Its not wrong to start blogging with a free online blog such as Blogger Blogspot platform. But once you start earning from your blog, should you move to a self hosted blog such as a WordPress platform ?
This question has been haunting every new blogger. Could it really be worth spending about a hundred dollars a year for getting a good hosting ? Or is the free hosting good enough ?
Whats the cost difference ?
Blogger:
10$ for a domain name approximately (optional)
Free hosting in which you have no control
WordPress:
10$ for a domain name approximately
Hosting charges around 100$ a year approximately (can vary widely)
Here are a few reasons you should consider buying your own hosting and blogging there…..
1. Your domain
If you notice, free blogs usually wont give you a domain of your own. A free Blogger blog has a domain name such as example.blogspot.com, this is not really your domain.
When someone wants to check your site, they might check the owner of the domain. And they will find in big bold letters “OWNED BY GOOGLE”
This reduces your reputation. If you apply for an ad service such as Google Adsense then they are likely to reject your application because of the domain.
Though you can spend about 10$ to get your own domain and use that. This will keep you on the safe side.
2. Your Hosting
If you use a free service, the posts have to be stored somewhere. These posts will be stored on the Blog server. But the problem is YOU DON’T OWN THE SERVER. This simply means all your posts are owned by the Blog server.
If you’re using blogger, you can know that the words “OWNED BY GOOGLE” will be engraved in hard rock. You cannot change it.
Whereas if you’re blogging on your owned hosting server, all your posts are owned by YOU and only YOU. You can change it in any way, delete it, copyright it, etc.
3. Better Control
Free services are really easy to use. Take Blogger for example, you can set up a professional blog in just 2 minutes. Sometimes it seems that even an illiterate can blog.
But setting up a self-hosted blog is rather difficult. You have to upload a blogging platform such as WordPress and make innumerable changes to it. If you’re really experienced then you may be able to set up the blog in about 20-30 minutes but an average person would usually take days to set up a self-hosted blog.
But yet, you get much more control over your self hosted blog. The best part being Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You can easily make a free blog on Blogger but you cannot make a robots.txt file or a sitemap for it. Robots.txt will be pre-ready and at the most the only possible sitemap which you can submit will be your atom xml feed. You cannot modify these much. But on a self-hosted wordpress blog, you need to upload robots.txt and sitemap.xml manually. This can be a tedious job but at least you control your SEO.
In fact, you are suppose to upload each and every file yourself, unless your hosting supports auto install. Nothing can get into your hosting unless you do it. Its the best advantage you can get. You put what you want.
4. Plugins
Though I was a die-hard fan of Blogspot some time ago, one problem I faced was editing my theme. If I ever needed to add an app in the sidebar I would have to manually get the code and put it up.
WordPress does make that easier. You can upload plugins in php format and activate or deactivate them whenever you want. Now that’s control !
5. Design
I wouldn’t say blogspot blogs have horrible designs, but I would say that WordPress designs can be awesome and much easier to handle.
In WordPress, you can actually upload multiple themes and choose the one you like. Switching between themes takes just seconds !
A Blogger blog on the other hand has templates really hard to modify. You have to change the template and re-upload plugins and sidebar content. This is quite a tedious job.
Here I had just listed 5 good reasons to move to WordPress. There are innumerable reasons you can spot out. Blogger too can be considered good in many ways. Google indexes blogger blogs really fast while you have to manually submit a WordPress blog. But I’m sure every professional blogger will prefer WordPress.
Feel free to give your own views on a self hosted WordPress Blog vs a free Blogspot Blog.
Siddhanathan Shanmugam (Siddhu) is an amateur blogger presently studying in High School.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
There is absolutely no comparison with Wordpress! Its just the best. You born in December 1994? Which day?
23rd December 1994…. And ya I agree with you.. Wordpress is the best
.-= Siddhu´s last blog ..Self-Hosted Wordpress Blog vs. Free Blogger Blog =-.
A self hosted blog is the best if you can manage the costs! even a self hosted wordpress rules!
nice post mate! 
.-= Pubudu Kodikara´s last blog ..Contest Updated : Win a (BitDefender Internet Security 2010) + (WinX DVD Ripper Platinum) + ($15 in Cash or A Copy of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog) =-.
Wordpress is the best for simple reasons such as usability and flexibility of the platform.
One need not spend 100$ a month to get hosting haha :p
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.-= Siddhu´s last blog ..Space Myths Busted =-.
Completely agree with all the points you mentioned in the post. WordPress is simply awesome, I don’t think there is any need to compare it with other blogging platforms especially with Blogger. Blogger really sucks!
There is actually a point which make users prefer free hosting and that is if they aren’t making money than there is no chance they would think of moving forward.
Personally I would say hosting wordpress on free hosting is better than having a blogger blog…. Even I started wordpress on free hosting….
.-= Siddhu´s last blog ..Space Myths Busted =-.
I have both types of blogs and I would say – “if you want to be seen as a professional bloggers, leave free domain like blogspot and start a self-hosted blog ASAP”!
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Ya…It is better to invest a bit to get a good hosting then to be insecured being hosted with a free host…Wordpress does rulez over all the other hosting platforms over there.
.-= Shiva @ seo magazine´s last blog ..Earning Money by Participating in Logo and Website Design Competitions =-.
Everyone prefers wordpress. btw boosted with a good point.
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Wordpress is best. no doubt
I agree wordpress is superior as compared to blogger. Still lot of people using it.
No doubt that people must go for Wordpress, you get ownership for your blog and customize according to your needs.
I do agree that self hosted blogs are good…Have you ever tried sites.google.com
check out the website http://www.infopediaonline.com
It is hosted in sites.google.com
It is flexible, has great themes, sitemap feature…only advantage i see here is robots.txt file…let me know your thoughts in this regard
Every time I come to http://www.techaby.com there is another interesting article up to read. A friend of mine was telling me about this topic a couple weeks ago. I think I will send them the link here and see what they say.
One more thing in Blogger is, if a user reports your blog as SPAM, the blogger servers mark your Blog as SPAM.. this is the worst thing i experienced in blogger… Coming to WordPress.. We can do what we want.. customization of the theme, plugins..the full power will be in our hands.
.-= Sandeep´s last blog ..HostGator April 2010 Discount Coupon (20% off) =-.
Wordpress is the best for simple reasons such as usability and flexibility of the platform.
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