It has been just over 3 years since I started Technically Easy. I have learned a lot within those three years, have made some mistakes (still do), met many great people, but more importantly, I continue to learn to this day. When I began blogging I started out on Google’s Blogger platform – mainly because it was a great way of learning how to blog as it was free and quick to setup.
Since that time, however, I have switch to a self-hosted WordPress blog. While there were many reasons why I switched, I still enjoy playing around with Blogger, and the templates. One of the questions that I see raised quite often on various blogs and forums is whether you can succed with Blogger?
What is Success?
Success is many things to many people. Each of us has our own measure of success. Some may say that receiving hundreds of comments on a post means they are successful, while others may look at how much income their blog generates as a measure of success. To each their own.
The good news is that whatever your measure of success is, you can achieve it on any blog platform – provided you are prepared to do the work. A blog platform doesn’t limit your success, only the amount of effort and work will be the limiting factor.
While making a small income with my blog is nice, my success lies in the fact that people find an answer to their technical problem in my posts. While I may not have all the answers, I’m hoping that someone will write a comment to help others out, or many times I write a post that solves a problem someone has had in the past to help others out in the future. That is how I am measuring my success.
Did I need a self-hosted blog to accomplish my success? Nope. I began helping others with my trusty old Blogger blog before moving to WordPress.
Do You Need to be Self-Hosted or Have a Domain Name?
Many people may say that to be successful you need to have a host and a domain name. While in some respects that may be true, especially if you are a business, but in reality it isn’t a huge limiting factor. To be successful, you must think like a non-webmaster, or someone who doesn’t know SEO from PHP.
I remember watching my wife, who is non-technical, perform searches for scrapbooking, and watched as she visited several blogs. As I watched I noticed that many of the blogs she visited were Blogger blogs. She didn’t care about whether the blog was self-hosted or had a domain name. She only cared about what content was present on that blog, and began bookmarking many of those Blogger blogs because of that content. I’m sure if she came across other free-hosted blogs or web sites, she would have done the same.
Many experienced webmasters do have self-hosted sites with domain names, mainly because it provides the most control over their site. For those that aren’t tech-savy, or just wish to publish content, Blogger will have all the tools they need to do just that.
Examples of Successful Blogger Blogs
While I stated that success is many things to many people, I have come across three blogs that you could deem successful for several reasons.
The first blog is humorous called Hyperbole and a Half. Each post provides an interesting, funny story, with just as interesting pictures. The most interesting fact about this blog is the number of comments on each post. I’m not talking 50-60 comments per post, I’m talking hundreds. By scanning the posts on the home page, I can see two posts have over 800 comments. The latest post, which is about a week and a half old, has received over 500 comments. I can’t find many non-Blogger blogs that can boast about the same number of comments. This Blogger blog appears to successfully get a lot of visitors just by the sheer number of comments on each post.
Another blog is started by someone that has made a great monthly income with Blogger blogs and AdSense. His blog How to Make Money Online for Beginners has over 6,000 subscribers, and is a straight-forward, no pulling punches blog about making money online. This niche is probably one of the most competitive to get into in the online world, and he managed to succeed – all with a Blogger blog. I’m not sure where he is now, as he hasn’t updated the blog in some time, but he proved that you could be successfull with simply a Blogger blog and AdSense.
One of the most important aspects of a successful blogger is to be considered an expert in a particular field or niche. Now most would say that most experts have self-hosted sites, and they would probably be right. There are some experts that prefer to use Blogger because of its ease of use. One particular expert named David Hobby is well known in the photography circles for his work in lighting. His blog is a Blogger blog called Strobist. Even though his blog is on Blogger, he is considered an expert in his field and receives quite a bit of traffic. In my last post, Do You Want to Take Better Digital Photos?, one of Scott Kelby’s books mentions David’s blog, and how it is one of the best places to go to learn about photography lighting.
The above are just three examples of successful Blogger blogs. The common aspect among each of them is that they all provide good content and value to their readers. Each works hard to provide that value, which is evident in the success of each blog.
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on August 7, 2010 at 8:56 am
Also the blog that is in the number one on the 1st page of google for the keyword make money online uses blogger. But the blog was deleted without warning from google.
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on August 7, 2010 at 11:25 am
That can be a problem with Blogger – having a blog deleted automatically. while I haven’t experienced the issue, many have. It is always best to ensure you have your own original content anyways, which should prevent your blog from being deleted from Blogger.
on August 7, 2010 at 9:55 am
This is Source Blogger.
