12 Best Blogging Platforms to Make Money in 2026

Do you aspire to transform your passion for blogging into a lucrative career? Achieving financial freedom through blogging is more than just a dream; many successful bloggers are generating impressive 6 and 7-figure incomes from sharing their thoughts and expertise.

To join their ranks, it’s essential to leverage the powerful features provided by the industry’s leading paid and free blogging platforms.

As an experienced marketer and blogger myself, I know where to look for a platform that can be turned into a profitable business. In this article, you’ll get a breakdown of what I find to be the best blogging platforms and what each one can offer.

Let’s dive in and uncover the potential of your blogging journey.

What Are the Best Blogging Platforms to Make Money?

The best blogging platform to make money will be the one that best matches your budget, technical ability, experience with marketing, and goals.

To help you find one that meets your criteria, the best blogging platforms listed below include social media sites, hosting services, and more.

1. Squarespace (Editor’s Choice)

Squarespace is a service that removes most of the effort from creating and hosting websites. You can create attractive sites and storefronts with simple drag-and-drop tools.

Then, you can launch and maintain the site from the same dashboard. It even handles a variety of SEO tasks for you.

This is not a self-hosted blogging platform. Your site will be hosted through Squarespace.

You can’t move your site to a different host and keep any of the designs you created in the Squarespace website builder. That means if you ever decide to leave Squarespace, you’ll have to rebuild everything.

Many blogs are built on Squarespace. If you are new to building websites, this platform can require a lot fewer tutorials to get started than WordPress. On the other hand, you’ll have to pay a monthly subscription fee (starting at $14 a month) to maintain your site.

How Do I Make Money With Squarespace

Your Squarespace blog can be monetized in all the same ways as a blog built on WordPress. You can set up ads (It’s compatible with most ad networks and 3rd-party ad servers), manage a shop, or sign up for affiliate marketing programs.

Overall, Squarespace offers you a faster path to a more professional-looking blog—especially if you have no web development experience. Whether that’s worth the cost of choosing it over WordPress will depend on your needs.

2. WordPress.org

WordPress.org is one of the most popular and in my opinion, the top platform for blogging online. It’s an open-source Content Management System (CMS). That means it helps you design, publish, and organize content online.

You start by installing WordPress for free onto your domain. Once installed, WordPress will walk you through the steps of setting up your log. You can install it, select from design templates that determine the look of your site, and start blogging on the same day.

WordPress.org is completely free. A large community development team keeps bugs under control and new features and free themes rolling out year after year.

While the base platform and many templates are free to you, there is also a mass-market of premium WordPress site templates, tools, and plugins. This market makes it easier for you to go professional at a later date, even if you start with free options.

If you don’t have your hosting set up, you can skip that step by going to WordPress.com. If you want a custom domain, then WordPress won’t be the best platform for you. But WordPress is definitely the best free blogging platform.

WordPress.org Vs. WordPress.com: What’s The Difference?

WordPress.org is the name for the open-source CMS program and the volunteer community that supports it.

WordPress.com is a hosted blogging service run by the company Automattic. Automattic’s service combines hosting with the features already offered by the CMS.

How Do I Make Money With WordPress

WordPress does not generate money on its own. What it does is make it easy for you to build a blog that can be monetized in nearly any way. For example, you can monetize them with ads, affiliate marketing, merch stores, and more.

Some blogging platforms we’ll cover on this list require you to host their ads, but you’ll have full control of any self-hosted WordPress blog. That means you get all the money you earn from the WordPress blog and never have to worry about giving up a cut.

WordPress could be considered the best self-hosted platform based on how much you can do, how easy it is to install a WordPress blog, and how much potential you have to scale.

The downside is that learning all of the platform’s features can take some time if you are brand new to blogging.

3. Ghost

Ghost is a professional content management service. It simplifies the process of getting your blog online and running with a drag-and-drop website builder, word processor, publisher, and paid subscriber management tool.

Unlike WordPress, this platform tries to put all the tools you need in one dashboard so you can automate or background the more annoying tasks.

You can create a self-hosted blog with Ghost, but the subscription cost includes hosting that handles server backups, SSL certificates, and security for you.

