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Is WordPress free for blogging?
Yes, WordPress, the content management system, otherwise known as CMS, is free for blogging.
In fact, you can download not only WordPress, but also free themes and plugins from WordPress.org.
Is WordPress free or paid?
As I’ve mentioned above, WordPress is free to download from WordPress.org. This includes many themes as well as plugins.
You can literally set up a WordPress blog for no money.
WordPress also has paid themes as well as pro and paid versions of plugins. Now, maybe you are unfamiliar with WordPress or any of the other CMSs out there.
Perhaps this is your first experience with websites. If it is, then I’m sure you must be asking yourself, “why pay for themes and plugins when I can simply get them for free?”
The internet is a huge and wonderful place. A place where you can learn and read about anything for free.
However, it all comes down to time and convenience.
Why spend hours, even days trying to find information or solve a problem when you can pay for that information or software to conveniently and easily solve it for you and solve it fast?
I can’t tell you personally how many hours and days I’ve wasted with free themes as well as plugins trying to get them to look and function the way I wanted them to.
When I found out that paid themes and plugins were actually quite cheap compared to the benefits and time savings alone, I was sold.
That’s not to say that you should buy everything or buy every plugin you need.
Many free themes and plugins can basically do what you need them to do. But, the key word in that last sentence was “basically”.
Something to keep in mind.
However, if you find yourself needing a specific functionality or appearance of your website and you’re finding you’re taking way too much time fiddling around with free versions of these tools, then I wouldn’t hesitate to buy a theme or plugin.
In addition, most paid themes as well as plugins not only have great support and customer service, but they also back up their themes and plugins with updates.
How do I create a free WordPress blog?
If you want to create a free WordPress blog, the best way as well as the easiest way to do so would be to sign up for WordPress.com’s free blog plan.
In it you will be able to work with a WordPress theme as well as any plugins that WordPress.com has approved for their free blogs and even get it up live on the internet.
Do free WordPress blogs make money?
Yes, free WordPress blogs can make money.
However, if you get a free WordPress blog on WordPress.com you are severely limited in how you can monetize it.
For example, you will not be able to display AdSense or any 3rd party display network ads and collect revenue from them on your free WordPress blog.
You can’t even display or qualify for WordPress.com’s own display ad network called WordAds.
You would need to upgrade to one of WordPress.com’s paid plans or switch to a self-hosted plan from another web hosting provider.
However, with the above being said, you can monetize a free WordPress blog and make money. How?
Well, you can put affiliate products on your free WordPress blog like Amazon Affiliate Program and collect the revenue from sales of those affiliate products as commissions.
You can also advertise your own product or service on your free WordPress blog too.
Finally, you can sell info products from your free WordPress blog as well.
Just be careful, WordPress.com’s free blog plan is not intended for commercial use.
If WordPress.com feels that your blog is too commercial they could limit your monetization possibilities even further.
If you want to have the opportunity to totally monetize your WordPress website in any manner you choose, you would need to get a self-hosted web hosting plan.
WordPress.com also offers paid hosting plans that you can move your free WordPress blog too.
But these are Managed WordPress Hosting plans.
It seems that with every upgrade of WordPress.com’s plans you get more freedom and flexibility not only with monetizing it, but with themes and plugins as well.
But WordPress.com still has some degree of control, even on their most expensive hosting plans.
So if you truly want to have independence, be able to choose your own themes and plugins as well as monetization methods, you will be much better off moving over to a self-hosted plan from a web hosting provider.
Here are a couple of posts you can check out for further information on making money with a free WordPress blog:
- “Can a WordPress blog make money? The Sky’s the limit!”
- “Does free WordPress have ads? WordPress and ads.”
Can I create a free website with WordPress?
Actually, there are a couple of ways you can create a free website with WordPress.
The first way is the way I had just described above. By starting a free WordPress blog on WordPress.com’s free blog plan.
However, there is another way that you can create a free website with WordPress even without the need for hosting. That is to download WordPress onto your local computer.
You can either download a free WordPress theme and plugins or a paid WordPress themes and plugins.
You can also, of course, download a combination of both free and paid themes and plugins as well.
WordPress CMS is afterall, free and open source.
In fact, I have a post that talks about that more in detail on how you can download WordPress for free on your local computer and work to create your ideal website on it.
Then deploy it out to the internet through a Self-Hosting service provider.
You can read about that here: “Does WordPress need hosting? Hosting and No Hosting options.”
Is WordPress hosting free?
As I’ve mentioned throughout this post, WordPress.com’s free blog plan does include free hosting.
However, WordPress also offers paid web hosting plans on their platform as well for greater autonomy and flexibility.
In addition, other web hosting providers also offer a choice of several different self-hosting plans including:
- Shared Hosting.
- WordPress Hosting.
- Cloud Hosting.
- VPS Hosting.
- Dedicated Server Hosting.
These plans vary in price and features.
I’ve listed them in general from cheapest to most expensive.
But prices vary, sometimes greatly, from one web hosting provider to another.
Do I have to pay for a domain name WordPress?
If you want your own domain name for example myname.com and not myname.wordpress.com, then you would need to pay for your domain name on WordPress.
Is WordPress free for blogging, final thoughts.
WordPress is not only free and open source, but it’s free for blogging as well.
You can simply start a blog for free on WordPress.com’s free blog plan.
However, if you are truly serious about blogging, you will soon realize that WordPress.com’s free blog plan has severe limitations.
Eventually, you will want to either move your free WordPress blog onto one of WordPress.com’s paid plans or go to a self-hosted plan from another web hosting provider.
So now that you know that WordPress is free for blogging, why not start blogging today
