When starting a blog, you have two options: free blogging services and paid WordPress.
If you have no prerequisite knowledge about blogging, you may be drawn in by the lure of free, but if you want to make some money, we do not recommend a free blogging service.
On the other hand, if you do not need to earn money, there is no problem at all with a free blog.
In this article, we will summarize and explain the disadvantages and reasons why we do not recommend free blogging services.
To avoid choosing a path that you will regret at the start, make sure to get an overview of free blogging in advance.
There is no possibility of service termination
Free blogging services may be terminated due to the provider's business situation or a decrease in the number of users.
Popular blogging services are not likely to be terminated so easily now, but in the long run, the possibility is not zero.
In the past, free blog services operated by major companies such as Yahoo Blogs have been terminated.
Free blogging services are fine as long as the service itself has a large number of users, but people's interests and concerns change over time.
Once a service reaches its peak and the number of users reaches a plateau, it can only decline slowly.
Once the service ends, your articles will disappear.
You can move to a different rental server, but it will take more time and effort and will not take over the domain power and SEO of your site.
If blogging is a hobby and not about making money, you can switch back to another service, but many people do not.
If you want to run a blog for a long time over time, it is natural to want earnings.
It would be a shame to give up your blog after you have spent so much time and made so much money.
If you want to run a blog for a long time, year after year, you should avoid free blogging services.
The articles you write become the property of the management company.
The reason why free blogging is free is that the company gets advertising revenue from the articles written by the service users.
In other words, part of the advertising revenue that should be earned is taken by the company.
This is natural since the server is provided to us for our use.
If you want to make good money, we recommend that you contract a rental server, acquire a domain name, and operate your blog by yourself.
Of course, it is possible to earn money with free blogging services.
However, since you cannot freely place advertisements in prominent locations on your site, it is difficult for users to click on the ads you place even if you attract traffic.
You can also switch to your own domain or a paid plan to get rid of ads that appear on your site without your permission, but this makes the free service meaningless.
By the time you are able to make money with a free blog, you should be able to attract a good amount of access.
That is why it is a waste to lose half of your advertising revenue.
This is where many people consider moving their free blog.
They realize, "I would have been better off signing up for a rental server from the beginning and managing the blog myself.
It is much more profitable and efficient to own the blog from the beginning and receive all the revenue yourself.
Account Suspension Due to Changes in Terms and Conditions
Free blogs rarely have changes to their terms and conditions.
If you are running a blog within the service, you will have to abide by these terms.
This can result in content that was previously OK being removed as a violation of the terms, or even account suspension in the worst case scenario.
As long as you are allowed to use the service for free, you must absolutely abide by the terms and conditions.
Even if it says, "No advertisements are allowed," you have no choice but to comply.
If you want to freely publish your contents, you should sign up for a rental server yourself.
There are restrictions on the placement of advertisements.
Free blogs are designed to display advertisements on their own in places that are easily seen by users.
Therefore, the operator can only place ads in a limited space.
However, this is not an option.
It is the same as when a landlord places an ad without permission in front of a house where you are allowed to live for free.
There are limits to customization.
A free blog can only be used with the features provided by the service.
The text decoration and SEO are a step behind WordPress.
However, if you want to write a minimal blog with text and images, it has enough features.
The WordPress admin screen is similar, although it takes some time to get used to using the editing screen.
The difficulty level of using a free blog and WordPress is actually not that different. If you keep using it, you will learn on your own.
Don't get serious about earning money.
With a free blog, you don't have to spend your own money to manage it.
That is why it is not uncommon for people to not be serious about running a blog.
If you are paying to run a blog, you will want to recover at least some of the maintenance costs, and your approach to content creation will change.
If it is a paid WordPress blog, there is a monthly fee.
However, if you are posting Google Adsense ads, it is not such a big expense because you can recover it with about 10,000 PV.
Instead of prioritizing the small change in front of you, we recommend that you start a blog on WordPress, which is likely to give you a big return in the long run.
Need to get your own domain to partner with Google Adsense
In order to partner with Google Adsense, which enables the delivery of click-based advertising, the site must have its own domain.
Since there is also a fee for acquiring your own domain, it is no longer free after all.
At this stage, many people migrate from free blogging services to WordPress.
If they are going to switch to a paid WordPress blog anyway, they would have been better off using a paid blog from the beginning.
The SEO and domain power of the site cannot be transferred to the new site, so it can be a lost opportunity during the initial period of migration.
Free blogs are less likely to appear at the top of the list.
Free blogs are less likely to appear at the top of search results than WordPress.
An article in a free blog service is just one article in the service, and a reader who visits it can be immediately transferred to another user's site.
Recent search algorithms emphasize comprehensiveness, so if you cannot solve the reader's problem within the same site, it is difficult to appear at the top of the list.
A WordPress site that appears at the top of the list is specialized, so it can solve the reader's deepest problems within the site.
As a result, readers will visit more than one page of the site and stay longer, which means more opportunities for Google to earn ad revenue.
A single page of high quality articles on a free blog is not going to solve your readers' deepest problems, so it is unlikely to appear at the top of search results.
You can't make money with a free blog.
Free blogs must be used after accepting these limitations.
The biggest disadvantage is that it is difficult to earn money.
The revenue source of a blog is advertisements.
As long as advertising is restricted, it is inevitable that the amount of money you can earn will be limited.
If you want to operate a blog for the purpose of earning money, you should start blogging with WordPress, not with a free blog.