So you’ve decided to become seriously active online and you’re looking for the best blogging platform?

 A few years ago, it was still difficult to find the most user-friendly platform and it was really hard (for me at least) to make my blog look the way I imagined it.

Today, there are hundreds of different options but really, if you want to find the best blogging platform for you, you’ll need to identify your priorities

What is the purpose of your blog? Are you looking to reach thousands of readers, or is it just a private collection of updates your family can follow? Are you looking to make money online? Here are the most popular blogging platforms available on the internet.

WordPress: Without a doubt this is a monster in the blogging world, powering 8.5% websites on the internet and they counted 13,409,950 downloads of WordPress 3.0. This is massive! They have over 10,935 pluggins available so I’m pretty sure you’ll find pretty much everything you like in the lot. Over 1,237 free themes available. Another notable fact about wordpress, they are really really search engines friendly, so as long as you know how to set up your blog, Google will find it.

Blogger: Owned by Google, Blogger.com is one of the pioneers in the blogging word, and has been up and running for over 12 years. It automatically integrates with Google adsense, it is completely free and is said to be one of the easiest platform to use. In fact, new bloggers often start here.

Tumblr: Tumblr counts 37,918,213 blogs. It is also completely free to start blogging and very quick to set up (within 10 minutes). However, it seems this platform is more for semi-experienced users as I’ve read a couple of reviews stating the dashboard can sometimes be a bit confusing, so if you’re new to blogging, this is maybe not the way to go.

Squarespace: This platform is known for having one of the most user friendly interfaces. So if you’re fully into designing, customizing and personalizing, this is the one for you. No need for complicated codes and programming languages, anyone can set up their blog as they wish. Squarespace isn’t free, you’ll have to pay $13.33 if you choose the monthly option.

Empower Network: This is the latest addition to the list. The Empower Network has arrived on the market on October, 31^st 2011, so you probably haven’t heard about it yet. It is very quick to set up a blog, and since the platform is powered by WordPress, it is very simple to use. As a new platform, the interface isn’t customizable just yet but more than 10,000 people are using it less than 2 months after the launch. The platform also gives its users the option to become affiliates and earn 100% commissions. In fact, already close to $2,000,000 commissions have been paid to this day.

As you can see, there are plenty of choices available, so there’s no reason you won’t find the best blogging platform for your needs. Just take a moment to analyze what you’d like to achieve with your blog. Give it a try, and enjoy the process, after all, blogging is about having fun!

By now you have probably have noticed which of these I am using. There’s a reason you found my blog today while there are 45,200,000 results for the best blogging platform on Google and I wrote this article with the purpose to show you how easy it is to rank on page one and reach your readers when you’ve got the right tool in hand. So If you’d like to know more about the Empower Network, check out this free video presentation now.