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When I decided to restart blogging this time around, I was faced with the dilemma of choosing from a whole lot of great platforms. There's WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Blogger, and the list goes one. They all come with their unique FABs, but it the end, it all came down to what my specific needs and expectations are.
In the final round, it was a question whether I'd go for WordPress or Blogger. Blogger is a free and very simple blog-publishing service by Google. It allowed me before to create content and publish easily.
On the other hand, WordPress also is a free, open-source Content Management System for building scalable websites. According to a survey, WordPress powers more than 1/3 of websites in the world. At one point, I thought it would be amazing to be in their league so I contemplated on working with WordPress this time.
So what did I end up using?
First, I'd share what my thought process was into ultimately choosing which I’d go for.
1. What are my goals?
Like everyone else who has blogged or are currently blogging, there are different motivations for each person. For me, I wanted to continue writing and sharpen my skills. I also wanted to find a community who are like me, share and exchange ideas and eventually, build an audience. On my list, the least item is to monetise the website and turn it into a money-making machine that would replace my 9-5 job and be my own enterprise.
2. Given my goals, what are the aspects important to me?
As I hold a full-time position and do familial responsibilities in parallel, I require first and foremost ease of use of the platform, one that would not take a ton of my time to manage the backend of getting content out there. Would I be able to immediately navigate the platform, publish a content, monitor and track the performance conveniently?
3. What are the tools I would require?
Definitely, though my priority is not to monetise the blog, I still would somehow need to monitor its performance. At least the minimum bare I need to review are traffic, pages, activities, duration, demographics, etc. So definitely, Google Analytics integration is good to have.
Additionally, I wanted to be able to use SEO tool plugins in the platform. This aspect actually bears more weight on my decision-making as to what platform would actually allow me to do this.
4. What am I willing to invest?
Apart from the time that I will put into this, there are definitely other things I need to invest, like money and resources. To make this work, I decided up to how much I am actually willing to spend. Do I spend it on the platform, or do I allocate it to other tools that would make my content more compelling and appealing to audience?
Here's a table I created that helped me decide which platform I would go for. If I would go for a plan that would allow me to use SEO tools, I need to invest in WordPress' Business Plan. And if I want to have Google Analytics integration, I'd have to choose the Premium plan.
Since my blog is personal and casual, I don't really need to subscribe to a Premium or a Business plan. It would be entirely useless to pay for an amount which would likely not give me any returns.
Hence, it was between the WordPress' Personal plan and Blogger. At this moment, it was no brainer for me to just go for Blogger because even if I were to subscribe to the Personal plan, it still wouldn't allow me to use SEO tools and GA integration.
Then, I finally decided on the domain name and registered on GoDaddy for as low as USD5 annually compared to WordPress Personal Plan at USD46 annually (for hosting and domain name registration).
There are many things that both WordPress or even Blogger has to offer. Choosing the right platform has to mean aligning it with your goals and expectations. The one you would go for should meet your goals, whether you just want to share your experiences, insights or want to jumpstart your business.
