9 reasons why Blogger.com is best for beginners

March 31, 2009 By

Lots of folks have asked why my first teleclass focused on Blogger.com instead of WordPress.

That’s a Really Good Question, given that I’m using WordPress for my very own online home. I posted earlier about why I switched from Blogger.com to WordPress, but I thought it was time to round up some reasons why I still believe Blogger.com is the best choice for web beginners to create their first online presence.

Reason #1: It’s free. As in totally free. As in no extra charges for anything. TypePad, another online blogging platform, is a paid service. WordPress.com, the online hosted version of WordPress, starts out free but charges users for the ability to modify basic stuff that Blogger.com lets you do for free. Zip. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

Reason #2: You don’t need web hosting. Blogger.com is completely web-based, and all you need is a web browser to sign up for a free account. You don’t need a separate web-hosting account with some other company that charges you by the month (as you would if you used WordPress.org). And the completely-online-hosted versions of TypePad and WordPress.com, as I mentioned, have financial costs.

Reason #3: You don’t need a domain name. Blogger.com gives you a subdomain so you are automatically (and freely) provided with a web address that looks like “http://mydomain.blogspot.com/”. Yes, there are good reasons to get your own domain name, but that’s a separate step that you can take care of, if you want, once you get more confident with all this online-presence-creation stuff.

Reason #4: When you’re ready for your own domain name, or if you already have one, you can use it with Blogger.com. You might have heard a reason for not using Blogger.com that goes something like this: “They own your domain name and you’re just building traffic for them, not for you.” This is one of the biggest misconceptions out there about Blogger.com. Don’t you believe it! It’s totally wrong if you’re using your own domain name. Just because Blogger.com automatically gives you one of their subdomains doesn’t mean you can’t switch (it literally takes about 3 mouse-clicks) to your own domain name. Blogger.com even lets you buy a domain name from right inside their dashboard, so you don’t have to mess with finding a domain name elsewhere (although if you’ve already done that you can still use it, easily, with Blogger.com).

Reason #5: Blogger.com plays nice with Google. Google owns Blogger.com. No, this doesn’t mean you automatically get better search engine rankings. But it does mean that Blogger has easy and simple integration with other services owned by Google, like Feedburner (a way to let people subscribe to your blog) and Adsense (a way to place ads on your site).

Reason #6: You don’t ever have to look at HTML. You don’t need to be able to go in and edit the mysterious gibberish that lies underneath the pretty surface of your web page. Everything on Blogger.com can be accomplished with human-friendly menus, buttons, and good old-fashioned click-and-drag technology.

Reason #7: The themes available on Blogger.com just work. No downloading, uploading, installing, unzipping, configuring, copying, or any of that hassle. Just pick a theme and bing bam boom, the whole look of your website changes instantly. Yes, there are other themes out there (not on the official Blogger.com template-picker) that you could download, upload, configure, etc. but if you’re a complete beginner, why bother with that? Let Blogger.com do the heavy lifting for you.

Reason #8: Create as many blogs as you want. It’s still free. Yep, Blogger.com lets you create unlimited blogs and all the same stuff applies. So if you have one blog for your business, and one for pictures of your cat, you can use Blogger for both of them and they can look completely different. And they’ll still both be free.

Reason #9: Blogger.com is business-friendly. You are free to sell stuff or offer services on a Blogger.com website. You can add a shopping cart (we’d recommend starting with the free PayPal one), ads, affiliate links, you name it. This is the biggest disadvantage to WordPress.com, the online hosted version of WordPress. Their terms of service don’t allow for “commercial use.” So you’re free to post photos of your cats, but if you want to sell them, you’ll get booted off of WordPress.com. Blogger won’t do that.

Want to share your own reasons why you heart Blogger? Or is there a question I haven’t addressed here? Leave a comment and join the discussion!

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All about RSS

August 19, 2008 By

Last week I promised a spam-stopping trick, and here it is: RSS. It stands for “Really Simple Syndication” but it also “Really Stops Spam,” and only about 25% of the world knows anything about it.

This technology isn’t about filtering spam out of your inbox — it’s about reducing the amount of stuff that even attempts to get into your inbox. If you learn to use RSS, you can actually unsubscribe from a whole bunch of stuff that you’re currently deleting, filing away, or just feeling guilty about not reading as it clogs your inbox — because RSS doesn’t involve email at all.

RSS documents (called “feeds”) are readable by web browsers, and by web-based services called “feed readers.” Several outstanding feed readers are freely available; I’ve heard great things about Google Reader, and I currently use Bloglines. You can set up a free account with these services in minutes. Here are a couple of video tutorials:

  • Google Reader Tutorial (this video starts automatically!) by the fabulous Andy Wibbels, professional blogger and tech expert with a reassuringly human ability to explain things.
  • RSS in Plain English is exactly what it sounds like.
  • Oddly, I couldn’t find a current (newer than 2006) video tutorial for Bloglines, but here’s their FAQ file.

Once you have an account, you can use your reader to “subscribe” to a feed, without ever disclosing your email address at all. Then you use your reader to organize and read your feeds. You have complete control over how and when you see the feeds, instead of awaiting (or dreading) the delivery of email newsletters or announcements on someone else’s schedule.

Almost all blogs (including this very blog ) and newsletters are available in RSS format. Just look for the universal “feed icon” (the orange square with stylized white radio waves, which I’ve reproduced in multiple colors above) and click on it to use your web-based reader to subscribe. Every time a new post or issue is added to a blog or newsletter, a new RSS entry is automatically created and made available in your feed reader.

Now you can save your email inbox for actual communication that you want to respond to, and keep your newsletter and blog subscriptions in your feed reader. RSS subscriptions are also available for lots of special functions, like weather updates, product (and recall) announcements, flight status, sports scores, and stock price tickers. Most readers offer handy tools for saving, filing, and emailing individual posts/items, and creating folders and labels for various categories of feeds. And it’s all free!

This week’s heart of the matter: Give RSS a try, and see how many of your current newsletters and email lists have an RSS feed. If your inbox is crowded, you should be able to immediately ease the pressure with RSS. Let me know how it goes!

Filed Under: Heart-Centered Tech Tips Tagged With: , , , ,