Why to chose blogger.com as blogging platform?

If you wish to start your own blog, there are many options you will find in the internet to get started with. Most of us will be in dilemma in the beginning regarding which platform to choose from and whether we should pay for it, whether the blog will generate revenue to cover the cost and so on. In terms of cost, you can find options ranging from free to yearly cost in excess of 1000$s (including, designing, development, customizations and support). Wordpress.com and Blogger.com among others are one of the most popular and easy to use blogging platform in internet. Although they are free but you can't get a custom domain name and your blog will have .wordpress.com or .blogpsot.com at the end. It will cost you a minimum of 10$/year to get your own domain name and hosting space if you wish to have your own website.

In this post I will explain why you should Blogger.com if you are confused, why I chose it and what are its advantages and limitations 

Why to use blogger.com?

Because it is free, secured, reliable and scalable. You do not need any prior knowledge of programming or coding. It is the easiest platform to start blogging and express your feelings and share your passion over topics of your interest. It can be monetized by using Google Adsense, Affiliate marketing etc. and it can generate you revenue as much as other platforms if you can write good contents consistently and give some time managing your blogs. 

Advantages of using Blogger.com

1) Free of cost and easy to start - You can write you first blog and reach out to the world in less than 5 minutes

2) Provided by Google - Trusted, Reliable and Secured. No need to worry about vulnerabilities and hacking.

3) Scalability - No need to worry if your blog has lot of content (images/music/videos) or high traffic or if it increases in future (You may be required to upgrade and pay more as your blog size and traffic increases if you choose paid hosting platforms). 

4) Reliability - No issues of website crashing or downtime since your websites are hosted on Google  cloud servers . 

5) No need to have any programming knowledge or understand complexities of managing database.

6) Can be monetized to generate income from your work.

Limitations of Blogger.com

1) No custom domain name (you blogs have .blogspot.com at the end) 

2) Not so attractive and customizable themes or blog interface by default

Nevertheless, there are some workaround to overcome these limitations as well: 

1) You can have your own domain hosted in blogger. If you wish to have a custom domain name instead of blogspot.com at the end, it can be done by redirecting your domain to blooger.com. You need to configure some settings form your domain hosting provider to point it to Google server and link your blogspot website with custom domain name. You can find a separate article 'How to host custom domain at blogger.com' .

2) Although the default themes in blogger are not so attractive on first look, there are plenty of options to customize fonts, colors, layout and appearance in such themes and you can easily have a professional looking blog if you give some time to it. You can do better if you have some programming skills. Also, there are themes which you can find online for free that you can use instead of default blogger themes. Please do ensure that they are from trusted sources since there may be chances of vulnerabilities or security issues in the themes provided by third parties. You may want to read 'How to change default Theme' and '5 Best Free Themes for Blogger'

Why I chose Blogger.com?

Personally, I chose blogger.com because it fulfills my minimum requirement of blogging, it is free and easy to use. I do not need to worry about upgrading database and programs at backend periodically or maintaining my blog, I do not need to worry about backing up data in fear of loss due to hacking or vulnerabilities and so on. Google will take care of all these difficult stuffs and we can just focus on blogging. 

Hope this article helped you to some extent in solving your dilemma. You may decide what is good for you. Happy blogging!