7 Best Blogging Platforms to Make Money

A blogging platform is any software, service, or digital communication system that allows you to publish written content online. It’s one of the most important content creation tools for writers. Blogging platforms come in a wide range of different formats, with different capabilities for users.

Blogging platforms are generally made up of the following components:

• Content management system (CMS): Type of computer software that allows you to create, edit, and publish written content online.
• Web host: The place where your blog lives on the internet. You need to pay to rent space on the internet, and the companies that provide this space are known as web hosts.
• Domain name: Your blog’s address or URL. Every blog has a domain name, whether it comes free with your blog or you pay for a custom domain name.

You can also use a website builder to create your blog. These are all-in-one solutions to creating a website, and they’re designed to be easy to use without any technical knowledge.

How to choose a web host

Be sure to choose a web host that has a solid reputation. In addition to that, choose one that offers sufficient bandwidth and storage. Benefits like a free email address that features your domain name are also a huge plus. If you’re not sure where to start, try browsing the web hosts recommended by WordPress.org.

1. WordPress

WordPress originally began as a blogging platform 2003. It’s now the most popular content management system in the world, used to build everything from personal blogs to booming online businesses.

You have two different WordPress platforms to choose from:

• WordPress.com: All-in-one website builder and host that’s easy for beginners to use. Most membership plans have fees, and your monetization options are limited.
• WordPress.org: Website-building software only. It’s completely free and allows for all types of blog monetization, but you’ll have to pay for a web host and take a more hands-on approach to building your blog.

While you can use WordPress.com to start a blog for free (or for a very low cost), it’s not ideal for making money. Instead, you’re better off creating your blog with WordPress.org.

What you need to know about WordPress

• What it’s best for: WordPress is one of the most versatile solutions for creating a website. It’s by and large the best blogging platform to make money, and it’s the most powerful website building tool, with applications extend well beyond blogging.
• Beginner-friendliness: Thanks to optional themes and plugins, you don’t need to have professional design or coding experience to build an amazing website. WordPress does have a slight learning curve, but it’s well worth the effort for the money-making capabilities.
• Monetization capabilities: You can integrate your WordPress blog with Google AdSense and make money from ad views. You could build a business website around your blog where you promote and sell services. You could even add an online store and create blog content based on your products in addition to selling memberships, adding affiliate links to posts, and allowing brands to sponsor your content. WordPress lets you do it all.
• Pricing: WordPress.com plans start at $4 per month ($48 billed annually). WordPress.org is free, but you’ll need to purchase a domain name and web host.

2. Blogger

Blogger is a free blog hosting platform that’s excellent for newbie bloggers who are still learning the ropes. The platform is owned and operated by Google, and it’s mainly designed as a basic and free blogging solution.

The biggest draws are the simplicity and lack of fees. Everything is free, including hosting—although you need to be okay with having a blogspot.com domain, unless you’re willing to pay to use a custom domain.

What you need to know about Blogger

• What it’s best for: Blogger is designed for blogs—and pretty basic ones at that. Everything is simplified, which makes it easy to use but limits your capabilities. You have a few dozen themes and layouts to choose from, but they all look similar. You can add some extra pages—like an “about” or “contact” page—but your site will mainly consist of blog posts.
• Beginner-friendliness: Blogger is super easy to use. Zero technical skills are needed. To create your own blog, just give it a name and then start writing.
• Monetization capabilities: The main ways you can make money through Blogger are ads and affiliate marketing. Blogger doesn’t offer any inherent e-commerce features, so you’d need to link to a third-party payment processor to make money from memberships or product sales.
• Pricing: Free.

3. Medium

Medium is a free blog creator. If the ability to transmit your content to a large audience matters most to you, you’ll be pleased to learn that Medium has over 100 million monthly readers. So it’s a great place to go if you want to spend less time on marketing and more time writing.

What you need to know about Medium

• What it’s best for: Similar to other free and freemium platforms, Medium has the drawback of providing limited control over the appearance and functionality of your blog. You’ll also have to abide by Medium’s list of rules for writers, meaning you can’t just write about whatever you want.
• Beginner-friendliness: Medium is super easy to use. You don’t need any technical skills or web-building experience. All you need to do is sign up and start blogging.
• Monetization capabilities: Medium is one of the few blog sites that pay creators, which they do through their Medium Partner Program. As part of this monetization program, you can make money based on factors like your number of blog post views or listens, engagement levels (e.g., claps, highlights, and replies), and follower count. You can also promote your own products or services or include affiliate links in your blog posts, but you’re not allowed to advertise third-party products or publish sponsored content on your Medium blog.
• Pricing: There’s a free membership option as well as a paid plan that costs $5 per month ($60 per year) and offers a custom domain, access to member-only stories, and the ability to create a publication and earn money as a Medium writer.

