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Today I will tell you how I find and choose the best blogging platform for solopreneur and solo developer.
What are problems with platform policy before making money
That was some weeks after my first blog. I'm a full-time Front-end developer but on the way to being a solopreneur and a content creator. Last some weeks, I thought I can get money from Medium and Substack by partner program.
But I was wrong, because:
- My country: Viet Nam, is not in Medium partner program allowing list
- Substack allows only Stripe as a payment method and Stripe doesn't allow my country ID
My advice before you want to get money from platforms like Medium, Substack, ... is you have to understand partner program policy.
Why Medium and Substack are important for the blog
Medium, Substack are the popular platforms with a lot of positive users.
You need to publish a post to your website first and duplicate the content to other platforms with a canonical link from your blog post. That's good for SEO, and Google can determine which one is your main post and improve your site ranking(I will tell you how to improve it later).
So, I have to find the best blogging platform to deploy the website and publish my posts there. Then, I will get money from advertising, affiliate marketing, and subscription pricing for my own tools in the future.
How you can define what you need for blogging platform
You don't have to think too much, just keep it small and simple.
You can base on your strong experience to determine which one is good for you. If you are not a programmer, you should consider things as follows:
- Budget for your blog(free or paid)
- Easy to manage your website with many useful plugins, tools or extensions
- Do you want to make money or run a store from it?
- Do you be hosting the website or need a blogging platform?
- How often to customize your website? Googling based on your answers and choose a good one for you.
If you're a programmer like me and wanna develop your own website, consider things as follows (my answers are in bold):
- What is your strong tech? (Reactjs, Nextjs, Jamstack)
- What is your editor style for posting? (Markdown)
- Budget for your blog (10$ per month)
- How long do you want to develop it? (In a week)
- Do you want to earn money from it? (Yes)
- Does it allow comments on posts? (Yes)
How I find good solutions depend on the answers
From my answers, I plan something need to find to develop the blog website:
- A good Nextjs blog starter template
- A low-code or no-code platform for building collaborative apps
- A platform to deploy my website automatically
- A free comment solution
Where is a good Nextjs blog starter template for your blog
Depending on your strong tech, you can search on Google by your own keywords to find in Github. For me, it's "Nextjs tailwindcss starter blog site:github.com". Then select a good repository with the highest star.
This repo is great with over 1k forked and 4k stars, that's good.
How to find a low-code or no-code platform
My target for this blog is in only 1 week, that's short, so a no-code platform that can be managed as a database is better choice.
I search on Google and see two popular platforms Airtable and Firebase with comparison details here. I go to each one and love Airtable more by 1200 records for free tier. I will use this platform as a data provider for my blog repository.
Best platform to deploy Nextjs
Yep, I know Vercel and Netlify are two popular platforms to deploy Nextjs. But Vercel is maintaining Nextjs, then it's my choice.
Decide a free comment solution
If you want to use Github or Disqus as main user login method to add comments, then you can select your provider here (Disqus, Giscus, Utterances).
For me, I need a solution that allows users can log in on multiple social platforms. I check in Nextjs repository examples and see this repo. It uses Upstash, Auth0 for comments and they both have a good free tier.
What are next actions for developing my own blog
I've made my decision and here are the next steps:
- Customize my own style for that blog
- Integrate Airtable to Nextjs and Vercel
- Adding comments by using Upstash, Auth0
Enjoy the journey to make a blog by Nextjs with me and feel free sharing me your voice by adding comments.
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