Favorite FREE blog site? looking to blog professionally....?

Question

Ok, I know, it's been asked & answered A LOT...
However, I'm looking for current opinions & reviews.
I really like the 360 Yahoo... I've found it the easiest so far!
But I need to get a professional site started & I just want to look good to those who will be critiquing my work!
Also, I like the creativity with 360 Yahoo... but since it's still Beta, do you think it's wise or not to use 360 for a professional site? (Right now it seems more like a MySpace site... which in my opinion is over the top... more for personal sites.)
I've come to respect the opinions of Yahoo Answer members & hope you will be gracious again with your help.
Please, don't just give me the blog site name... Please add why you like it. This will help me with my decision.
Thanks, LH99
P.S. It has to be FREE, because we have NO extra $$! That's why I'm looking to be a professional blogger!! :)

UPDATE... ""Do you mean you want to have a professional look and feel, to provide a blog that looks like it was created and is run by someone who really knows what they're doing? Or do you mean you want to rake in wads of cash while writing what you love? Or both?""
Yes, BOTH :)
Any others have an opinion? :)

Answer 1

There's a couple of things going on here to answer.

What is "professional"? Do you mean you want to have a professional look and feel, to provide a blog that looks like it was created and is run by someone who really knows what they're doing? Or do you mean you want to rake in wads of cash while writing what you love? Or both?

If the former (just looking good), stay away from social networking sites. You won't earn "pro" points by blogging on Yahoo! 360 or Xanga or Myspace or Bebo or LiveJournal or wherever. Basically, if there's a tool on the blog to invite your friends to connect with you, stay away. For "pro" purposes anyhow.

Instead, look to WordPress.com. You'll get the widest variety of templates and tools availalble to not only make your blog look professional, but work fast. I know a lot of people like blogger.com, but that's not where you find the pros.

On the other hand, if you're looking to make money blogging, unless you're going to post porn you're going to make more money writing articles for publication. Trust me. I know. The people making money writing blog entries out of their home right now are the ones who got in early and fast and they blog on one of two or thee things: They blog about being a pro blogger (ironically enough), they blog about gadgets and the post many times a day, or they blog about politics. These bloggers all have subscribers to their feeds in the order of many hundreds of thousands of subscribers. They earn ad revenue off of a million or more page impressions a day. They sell product.

Getting there at this stage in the game will take you many months, if not years. And if you're not already writing a blog that has generated interest and is earning you income, you have a ways to catch up.

But don't let that stop you from blogging. Start now, start fast, and start writing. Who knows? You might tap into the cultural zeitgeist and start getting a hundred new subscribers a day. Your site traffic may well soar, and you could be making book deals by the end of the year.

But the reality is, it's not likely.

Now, if you want to earn some cash writing blog entries, and it doesn't matter to you what you write about, start watching the jobs.problogger.net job board. Every once in a while there's a call for new bloggers from some marketing blog group. They'll want something like three posts a week on gadgets, or ten posts a month on real-estate news. And they'll pay you anywhere from $100 to $300 a month to do it. If you can line up enough of those commitments, you could fnd yourself writing blog entires eight hours a day and maybe pulling down some nice income. You'll be earning your chops, getting your name out there, and establishing a real business. But, for that, you don't need your own blog. You just have to give other people your words.

Now, back to publishing: if you can write, and you know how to present your ideas in compelling and interesting ways, why start with blogs? Start submitting articles to magazines. They'll actually pay you. Build an audience with your writing in the real world, and they'll follow you online.

Hope this helps!

Rich

Answer 2

I like blogger.com - Lots of controls there; plus, you don't have to, but if you want to, you CAN dig in to the deep dark innards of the html (xml, actually) of the template behind the blogger and rewrite the whole look and feel of your blogsite - Google folk offer all manner of help files for the "widget" language used to construct it. So, as I did, on two of my client sites, you could link it to the rest of a website and integrate it.

Answer 3

I am really tired of answering this question... Ucoz is the best free web host CMS combo out there. U can use freewebs or wordpress and stuff, but none will be as good as ucoz. If you don't need anything fancy, try something else...

Answer 4

1

Answer 5

Blogger and Wordpress are both free and their best features are listed in link below. Have a look and make your decision :

Answer 6

you can find a free download of Wordpress here http://bit.ly/1xTAnPz
It's the best choice.
Cheers ;)

Answer 7

blogger.com

Reason: Owned by google (so you know it's done well).
Easy to set up
Option for html or a template
Ability to easily keep your contacts up to date with your blog
New features allow uploading videos, pictures, and more
Looks great
And of course, totally free

Answer 8

I blog on myspace. I have a pretty good audience

Answer 9

free script http://wordpress.org/download/

Looking professional for nothing that'll be a trick..

Answer 10

wordpress is the best, trust me!