4. Ghost

Ghost is premium software made for bloggers. It’s not the cheapest blogging platform out there, but it may be the most loved by bloggers.

Many users report that Ghost offers faster loading times than other blogging platforms, which is essential to attracting users to your page and keeping them there. If you’re unsure whether Ghost is the best blogging site for you, the good news is that you can try it out for free for 14 days before committing to one of their paid plans.

What you need to know about Ghost

• What it’s best for: Ghost is primary designed for blogging, and its strengths are speed, simplicity, and SEO support. While Ghost does allow you to customize your branding, you have to pay for custom themes and integrations, so it’s best suited to serious bloggers who are willing to spend a bit of money to produce a high-quality blog.
• Beginner-friendliness: All the essential features and widgets you’d need to write a blog post are included. Many users also love Ghost’s distraction-free writing interface, which makes writing and editing blog posts a breeze.
• Monetization capabilities: Ghost offers built-in monetization solutions that you won’t find on other platforms. To start, you can add a tip jar or ask readers for donations. You can also create paid memberships for loyal readers who want access to gated content or extras. Overall, Ghost may be the best blogging platform for making money from memberships or influencer marketing.
• Pricing: Membership plans start at $9 per month (billed yearly) or $11 per month (billed monthly).

5. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is best known as a social media platform for professionals. What many people don’t know, however, is that it’s also a good place to start a free blog.

Although social media posting makes up the crux of communication on LinkedIn, you can also write entire blog posts. When published, these posts will be connected to your LinkedIn profile and will be accessible to LinkedIn’s base of over a billion users.

What you need to know about LinkedIn

• What it’s best for: LinkedIn is an ideal blogging platform for people who want a low-maintenance, free, and easy way to reach a large audience, and it’s an especially good choice if you’re blogging about your career or job-related topics. However, it’s not really designed to be a blogging platform, so your blog won’t really look like a blog—it’ll just look like a collection of social media posts.
• Beginner-friendliness: LinkedIn is arguably the easiest platform to use for blogging. You won’t need to worry about web hosting or designing your blog.
• Monetization capabilities: Unlike some other social media platforms, LinkedIn doesn’t offer any built-in monetization tools. However, you can still make money from your content using traditional blog monetization methods, like including affiliate links in your blog content, asking for donations or tips, selling merch, or promoting your professional services or products.
• Pricing: Free.

6. Substack

Substack is one of the newer options when it comes to blogging tools, and it’s free to use. Although it’s new, it’s quickly gaining traction among digital creators and consumers. Substack claims to have 35 million subscribers, including over 3 million users who pay for a subscription.

Like Medium, Substack is its own platform, which is a drawback for some. You’ll be publishing blog content on their site, and you’ll have to abide by Substack’s content guidelines.

What you need to know about Substack

• What it’s best for: Substack is a great blogging platform for content recycling. One big reason why writers choose this platform is because of how easy it is to create multimedia content. You can write a post, publish a vlog, and create an audio version of your content.
• Beginner-friendliness: All you need to do to get started is set your subscription price, then determine which posts are available only to paying members. A major benefit of Substack is that you get access to a network of readers right from the get-go. This is great for beginner bloggers, as long as you’re willing to sacrifice some freedom over your blog content and design.
• Monetization capabilities: Unfortunately, Substack doesn’t allow you to host ads on your blog. However, you can still make money by using affiliate marketing, getting sponsorships, and selling memberships to premium content.
• Pricing: It’s free to get started. If you enable subscriptions, Substack will take 10% of your revenue once you start making money from your blog. The platform also charges a credit card fee (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction fee) and a 0.7% billing fee for recurring subscriptions.

7. Weebly

Weebly is a drag-and-drop visual website builder. It’s a step up from basic blogging tools that limit creativity. With this tool, you can create a beautiful custom blog to go with your original words.

You can use Weebly at no cost. The tradeoff is that you’ll have a Weebly-branded email and Square ads will appear on your site. Alternatively, you can sign up for a paid plan to get a custom domain.

