Blogger Vs. WordPress: What Platform Is Best For Authors?

I make my living as a coach, writer and publisher of how-to information on non-fiction writing and marketing for the web, Amazon, etc. In that space, the go to platform for blog writing is a self-hosted WordPress blog. That means that you spend a few dollars purchasing a domain name and domain hosting from a company like my favorite Hostgator and then build your own blog using WordPress as the platform.

It works very much like a free WordPress account except you don’t have to follow their rules around what content you can publish. With your own site you can publish whatever you want. This is important if you plan to SELL anything from your site directly or indirectly as an affiliate.

Now I have to say that I LOVE the self hosted WordPress platform. It provides great visibility for your blog because search engines like Google love WordPress blogs and it is a relatively easy platform to learn – but the world of writing fiction is very different. It seems that fiction writers gravitate more towards to the Blogger.com platform which I also have a bit of experience with but don’t like as much.

This is driving me absolutely CRAZY! Why?

1. I can spot a Blogger blog a mile away. Even with all the templates that are out there for it, most users do not have the skill to tweak them so most still end up looking amateurish. Now don’t be offended if that’s you. I’ve seen millionaire authors with bad looking Blogger blogs. I won’t name names to protect the innocent:)

2. I absolutely HATE that if you want to leave a comment on a Blogger blog that you are limited in doing so. Most people that leave comments own their own Blogger blogs or have their own Google/Gmail accounts (but you have to be logged in). I totally understand why Google would do this, but I guarantee you that if it was easier for the average reader to leave a comment then there would be more comments on these blogs which is better for YOU.

I tried to leave a comment for an author today and I was forced to login to my Google account then go back and leave my comment when on WordPress I just leave my comment, add my name & email and press submit.

What I think is happening is this…

1. When most writers start out they don’t have a lot of income or they don’t want to expend a lot of income on their first go into writing, BUT they know that having a blog is an essential cog in the author’s marketing machine. So why not start one spending zero cash? Solution: Blogger, Weebly, Tumblr etc.

2. Many new writers tend to follow the lead of other successful authors and some of the more popular author blogs and writing blogs out there are on the Blogger platform. Monkey see, monkey do. If authors moved to another platform, so would the newbies.

3. Most writers know zero about marketing and don’t realize when they start out the advantages of building a self hosted WordPress blog versus a free blog. Once they figure it out, most find it too late to move to another platform when they’ve just got the hang of their free one. So they just stay.

Which will I go with?

Right now I have two blogs. This one and a Blogger one. I’m still torn. I want to be “in” with the cool kids who are all on Blogger but I know better. I know that in the long run there will be no room for growth. I did a Google search on my name and noticed that my WordPress blog is #1 and my Blogger one fell off of page one. I haven’t updated either blog really well so far. I’ve been too busy writing my book:) So I’m 99% sure that I’m going to go with my WordPress blog. The biggest challenge doing so may be connecting with other authors who are on the Blogger format. We’ll see!