Pick a subject you can write about every week for a year, then the platform that matches how you want to earn: Substack is free to publish on and keeps 10% of paid subscriptions plus card fees, WordPress.org is free software you install on your own hosting and domain so you own everything, and Blogger is free on Google's hosting. Earn through Google AdSense once you have original content that meets its policies (you must be 18 or over), through affiliate links, or through paid subscribers. Write for readers, not for search engines: Google's own guidance says its systems reward helpful, people-first content that shows first-hand experience, and gives questions to check each post against. Publish on a fixed day and share every post where your readers already spend time. What kills most blogs is stopping in the first few months, before search traffic has had time to arrive.
Substack's own fee page: publishing is free at any size, and if you turn on paid subscriptions Substack keeps 10% of subscription revenue while Stripe charges its own card fees. A custom domain is a one-time $50.
Google's own conditions for showing AdSense ads on a blog: your own original content that meets AdSense programme policies, and you must be 18 or over. It explains hosted accounts for Blogger users.
This is Google's own standard for what earns rankings, written by the team that runs the ranking systems, so it settles the debate instead of guessing at it. It reframes the whole question: SEO is fine when it is applied to content built for people, and the trouble starts only when you write for the algorithm first. Treat it as the starting point every other content opinion is arguing with.
Google's ranking systems reward content made to help people, not content reverse-engineered to attract search visits, so write for a real audience first and layer SEO on top.
It gives you a self-audit checklist (does this show first-hand experience, will a reader leave satisfied) that catches keyword-stuffed filler before you publish.
Trust, backed by experience and expertise (E-E-A-T), matters more than any keyword density trick, which is exactly why stuffing backfires.
The free, open-source WordPress software you install on your own hosting, so you own the blog, the domain and the data. The page lists the server requirements to look for in a host.
