr.com:

Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from your browser, phone, desktop, email or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors to your theme’s HTML.

Some of the more outstanding features of Tumblr include:

• Bookmarklet: Quickly share web treasures via this quick link you add to your bookmark bar.
• Post via email: Automatically post text, photos, or videos to your Tumblr blog via a unique email address. The email address is found on the Settings page for any of your blogs.
• Mass edit posts and tags: The Mega-Editor is a powerful tool to easily edit tags on multiple posts at the same time.
• Phone in an audio post: Via a toll-free number (Dial 1-866-584-6757) you can call in a post and it will be automatically posted for your followers.
• Short URLs: Short urls are useful when you’d like to share a link to one of your posts and you don’t have much space. If you’ve connected your blog to Twitter, you can grab the short url for any published post from the right column of the Edit screen for that post.
• Reblog between your blogs: Click “reblog” on any of your own posts to reblog it to any of your other Tumblr blogs.
• Keyboard shortcuts for fast navigation through posts. Pressing “Z + tab” will switch between the dashboard and the public view of your blogs.
• Mobile apps for either iOS or Android operating systems.

Popular Tumblr Blogs: Celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Zooey Deschanel and President Obama have all used Tumblr to run their blogs.

Tumblr Features:

• Costs: Free
• Ability to use custom domain: Yes
• Integration with Google Analytics: Yes
• Ability to Use Custom Themes: Yes

5. Blogger Blogging Platform

This popular blogging platform owned by Google is extremely easy to set up and has good online support. It has been said that a site run on Blogger receives SEO benefits by Google, although this hasn’t been verified.

Clear benefits of using blogger include:

• ease of setup
• simple design and layout
• inability to harm the backend (no custom coding)
• free

Drawbacks to using blogger:

• inability to do custom coding
• limited opportunities for monetization
• unprofessional design options

Blogger is popular primarily among family and amateur travel blogs. Seldom do business bloggers use the Blogger platform because the drawbacks are significant. Blogger simply was not created to run a professional blog.

Blogger a great choice for people who want to share photos and travel experience with friends and family, but not for business blog.

6. LiveJournal Blogging Platform

Primarily for hobbyists and personal blogs, LiveJournal has strong community. At time of posting, LiveJournal had 61.7 million journals and communities and over 120,000 posts in the last 24 hours.

LiveJournal has a free client via the Apple AppStore and a mobile version for use from any mobile device.

To practice your blogging or to share personal experiences, LiveJournal.com looks like a reasonable option. I can’t imagine a business, of any size, using this blogging platform. Even the creators a LiveJournal agree: posts on this blogging service don’t even show up in search engines and even offer the option to hide posts from some readers.

7. Blog.com Blogging Platform

Easily set up a free blog at Blog.com. While they offer a set of premium features, you can easily begin blogging without spending any money. They have a strong community, including more than 2 million bloggers. Choose from more than 100 blogging themes, the majority of which are free.

Benefits of using Blog.com:

• the free sub-domain actually looks pretty good (yourname.blog.com)
• free multi-author blogs
• huge selection of free blogging themes
• a nice set of inexpensive premium options
• optional privacy settings
• search engine optimized
• the ability to earn from ads on your blog

Premium features on Blog.com:

• remove the ads, or add your own ($30 per year)
• extra storage space (2 GB included for free) in increments of 1020 or 30 GB (starting at $20 per year)
• custom domain ($18 per year)
• custom design ($15 per year)
• unlimited authors (free option includes up to 35) at $25 per year
• premium themes ($60 per year)

8. Jux.com Blogging Platform

Jux.com is unique blogging platform that displays your posts and images full-screen on every device.

If photography is a primary part of your blogging model, you might want to check out Jux.com. While the site is a little hard to navigate, the appearance of the content on the site is outstanding. Simply visit Jux.com and click “sign in” to get started.

While photos are the obvious benefit to a format like this, there are a number of other applications, such as:

• Slideshow: display images with no clutter
• Video: display video at full-screen and make an impact
• Article: display your content above a related image background
• Top 10 lists: create strong list posts with powerful images

From Jux.com:

Jux is the best showcase for your stories. Share words, photos and videos with unprecedented ease and impact. Fullscreen on every screen. Desktop, iPad and iPhone.

