Technical Lesson #1: Choosing a Blog Platform

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Image of a person's sneaker's approaching a directional sign, with choices to go left, right or straight ahead..
"Often any decision, even the wrong decision, is better than no decision."
- Ben Horowitz, businessman, author, blogger


I honestly didn't think this was going to be such a hard decision.  Isn't blogging the digital equivalent of opening to a blank page and starting to write?

But there are a lot of considerations for a new blogger. 

For instance:

Do you care how it looks?  (Me: of course!).

How much do want to pay for your blog? ($0 to cheap).

Do you want to make money showing ads (uh...maybe?) CINNABON I LOVE YOU! Just sayin'...

Do you have your heart set on an independent domain name, like IamAmaaaazing.com?  Or can you live with a sub-domain? like I-Am-Amaaaazing.blogspot.com? (ugh...so ugly, and will anyone even find me here?)

Do you know the first thing about coding or programming or hosting or SEO?*  (nope). 

So here I am on Blogger.

For free blogs, my top two choices were Wordpress.com (not to be confused with big sister Wordpress.org) and Blogger (formerly Blogspot, til Google gobbled them up).

From what I've read, Wordpress.com offers tons of options for easy customization, and although it's free, there are lots of fee-based add-ons.  Costs can easily add up.  For instance, there's a fee to redirect to your own domain name, and you have to pay to sell ads on your blog.

On the other hand, Blogger offers fewer bells and whistles than Wordpress, and if you're not careful, your blog will bring everyone back to 90s MySpace hell (okay it's probably not that bad...).  But you can generate cash on ads for free so long as you meet certain criteria. And if you own your own domain name (IamAmaaaazing.com) you can redirect there for free. 

Both Wordpress.org and Blogger provide analytics, SEO tools and a certain amount of storage space for free (Blogger is the more generous of the two on storage).

This may turn out to be one of those decisions I need to adjust along the way, but sometimes there's value in mobilizing quickly.

Here we go..!

PS: SEO is Search Engine Optimization. You want your adoring fans to be able to find you on Google right?  I will definitely need to learn more about SEO.  (Add it to the growing list...)

Photo by kvrkchowdari at Pixabay

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