I have tons of opinions, and am very good at articulating them. I used to write even for a game review site that was on the professsional side of metacritic for a time, and shortly after I joined, they were laying off, but I was a good enough writer that even though I joined within a month, I got to stay.
It wasn't a big thing. I only got paid in free games. The hope was that the site would grow, but it never went anywhere, but still, I got my review scores on some fairly major games impacting the overall score on metacritic, so it's a nice little notch in my belt.
My opinions would cover the gamut; games, movies, music, culture, Christianity, theology, politics, race.
That's why it will be called something like "too many opinions" because I'm acknowledging that I'm too opinionated. The end goal is something akin to "The greatest page in the Universe" that Maddox had, but not as arrogant because even as a character, it's not compatible with my Christian life.
But creating and hosting your own website requires money, and know how, something I have neither of.
It won't turn a profit because it won't show up in search results. That's why I have to create a blog, gain a potential following and then transition to some format where I can potentially make money.
The question, to finally get to the question is; what blogging type host site is my best shot to gain an audience considering I'll be spanning the spectrum of all types of topics from geeky to philosophical and everything in between.
I asked AI to give me a rundown, but as you know, it just picks what it thinks are the most helpful sites, whereas people can say something like "avoid wordpress; I tried it and got zero views, despite SEO and whatnot"
I don't know if that above statement is true or not, just an example. I would like real experience to know where to begin and not build up a sunken cost fallacy by starting in the wrong place.
The modern host for such a thing would likely be Substack.
Problem with Substack as I see it is no discoverability. There's lots of likely decently-written Substacks with no comments or engagement.
The more successful Substack writers seem to make a name for themselves on another medium first. Then manage to funnel some of that audience over to SS to have enough engagement to make a lively comment section. And eventually some paying members if one becomes notorious enough.
Substack doesn't play nicely with Twitter either. Elon specifically chimped out & shuttered the Twitter Files BITD because Matt Taibbi, one of the main journalists digging through the archives , was using SS for his own private ventures instead of whatever gayass essay feature Musk was trying to roll out.
As I understand it, Twitter won't even let you post direct Substack redirect links.
You've two choices to not get cancelled: self hosting a wordpress site, or substack. I do the former, have no experience with the latter.
Self hosting costs a nominal fee every month for web space, and a nominal fee annually for the domain name, but it provides the most cancel proof way to do things. You are at risk of cancellation from only your web host and domain name provider, and those can be mitigated somewhat by choosing a resistant provider.
Substack is an all in one place that can offer an income for writing, but you are at the mercy of their policies. Substack has been pretty good, so far, but that can change.
Wordpress.com and Blogger are the two big names in blogging spaces, and both have cancelled numerous accounts for political reasons.
I'll probably go with that WordPress site if it's not too much money.
A few questions.
How much do you have to pay?
Do you need to know how to graphic design your website?
How's your discover-ability? Ie are you popping up in search results?
Hosting for a single Wordpress blog shouldn't be more than $5/month or so for a site you've just started. If it really takes off you might need to pay more. The yearly fee for your domain depends on what domain you register and who you get it from, you can look at Namecheap or Godaddy if you're not posting anything that's going to make tech trannies super mad at you.
It helps but there are lots of free Wordpress themes you can pick from and modify without having to design a logo or anything like that. Grok or any LLM can walk you through the basics.
This is completely up to the search engines and how they rank things. You'll have to have some kind of social media presence to advertise yourself.
My monthly hosting cost is $12.95. Domain name is $24 for two years (what I last paid). I use a stock Wordpress theme, so no graphical design needed at all. Discoverability? Nil, I have blocked all web crawlers (search engines use these to index sites) with robots.txt.
I also deliberately do not use any login or account details associated with any other web site, so no one can extrapolate user name details across to other social media sites. Small but important way to avoid doxxing.
You put it out there wanting to not have discoverability? I understand the desire for privacy and not being doxxed, but I would want my site/blog to show up even if I wasn't paying to create it.