Why I Decided To Use Blogger Over
A Self-Hosted WordPress Site
To be perfectly honest, it's because I am on a rather tight budget. One of my 2023 goals is to get my credit cards paid off, and once I get those paid off I want to start working on my student loan debt. Essentially, I don't have a lot of money. The domain name costs me roughly $10 a year (pretty sure it's actually a few bucks less than that), I got a very simple and clean layout that cost me $12 one time, and blogger itself is free. I have started, stopped, and deleted this blog so many times it's getting a bit nutty. The biggest reason it keeps getting deleted is that I didn't want to pay for the hosting anymore, and its been so long since I have even posted anything I didn't want to keep paying. I also had premium hosting that was costing me roughly $50 or so a month. Having it on blogger is going to guarantee that I don't decide I need to cut this expense from my budget because it is not an expense. Having it on blogger, was something I should have done from the beginning.
A lot of people will tell you, Blogger doesn't look professional, and I somewhat agree with them. However, only if you are using the built-in layout and not doing any customization, then yes, it doesn't look as professional. However, with a custom layout and a bit of tweaking, it can look just as professional as any other blog. I know several people who had a self-hosted WordPress blog that essentially looked exactly like this one, and they were in fact, making some money with it. If you want to make money blogging, you do not need an expensive theme, monthly hosting, etc...
"No Skin in the game" I have never understood this one to be perfectly honest. What they are eluding to, is that because it is free, you won't be motivated to take it as seriously. This is mostly a mental "trick," if you will, and it's not true. I have seen and followed people who use Blogger seriously. I am pretty sure they use it for the same reason I am. They aren't going to be deleting, ever, because it is free. While an argument can be made that lots of people don't take free things seriously, that doesn't mean you can't or won't, take it seriously.
For me, the only reason I wouldn't use Blogger is if I thought Google was going to delete the service. That said, blogger has been around since 1999 and was purchased by Google in 2003. So, this service has been around for a very long time, and I don't see it going away anytime soon. I could obviously be wrong about this assumption, but I know I won't be the only person pissed if that happens.
The biggest downside is that you are locked in. You cant easily just change to a different host if you don't like the service and fare enough. But what I am trying to achieve and what this offers, I don't see as being a concern.
So far, I have used this $12 premium "theme" and put in some custom code to remove the date from the post URL. That's it, and I don't plan on doing much more, except writing and posting. I personally really like the simple layout and plan on keeping it that way.
Blogger also allows me to monetize this blog using Google Ad Sense much sooner than if I was to use a different hosting service. This is something I want to do, as paying off debt is a significant goal of mine in 2023.
Whatever you choose to blog with, I hope you take some time to think about it, and it helps you achieve your goals.
To Your Adventures!
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