Which Blogging Platform Is Best For Making Money in 2026

The short version: WordPress.org (self-hosted) is still the best platform for building a blog you can monetise on your own terms, because it lets you run every income stream at once, ads, affiliate links, digital products, email lists, without a platform taking a cut or deciding your fate. Substack and Medium are fine for building an audience fast and getting paid directly, but they cap what you can earn and hand control to someone else. The honest truth nobody tells you upfront: the platform is maybe 10% of whether you make money blogging. The other 90% is traffic, offer, and how long you're willing to keep going.

Why this question gets answered badly everywhere else

Most "best blogging platform" posts are written by people trying to get you to sign up through their affiliate link. That's why every single one of them tells you WordPress is best, then spends 2,000 words describing themes and plugins instead of talking about money. Nobody tells you that a beautifully built WordPress blog with 40 visitors a month earns exactly £0, and a scrappy Substack with 3,000 engaged subscribers can bring in £1,500 a month from paid subscriptions alone.

I've run blogs on Blogger, self-hosted WordPress, and I've tested Medium and Substack with actual published content, not just a poke around the dashboard. So this isn't theory. This is what happened.

The platforms, ranked by how they pay you

Self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org, not WordPress.com)

This is still the workhorse for anyone serious about making a blog earn its keep for a business. You own the content, you own the email list, and you can stack every monetisation method at once: display ads through Mediavine (needs 50,000 sessions a month) or Ezoic (no minimum, which is why most beginners start there), affiliate links, sponsored posts, your own digital products, and a services page.

Cost: hosting runs £3 to £15 a month with providers like SiteGround or Bluehost to start, rising to £25 to £50 a month once you're getting real traffic and need better speed. A decent theme is £50 to £100 once. That's it. No revenue share, no platform fee on what you make.

The catch: you're doing the tech yourself, or paying someone to. Backups, security, plugin updates, all on you.

Substack

Substack is where a lot of the current "which platform pays you" conversation is happening, and I've written a full breakdown of which blogging platforms pay you for content and what they paid me if you want the numbers platform by platform. On Substack, readers pay you directly through paid subscriptions, typically £5 to £10 a month, and Substack takes 10% plus Stripe processing fees of around 2.9% plus 30p per transaction. So on a £5 subscription you clear roughly £4.35.

The maths only works with real subscriber numbers. A newsletter with 2,000 free subscribers and a 5% paid conversion rate, which is considered good, gives you 100 paying subscribers at £5, so £500 a month before fees. Most Substacks never get near that. The platform's own reporting has shown that a large majority of newsletters earn nothing at all because the writer never builds the free list big enough first.

Medium

Medium pays through its Partner Program based on how long members spend reading your posts, not clicks or views. I ran posts on Medium for about eight months as a test. Total earnings across that period: $340, spread wildly unevenly, with two posts that hit Medium's curation algorithm earning $180 between them and another eleven posts earning single digits each. That's the reality most Medium success stories leave out: it's a lottery weighted slightly in favour of whoever the algorithm happens to like that month.

Medium is a reasonable place to build visibility and drive people to your own site or list. It's a poor primary income strategy on its own.

Wix and Squarespace

Both are fine for a business website with a blog attached, and Squarespace in particular has gotten nice to look at without any design skill. Neither is built for scaling a content-first income the way WordPress is. Ad network requirements often exclude these platforms or make setup clunkier, and you're more locked into their ecosystem if you ever want to move.

Blogger (Google's free platform)

Still free, still functional, and still where I started back in the early days before moving everything to self-hosted WordPress. I'll be blunt: move off it the moment you're serious. You don't own the domain relationship the same way, the design options are dated, and it signals amateur to anyone checking your site before hiring you or partnering with you.

LinkedIn newsletters and articles

Worth a mention because so many people ask. LinkedIn doesn't pay you directly for articles or newsletters at all. What it does is put your writing in front of your existing network and their connections, which is useful for building authority and inbound leads if you're consulting or selling services. Zero direct monetisation, potentially strong indirect monetisation.

My own numbers, because vague examples are useless

In my first proper year of blogging consistently on self-hosted WordPress, I didn't make a penny from ads. What I made was roughly £3,200 in consulting enquiries that came directly from three posts ranking for specific, practical search terms, nothing viral, nothing clever, just posts that answered exact questions my ideal clients were typing into Google. The blog wasn't the income. The blog was the front door. That's the pattern that's held for me for over a decade, and it's the one thing every platform comparison post skips because it doesn't fit neatly into "platform X pays £Y."

