Free Blogs vs. Hosted Websites
There are a lot of companies out there which offer free blog websites including sites such as Blogger and WordPress but there’s also the option of going with a web hosting company so what’s the best choice for your company?
Free Blogging
Free blogging websites have one key advantage, they’re free. Other than that, they’re very easy to get started with and take very little time to setup. In fact, with something like WordPress you can have your website up and running within a couple of minutes but there’s a catch, the website never really belongs to you.
One of the biggest negative factors to putting your website on a service like WordPress or Blogger is that they own your website’s address and maintain the right to alter content as it suits their needs. What that translates to is pretty simply, if the owners of the services don’t like what you’ve written or believe it violates somebody else’s copyright they have the right to remove it without consulting you, just like Google’s been doing to music websites.
On the other hand, setting up your account with either service is quick and easy, it’s also free. Free website hosting therefore is suitable for personal blog websites or commentary websites which do not feature business critical content.
Hosted Websites
I don’t think it’s a secret that I choose BlueHost as my hosting provider but there are a lot of great, easy to use web hosting companies out there and running WordPress on any of them is just as easy as running it on the commercial, hosted version found at WordPress.com.
The primary drawback of a hosted solution is cost. Registering your domain name will cost about $10 per year and your website hosting will set you back around $75. There’s an old article of mine which talks about hosting a website for less than $100 which I highly recommend for new website owners as well as a special promotion that I’m currently running which will give you $75 in advertising credits and a free website for signing up with BlueHost.
The key advantage of hosting your own website is control. Once you host your own site, you can assign a domain name and maintain the content using exactly the same software as the free solutions but without having to worry about other people editing your content. Self hosted solutions will also allow you to edit the themes, add new plugins and build on your website using better search engine optimization and organic marketing.
I’m a strong advocate of hosting your own blog. It gives you the benefits of doing what you want with it and the ease of monetizing your site. Not to mention, I like keeping my domain as that turns into an asset as well :)
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Free blogging is OK when you’re just getting started, but eventually you’ll want to host your own blog, especially if you hope to sell it someday.
Free blogs are nice for hobby sites and people who aren’t looking to make money online. If you’re looking to build a business investing in your own domain and hosting is an absolute must.
For the $75/year it costs to have full control and options, I don’t see the free model as a good investment, but that’s a personal opinion.
I used to use free blog hosting at blogspot and also wordpress but the freedom I have enjoyed at the hosted account is the real thing. It gas given me alot of flexibility and control and I think if you are ready to really make a living from blogging, you must use a hosting account and such that has fantastico that will really automate the whole process. Nice post as usual. Keep the fire burning.
Generally people even including me like to with free one in Starting stage if got reasonable visits after wanted to go with hosted one, Even our whole group believe and fever in Hosted website because as you said we got total over control and support facility.
[...] Ross explains the advantages of hosting your blog. If you are just starting off as a blogger, I would recomednd that you host you own blog so that [...]