How to Start A Blog Series: Blogger vs. Wordpress

I always seem to find my teaching-bone late at night when I’m too tired to work on real work, but not tired enough to go to bed. Tonight is one of those nights. It’s how my Photography Tips post was born, and it’s going to be how this post is born too. With the new year here, you are probably setting goals and making big plans to bring about change in 2015. One of my goals is to share more behind the scenes content on blogging and business. This has been on my mind for quite some time, but has been pushed to the wayside as this past year has also brought some exciting growth with my design studio. And if I’m being completely honest, I feel like this whole teaching element is a piece to a puzzle that I’ve been missing. As much as I love creating printables, designing websites, and helping bloggers transform their online presence – I find a great deal of fulfillment teaching & helping other creative entrepreneurs and bloggers grow their brand. I want to help more creatives find their voice and realize what they have to say is worth something. I’m going to be posting these informational type of posts on Fridays (probably not every Friday, but I’ll do my best!), so stay tuned for those. I’m also in the process of writing a e-book on photography tips, so be sure to sign up for my e-Club to get notified of when that will launch and go on sale!

So without further adieu, let’s start the How to Start A Blog Series with my thoughts on the Blogger vs. Wordpress debate! Whether starting a blog has been on your mind, or you are just curious as to how the whole thing works, I hope this series will take some of the intimidation away from the whole process. If you’ve got a passion for something & a willingness to learn, starting a blog can be a rewarding and fun way to share those passions with others. The first step to starting a blog is deciding on a blogging platform. Two of the most prominent blogging platforms (and the two I work with for custom blog design clients) are Blogger and Wordpress.org. Many people have their opinions on each, but here’s what I tell my blog design clients. If you are wanting to blog for the mere purpose of writing, testing the waters, and seeing if blogging is even something you want to do, then Blogger (which is free) is probably suitable for your needs. In fact, I started one of my first blogs on Blogger back in 2011 and then switched to Wordpress in two years, because I wanted more advanced capabilities for my site; such as Recipe & DIY thumbnail galleries and more control of my plugins. But for many bloggers & clients, Blogger is 100% suitable for their needs.

Blogger:

• Free to use.
• Great for beginner bloggers/personal blogging, where you don’t want to invest a lot of money in it quite yet.
• You just want to write and share your ideas without having to worry about the “backend” of things.
• Easy to maintain because Google updates the interface.
• Your site lives on Google.
• No plugins, no FTP access, and (unless you know HTML/CSS) you may have a hard time making your site look unique because of the limited template options.
• Easy to integrate with Google Adsense
• Wanting to start a blogger site? Follow these steps to get one set up!

Wordpress:

The other platform is Wordpress. There are two different kinds of Wordpress, just to make things confusing (of course). There is Wordpress.com (the free version) and then Wordpress.org (the self-hosted version that requires setting up a web hosting plan). I personally only work with .ORG and never recommend the .COM version to my clients. Not because it’s bad by any means, but because it’s very limited in the amount of customizations you can do with it. And many of my blog design clients are looking for extensive features like recipe plugins, design customizations, and specific ad placements. I have about the same feelings with Wordpress.com as I do with Blogger – if you are wanting to just test the waters of blogging, are not quite ready to invest much money in it, and don’t necessary need a lot of functional capabilities, then go for a free account. Just know that with Wordpress.com, they do charge for upgrades should you decide you want to customize things later down the road. If you want to have full control & ownership of your site, Wordpress.org is what I always recommend to my clients.

• Wordpress software is free, but a monthly hosting fee (usually around $5-$7/month for starters) is necessary to host your site on a server. I will be writing more about hosting in the next post, but if you are looking for a hosting company, I recommend A Small Orange (what this blog is hosted on).
• Great for professional businesses/bloggers.
• Allows for more customizations & functions.
• Easy-to-use interface, with large library of free and premium theme (like the Genesis Framework).
• You ultimately own your site because you are paying for a hosting service.

The one thing to remember is that more features also come with more need to maintain the site after launching (update plugins, update wordpress, etc.) A common misconception I see is that many think that because Wordpress.org offers all these customization options, that they will only take a minute or two to implement. Depending on the look you are going for, one of Wordpress’ free templates may suffice or you may need to dive into coding for more extensive changes. So while it’s “possible” to have an amazing site, just remember that with anything – it’s going to take some time to get acclimated to. If you have time to kill and want to DIY your way through things, then I’m in full support! But there’s a reason web designers charge what they do, so if you want to really take your site to the next level, you may want to consider hiring a web designer to help you customize the site how you want it. Most custom Wordpress sites I work on range anywhere from 40-60 hours of work (from consultation, design time, revisions, development, launching, and post-launching support), but the hundreds of hours that have led up to that point (of learning, tutorials, schooling) are why web designers (and any service based industry for that matter) charge what they do. If you are willing to learn and invest time in tutorials and DIY methods, then I say go for it!

Throughout my past few years of working on blogs, I have seen a shift of more people starting with Wordpress.org right away and skipping the free services like Blogger or Wordpress.com. And while these free services are great for personal blogging, if you have plans to really expand and take control of your blog in the future, then self-hosted is a good choice because your content will always stay in one place rather than having to migrate it later on. Migrating a site from Blogger or Wordpress.com to self-hosted Wordpress.org can be done, but it will often run you a couple hundred dollars if you want to hire a pro to take care of migrating the content and redirecting your links. And for that cost, your $7/month hosting plan would be worth it.

So to summarize all of this, it can be seen that both platforms have their pros and cons. What it really comes down to is how much time and money you have budgeted to accomplish the type of site that will fulfill your needs and be something that you are proud to showcase. If you have the budget for hosting and have aspirations to make a sizeable income or become a professional blogger, then my recommendation would be to go with Wordpress.org. If you just want to blog casually while on a budget, Blogger is great platform to let you start blogging without all the backend things to worry about.

And while I think it’s important to really think about your goals for blogging when choosing a platform, I also don’t think it’s something you need to stress over. The most important thing is to just start. Don’t let mulling over platforms hold you back from making that first step. Remember that nothing is permanent. If you decide blogging isn’t for you after a few months, you can delete your blog or cancel your hosting plan. But if it’s something you really want to do & are willing to put in some work, then give it some time to gain momentum. I’m going on 4 years of blogging and while I have learned a ton through trial and error, I still have so much more to soak in. The most important thing to remember is that blogging is a journey, and your journey shouldn’t be compared to anyone else’s. I’ll go into that in more detail in a future post, but it’s something to remember to anyone just starting out!

Have questions regarding blogger vs. wordpress? Leave your questions below and I would be happy to address them!