How is Jux pronounced? Jux [pronounced jucks] verb informal. To put something on the internet in a way that awes your peers: “Wow, you gotta Jux that.”

9. Weebly Blogging Platform

Weebly offers a free tool for creating and hosting your website.

Features of using the free Weebly service:

• Drag-and-drop website builder: building great-looking site with no coding or technical skills needed
• Free powerful hosting included
• Choose from hundreds of free themes
• Add a blogging application to your free website at no extra charge
• Choose from a full set of multimedia applications:, including for galleries HD video and audio players maps and photo slideshows
• iPhone app available

In addition to their free version, they offer a premium version called Weebly Designer Platform.

In addition to the standard features included with the free version, the Weebly Designer Platform offers a 100% white label solution. White label means that all the branding from Weebly is removed and replaced with your company logo, color scheme, and domain name. This platform allows you to resell this service. Learn more about white label blog platforms.

While Weebly has its own CMS (content management system) in resembles WordPress in a number of ways. Key features such as form builders, traffic stats, functional mobile sites, changeable themes and a set of other functions and applications make Weebly a powerful option for new bloggers.

In addition to the drag-and-drop ease of Weebly Designer Platform, there is also an option to modify and change HTML and CSS. This is not required but a nice feature for those who like to fine-tune their site and have knowledge of these coding languages.

Build a site for free and only pay once it goes live. Price is $7.95/month per published site.

10. Posterous Spaces Blogging Platform

With a focus on sharing and creating more content, Posterous manages the technical back-end of your blogging. They offer the ability to create a private or public space (“space” is how they refer to what we know as a blog) controlling who sees what content.

The platform works great for professional bloggers, businesses, families and travelers. While your Posterous space can be used as a standalone blog, it can also be used as a syndication channel that will auto update numerous other social media channels.

Mobile apps for either iOS or Android operating systems are available.

From Posterous Spaces: Millions of users are Sharing Smarter with Posterous Spaces. From personal blogs to fully functional business websites, what will you create next?

Posterous currently supports the following services for auto-update:

• Facebook- Profiles and Pages
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Blogger
• Tumblr
• WordPress (XML-RPC must be enabled)
• Drupal
• Flickr
• Picasa
• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Scribd

Update: Posterous will be shutting down April 30, 2013.

Choosing The Best Blogging Platform

A company blog has become an indispensable component of every website and company marketing plan. Writing great content isn’t enough. Some blogging platforms actually limit your search engine exposure, while others look so bad that it will distract from your message.

Take your time as you choose your blogging platform. Many of them have free trials – sign-up for the one you like and try it out. Wait until you are confident in the platform before you promote it. Blogging is an important component in starting your online business.

Earn a few hundred extra dollars a month for writing blog posts

If you’re a writer looking for a paid blogging job, this list of the 10 websites where you can find blogger jobs is for you.

Most blogging jobs pay per post (often around 300-500 words), and have some kind of regular posting schedule. Typical rates are $5-$50 per post depending on how involved each post has to be. Some jobs also have ad revenue sharing.

Be wary of jobs that only pay based on revenue sharing, especially from very young sites. It’s only worth it if the site is fairly large and has an established revenue stream.

1. Problogger.net

Resource Type: blogging specific job board ($50 to post a job)

It makes sense that Problogger.net has the best marketplace for publishers and bloggers to connect. Darren Rowse — problogging guru and cofounder of blog network b5media — has been teaching bloggers how to make money for years. Darren not only shows novice bloggers how to get started, he also discusses advanced problogging topics to help you hone your blogging skills.

Because of this environment, the job board draws a knowledgeable audience of bloggers (great applications), which attracts the best job postings (highest paying / most prestigious opportunities). 

2. Freelance Writing Jobs

Resource Type: blog for freelance writers with a category for job leads.

Where are the jobs? Click the Writing Gigs link for the list of blogger job openings. There are high quality blogging jobs posted here, because they don’t accept low-paying jobs.

Freelance Writing Jobs is a blog whose aim is to help writers find writing jobs. Especially ones that pay a fair wage. Multiple posts daily, including job sightings and helpful articles about freelance writing. 