I do not feel it is always necessary to self-host every blog onto WordPress.
I have Blogger blogs that SEO well and get hundreds of blog hits a day.
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on August 7, 2010 at 11:26 am
I agree. Before I switch to WordPress, this blog was receiving hundreds of visitors a day when it was on Blogger. If you are willing to do the work, your can easily create a successful blog on Blogger.
on August 9, 2010 at 9:05 am
I’ve blogged with Blogger in the past and I wasn’t very impressed. With wordpress, my blogging is a lot easier especially when it comes to modifying my themes. You simply can’t do that offline in blogger. You always have to be online to edit anything in Blogger unlike WordPress where softwares like XampServer can allow you to test your changes offline before going live.
Comment moderation and reply is another issue. For blogger, you just have to open the post in other to be able to reply to comments unlike WordPress where you can do it fast and easy from the admin area.
Summary: Working with a wordpress blog is less stressful
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on August 9, 2010 at 9:21 am
The offline development/testing of a WordPress theme is great. For Blogger, I create a second blog that match the first one and did all my development/testing in that blog. When I was happy, I would copy the template over to the production blog.
Comment moderation can be a pain, but I’m sure it can easily be remedied on Blogger’s side of things – if enough people want it.
on August 13, 2010 at 3:22 pm
I hear Blogger has just added a comments panel to the dashboard but it’s yet to work as fluidly as wordpress does.
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on August 13, 2010 at 8:27 pm
I read that they have, but I’m not sure what options are available as I haven’t checked it out yet. At least it is a step in the right direction.
on August 9, 2010 at 9:12 am
I don’t think so. I moved from Blogger to WordPress some months ago and I am really happy that I made the change.
Reason: Google bot picked up my blog as a spam blog and deleted my blog. My blog was to be reviewed by humans and nothing came out of it. So I moved and I am really happy that I moved because I have achieved alot of great things using WordPress self hosted
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on August 9, 2010 at 9:20 am
Many people that switch from Blogger to WordPress are usually happy. Nothing like owning every aspect of your blog. Many people that start out with blogging may choose Blogger because it is free and easy to use – in terms of creating a blog quickly. Unfortunately, that has the undesirable side effect of causing spam blogs to be created.
I have heard about problems with the bot identifying legitimate blogs as spam. Sorry to hear about that.
on August 10, 2010 at 4:29 am
When I read the title of this post, I was prepared to mention Strobist in the comments section, but you beat me to it. Content is king.
I do wish Blogger offered a little more freedom with the blogs. They took a big step with the new template designer tool. I would still like more though. I know I could tweak the HTML, the designer tool is much faster.
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on August 10, 2010 at 8:26 am
I couldn’t talk about successful Blogger blogs without mentioned Strobist, now could I?
I haven’t really looked at the new template designer tool in great detail as I have been more focused on my WordPress blog lately. I have heard good things about the designer, and hopefully it is just the beginning of things to come for Blogger.
on March 3, 2011 at 3:34 pm
I have to say I never thought that Blogger blogs could survive after WordPress.
About the self hosted and non hosted platform, as you guys already said, the making money online blog is gone now.
And as my last thought I have bumped into marketing people that claim if you have a non hosted blog (be it wordpress or blogger) you won’t be creating any trust in your visitors. I particularly always doubted this and the example of your wife not caring what the URL was but about the content, just proves this right.
Thanks for sharing this article, I’m really going to check the hyperbole and a half blog for a few minutes, looks fun!
~Sergio
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on March 4, 2011 at 10:11 am
Many people probably wouldn’t have guessed free blogs, such as Blogger, would survive since WordPress took the stage. The one thing we need to remember is that not everyone is interested in creating a self-hosted blog. Many people use Blogger because of how easy it is to use, and how quickly a blog can be created.
I have seen many successful Blogger blogs. If the quality content is there, who cares where it is hosted.
on April 13, 2011 at 6:55 pm
I have my own domain, but blog is hosted on Blogger.
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on April 13, 2011 at 10:58 pm
That is a good choice. If you do decide to move your blog to a self-hosted solution, you should be able to move it without much issue with your indexed content because the domain, and page URLs, would remain the same.
on April 24, 2011 at 9:34 pm
My Blog does what I need it to do, but I had to make it DO FOLLOW, and do some other Mods.
But I have a roof cleaning company in Tampa, and it is fairly easy to be well ranked for my keywords.
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