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Are you anxious to explore the sensational world of blogging?
But also worried about huge prices that come with it…
Don’t worry…
Because we are here to provide you the best ways to start your own journey of blogging without draining your wallet.
Let’s go through with us in this exciting journey to reconnoiter the cheapest ways to start a blog.
Choosing a right digital platform and then promoting your content without spending any money is our goal that we have to cover in this blog.
Start a Successful Blog:
Here presenting a guide that will lead you towards your captivating journey of blogging slowly but surely.
Best Place to Start Blogging:
It directs you towards blogging platform.
How to start a free blog?
When you are going to start a blog, you need a software to run your blog.
But where can I make a blog for free?
Although there are number of these platforms which allow you to post blog posts, create your content and images. Some are premium, some are free having premium features and few are totally free which includes
- WordPress.com
- Wix
- Blogger
- WordPress.org
These platforms help you to start blogging free.
Actually, this helps you a lot. Because you have no worries about the prices, yearly plans, subscription fees, etc. And you can totally focus on your website, create free blog pages and enjoy free blogging.
Let’s discuss these platforms briefly.
1. WordPress.com:
WordPress.com offers a phenomenal platform for how to start a blog site for free.
Actually, it recommends a lot of free and important features to help your blog run in no time.
It also proposes different tools for ranking and creating content for free.
WordPress.com offers a user-friendly interface and a lot of customizable themes for your startup blog to help you build a professional website without any coding.
Yes… using this platform you don’t need any coding. It stores numerous themes which can be customized. Furthermore, you can download any theme which you want. You will find lots of free themes and free plugins.
Plus, it will also benefit you with its already installed SEO tools which helps you to rank your post and see how audiences react to your blog.
What you are exploring next? It is somewhat also called hosted wordpress because it also supports hosting feature combined with software.
If you are looking for reasonable and user-friendly platform, then wordpress.com is the best choice for beginners for writing bogs.
2. Wix:
When you think about starting a blog for free, first thing you acknowledge is from where should we start?
As we discussed earlier about wordPress.com, another platform which can help a lot in blogging for free is popular blogging platform wix.
Is wix good for blogging?
Of course…
It puts forward an easy to understand and accessible website builder which helps users to use wix for blogs for free. Wix offers free plan with limited features, making it a bit less ideal for bloggers. When you switch to paid version, you get more customized options which comprised of
- To connect a custom domain
- Get rid of ads
- Access to Google Analytics
If you are budget conscious and find wordpress difficult to use, then wix is the best option to start a free blog.
3. Blogger:
What is a blogger?
In 2003, Google take possession of blogger website builder. It was earlier founded by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan in 1999. This earns great support for blogging platform making its position stronger. It may not be as feature-packed as some new platforms; Blogger is still the popular choice to start a free blog. It can be used for causal blogging, to share your thoughts with audience, to post free blogging articles, and many more.
It offers a generous space for your blogging articles, more than other free blogging website builders can provide. You can quickly post your blogging articles and say whatever you want to say.
4. WordPress.org:
It is often known as “self-hosted version” of WordPress, because it doesn’t offer web hosting but can support great valued hosting. WordPress.org allows its users to download and install wordPress software.
Unlike wordPress.com which has limited customized options, wordPress.org advocates several premium as well as free themes and plugins which permits you to install them at any time.
WordPress.org is SEO friendly platform with several attributes like:
- Customized themes
- Personalized permalinks
- Preprogrammed sitemaps
- Approved SEO plugins like Yoast plugin
WordPress.org is suitable for all types of blogs like from personal to high scale blogs like blogging for business etc. As your blog grows you can update your hosting and install upgraded features for your blog.
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Make Use of Free Themes & Templates For Free Blogging:
Now you have established your blog, next step is…
How to design a blog?
But don’t worry… we have a solution for this.
All blogging platforms are provided with free themes and templates.
Divergent designs are available for every niche and blog articles. If you have news blog, then themes for news blog will be available. Or you start blogging for business, then themes related to business sector will help you to create a blog for free.
And what if you are starting a tech blog and you are how to start a technology blog? Then you also have option for free technology themes and layouts.
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What makes a blog good?
Answer is: It’s design and layout. Take advantage of free themes and templates and make your blog a worth-looking blog for viewers for free.
Here is the list of some free themes and templates that you can use for your preferred blogging platforms.
WordPress.org:
Astra:
It is lightweight and comprises of several customized and personalized starter templates to start a blog quickly.
OceanWP:
It comes with pre-arranged demo sites that can be used with single click. It also accommodates customized options with clean and modern design.
GeneratePress:
This theme focusses majorly on speed. It permits users to use the features which they need. It comes with a modern design.