3. Elance

Resource Type: freelance specific job board (free to post a job)

Where are the jobs? Click on the “Find Work” tab, then search for the term “blogger”.

Elance is a large marketplace for freelancers of all types. From data entry to Web design to programming to writing, Elance is a global marketplace for freelance work. There are several blogging jobs posted every day. 

4. Performancing

Resource Type: community of bloggers with a forum for blogging jobs (free to post a job)

Where are the jobs? In the “Blogger Jobs” forum. (Click “Forums” in the main menu, scroll down to find the “Blogger Jobs” forum.)

Performancing is a blog community of many bloggers. The jobs forum gets around 5 new listings a week. The Peformancing blog offers good tips for aspiring probloggers. 

5. Authority Blogger Forums

Resource Type: forums for bloggers (free to post a job)

Where are the jobs? They’re listed in the “Want, Need, Offer” forum.

Authority Blogger is a forum community founded by problogging guru Chris Garrett. There is a helpful community of bloggers here helping each other write better blogs. 

6. Poe War

Resource Type: blog and resource site for freelance writers with a job board ($50 to post a job)

Where are the jobs? Click on the “Jobs by Category” link in the main menu. Blogging jobs are usually listed in the “Online/Web” or “Freelance” categories. A lot of the relevant jobs will say “Web content editor/writer” instead of “blogger”, so read the descriptions carefully.

Poe War is a very popular resource site and blog for freelance writers. Check out the index of freelancing articles in the “Articles” section for thoughtful essays and tutorials. 

7. Writer’s Weekly

Resource Type: resource site for freelance writers with a weekly job listings roundup

Where are the jobs? They’re linked from the main menu as “Markets“. It’s a weekly post with a roundup of (seemingly all) the newly available writing jobs around the Web.

Writer’s Weekly is an old school site (published since 1997) for freelance writers. Don’t let the 90’s style design fool you. There’s a ton of useful information here.

8. Craigslist

Resource Type: city specific online classifieds ($25 to post a job in one city)

Where are the jobs? You can find writing jobs under the “Writing/Editing” category of the job listings. Unfortunately, you’ll have to browse to each city first. Blogging is often not locale specific, so it’s worth it to look at the listings in all the major cities.

Craigslist is still (by far) the biggest online classifieds site and a good source of freelance writing jobs. To save some aggravation, you can just follow the freelance writing blogs (like Freelance Writing Jobs) since they will often post jobs listed on Craigslist. 

9. Media Bistro

Resource Type: portal for media industry with a job board ($279 to post a job)

Where are the jobs? Click on the “Jobs” link in the main menu to go to the job listings. Search for “blog” in the search box on the left. You can also visit the “Online / New Media” category for more interesting opportunities.

Media Bistro is a big portal for anyone who works in the content / creative industry. That includes online media, PR, writers, editors, producers, etc. This is where the big media players (magazines, newspapers) will post jobs.

The Best Free Blogging Platforms for Starting a New Blog

Many small businesses and internet entrepreneurs are looking for a way to start blogging – but without spending much money. In this article, you will learn about the top five best free blogging platforms.

Free Blog Warning: There is a drawback to using a free blogging platform. You have very limited control of your content and it can be hard to download or export should you decide to switch to a self-hosted blogging platform.

It is important to decide which is more important: price or flexibility.

Generally speaking if you are just looking for a place to express your thoughts and have no commercial intent, then a free blogging platform can be right for you. However, if you have any intent to make money online then you must go with a paid blogging solution.

Another huge consideration is whether you are starting a blog to make money online. If you plan on having a blog with commercial intent, many free blogging platforms restrict that or are not flexible enough to support all the tools you’ll need to market and sell online.

There is no shortage of blogging platforms. While some are free, others charge a small monthly fee. And others start free and offer premium services for a cost.

Top 5 Free Best Blogging Platforms:

1. WordPress

The world’s most popular blogging platform, WordPress offers a free and premium platform.

Learn the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

While WordPress is free on both sites, you’ll have to purchase web hosting if you download from WordPress.org. For the free version, visit WordPress.com and open your account.

Like Blogger.com (see below), WordPress.com offers a huge set of free themes and the ability to customize your site/blog.

