A beginner’s guide to Google Drive
Google Drive is a collection of free cloud-based tools dedicated to creating, sharing, storing and collaborating on files.
Learn more about Google's free tool for creating blogs
If you’re unfamiliar with Blogger, the website is essentially Google’s free tool for creating blogs. The best thing about the site is that it’s completely free to use, making it perfect for anyone getting to know the ropes and looking to set up their first blog. Keep reading for some more information on the service and tips on how to get the most out of it.
You can use your blog for whatever you like, whether that’s keeping your friends and family up to date on your life, sharing advice on makeup and fashion, or discussing your political views. With Blogger, you can even host blogs with multiple contributors, meaning that you and a few friends could start a blog together and take it in turns to post about shared interests.
Getting set up on Blogger is simple. Once you’ve created an account, named your blog, and chosen a layout template, you’re good to go.
When you get started, Blogger offers several default templates for you to choose from to get your blog looking nice and orderly. Simply click the one you prefer and you’re ready to start blogging!
If you’re clued up on the ins and outs of CSS and web design, you can create your own templates or edit any of the many free ones until they’re more to your liking.
If you’re not so good at web design but still want a different look, not to worry – there are plenty of websites that offer Blogger templates that are free for personal use.
If you decide to use Google AdSense to place ads on your page, you can start making yourself a bit of money from the content. The amount of cash you earn depends on the popularity of your blog, so the more followers you have, the better chance you’ve got of earning yourself a nice little pile of cash.
Google puts a link to sign yourself up for an AdSense account within Blogger, so it’s all very straightforward.
If you want to make blog posts for a specific audience, or simply keep a private journal for yourself, you can choose to make your posts either entirely private or restricted to approved readers.
The catch is that you can only set the restrictions for the entire blog rather than on individual posts, meaning you might lose out on a lot of hits and followers. If you do decide to restrict your posts, everyone you give permission to view your blog must be logged into their own Google account first.
Once the visual side of your blog is all ready to go, you can organise your posts as you make them. Similar to tagging things on Instagram, you can use labels on your blog posts so that all of your content is automatically sorted into the right areas.
This feature makes it easy for viewers to find posts on specific topics and also helps when you want to look back on your own posts, such as if you’re searching for a specific recipe you know you posted a month before.