When I first started online, I started on blogger.com – also called Blogger or BlogSpot. What drew me to it? It was a great way to start a free blog and at the time that was all I needed to know. My experience with Blogger helped me figure out if I enjoyed blogging and which direction I wanted to take with my blogging.
If you are not sure if you want to be a blogger or make money from blogging, then skip the costs of buying a domain and hosting and start up a free blog on Blogger to give blogging a test run. Yes, it’s true you have more freedom to do what you want when paying for a self-hosted blog, but blogging for free helps you to learn the ins and outs of blogging and ensures you don’t waste money on something you may not end up feeling passionate about. Plus, you can get a feel for whether or not there is an interest in your niche/topic/you before you pay some money to get a more personalized blog up and running.
6 Reasons To Take The Start A Free Blog Challenge On Blogger
1. It’s Free
If you’ve been thinking about blogging, but you don’t know whether or not you will really like it, starting a free blog is the answer. It will introduce you to the art of blogging, and you will learn firsthand how much effort it can take to write a decent blog post.
Of course, blogging about your selected niche might come naturally to you, which means you won’t need to put a lot of effort into your writing. But, I’ve found that putting together a blog post that does well in the long run usually requires more effort than I expect.
In short, without paying a dime, you will get insight into how much extra work can go into blogging, such as looking for perfect pictures, researching information for your post, and making your post readable and pretty.
2. There Is A Lot Of Help Available
The thing about Blogger is that you pretty much can’t get lost. They help you do everything from setting up your blog to managing your blog’s comments.
Their help center will help you learn more about Blogger and how to set up/manage your new free blog. You will also learn more about blogging in general as you move through your process of having questions and finding answers.
3. Automatic Spam Detection
You don’t have to worry about spam when you are on Blogger. They have an automatic spam checker, and it is really good at catching all those nonsense spam comments that people leave.
Spam comments are solely written for the purpose of trying to get you or your readers to click out to a site or product. They are usually full of nonsense. You may not get a ton at first, but you will find that you get more and more of them as your blog starts to gain popularity.
4. People Will Find Your Blog Quicker (And Vice-Versa)
I find that on Blogger, there seems to be a community of people that can easily find your blog.
Normally for people to find your blog, you need to rank in the search engines or get social on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter, and get people to talk about your blog. But, on Blogger, I’ve found that people find your site easier through the blogger.com network.
You can also find other people who blog about similar interests by going into your profile and clicking on the industry, occupation, location or any other keywords that you have chosen. (Learn more about that here.)
5. If You Decide To Continue Blogging Full-Time, You Can Easily Transfer To Something That Gives You More Control
If you decide you like blogging and want to get more serious in your blogging journey, you can easily get a domain, buy hosting, and then import your blog from Blogger with the click of a few buttons. Following is a screenshot of my WordPress site, and you can see that importing all the posts and comments from Blogger would be super easy.
You will need to export everything you’ve done from Blogger, but Blogger makes that easy too – you simply go to settings – other – export blog, which generates a .xml file that is downloaded to your computer and used as the import file to your new blog.
If that sounds too complicated, don’t worry. You can tackle that step if and when you come to it – and I guarantee you will easily find the information you need to help you do so.
For now, just focus on the challenge of starting a free blog on Blogger and trying it out to see how blogging feels to you.
6. You Will Get Yourself Over A Blogging Barrier
This challenge doesn’t consist of a lot besides creating a blog, writing a post, and interacting with other people. BUT, it forces you to get started – which is where a lot of people fall short.
So many people I know want to start a blog, but they overthink it. It seems like a daunting task that is going to take up a lot of their time, so they put it off and keep putting it off until they lose interest in doing it altogether.
You will never know if you enjoy blogging if you don’t just START blogging, which is where this challenge comes in. You are challenging yourself to do a few simple steps and get your feet wet. Once you get your feet wet, it’s much easier to jump into the water and take a lap or two by writing a few posts and getting some interest in your blog.
And once you start to blog consistently, you will quickly learn whether or not blogging is for you.
If it’s not, at least you tried – and it didn’t cost you a thing. But, if it is for you, then you don’t have to live with the regret of not even trying.
Extra Thought About Making Money With Blogger
The great thing about Blogger is you can connect an AdSense account easily. That means if your blog does well, you could be earning some decent money from ads. Yes, even on a free blog that is requiring zero investment from you.
