BLOGGING -Don't Pay For It

First off, let me say, for now - DON'T PAY FOR BLOGS!
Right now I am tasked with doing some promoting for someone who has a new book coming out. They need a blog and all the other social media goodies to go along with it. However, some of the best content I could have used was a blog they did as a daily 'on the road' diary. When they set it up, they were ill advised to put it on a site you had to be a member of to see the blog, and that blog site later became a 'pay to play' website, so the content may be lost forever if they didn't convert it.
Don't pay for blogs, people.
Blogger.com (where you are right now) is plenty of blog to start with, and really all you will probably ever need. It's searchable, you can add widgets to do just about anything, point to anything, sell anything, etc.
I really don't have any idea what more a pay to play site could offer, other than a pain in the you know what - that you just don't need. Promoting is still the same, no matter where you park yourself. Instant traffic doesn't exist. You either get it through sweat equity (which eventually you run out of hours in the day to get any bigger) or you pay for it. There's never any easy way to get there. You have to do the work.
Although some people just aren't happy unless they are spending money for services and gadgets to do their work. But there are businesses out there that know that and take advantage of it.
Do a gut check and ask yourself - can I accomplish what I need to do on this FREE site? If the answer is yes--save your money for the ads you'll eventually need to run!