Free web publishing allows global reach with your message

Free web publishing platforms or programs are available throughout the Internet. Two of the major free online publishing services are Blogger.com and WordPress.com. Both of these platforms allow the user to set up a blog-formatted website virtually immediately. Both the Blogger.com and WordPress.com interfaces and technical basics can be learned fairly quickly by anyone with a bit of patience and enough computer knowledge to perform basic functions.

There are generally no costs involved
Free website publishing has an obvious appeal, in that there is no financial outlay required to get a blog (website) up and running quickly. WordPress and some other platforms can be configured to look more like a regular website, if that is your preference and you want to have a website that stays the same, for the most part, from day to day after your site is built, except for periodic web page additions.

In its present configuration, however, the totally free version of WordPress available at WordPress.com does not allow the addition of Google AdSense, so this simple way of monetizing your site will not be available with that particular platform. Blogger.com, on the other hand does allow the addition of Google AdSense to your blog and there are simple instructions for how to install the Google AdSense program on the Blogger.com site. Having Google AdSense on your blog gives you the opportunity of earning some money with your blog.

Free web publishing with affiliate programs
There are also free web publishing platforms available through a number of affiliate programs offered on the Internet. Generally these websites are templated to all look the same except for some form of identification with the affiliate member. These programs offering free websites are tempting in many ways, but remember that you do not own the site, and you cannot put what you want on the website, beyond the choices offered to you by the sponsor of the affiliate program.

Free online self publishing platforms such as Blogger.com and WordPress.com offer an excellent way to learn the basics of online or web publishing at no cost. With practice, you will learn basic skills such as making posts, boldfacing, italics, linking, and other skills. By putting in time and effort, you can also learn the special art of writing for the web.

Free web publishing program disadvantages
Free web publishing platforms or programs, such as Blogger.com and WordPress.com, do have several drawbacks, however – you do not own the site, and you do not own the domain name (i.e. the name of your website) such as (http://www.nameofyoursite.nameofplatform.com.) And, as can be seen by the foregoing example, these are typically long domain names, usually called sub-domains, and hence, are not easy to remember by Internet surfers. Some individuals however, have achieved good visibility on the web by making their content available through such free online self publishing programs.