What is a Blogging Platform?

by Tom Connelly

This article may contain affiliate links, and if you were to purchase a commercial product or service through them it would be at no additional cost to you, but it might help my family and me, and help me pay to keep my blogs up and running. Thanks!

If you’re wondering what is a blogging platform, I can put it simply like this: A blogging platform is the software that your blog runs on.

You mean that different blogs use different software?

Well, these other services that offer their blog platforms of course program them in house themselves, so each programming effort by these companies is a different blogging platform.

So, if you ask what is a blogging platform, my answer would be WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Ghost, Squarespace, Wix, Medium, Kalatu, PLS Power Blog, etc.

I’m not going to list every odd piece of blogging software out there in the wild, but that is to give you a hint that there are plenty.

Let’s get this party started, okay?

What is a Blogging Platform That is Used Beyond All of the Others?

WordPress. Period.

Honestly, if you could assess all of the others listed, you would find that whoever uses them is outnumbered by an order of magnitude by those who use some implementation of WordPress.

Even Empower Network’s Kalatu and Power Lead System’s Power Blog are WordPress based, albeit with limited tested theme and plugin support. They’re hosted by the respective companies, much the way WordPress.com hosts the free WordPress blogs, or all of those other systems host their own blogging platforms’ blogs, so the administration needs for the user are pretty much nonexistent.

I also have made arguments against the totally free blogging platforms, as a short sighted folly. You really don’t want to rely on a totally free service with strict TOC’s for your blogging. It can all be taken away as quickly as they seem to give you a blogging platform to work with.

You have to ask yourself what is a blogging platform except for something that lets you blog the way you want with as little trouble as possible.

The Best Blogging Platforms to Make Money

If you are wondering what are the best blogging sites to make money then, no matter what I want you to do or to influence your direction, and I challenge anyone to effectively refute this, is to use a self-hosted WordPress blog, where you install free WordPress into a web hosting account, which sounds complicated but it’s easy and usually one click to start the process. After that I would say if you don’t want the headache of worrying about administration or security and have a slightly larger budget, and especially if you are an online marketer, selling something via your blog, are creating a commercial brand via your blog, or into affiliate marketing via your blog, then you need a service that does not have a restrictive Terms and Conditions, and many of these free and other services DO have restrictive TOC’s that are downright anti marketer.

So, if you are just doing a hobby blog with no desire to ever make a dime, or maybe not more than what Adsense might give in the case of Blogger and any others that support that, then you would be okay from a TOC violations standpoint as long as your subject matter was also within their guidelines.

Why WordPress Blogging?

WordPress has the largest installed base and has all of the plugins and theme support you could ever imagine, and Google loves WordPress from an SEO standpoint, so you can’t go wrong with it.

The self-hosting route is the best way to do it for many reasons, not least of which is that you are in control of your site when you host it yourself, and it’s actually the cheapest method, too, when you factor everything in.

The only exception, and I write more for online marketers than for the hobby blogging population, is a marketing friendly hosted WordPress based system where you pay a bit more per month, but you also have access to great training and perhaps other products, AND you don’t have to worry about the administration, security, and other headaches that come with self-hosting. They are minor headaches that you can usually trust to plugins, but you do have to actually install them and get them running and configured. Again, not the hardest thing to do, but some people don’t want to worry about that at all. It’ll cost you a bit more to get all of that PLUS have a marketing friendly blogging platform at your disposal, but if that’s you then that’s you.

Only YOU know best what YOU need.

You also know your budget best.

I still think that with a little trial, error, elbow grease, and experience that self hosting is best for most, but there are variations when asking what is a blogging platform, so I offer them as alternatives.

Whichever variation you choose, WordPress blogging is the best blogging platform to make money.

You can theme the blog your way, secure it your way, everyone integrates with WordPress, and it’s the gold standard for blogging.

Search engines love it from an SEO point of view, and as long as you do your due diligence with keyword research, on page seo, and offpage seo, you’re good to go.

What you have to do is create great content and keep at it.