Top Free Blog Software / Hosting for Bloggers

Blogs seem to be popping up everywhere on the Web. With so many free blog software and hosts available, it can be downright confusing. And, one of the most common questions is: "What are the best free blog software or systems out there?" So, if you're one of those looking for the best free blog platforms available, here are some of the most recommended free blog systems.

1) WordPress

This free blog software is b2/cafelog's official successor. It has a great interface and useful features like 'private' posting (password-protected), file uploads, and more. You need PHP version 4.1 or greater, MySQL version 3.23.23 or greater, and The Apache mod_rewrite module (optional, for the nice URI functions) on your server.

2) Blogger.com

This is one of the most popular free blog hosts.Users can create a personal or a group blog for free - either by using their hosted service (BlogSpot) or one's own web host.

3) Movable Type

This is a popular blog software among bloggers who like to manipulate web designs, formats, and functions. However, you need to have some programming skills (or pay for an installation service) and your own web host. While there is a free blog version, some bloggers might find the licensing agreement with this too limiting. For more flexibility, there are several licensing fee options for both personal and commercial users.

4) Greymatter

It is the 'original opensource weblogging and journal software' on the web (Read: Free blog platform). Installation to a server that supports Perl 5 software is required. It has several features like comments, 'karma' voting, templates, search, and bookmarklet.

5) Live Journal

This popular free blog host is preferred by many individuals who enjoy a community-based blogging system. It is web-based and the sign-up process is quick and easy. There's also a premium version.


6) Multiply

This is where blogging meets social networking. It also supports photo blogging and video/audio uploads. There are three membership levels: Free, Gold, and Platinum.


7) Xanga

This free blog platform is web-based. There is also a 'premium' (paid) version. It is growing in popularity, especially because of its community. Just sign-up and you will get a free blog going soon enough.


8) 20Six UK

This is a UK-based free blog host that has some nifty features including image hosting, statistics, categories, RSS/XML feed, voting, and comments functions. One special feature it has that many blog hosts don't offer is the support for mobile blogging (posting to your blog using MMS and/or email). They have recently introduced paid versions of this blog system.


9) MindSay

This free blog system offers features and plugins including templates, friends' list, favorite links, music playlists, recent visitors list, comments, and ratings.

Free Blog Hosting Guide picks

Blogging (posting a Web log) is popular, fun, and just plain cool. Here are some sites that allow you to setup and maintain your own blog for free. With these free blog hosting sites you don't need to know anything about setting up scripts, using FTP or even coding HTML. Just fill out a form and click submit - presto - you are blogging.

Blog*Spot

Blog*Spot is run by Pyra Labs, the people who run Blogger. Blog*Spot offers free hosting of your weblogs created with Blogger.

Blogger

While Blogger is not a hosting site, they do offer a very popular free online tool for updating your blog on any site that allows FTP access.

Diaryland

Diaryland offers free creation, updating and hosting of your online diary. You can make your diary public or private. No ads are displayed. They only require that you have a link back to the Diaryland homepage.

Easyjournal

Easyjournal is designed to be - well - easy. I like the clean design and fast loading of journals. They don't claim to be ad free, but I didn't see any ads on the journals.

Free Open Diary

This site has been around since before blogging became cool or was even called blogging. They started in October 1998 and provide a very reliable and easy to use basic online diary. You can make your diary public or private.

LiveJournal

Note: You need a referral code from a current member to create an account. LiveJournal is similar to many of the other free blog hosts, but they offer a downloadable client that you can use to create your updates offline. The client runs on just about anything including: Windows, Mac, Unix, BeOS, Palm, and more. You can also make your updates online without the software.

News Is Free

This site offers a large number of newsfeeds that can be used to create a custom page or weblog on the site, or integrated in your weblog on another site using the most popular blogging formats.

Pitas.com

Pitas.com offers a quick and easy system to getting your blog setup and updated. No ads are displayed on member pages, just a link back to the homepage.

we::blog

This one takes a little bit more technical know how to customize, but we::blog offers a good system to allow comments on to your blog and even comments to the comments. You can also syndicate your blog, allowing other people to display posts from your weblog.

Weblogs.us

Weblogs.us offers free Movable Type blog hosting for non-commercial use. At this posting the accounts are setup manually, so it may take a day or two for your account to be active. There are no ads displayed.

Xanga.com

Xanga.com is a is a weblog community that features free weblog hosting and lots of interactive features. The blogging and interative tools require no technical knowledge.

