When you work in the Internet marketing field as much as I do you tend to view everything from a business point of view. This is certainly true as it pertains to blogging.
However, many people do not blog for profit. If you are the type of person who would just like to set up a free blog, and have some fun with it, there is certainly nothing wrong with this.
Three of the best free blogging platforms are:
1. Blogger.com
2. WordPress.org
3. Drupal.org
I encourage anyone to set up a free blog and have some fun with it. As you begin to get the hang of blogging you may find that you want to try it as an Internet business.
At this point you certainly do not want to use the free blogging platforms. Here is the primary reason this is true.
When you have your blogs hosted by someone else you lose control over it. Your blog can be canceled at any time without notice.
I have personally had several Blogger.com blog's cancelled. It actually is a sickening feeling to login to your account and find out a blog you have been building up is no longer online.
Here is a key point regarding keeping control of your blogs.
Domain names are cheap. You can buy a.org,.net, or.com domain for around $10 a year depending on where you purchase at.
Website hosting as cheap as well. You can get 1 account with Host Gator for $10 a month. This gives you unlimited hosting no matter how many domains you host there.
So when you initially start out you're looking at purchasing a domain for $10 and paying $10 a month for hosting. Hopefully you are choosing a blog theme that will allow you to a least earn $1 a day.
Using affiliate marketing products and programs is very easy to do. This is why you see so many blogs monetized with Google Adsense, Amazon, ClickBank and Commissions Junction products.
All of these affiliate programs are free to join. This give you a broad range of affiliate products to promote.
With Google Adsense you get paid by the click. They are the largest search engine in the world and have plenty of advertisers to match the theme of your blog.
Amazon is an excellent source of physical products. They are the largest online retailer in the world.
ClickBank is a digital information provider. People love to pay for information that solves problems and ClickBank has thousands of products you can promote with one I.D. number.
Commission Junction is a good source of cost per action programs. Getting paid by the lead is a very easy way to make money.
If you are going to do to the work of setting up a business blog you do not one to use the free blogging platforms. This is especially true now that it is very inexpensive to start a blog and the monetary rewards can be so good.