Benefits to WordPress.com Platform:

• Ability to use a custom domain (although this does incur an annual fee)
• All maintenance is taken care of for you: security, upgrades, spam filters and backups
• A huge set of free blogging themes

How to get started with WordPress.com

Visit WordPress.com and setup your free account. You’ll need to give some thought to your domain name. If you choose to use the completely free version, your site URL will look like this: yourdomain.wordpress.com. This is an important part of your brand and you should give considerable thought when choosing your domain name.

Once you have your blog up and running you’ll want to start driving traffic to it. Here are 5 ways to drive massive amounts of traffic to your new blog.

Again, if you have any commercial intent or are looking to make money with your blog you’ll want to go with the self-hosted WordPress.org solution.

2. Blogger

Blogger is a free blogging platform by Google. And it is extremely popular. Millions of blogs run on this free platform.

Benefits to Blogging with Blogger.com:

• Easy to setup
• Lots of free templates and designs
• No need to know or use custom code

How to get started with Blogger

Visit Blogger.com and setup your free account.

If you already have a Google account (Gmail, YouTube, etc) it is best to use that account and link them together.

Once you have setup your free account, you can get right to work designing your blog. Within a few hours, you should be able to have your first post published.

Blogger is best suited for informational blogs and for people wanting a platform to stay in touch with friends and family. E-commerce functions are limited on this platform and not an appropriate solution for any type of business activity.

3. Tumblr

Blogging on Tumblr is probably one of the easiest ways to start blogging. The options are fairly limited allowing you to begin blogging right away. Because of how the network is setup it is actually a mix of Twitter and WordPress.

Considered a micro-blogging platform, you can blog just a sentence or a full dissertation – it’s up to you. Many Tumblr blogs focus on sharing (reblogging) photos on a specific theme.

Benefits of Blogging on Tumblr.com:

• Use a custom domain
• Blog directly from your mobile device, desktop or via email
• Enjoy shared traffic from their network – opening your content to their huge audience

How to get started with Tumblr.com

Visit Tumblr.com and setup your free account. Click “Sign-Up” to start your blog. It would be best to spend some time learning how the site works. It is part blogging platform and part social media network, and it is different from any other that I’ve seen.

If you do decide to use Tumblr for your blog, I would still recommend using a separate website for your main business pages, products, etc. Basically you’ll have your own website to handle the business end of your web presence and use the Tumblr blog as a traffic source to your main website.

4. Blog.com

With more than two million bloggers, your content has an audience just waiting for it on Blog.com. You have the choice between a free or premium package. Once you start blogging you can easily upgrade to a premium option if you need more power or options.

Benefits of Blogging with Blog.com:

• The free subdomain (yourdomain.blog.com) is clean and looks great
• Choose from a nice set of free themes
• Their search engine optimization platform means that you’ll get more traffic

How to get started blogging with Blog.com

Visit Blog.com and click “Sign In”. It really is that simple. Then choose your design and general settings. A great option for a nice looking functional blog.

5. Medium.com

Medium.com is a relatively new blogging platform that is growing quickly in popularity and audience.

The Medium platform is very minimalistic with a focus on the quality of the content and viewpoints being written.

How to get started with Medium.com

Simply go to Medium.com and click on the Sign In / Sign Up button. You can create an account using your existing social media accounts including Twitter, Facebook, and Google.

A nice feature of signing up using your existing Facebook or Twitter account is that Medium will automatically import your followers into the network on Medium.

Similar to Tumblr, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend using Medium as your primary place of business online, but would consider using it as a traffic source; blogging to reach new audience that wouldn’t know of you otherwise — and drive them back to your website.

Other Free Blogging Platform Options

While this article focused on the most popular / newest blogging platforms, there are literally hundreds if not thousand of options to choose from. These days there is little difference between a “regular website” and a blog so you may find that you don’t necessarily need a separate solution for a blog vs website.

Some other options you way want to look at include:

• Wix.com
• SquareSpace.com
• Web.com

These are certainly all more commercial friendly options if your goal is to make money online.

Alternatives to a Free Blogging Platform

My recommendation when it comes to blogging is to get your own paid hosting account (such as Bluehost) and install WordPress on your hosting account. This gives you complete freedom and flexibility to control the content and commercial intent of your website.