Since blogger is a part of Google, and so is AdSense, there is not a lot of work to be done on your part. They want you to connect the two! But, you do need to qualify for Adsense first, which means your blog needs to be active for a certain amount of time before you can advertise. Blogger, just like YouTube, will let you know when you are eligible for monetization with ads.
Start A Free Blog Challenge: Let’s Do This!
Starting your free blog is the challenge. Many people want to start a blog, but never actually take the steps to do so. They talk about it. They think about it. They look up how to do it. But, they never gather the courage to create their blog, write a post, and work on getting people to their blog. Those are three very important steps in anyone’s blogging journey.
So, this challenge is all about creating your blog, writing a post, and interacting with other people – and doing it quickly before you lose interest and never even try.
Let’s do this!
1. Decide What You Want To Blog About
When I start a new blog, I always have a niche or topic in mind. You don’t want to jump from topic to topic because people won’t stick around to read your blog.
People read a blog because it talks about something they are interested in. So, whether you want to talk about:
- Parenting as a single mom or dad
- Working as an accountant
- Dealing with depression
- Your dogs
- Your conspiracy theories
Go with it.
Need some inspiration? Check out these 81 topic ideas and let them help you narrow down what you want to blog about most.
Remember, you can always start another blog on another topic. But, from experience, I know that one topic will help you attract a dedicated crowd that is interested in what you are talking about.
It will also help you stay focused as you blog. When you pick too big of a niche to talk about (for example relationships), you can get overwhelmed with ideas. Being overwhelmed can cause a lot of stress and you may give up on blogging altogether. But, if you have a specific topic that you are blogging about (for example long-distance relationships), it becomes easier to find relevant things to blog about.
2. Sign Up, Pick A Name, And Pick A Theme
Signing up with Blogger is very easy. They want you on their site, so they make the process user-friendly.
You could find a tutorial on how to do this, (in fact, here’s a step-by-step process for signing up to Blogger), but I highly recommend doing it yourself.
I’ve found that doing things myself helps me understand how to tackle future problems on my blog. The more active you are with creating and maintaining your blog, the more you will learn, and that will help you down the line if you want to start blogging as a business.
Choose a blog name that is relevant to your niche and is easy to remember. That will help interested people remember your blog’s name and come back to it. Keep in mind that because your domain will be a part of Blogger, it will have ‘blogspot’ in the domain name.
You will need to choose a theme for your blog during the creation process. The theme is the appearance for your free blog and it can be customized, later on, so don’t overthink this step.
Note: When you create your free blog, you will be asked if you want to find a domain name for your blog and connect it instantly. You will need to buy the domain name if you do that. If you choose not to, simply decline and you won’t need to pay a penny. It’s optional and you can also get a domain name later.
3. Write A Post
On Blogger, all you need to do is click on ‘new post’ and get started. Add a title to your post (what your post will be about) to help you stay on track (you can change the title before you publish the post) and get typing.
Challenge yourself to get your blog post written within a day.
Don’t overthink it. Trust me. You are just starting a free blog around a topic you are interested in, and you don’t need to make it a stellar post or have a stellar design. You’re new! Take advantage of that fact and let it be your excuse for a quick start even if everything is not perfect.
Why challenge yourself to post within a day? I know a guy who sweat so much over his first blog post that he never got it started. It stressed him out too much because the longer he took to post it, the more he overthought it.
I can guarantee that the best way to keep moving along with your Blogger adventure is to just write a post off the top of your head. You can learn all the ins and outs as you go along.
Before you hit ‘publish’ on your first post, though, take advantage of the ‘preview’ button so that you can see what your published post will look like. If it looks like a mess, clean it up.
4. Interact With Other People On Blogger
Lastly, challenge yourself to interact with some other people on the BlogSpot platform through their blog posts. See how much interest you get from other people. Experience what it’s like to connect with other bloggers with the same interests.
Doing this will give you a feel for whether or not you want to keep moving forward because you will find that interaction is an important part of successful blogging – both on a free blog and on a blog where you are paying for hosting.
Note: If you have any questions, please ask them below. If we get enough of one question around starting a free blog with Blogger, we are going to make the answer into a download or worksheet. Thanks!