ColorMag:
For bloggers, who want to publish a lot of articles; this theme is best for them with its magazine type layout.
Wix:
Art blog:
This template is specially designed for artist and creative audiences to create blog with wix. It encompasses portfolio sections that can be customized and also gallery-style layout.
Travel blog:
Exemplary theme for travel lovers. It presents phenomenal designs, photo galleries and maps to create blog using wix.
Blog:
Wix comes with built-in blog template which is full of already designed but customizable and professional-looking features.
Fashion blog:
It offers stylish and sleek look for your website. Lookbooks, product galleries and social media interaction corner helps you to make free wix blog worth-watching.
Blogger:
Simple:
Like its name, it offers simple and straight-forward design for blog writer to make it easy to read and write.
Soho:
For photography and artwork lovers, this theme helps them with its grid layout and customized header to create free articles for blogs.
Notable:
If you want clean and minimalistic look for your website, then this theme is best for you with its topography and white space.
Emporio:
Emporio is magazine-style theme. It has clean and organized layout. It features content slider and customized sidebar widgets.
WordPress.com:
Twenty twenty-One:
Clean and modern design is major spotlight. It promotes custom-built colors, block editor support. Its serves as default theme for wordpress in 2021.
Twenty twenty:
A default theme, perfect for readability and accessibility, to create free articles for your website.
Radcliffe 2:
With featured content slider, it is suitable for
- Magazine-styled blogs
- Lifestyle
- Fashion bloggers
Twenty Nineteen:
It puts forward a simple and dignified design. For personal bloggers and writers, this classic blog-style theme is perfect for free blog articles.
Content; Powerhouse of Blog:
Do you want to start write or create content?
Basically, when you start a blog in limited budget, you are restricted in terms of design, promotion, buying tools, etc. rather than investing your energies, efforts and resources on these factors, you can devote your time and struggle into generating a quality content.
It is the most effectual way to grow your blog in long run. When you write a quality and relevant content, your blog will get a boost irrelevant how much money you spend on design and other tools.
Here’s why:
Minimum Money Required:
Generating classy content values nothing but our time and struggle. On contrary, focusing on paid website designs, promotions or tools, giving priority to quality content creation, can give us most of the use of limited resources and attract readers and viewers.
Organic Growth:
Depend less on paid plan, let your content do talking.
When you put all expertise, experiences and potentials in creating content, you drag audiences organically. It leads to organic growth and more visibility for your blog.
Establishing Trust:
When you write quality content, remember high-quality content, then all other stuff goes in background. Whatever design you use, if your content is engaging, informative and entertaining, it attracts people. Thus, it established a sort of trust between you and readers.
Monetization Possibility:
Top-grade and exceptional content increase chances of monetization. Superb content always attracts loyal audience. It enhances opportunities of monetization through different mediums. You can then use different monetization strategies such as affiliate marketing, sponsored content or selling products.
Connect with Blogging Community:
Making connection with dynamic and influential bloggers of your niche is one of the most cost-effective ways to start a blog. Exchange of ideas, guest posts help to grow your blog. This can boost your efforts and quicken your journey towards blogging success.
Here’s how this can benefit you:
Exchange of Tips & tricks:
Collaborating with other bloggers encourages you to learn some tips and tricks about blogging community. When you attend different seminars, social meet-ups, you dive into sea of knowledge and experiences. And believe it doesn’t cost you any penny.
Free of Cost:
Networking doesn’t cost anything. There are lot of social forums, social media groups and online communities which are free to join. Joining them and actively taking part in their sessions provide you better and better understanding of different aspects of blogging.
Support System:
When you start a blog, it requires too much hard work and consistent efforts. There comes a point that your efforts start to shatter. At this point, your networking with other bloggers gives you support.
They have already experienced same situation in past. You can share your problems, challenges, ask for advice. It motivates you to keep going without spending a dime.
Marketing Alliance:
Cross promotion with other bloggers help you to grow your audience without investing in paid advertising. When you interact with them, you come across their experiences. They give you chance to share your content, give you opportunity of guest posting. In this way, you can get more traffic organically.
Advertise via Social Media:
Now-a-days there is a lot of buzz about social media. There is nothing that you cannot do through social media.
When you start a blog, there is a big issue of how will you promote it? Advertising via social media is the most cost effective strategy. Facebook, instagram, pinterest, quora help you a lot in finding targeted audiences.
While keeping cost low, here are some useful tips that will help you to advertise your blog.
Use Organic Traffic:
Writing blogs on your own gain organic traffic. Share your articles organically on you social accounts like fb, ig etc. In this way, you can get traffic without spending any penny. Take advantage of your existing social media accounts.
