Forum Moderators: mack
You could easily spend around $5 a month for a host, and then get Wordpress setup for your blogging software.
Just my thoughts....
You can register your own domain though them for $10 (US) but that is completely optional.
Blogger also shows you how to ad adsense into your blog, plus also other widgets you'd like to have thrown in there.
Or, register a domain ($7-$10 US) and get hosting, some are pretty cheap ($5 US a month), and get a free script, like WordPress and host it on your own site. You'll just need to make sure your host supports PHP (most do) and gives you at least one MySQL database.
Going though Blogger is the easiest option and free. They do all the hard work for you. Installing WordPress onto your own hosted site isn't the easiest, but you have 100% control over it.