Setting up a free blog is extremely simple. There are some advantages to using one of the free blog hosting services, but there are disadvantages, too.
Advantages of Free Blogs
Free blogs are …free, which is a massive advantage if you have no money to spend. Setting up a free blog is as simple as going to a website, clicking on Set Up A blog, typing in your desired blog name and a few personal details and pressing Enter. It takes about three minutes.
If you use blogger.com then Google’s Adsense ad program is integrated into the interface. It does not get any easier than this. You can change layouts and add widgets with a few mouse clicks.
There are dozens of free blog services, including wordpress.com, but Blogger.com is the easiest to use.
Disadvantages of Free Blogs
Sadly, free services always have a down side. There are several.
The biggest disadvantage of setting up a free blog is that your blog is on a sub-domain instead of on your own .com or .net URL. If this website was a free blog on blogger.com it would be www.escapeteaching.blogspot.com instead of www.escapeteaching.com.
If you ever choose to move your website from your free blogging host you lose all your readers.
Many people worry that their free blog can be shut down, just like that, in seconds and with no appeal or notice. Certainly there is no way I would ever trust any free blog host with anything I have invested time and energy into. I want to know that if I prefer a different hosting service I can take my blog, along with every link that points to it and all my readers with me, rather than starting afresh.
If your blog is on a sub-domain it tells your readers that you are not willing to invest even $17 a year to get your own proper domain. Many people will never visit a .blogspot.com sub-domain if there is a proper domain site listed that will give them similar information.
Sub-domain web addresses are easily forgotten and confused.
Alternatives to Setting Up a Free Blog
There is an alternative that you will rarely read about, because there is no referral program.
At wordpress.com when you sign up for a free blog the site gives you an option to include your own proper website domain name, purchased through them.
You get a proper .com, .net or other top level domain name and blog hosting for $17 a year. . .Now, $17 a year is not free, but it is almost as good as.
Except for blogger, the free sites don’t usually allow you to have Google advertising blocks. They are also very limited as to the programming code blocks that you can include.