Set Your Audience:
Before getting ads, define your audience. When you get to know that who you want to reach, it will help you to get more traffic and effective ads.
Engaging Content:
As discussed earlier, content is the king of blog. Create engaging and relevant content with eye-catching visuals and sizzling headlines. It will get you more and more clicks and advertisements.
Monitoring Results:
There are a lot of analyzing tools which social media provides to track the performance of your ads. Through these tools, you will know about metrics of your articles such as CPC, engagement, organic traffic, inorganic traffic, reach etc. It will show the effectiveness of your efforts you are putting for your blog.
Using all these points, you can use your social media platforms to make your blog a best blogging site and to get more ads.
SEO:
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is a technique which is important for bloggers to understand. It helps you to acknowledge what Google wants and what people want to know. By optimizing your content for SEO, you can rank your content and better earn more money.
Here are some tips that how you can optimize your content.
Keyword Research:
Startup your blog with some keyword research. You can do this by using tools which can tell that how you can use certain keywords. They show below listed characteristics of keywords you want to select
- KD (Keyword Difficulty)
- CPC (Cost per Click)
- Traffic
- SERP
- Intent
The tools are listed below that helps you to find keywords in a limited budget are:
- Ubersuggest
- Semrush
- Ahrefs
- Google search bar
- Google keyword planner
Even their free plans offer more than what you want.
Use a long-tail keyword with moderate search as your title of post to attrct more traffic. Write in a way which people want to read.
Quality Content:
Always try to create quality conten that seconds your keywords choice. Your on-page SEO requires quality and unique content. It will check your content’s:
- Readability
- Originality
- Sentence length
- Paragraph length
- Headings
On-Page SEO:
Now, the most important part of SEO next to keyword research is on-page SEO. You have to optimize your content for on-page SEO. It includes:
- Meta titles
- Meta description
- Headings
- Url
- Alt tags for images
- Title for images
Mobile Responsive:
Make sure that your blog is mobile friendly and responsive. Use such themes and graphics that are easy to upload and consume less time. Websites that are mobile friendly are the priorities of Google.
Now-a-days, there is a lot of mobile use. Nearly 75% people use mobile search engine. So, optimizing your blog for mobile use is very pivotal for SEO success.
Free Stock Photos:
Your blog needs a lot of visual help for attracting traffic. Visuals add beauty to your blog. They help audience to understand your article more effectively.
But how you can get these visuals?
Hiring a designer or buying stock photos can charge you a lot. For creating breathtaking images and high quality graphics you can use
- Canva
- Unsplash
- Google copy-right free images
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Monetization:
Monetization a vital aspect for converting your best blogging site into money-generating asset. It’s very important to know about the techniques of monetization that are not costly and earn you better revenue. Don’t rush towards the high investments for monetization. Here is the guide for you on how to monetize the blog affordably.
Show Advertisement:
- Sign-up for ad network such as Google adsense, Ezoic, media.net etc
- Show ads on your website where you want
- As return you earn revenue though CPC i.e. cost per click
- Presenting ads on your website or blog doesn’t require any handsome amount. You can sign-up for free. Balance your ad placement that doesn’t bother audience and enjoy your income stream.
Affiliate Marketing:
- Become a member of affiliate programs that are appropriate for your niche.
- Through affiliate links in blog post, promote services and products.
- You will earn commissions when visitors go to the respective product through your link.
- These affiliate networks are free to join and are low-cost & best monetization strategies.
- They can also be started with a small audience.
Sponsored Content:
How do I find a blog for sponsored content or guest posting?
- Team up with other brands and networks for sponsored post or review about your niche.
- You can charge some amount for featured post on your blog.
- Featuring sponsored content is very profitable as your blog gets popularity.
- It doesn’t cost you anything but boost you blog at start.
Digital Services:
- You can offer digital services and products to your visitors such as newsletter, eBooks, online courses etc related to your niche.
- It helps to monetize your blog as these services are based solely upon your expertise which Google admires a lot.
- There services require a little bit income at start but depending on your skills it earns for you more by helping to monetize your website.
Link Building & Email Marketing:
- Personalize your email list by offering some valuable content, newsletter, eBooks, privacy updates etc.
- Monetize your list by affiliate promotions or exclusive offers.
- Email building platforms such as Mailchimp, Convertkit etc offer free and affordable plans for automation.
- Emphasis on making strong relationship with your subscribers to drive traffic & revenue.
Conclusion:
In recent world, starting a blog on a budget is attainable. It offers numerous strategies to boost your online presence in cost-effective way. Adopting low-cost blogging platforms, SEO optimization techniques, creating quality content, affordable monetization methods, and bloggers can kick start their online journey not spending too much money. Your dedication, strategic planning and expertise can lead you to sky in this online journey.