WordPress vs Blogger – Choosing a Blogging Platform the right way

There are many blogging platforms available to choose for starting a blog like WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, movable type, TypePad, Joomla, Drupal, Open Diary, Live Journal, Xanga, Dead Journal, MySpace,etc. But among them only two of them have topped the leader board namely WordPress and Blogger. As a Newbie you might well have a doubt on which platform to choose or which platform would satisfy your needs. I am not going to stress on the cons but I would stress mainly on the Pros of both the platforms from my experience. So this is not a post on debate between WordPress vs Blogger but it is an informative article.

WordPress vs Blogger? Which one to choose?

A burning question indeed and it can also be asked indirectly as Paid vs Free which is preferable? This platform wars between WordPress vs Blogger has been surfaced from very long since WordPress has been introduced in 2003. I have started my blogging journey with blogger and I have been with it since 2008 which is almost five years. Many bloggers who now are called professional bloggers also have been using blogger in their initial stages.

Why I Choose Blogger and why you should?

Most of the people who have just entered into blogosphere start their blog with blogger as it doesn’t take any extra time or effort if you are already having a Gmail account.

1. I choose blogger due to the fact that it is free and easy to use. Even now I feel easy to write a post in blogger rather than writing in WordPress.
2. As a newbie I felt, it is not preferable for me to invest money on hosting as I don’t know the in and out of how people make money through their blog (initial days).
3. Blogger also had variety of templates to choose from and I also had the option to install many custom templates from third-party sites.
4. I never needed to pay a single penny for hosting and the only expenditure I had to invest was 10$ a year to renew my custom domain.
5. Though there was a section in blogger about adsense I never got approved as in those days I don’t know its terms and conditions and Privacy Policy. But at last I got an approval from blogger blog itself.

My Experience with Blogger:

1. I have 5+ years of experience with blogger.
2. 90% of the income I generated till date (over 1000$) is from blogger platform.
3. I also have designed few templates on my own for blogger.

Why you can choose Blogger?

1. Free, I think most of the people love this word free, blogger is free to use.
2. Inbuilt templates to choose, no need of installing frameworks and templates. Though you have the option to change your template that too very easily.
3. Many languages to choose, you can write a blog in your own regional language.
4. You can also get approval for an adsense account from a blogger blog provided you meet the requirements. ( I got adsense approved for a blogger blog)
5. You can learn many new things without investing any money like SEO, template designing, writing a post in blogger is a good platform to experiment and if you fail you can immediately start a new blog.
6. You don’t have the risk of getting your blog hacked.
7. You don’t need to be afraid of any downtime as it is run by one of the most trusted company Google.
8. Recently blogger has rolled out many SEO features to help blogspot users to rank well.

Why I started a blog in WordPress and why you must?

I never knew that WordPress existed when I was blogging in my starting days. But it did not take many days for me to know about it. I also suggested WordPress for a guy who asked me to teach about blogging and he turned up with whooping returns from his blog. He had his uncle in US who paid him for hosting and domain and only thing he had to do is write articles for his blog and he earned really good amount within a year. It did not surprise me as I already know that it works.

But I did not choose to start a WordPress blog seeing his success as I had no uncles in US to support and at the same time I was studying and I was blogging on a part-time basis now and then. If I had invested money on a blog, then I need to invest my time and energy to get back what I have invested. But now I just started this blog in WordPress and with very less effort I was able to bring traffic and a good Alexa rank.
Read: 3 Months of my Blogging Journey with Blog in Grace

Why you must choose WordPress?

1. Using WordPress is like you are in an advanced stage of blogging (most people love WordPress blogs over blogspot blogs).
2. You have an opportunity to control the design, template or framework and give your blog a professional look.
3. Plugins though it is not mandatory but still you have variety of plugins to use and enhance your WordPress activities. You can get page stats, social networking buttons, SEO, etc all through plugins.
4. SEO feature is rocking, you have plugins like Yoast and All in one SEO they really do a great deal in ranking your sites high in search engines.
5. You have a real control over spam (should use plugin for this) and also user engagement will be more due to comments section (People won’t comment in blogger blogs as often as they comment in WordPress blogs) .
6. It takes very less time to get indexed by search engines as it has some good ping services.
7. If you are serious about making money or turning into a full-time blogger then WordPress is must.

Below is a video from Matt Cutts who is the head of Google’s Webspam team. Though he works for Google he runs his blog on WordPress but not Blogger so listen to him on what he says.

Before choosing a blogging platform:

Well I think you have understood why one should choose Blogger or WordPress. I am not a supporter for either of them as I like both platforms equally. If you are serious into blogging then I would suggest WordPress as a must go. If you are into experimenting and learning how to blog, then Blogger is good to start.

But remember a blogging platform should be easy to understand and user-friendly. We must be able to control the design and customizations of our blog as per our requirements without any restrictions. Blogger has many restrictions whereas WordPress gives you the freedom of choice. As a newbie a free blogging platform is always preferred. What ever platform you choose see that it must and should be indexed by search engine so that we can get traffic. Traffic is all what we want, if you know how to get it then you know how to make money. WordPress vs Blogger, it’s up to you on your choice…

Read: Five Best Blogging Platforms (From Lifehacker)