Beginners should take advantage of the hosting so that they will be less vulnerable to hacks while learning about blogging and creating their own site.

This platform has integrated support for some of the most important tools you use. It currently supports Google Analytics, Google Adsense, Paypal, MailChimp, Shopify, and Stripe.

How Do I Make Money With Ghost

Ghost is designed to help you take blogging operations to the next level. If you have a growing audience, this platform gives you the analytical tools you need to professionalize what you do.

This platform can benefit small business owners who don’t have the background or staff to create an online store or blog by themselves.

It may not be the best choice for brand new bloggers who are still learning the ropes. After all, this is not a free blogging platform. At $199/mo, its highest-level subscription is the most expensive one on this list. Besides that there are other Ghost hosting providers with better value.

You won’t get the full value of the subscription if you still need to learn how to use these tools. On the other hand, you may prefer the business focus that Ghost offers over WordPress. A 14-day free trial is available if you want to experience the features at no cost.

4. NewsBreak

NewsBreak is a news app that distributes content from news sites, as well as from its own network of independent content creators who get paid to blog online.

Independent creators can join the contributor network to begin earning money based on engagement. This is a popular blogging platform if you want to set up a news portal of any sort.

This is a free blogging platform. Accepted contributors can post their blog posts directly at no cost, or link from their work on local news sites.

How Do I Make Money With NewsBreak

You can earn money with NewsBreak by signing up as a contributor and completing the application process. As long as you meet the criteria, NewsBreak will pay you directly.

The guaranteed monthly payment for all eligible contributors is $1,000 a month. You can earn more.

Your stories can be promoted to the site’s users, with an emphasis on local readers. The platform allows contributors to cover most major blogging topics, including music scenes, food, and politics.

5. Substack

Substack is the top blogging platform that helps bloggers create content and manage paid subscribers for newsletters, blogs, reviews, and other forms. Chiefly, it includes a word processor, payment processing, and optional publishing space for your blog.

Substack’s word processor lets you edit content, format it to match the needs of a blog or newsletter, then distribute it to your email/subscriber list in a few clicks.

This blog platform takes payments from your subscribers through the payment processor Stripe[1] and sends you 90% of the amount (minus credit card feeds). Once you set up a Stripe account, you can have the funds deposited to your preferred bank account.

This blog platform also offers free blog hosting if you want your content posted on-site. Readers will be able to access it by using the search bar on Substack’s home page.

You can also get a featured article on the home page of Substack and grow your readers by taking advantage of Substack’s home page traffic.

There are multiple millionaires on this blog platform.

The top 10 authors earned more than $20 million[2] between them in 2021 alone.

How Do I Make Money With Substack

If you choose to use the paid subscriber features, you’ll start making money as soon as you get your first signup. Substack stays out of your way and lets you set whatever price or conditions you want.

Top authors have thousands of subscribers. If that doesn’t sound like a lot, remember that each subscriber is paying anywhere from $5 to $15 a month. It only takes 2000 subscribers at $5 to start earning $10,000 a month.

6. Wix

Wix is a cloud-based hosting and web design service. It is another alternative to WordPress and Squarespace if you’re trying to launch a blog from a custom domain.

To help you do this, Wix comes complete with a drag-and-drop website editor. It also has new-user-friendly search engine optimization tools that generate an SEO plan when you input your domain, location, and keywords.

You cannot build a self-hosted blog using Wix. Your site will need to be hosted on their servers to display your themes and content.

Many bloggers choose to build and host their sites on Wix. This platform has a reputation for producing excellent templates that can help a blog to stand out from the start.

You can improve your site with third-party software and tools from the Wix market[3].

How Do I Make Money With Wix

You can monetize your Wix blog in all of the usual ways, such as advertising and affiliate marketing. It is compatible with all major ad networks so you can monetize your ads how you like.

Several higher-level subscriptions come with $300 in ad vouchers for Google, Bing, and Local Listings. It’s considered a good platform to run an online business and is preferred by some small business owners who want an amazing blog without the effort.