If your goal is direct platform payouts, like Substack subscriptions or Medium's Partner Program, you're playing a volume and algorithm game. If your goal is using a blog to sell something else, coaching, consulting, a course, a product, WordPress wins because nothing stands between you and the reader, and nothing takes a cut.

The uncomfortable bit

Here's what most platform comparisons won't say plainly: switching platforms will not fix a blog that isn't making money. I've had multiple people tell me they're "thinking of moving to Substack" or "trying Medium instead" as if the platform is the reason nobody's paying them, when the real problem is they're publishing once a month, writing about whatever they feel like rather than what their audience is searching for, or they have no way for a reader to pay them even if they wanted to. Move platforms and keep the same habits and you'll get the same £0.

The platform decision matters. It's just the fourth or fifth most important decision you'll make, behind what you're writing about, who you're writing it for, how often you publish, and whether there's an actual product or service on the other end of the reading.

How to choose, step by step

• Step 1: Decide what you're monetising through. If it's your own business (services, products, consulting), pick WordPress. If it's the writing itself as the product, consider Substack.
• Step 2: Check your budget. WordPress needs £5 to £15 a month minimum for hosting plus your time. Substack and Medium cost nothing to start but take a cut of anything you earn.
• Step 3: Set a realistic traffic milestone. Ezoic will approve you with almost any traffic. Mediavine wants 50,000 sessions a month. Know which door you're aiming for before you build.
• Step 4: Publish weekly for at least six months before judging results. Google typically takes three to six months to rank new content, and that's before you've built enough posts to compound.
• Step 5: Build an email list from day one regardless of platform. It's the one asset none of these platforms can take away from you if they change their algorithm or their terms overnight, which every one of them has done at some point.

What the "editor" question costs you

One thing that quietly drains money and time on any platform is fighting with clunky writing tools. If you're stuck editing in a slow, ad-cluttered interface, it adds up to hours a week you're not getting paid for. I've tested most of the free options and written up which free content editors are worth using and which ones waste your time, which matters more than people think when you're trying to publish consistently enough to make any platform pay off.

Is blogging even worth it as a side hustle in 2026

If you're weighing blogging against other options, it's worth being honest that it's a slow-money play compared to some alternatives. I've broken down which side hustle is the most profitable right now, and blogging rarely tops that list in year one. Where it wins is durability: a well-built blog on a platform you control keeps earning years after you wrote the post, which most side hustles can't claim. For a fuller grounding in the mechanics before you commit, my piece on how blogging works and whether you can really earn from it covers the realistic timeline most people skip past.

My actual recommendation

Start on self-hosted WordPress if you have or plan to have a business behind the blog. Use Substack if you want to build a paying audience around your writing specifically and you're prepared to publish consistently enough to convert free readers into paid ones, which realistically means weekly for a year before you see meaningful numbers. Skip Medium and Blogger for anything beyond experimentation. Whatever you pick, build your email list from the first post, because that's the one thing that survives every platform change, algorithm update, and policy shift that's coming, and there will be more of them.

For guest contributors covering this area, read Write for Us Blogging: Blogging Blog Guest Post Guidelines.

Frequently asked questions

Which blogging platform pays the most per post?

No platform pays a fixed rate per post. Substack pays based on paid subscribers you convert, Medium pays based on member reading time, and self-hosted WordPress pays whatever you earn through ads, affiliates, or your own products, which for an established blog with real traffic usually far exceeds what Substack or Medium payouts alone provide.

Do I need to pay for WordPress hosting to make money blogging?

Yes, if you want display ads, full design control, and complete ownership of your content and email list, which are the things that build long-term income. Budget £5 to £15 a month to start with a host like SiteGround or Bluehost.

Can you make money on a free blog with no hosting costs?

Yes on Substack or Medium, both free to publish on, but you're capped to their monetisation systems and they take a cut, 10% plus processing fees on Substack, an unpredictable revenue share on Medium's Partner Program.

How long does it take to start making money from a blog?

Most bloggers see meaningful income between six months and two years, depending on niche and consistency. Google generally takes three to six months to rank new content, and monetisation methods like Mediavine require 50,000 monthly sessions before you're even eligible to apply.