Choosing Blogging Platforms For A Beginner: Blogger Vs WordPress

Are you a beginner at blogging and deciding over which platform to use?

Are you confused on what the differences are between Blogger and WordPress? In this article we will discuss Blogger versus WordPress and the pros and cons of each platform.  As we all know, over the past few years, blogging has become a well-known activity and many people have found it as a career path. Done with enough dedication and focus, blogging can be a profitable activity and full time self-employment.

From a writer’s point of view, the world of blogging has broadened the amount of people that are exposed to posts and texts. Up until some years ago, writing and being a writer was reserved for a few lucky people whose work caught the attention of editorial companies, or were brave enough to market and publish themselves.

Today, even though the quality of the texts is still a requirement, the Internet allows us to expose our work and build a following. It is really up to us to use the tools correctly and take advantage of this situation that many writers did not have before.

Being a writer and producing a lot of work takes up most of our time. We (I dare to include myself in this category) are a breed of perfectionists that spend hours in a single paragraph. That said, it’s only logical that we need a platform that will make it easy for us to show our work and doesn’t take up all our time and energy.

I personally have little or no knowledge of programming, so when I’m faced to endless lines of codes, it might as well be drawings or numbers or unknown symbols, it all looks the same to me. It doesn’t matter how many tutorials (claimed to be dummy-proof) I come across; I will not master the art of programming, ever.

Why I Chose Blogger

I’ve gathered enough information to make my own choice between the available choices of Blogging Platforms.

A lot has been said about Blogger and WordPress and which one of them is better. The conclusion that is drawn in every article that I’ve read, is that the choice will invariably depend on the knowledge that you have on programming, or the available resources to hire programmers. It will also depend on what you intend to use your blog for.

As I stated before, have no programming skills whatsoever, so that’s why I decided on Blogger. A lot of people say that this platform doesn’t look as professional and that it can hurt the way you expose yourself to others. Well, although this is somewhat true, it can quickly be changed. Even though Blogger is much more user-friendly than WordPress, you do have to surf the web to find tutorials to tweak the templates and the overall look of your blog. You will swim through a bit of codes, yet you will not drown, I promise.

Myths You Will Hear About Blogger

You Do Not Own Your Content And It Can Be Deleted At Any Time.

You files are stored in Google servers, but are not held hostage there! This will only allow them to be in a much safer environment, as opposed to hired servers that can be hacked (doesn’t mean they will, yet the chances are a bit higher of this happening).

You should always back-up your files, and professional bloggers recommend that you do this at least every two weeks. It will depend on the amount of posts you make and the frequency.

As far as the blog being deleted, well, you have to maintain common sense here. Will you post offensive,  racist, inhumane content? Well if you will, you are bound to be banned. There are “Terms of Use and Service” in every company, as long as you read and respect them, nothing will happen to your blog.

Blogger Is Not SEO Friendly.

I have been reading up a lot about SEO and it’s a fascinating subject. What I’ve learned is that traffic of links will depend on your SEO skills (tied to strategies and other tools) and not on the platform. Besides, it doesn’t really make sense that the platform that is created by Google itself can’t be optimized, does it?

Sponsors Don’t Like Blogger Platforms.

What advertisers want (and this is coming from someone that has worked in advertising for several years) is to be featured in websites that have high traffic and readers that keep coming back to it. This will be possible due to SEO strategies and relevant content, not the platform.

The Pros Of WordPress

For lots of reasons people chose WordPress. It is a giant of a company that has grown over the past ten years. It was born after Blogger but it held its ground and it grew with many features that stand high competition towards the rest of the platforms.

WordPress is more suited for large companies that would rather have complete freedom as far as developing the website; there are endless amounts of plug-ins that are available for the WordPress platform that will make its functionality much more attractive.

However, in order to take advantage of this full development, you need to be able to manage programming codes. The slightest mistake (something as simple as a missing comma) could bring several files down and make them not work until the code is fixed.

If you don’t have that kind of knowledge, then you are probably going to hire help that can increase the final cost.

Decide For Yourself: Blogger Vs WordPress

Help

You will find endless tutorials of active Blogger users that will guide you through the process of managing your account. WordPress forums have an active community but that it doesn’t seem to be very helpful.

Default Templates

Blogger has a much more limited amount than WordPress (that has over 70 to chose from). This is why many people find it unprofessional-looking.

Downloadable Free Templates

Related to the previous item (Default Templates), a lot of designers are providing many templates that are free to download and use in Blogger; they are not that active on doing that with WordPress, since it’s much more difficult. You will find downloadable templates,  this will raise the final cost.

Comments

Blogger allows no editing in comments, though it does allow moderation (erasing comments). WordPress does allow to edit and moderate comments and its form is much more user friendly. This feature will be helpful depending on the importance you give to what your readers have to say (which should be a lot!).

Images And Video

Blogger will allow up to 1 GB of image storage and 16 GB of video storage. WordPress, on the other hand, will allow 3 GB of both video and image storage.

Statistics

Even though Blogger doesn’t have a default system for measuring and giving out statistics, it does allow third parties to do it. WordPress does have a default system for stats, though they only last for two days and they don’t allow third parties to measure.

Mobile Phone Adaptation

This is a great feature for current days since Smartphones and tablets rule our daily routines. Blogger beats WordPress in this aspect since it does support this feature.

I hope this information was useful for you to make your choice. I already chose Blogger but because of my lack of programming abilities. Now it’s up to you!

Your Turn…

We want to hear what blogging platform you decided upon and the reason why. Are you happy with your decision? Let us know by commenting below.

About Our Guest Blogger Denisse Troconis Aoun:

Denisse Troconis Aoun is an Online Marketing Consultant. Passionate about US Hispanics & LATAM market-Hispanic Creativity for Latinos! I’m focused. I create. I learn. I grow. I work with iNetGiant.

Visit Denisse’s website: http://www.iNetGiant.com

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