Choosing the Right Keywords(2)

One way to compare keywords is to use a keyword effectiveness index, or KEI. What this will do is give you a visual aid that lets you gauge how much success you can expect to have with any given keyword.

To construct a keyword effectiveness index you simply need to plot a chart with search volume on the x-axis and either Google PR of the first site returned or total results returned on the y-axis. The x-axis represents benefit and the y-axis represents inherent difficulty to achieve the top spot. You want to optimize for words with low difficult and high benefit. Otherwise known as the path of least resistance.

The idea is to find a keyword that will result in a point that is as red as possible.

I cannot stress enough how important this is. There are often drastic differences between related keywords and choosing the right words to optimize for can be the difference between success and failure.

Choosing the Right Keywords

Now you know how to write effective content and use your keywords, but how do you choose which keywords you want to emphasize? To figure out how effective a keyword is going to be you need to look at two values: the popularity of that word as a search term, and the competition of that word as a keyword.

To find our how popular a search term is you can use a service like Wordtracker.com, or if you advertise through Overture or Google you can access their respective search term data. Whichever route you choose these services allow you to look up keywords, and how many times they area searched each month. This is very important because obviously it is much more beneficial to rank highly on a word that is searched a thousand times a month, as opposed to one that is search a hundred times a month. If you're trying to put keywords in your title or domain doing this analysis is especially important.

The other value you need to be interested in is how much competition is out there. You can simply do a search on Google and look at how many results are returned to get a basic analysis of the competition. You could also use the Google Toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com) to check the PageRank of the top ranking sites for your ideal search terms. Once you get more experienced at website publishing and promotion you will be able to estimate how much work it will take to get to the top for your search terms by checking the PageRank of the currently high ranked sites.

The idea is to pick keywords with the least resistance and the highest payoff. You're doing yourself a great disservice if you skip this step. If you spend months getting ranked highly on a certain set of words only to find out you could be getting ten times the traffic if you had worked on a different set of words you'll regret it.

How to Build a Successful Website

Due to the many news stories in recent years about big corporate websites going bankrupt it is a common misconception today that all or most websites are unprofitable and will not make their owners money. This assumption is based on the idea that if big corporations like Disney fail at making a website then your average guy on the street must fail horribly, of course that assumption is wrong. In the case of content driven websites the smaller independent operation often has the advantage over large corporate entities. While an individual or a small group does not have the resources of the large corporation, they also do not have the overhead. If you run a website out of your basement or your bedroom your overhead is already significantly smaller than that of a major corporation because you're not running your website out of a brand new state-of-the-art office building. Additionally if you only have one employee, yourself, you're also reducing your overhead compared to corporations who have to pay for workers who do the same things you do, but also management, building management, building security, maintenance, marketing consultants, development consultants, secretaries, and a myriad of other positions that by keeping your operation small you don't need. The only advantage a corporation has over an individual is that they can afford to pay for gross amounts of advertising both online and off, whereas the typical individual cannot.

What's great about the Internet is that everyone is on a level playing field. Due to the relatively cheap or free access to search engines you can compete with big websites with minimal investment on your part. You don't need lots of money to run a popular profitable website, all you need is time and know-how, and the time requirement isn't even that much. While some websites may require more maintenance than others a typical site can be managed in your spare time, in the evenings or on weekends.

As far as how much you can make? The sky's the limit, however keep your head firmly planted on earth. It is possible to have a monthly income of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars off a website(s) you run in your spare time, that is an attainable goal. It is also possible to make much more than that, but expecting more is a less realistic goal. Don't go into your website project with the expectation of millions of dollars, chances are it isn't going to happen. However, if you are after supplemental income that will last residually for a long time (quite possibly the rest of your life), then this guide will tell you how to do it.

There are no miracles here or magic systems, you will need to follow the correct steps and you will need to work on things. Your first site might fail, your second one too, but maybe your third site will be the one to succeed. After I launched my first commercial site it took me a year and a half before I started making enough money to live on, which was $2-3,000 per month, and then another 8 months before I started making great money, which was 5 figures a month. There wasn't anything magical about it when I finally became a successful self-employed website publisher. It was the result of work, sacrifice, and learning from my mistakes. I now make a very nice six figure sum yearly, but reaching this point first required that I live on a very strict budget back when my websites were only bringing in a few hundred a month. I have taken everything I learned in my road to success and placed it here. This guide bridges the gap between those who know how to build a website, and those who know how to build a successful website. You will not have to pay for this information, this guide is 100% free.