The Top 5 Reasons to Use a Self-Hosted Blog

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In the blogosphere, there is alot of advice floating around. Some is good, and some is bad. Almost all of the advice has those that will argue for it, and those who will argue against it.

Very few pieces of advice have unanimous support.

But there is one piece of advice that is given often, and it is one of the rare types of advice that everyone agrees upon.

That advice is:

Only blog on your own self-hosted website.

The reason why this advice is always agreed upon is because it is absolutely true. Blogging on a free site such as Blogger, Blogspot, or a free Wordpress blog is a great way for a beginner blogger to test the waters, see what the blogosphere has to offer, and get their feet wet.

But once the first month of blogging is over, and you have decided that this is for you, there are many, many reasons for you to take the plunge and get your own self-hosted website to blog on.

Are you spending 5-10 hours blogging each week on a site that you don’t even own?  If so, please read some of the very important reasons that I list here for why you shouldn’t waste your time blogging on a free account any longer.

  1. Respect- I apologize if I offend anyone, but to be quite blunt, most people who are familiar with blogging do not respect a blogger who uses a free account on a major blogging site. Bloggers who use free accounts are taken much less seriously by the rest of the blogosphere, and many readers will not subscribe or value a free blog’s content as much as they would a self-hosted blog. People have much more respect for bloggers who use their own websites to host their blog. In a way, it makes you legitimate.
  2. Power- Bloggers who have their own websites have much more power than bloggers who use free accounts. They have the power to utilize many more features and tools than they would if they used a Blogger account. For instance, Wordpress has thousands of plug-ins (additional features) that can be added to a blog. Blogger has none.
  3. Money- The potential to monetize your blog is much greater for a self-hosted blogger. You can use many different advertising programs that are not compatible with free blogging platforms. Also, have you ever thought of the possiblity of selling your blog in the future? Many people do it, and many blogs fetch thousands of dollars or more. But these are only self-hosted blogs. Having a blog hosted on a free account drops the value of that blog immensely.
  4. Domain Name- Do you know that your domain name may be worth a lot of money one day? If you own it, that is. Getting a free blog account makes your blog hosted as a sub-domain of the blogging site, meaning that you don’t own it, they do. For example, instead of www.you.com , your blog will be www.you.blogspot.com . Get the picture? It’s theirs, not yours.
  5. Your Brand- One of the main points of blogging is to create a brand for yourself and your blog. The only way to create a powerful brand is to own all of the naming rights, and to keep your image the way you want it to be. Blogging on a free account seriously dilutes the power of your personal brand.

Overall, here is the point of this article: If you do not blog on your own self-hosted website, the blog is not actually yours. It is the property of the free blog site.

If you have any dreams of eventually gaining a large readership and making a name for yourself in the blogging community, you must get your own self-hosted site. Believe me, I have talked to many bloggers who spent years gaining a huge readership on a free blog, only to realize later that they don’t actually own their site at all! They then cringe at the thought of what their site could have been. Do not let this happen to you….get your own website now, before you regret it later.

Take a look at all of the most popular blogs in the world….how many are hosted on a free site? Less than 5%, and you can check on that yourself. How many of those popular blogs on free sites wish that they had their own sites now? All of them, and I can pretty much garuantee that.

These are the five main reasons for getting your blog hosted on your own website, rather than a free blog account. Please contact me today if you would like to learn more about getting a fully-setup Wordpress blog on your own website for free.