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Why I chose Blogger over Medium, Substack and Wordpress

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I wanted to blog again and decided to pick a platform that was focused on writing and nothing else. I have tried several blogging platforms in the past but I chose Blogger this time around. 

I will tell you why I skipped the ones listed below.

Medium

I am not sure when it will shut down. The platform started great with minimalist design, great fonts, ease of writing and sharing. But writing there was always controversial. Over the years, several publications have moved away from the platform to other competing platforms or have decided to host content on their own. Last year, CEO of Medium admitted that the site is not doing that well which puts the future of the platform at risk.

Substack

The is new kid on the platform is a great starting point for most people. It takes care of email newsletters and provides you an eager audience for your content. I tried couple of times to write there but my issue with Substack is that it demands consistency. When a reader subscribes to your blog, he/she expects regular content every week which for me is hard to maintain. 

I can sometimes write 2 blogs in a day or go without one for two weeks. I was also constantly worried about the growth of subscriber numbers. Substack makes it easy to track the metrics. But you can easily get hooked onto it and get distracted from the actual writing.

Wordpress

I cannot recount how many times I have used Wordpress for my writing. Most of the times I have hosted it on a hosting provider like Namecheap or Hostgator. 

The platform demands work. I have plugged in an SSL certificate(not easy), connected to my domain. I have also taken backups, bought themes, installed them, bought plugins, used them and have done several other tasks along with writing posts.

The writing interface has improved over the years but there are just too many settings and options for a casual blogger.

Google Blogger to the rescue

I have know Blogger for many years now but never seriously used it. This time, it fit my needs. Easy to setup, analytics comes integrated, fewer options and is quite minimalistic.

Will I use this when the blog grows and gains some decent traffic? We shall see. 

For now, it' perfect!

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