Wix is a good blogging platform for you if you need an edge in design. Some topics may require a better-looking site for credibility. For example, it’s hard to blog successfully about web design, graphics, or art if your own blog site looks unappealing.

7. Medium

Medium is both a blogging site and social media platform. You can design your blog with a range of templates, but you won’t need to purchase hosting or install anything to a domain. Your blog will be hosted on the Medium network with its own address.

From Medium’s platform, you can promote your work to the site’s massive audience. The site reaches millions of people a month[4]. You can find success blogging here on topics as diverse as health, politics, and philosophy.

How Do I Make Money With Medium

You can earn money from Medium by joining the Medium Partner Program and getting paid for views. Subscribers pay a $5/mo fee to access all the writing on the site. When your content is read, you get a cut.

This may be the top blogging platform for you if you’re most concerned about reaching an audience quickly.

It can also be helpful to beginners, who will not need to build a site to start blogging now. As an added benefit, few other blogging platforms even approach the traffic Medium attracts.

Whether that popularity makes Medium the top blogging platform to make money is another question. Medium bloggers don’t make as much as many bloggers we’ll cover on this list. They also don’t own their domain, and can’t sell it for cash later.

Once you’ve developed an audience, you may want to consider blog sites on this list that pay more competitive rates.

You won’t need to pay anything to join the site as a writer, though subscribing to access other writers will give you a better idea of what content succeeds and fails. Reviewers have reported earning $1,000/mo after a year or less[5] of dedicated blogging.

8. HubPages

Hubpages is a publishing platform that shares revenue with you based on the views your content attracts.

Rather than subscriber fees, you’re collecting a portion of the ad revenue generated by your content.

This may not appeal to a veteran online entrepreneur, because ad fees don’t amount to much unless you’re earning thousands of views a month. However, it does mean that you can increase your income by promoting your content yourself.

The Hubtool you’ll have access to after signing in works as both a word processor and a publisher. It will help you easily integrate elements like images, videos, and tables into your posts.

You won’t have your own domain, but you will be able to access and network with all the writers who are currently working on this blogging site.

How Do I Make Money With Hubpages

You can earn money with Hubpages by attracting enough views. Successful writers on the platform have earned as much as $3800/mo[6]. Of course, these are the top earners. Reviewers seem to agree that climbing to the upper levels here can take years.

9. Vocal Media

Vocal Media is a publishing platform that pays its writers based on the number of views they generate.

It is somewhat different from Medium and Hubpages in that it pays you based on a CPM (cost-per-impression) model. You’ll be paid a flat amount (more on that in the next section) for every 1000 readers that view your content.

This platform features communities built around topics. Popular topics are given their own pages where writers and commenters can run into each other, network, and work together on new content pieces.

You can join community verticals as specific as futurism, fiction novels, or lifehacks. Your content has a chance of being promoted to the main page or community page, where it may attract many more readers.

How Do I Make Money With Vocal Media

You can earn money on Vocal Media simply by signing up and starting to write content. Regular Vocal members earn $3.80 per 1000 reads. Members with a Vocal+ professional subscription earn $6/1000 reads.

The Vocal+ subscription is optional, so you won’t need to pay to join. However, the subscription gives you access to additional tools including ones you can use to collect pledges directly from readers.

10. Wattpad

Wattpad is a fiction story-telling platform that connects writers and readers. As a writer on the site, you can produce fiction in every genre (romance and fantasy are particularly popular).

You have the option of releasing your work in book form or in chapters that are released over time. Thanks to this option, you can profit off of works-in-progress before you even know if you’ll complete them.

How Do I Make Money With WattPad

You earn money with WattPad by inserting ads between chapters of your Wattpad stories. This is a fully optional feature, so you can control when the ads appear. You’ll be paid for each view an ad receives.

There is no minimum payout. Even if you delivered a single reader to a single ad, you still get paid for it. When your stories can attract thousands of views, you have the potential to earn a lot.

Power users of the site have earned as much as $2000/mo[7]. Some stories on the site have reached more than 10 million views.

As far as fiction goes, Wattpad doesn’t have any serious competitors. You can choose the free version or opt for some special features with the subscriptions.