The best free blog sites – The truth

The best free blog sites – The truth behind the advertisements

Aka. Not everything that shines is gold. Be careful with the clickbait articles on free stuff.

I’ve started blogging around June the summer of 2016. I’ve had a lot which I thought it would be fun to share. About Morocco, travels, channels and so-so much. So, as such I thought I start looking around and see what blog sites are the best to subscribe to. And as it happens, I have searched for the best free blog sites or any articles which could guide me about this subject. I have managed to find one. And after going through the sites it was talking about, I thought I will DEFINITELY return to this article and let you know the truth behind this and all the blogs which it’s advertising.

Blogging is not easy. You do not only have to be capable to write, have some, if only basic skills to be able to make your blog look original and also, you will need to find the topics which do not only interest you, but which are also interesting for most of the readers out there. As people are constantly switching to vlogging and YouTube and bloggers are mostly only famous if they happen to be young girls blessed with the look of a model (or the purse to be able to buy design items), blogging isn’t getting easier either. And no everything is truth out of the „ free blog talk”. Actually be vary when you see anything which is advertised as being free. As for me, I prefer to stick to the truth. So I will include the link I have gotten the article from and I will go through all the blog sites it enlists and will tell you if it’s true that this is a FREE blog site. How free can you really be on it? For me if you are really limited in your free choices that doesn’t mean you are free at all and the very same goes for the blogging sites too.

Second of all, don’t get me wrong: this is not MY advertisement for everyone to use WordPress. I will share my WordPress story (as it is so far) with you and then you decide according to your free will.

The original article on free blogging sites. This article includes the list of 11 blogging sites. Let me tell you the truth about each one and my experiences with it.

Blog.com – THIS SITE DOESN’T EVEN EXIST! Sorry I think it was a hoax from the very beginning.
Blogger / Blogspot.com – I have 5 blogs on blogger which used to be called Blogspot then changed its name. But as not everything that shines is gold blogger has some negatives next to its positives: Let me run through these just quickly:

Free templates to choose from: this is a positive: you can actually get to choose from and customize free templates to your like. This is a great start for a newstarter like I was, actually. Everything is there and you can choose from a list what you can add to your blog. Blogger is excessively popular because the website has an agreement with Google and as such, it’s the only free blogging site which can be connected with the so very famous Google AdSense the biggest app which lets its users make money.
The AdSense pain: what they do not let you know is that it’s a real pain to get a blog connected with AdSense, it takes ages for someone to get accepted and even if they do, putting up AdSense ads that really work is a real pain in the a**.
The number of views: this is a bait ’n switch of Blogger. You will at first get amazed by the number of views on your blogs. But what you do not yet know is the following:
People there do not care: it’s incredibly- very hard to gain likes for a blogger blog. Getting comments and actual follows is close to impossible. People on G+ like to view stuff but will not commit. So, that’s that about Blogger.
Medium.com – the site doesn’t exist at all. So that’s about that.
Penzu – Penzu is a classic HOAX. It’s a lie. It will tell you that you can write blogs “for free”. When in real, you can do close to nothing at all on that site for free. Anything of any attractive value already belongs in the NOT FREE category. So in the end, you feel you are jailed and leave.
5. Squarespace – Ok so this blog is ABSOLUTELY not free right from the start. Too bad it’s included in an article about free blogs.
6. Svbtle – this page doesn’t exist at all either. So that’s that.
7. Tumblr – this is a social network/GIF site which is literally dying. Please don’t try to use Tumblr because your blogs will not get any traffic at all. It’s actually weird for me to see this in an article about blog sites. I got 1 follower after a year and the whole page is just not useful to build any valuable relations or do good searches on stuff you are interested in. I know Tumblr rocked about 4-5 years ago for its GIF and photos but with Pinterest and the ton of GIF building sites, I’m not sure Tumblr will stay alive for a lot more. It’s definitely not a platform of any use for a future blogger.
Webs – this is a site packed with spam so strongly it didn’t even let me enter! Next please!
Weebly – the website doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t think I ever got the chance to actually try it.
WIX – ok, so this is a blog site where you can get to choose from around 30 templates as to how you would like to design your own blog. The problem is, that the whole systematic is difficult, especially for someone who has no design experience whatsoever. I have just spend about 30 minutes trying to change the background, without much of a success and although the outlook is great, this one needs a LOT of work for it to actually work for you. I do not know what happens when you are ready. But I will get back with prompt answers shortly about this particular site. So far, it’s like a seafood meal: looks gorgeous but it’s very challenging to actually consume.
WordPress – AND last but not least. I initially intended to start-up on WordPress and I put energy to design my own website over here and I am quite content with the result. When it comes to quick customization, then the answer is either WordPress or Blogger most definitely. My WordPress blog was housing my first few blogs on Morocco for almost 6 months and did not get much of any movement, which had a dissuading effect on me. I decided to move all my travel blogs to Blogger. You can check my Morocco Travel blog which is the core blog by the way, I wonder about your opinion!
My breakthrough on WordPress just came last week when I posted my posts on the YouTube channels I love watching. Check out my latest on Arabic Beauty YouTube channels because I would be so glad if it gained viewership. I have gained 10 followers which I am EXTREMELY happy and thankful for. So, finally perhaps I am starting to understand WordPress after all!
I hope you liked my post. And I’d like to thank Kristen who wrote the upper mentioned article. Because it gave me motivation to look around and see how blogging works on many different sites. In the upcoming chapter I will reveal some of the web and image design sites which are advertised as free while not really being free. I am also going to do a quest on new blogging sites which actually work, just for the heck of it and if I have collected enough I will let you know about it.