What is Blogger? It’s a hosting website that allows you to publish your content to the Internet in a space designated just for you. Essentially, Blogger is a website hosted within another larger website.
Although there are more complex blogging tools available, being cost-free and easy-to-navigate makes Blogger an appealing option, whether you’re updating friends and family about your life, hosting your own advice column, or discussing your political views. Your blog can have multiple contributors, or you only, and you can even use Blogger to make podcast feeds.
Choosing the best blogging platform is just as important as the content itself – having a good message is useless if you’re speaking to the wrong audience. Whether it’s a personal blog, a business blog, or a review on dog toys – there is a place for you. You’ll need enough tools to help you but not too many as to get in the way of the content.
Setting Up an Account
Blogger is a very simple blogging web tool/platform. From the second you sign into Blogger, you can post blogs right away. You don’t even need to have your account fully set up with your appearance and theme chosen to start posting. To sign in, all you need is a Google account and from this your blog is ready to go.
After creating your first post, you need to name your blog – you should call it something fitting to you, such as your own name or something relevant to your topic. The next thing you should do is set up your full blog site, including your chosen pages, layout and theme.
Once you have your blog setup, you should promote it over the rest of your social media, particularly when you add posts to your blog. This will help your blog and posts to gain more traffic.
When you’re first setting up your blog, Blogger gives you a domain name ending in ‘blogspot.com’. This is Bloggers default URL but you can use your own domain name, or a domain name bought on Google Domains.
Unmissable Features of Blogger
Blogger itself has some amazing features that not only help to the success of your blog but also its appearance. The platform’s features also allow you to keep track of the success of your blog with the help of stats.
Stats
The statistics feature of the platform is a particularly strong component of Blogger. This feature shows your blogs along with all the time views on a graph. It also shows where your audience comes from using a global map.
The countries that show up in green are the countries that your blog is more successful in, countries in red are countries your blog has reached to some degree and countries that show a plain map colour are ones that have not been reached.
Since Blogger is owned by Google, you can also use Google Analytics to monitor your Blogger site. With Google analytics, you can do an in-depth check of which countries get the highest traffic. You can also check and see where people are coming to your blog from.
Places such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are often the source of your traffic, however you’ll be able to assess this clearly for yourself.
Layout/Theme
The layout and theme features allow users of Blogger to customise their own blog to their own taste. You can choose from many free themes on the platform, from simple-looking themes to more dynamic ones, there’s a wide range to choose from.
On the layout feature of Blogger, you can add ‘gadgets’ to your site. Gadgets are tools you could use on your site such as Adsense, header image and much more. All of the gadgets are ‘plugin and widget-like’, which will be familiar if you have used a web-building tool like WordPress.
Earnings
The earnings feature is supplied by Google Adsense, and is a way of making money from your site. To use Google Adsense on your site, you will of course need to have content on your site, be 18 years of age and in some cases, your site needs to be active for over six months.
You can use Google Adsense to set up adverts on your site. This will generate revenue from your blog. Google Analytics is another feature, previously touched upon, that will help you monitor your site.
You can also use Google Photos and YouTube to embed photos and videos onto your blog or upload photos from your chosen device.
Should You Try Blogger?
Yes, you should try out Blogger – that’s if you’re looking to start a blog and isn’t a massive part of your online presence. It is a great startup place to make a blog and to see if it becomes successful.
What makes Blogger a candidate for the best blogging platform is how easy it is to use. The limited design tools and options make it very friendly to those unacquainted with technology. If you’re looking for a simple distraction blog, like a review blog for example, then Blogger is your go-to.
Blogger is not only free, but it links in perfectly with your analytics and Google Display Ads. This means measuring, and even monetising, your content is a breeze. If your traffic is high enough you can even make a decent profit from Blogger, by applying to Google Adsense. Another positive aspect to note is that the site is owned by Google, which speaks to its reliability.
The only downsides to Blogger is that there isn’t much room for expanding your blog if you decide to take it to the next level. The tools and design templates are limited to a point, possibly due to the fact that it focuses on being beginner-friendly.
If you’re looking for a more complex blog, investing in other platforms, themes and plugins may be more ideal for you. WordPress is a great alternative for you to consider.
It’s important to think of where you’re going with your blog as well as what it currently is. When choosing the best blogging platform, you need to visualise a space you can grow into that won’t limit your potential and future goals for your blog.
Now that you know ‘what is Blogger?’, start your blogging efforts on the platform to find out whether you’re able to keep up with regular postings and attract a regular audience. If you decide to start blogging for profit, invest in your own domain and use a more complex platform that has better customisation options and analytical tools. Until then, for the price, Blogger is a well-rounded blogging space and an excellent place to start.
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