What you need to know about Weebly

• What it’s best for: What the site is really designed for is e-commerce, so it may be the best blog platform to make money from opening an online shop and selling products as part of your blog monetization strategy.
• Beginner-friendliness: What’s nice about Weebly is that it offers a user-friendly experience for everyone. Its drag-and-drop editor is designed for easy use, and its built-in hosting means you won’t have to pay for additional web hosting or worry about technical maintenance.
• Monetization capabilities: In terms of monetization, you can do anything you want with a Weebly blog. In addition to supporting online shops, the platform supports Google AdSense, and it allows all other types of blog monetization, including sponsored content, affiliate marketing, subscriptions.
• Pricing: Free option or paid plans starting at $10 per month (billed annually) or $13 per month (billed monthly).

Don’t be fooled—there’s a difference between the best blogging platforms and the best blogging platforms for making money. If your main goal is to get paid to blog, then understanding this distinction is critical.

Here are a few guidelines on what to look for in a blogging service to help you sort through all the most acclaimed blogging sites and pick out the best blog sites to make money.

Low fees

Many of the top blogging platforms charge fees. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—after all, you get what you pay for, and having a bit of money to spend on your blog can give you more control over your blogging side hustle and even unlock higher earnings in the long run.

With that said, it can take a while to start earning money from a blog. When you’re just starting out, you’ll want to keep your costs low. Otherwise, you risk going over budget and actually losing money overall.

Diverse monetization capabilities

Before you choose a blogging platform, figure out your monetization strategy. There are several well-known ways to make money blogging, but different approaches require different site capabilities.

For example, to make money from ads, you’ll need to choose a blogging platform that supports an ad program like Google Adsense. If you plan on selling products, you’ll want a platform with e-commerce capabilities and payment processing.

The blogging sites that will allow you to make the most money possible are the ones that are versatile enough to support a multitude of money-making strategies so that you can pull money in from all angles.

Beginner-friendly

Some blogging platforms are incredibly intuitive and require no web-building knowledge or experience whatsoever. The more customizable services, however, often require a bit of know-how.

Before choosing a platform for your blog, think about how much time you’re willing to spend digging into the more technical aspects of running a blog. If you pick one with an overly complicated interface, you could lose time and money figuring out how it works or even hiring someone to build your blog site for you.

Supports the right integrations and plugins

This goes back to your monetization strategy. Look up what types of integrations you’ll need to make money from your blog and then narrow down your options to the platforms that support those integrations.

For example, say you want to sell your own homemade products or digital downloads from a third-party site. Some platforms would enable you to sell those products straight from your blog through e-commerce integrations.

Alternatively, if your strategy involves posting premium blog content behind a paywall, you’ll want to choose a blogging platform that’s designed for membership sites or that supports a paywall plugin.

Scalability

Finally, you should consider your long-term goals for your blog. Is this going to be a casual project that you do on the side, or do you want to go all in and pursue a full-time blogging career?

If you’re not sure yet or you think there’s a possibility that you’ll want to invest some serious time into blogging in the future, then it’s worth picking a blogging platform that will allow you to upgrade as you go along so that you don’t eventually hit a wall in terms of your blog’s earning potential.

Free blogging platforms can be just as profitable as paid blogging platforms. If you play your cards right, they can be a great way to maximize your overall earnings from blogging. But just because the costs are lower doesn’t mean that free blogging sites are best for making money.

On the flipside, free blogging platforms are often limited in terms of their customization features, so they may not be ideal if you want a lot of control over your blog’s appearance and capabilities.

What are the best free blogging platforms for making money?

The best free blog site for making money is WordPress since it offers the most routes to profiting from a blog at no cost, particularly since the company started allowing users on the free plan to start getting paid in 2023. Blogger is a close runner-up, and it may be the best free blogging platform overall, but it has slightly fewer monetization options.

Weebly is another great free blogging site, but it’s best characterized as a free website builder, and it doesn’t offer quite as much control as some other free blogging platforms.

What are the best paid blogging sites for making money?

The best paid blogging platform is also WordPress. In addition to their free plan, WordPress offers premium plans that offer greater control and customization potential for bloggers.

Ghost is a close runner-up for the best paid blog site, offering just about everything you need for a lucrative blog with multiple revenue streams, albeit at relatively high prices.