10 Reasons to Self Host Your Own Blog
August 3rd, 2008Guest article by Dele Alawa
Since I am a blogger, I like reading other people blogs to keep abreast of current issues. There are some very nice, informative and well written free hosted blogs I have come across in the blogosphere. These blogs get decent amount of traffic (visible from the site counter). But I feel that these blogs can do better if they were self hosted. These are the reasons why those self hosted blogs gets more love than free hosted blogs.
1. Gain more Respect - If you have a free hosted blog, people would think that you are just dabbling in blogging. You probably just want to use your blog to pass time instead of staying idle doing nothing. But if you have a self hosted blog, people would know that you are a serious blogger and you have a passion for blogging.
2. Encourage Commenting - Commenting on blogspot can be a pain at times. You cannot enter your email address to receive your comment replies by email. Depending on the blog, you need to have a gmail address to comment on the blog.
3. Unlimited Email accounts - Not all hosting companies, but some provide unlimited email accounts.
4. Get Affiliate program approval - Affiliate programs like Azoogle, Sharesale requires you to have a website to be accepted into the program. Sharesale wants a proof that you have a website by requiring you to register with your website email address i.e. username@yoursite.com.
5. Include other scripts – On a self hosted blog, you can also include a forum on your blog to be interactive with your readers. You can also include an e-store on your blog to sell items.
6. Advertising Credit – Some hosting companies give free Google Adwords, Yahoo search and MSN adcenter credit to promote your blog.
7. Ability to Backup your blog - You have the ability to back up your blog and store it in your email address or on your computer. It would be devastating if you lose all your blog posts because your free hosting company went out of business. There have been many horror stories like that.
8. Better SEO (Wordpress) - You can use plugins to SEO your blog. You can use plugins like All-in-One SEO to SEO each post, link checker to check for dead links i.e. links that are not working.
9. Unlimited Amount of Pages (Wordpress) - You can also add unlimited amount of pages on wordpress as long as the allocated bandwidth from your host permits it. This is good especially if you want to chronicle about a topic. So you will have www.yoursblog.com/chronicle1/chronicle2/……chronicle end/
10. Selling Rights – After blogging for a while and you are tired or you have an emergency, you can sell your blog. On a free hosted blog, you have the ownership rights to the post only. The domain doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the free host. But on a self hosted blog, you have the ownership rights of the blog which includes the domain and the post. Sell your blog, earn money, and use the money how it suits you.
This guest article is written by Dele Alawa, who writes on blogging and Technology at Axio Blog. Got a tip to share, you can also write a guest article on QOT.
QOT View – There are some nice free blog hosting services like Blogger, Wordpress.com, Tumblr – which are very easy to start blogging, but if you want to truly create a brand presence for your blog, use Wordpress and host it on your own domain name and paid web hosting.
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this post makes me think of moving from blogger to a self hosted wordpres. thnx
Nice post. I have a slightly different view.
Sometimes, you never know how far would you sustain. Lets say for some reason you don’t feel like to continue, the trouble of setting up hosting account, WP etc feels like it is wasted.
I suggest to first blog on a hosted platform for a little while, once you know you are going to sustain it, move to self-hosted before you have too many contents making migration difficult.
I am speaking from my experience. My first blog moved to WordPress from a year of Drupal and it keeps running fine for close to two years now.
I had a tough time on a second blog. I started on a self-hosted one, and abandon it after a month or so.
Right now, I am trying something on tumblr :-)
So before jumping the gun, ask yourself
1) am I really going to like to this blog?
2) if I abandon it, would I feel the money and effort is wasted?
I’ve seen most self-hosted blog aren’t first timers.
All very valid reasons. Number one reason, hosting it yourself is very cool. It makes you stand out. I wrote very briefly about it in one of my posts long ago: http://blog.gadodia.net/hosting-your-blog-is-not-all-that-easy/
lol.. basically i feel much safer when i host my own blog :p… it gives me a feeling of independence :P
Hi there. I agree with some of your comments but I have to correct you with respect to Blogger:
1. I blogged for many years on Blogger before switching to Wordpress, and you will be hard pressed to find anyone who is more passionate about blogging.
2. Blogger has vastly improved its commenting and not only can you leave your own URL now, but it also has inline commenting.
7. Blogger now allows backing up of your posts as well as your template.
10. Blogger allows for Custom Domains.
Hope this helps to clarify and thanks for listening.
Cheers!
…BB
My host lets you do all of that and its free. http://www.podserver.info/
Nice info man appreciate it …
Thanks for the info, will look into it some time :)
Thank you very much for your post. Absolutely very usefull to me. Thank you.
Thankyou for your knowledge thx.
My host does that for free anyways. Even let you use top level domains.
Uhh….thanks for your great post. Absolutely very useful for me. Very Excellent. Thanks.
I agree for the most part. I started my first blog on blogger which was basically a gaming blog. I didn’t want to buy a domain and start hosting it myself because I didn’t know how long it’ll last. After a few months, it got bigger and I got more and more traffic.
Sometimes starting out small before going big is a good thing.
yeah it always help in terms of customization and creating a brand to have a self owned domain spaces
regards
Thinkjayant
Thanx for sharing gr8 info!!
It is much more satisfying having a website that is a domain not a subdomain like asdf.wordpress.com. It is like a signature. Word of advice: Keep looking for a domain that hasn’t been used. Make it two syllables is possible and no dashes. Make it easy to remember.
It is much more satisfying having a website that is a domain not a subdomain like asdf.wordpress.com. It is like a signature. Word of advice
Yes I would agree a domain is way better than a subdomain. Too much for people to remember.
is much more satisfying having a website that is a domain not a subdomain like asdf.wordpress.com. It is like a signature.
Hi Guys,
Whilst I do agree with most comments, I must admit I myself am in favour of self hosting.
I have just transfered & renewed my domain name for the a mere $8.17 add to that the $7.00 per quarter I pay for hosting & my total annual costs are $36.17. That’s just $3.02 per month. Now I understand what somebody said about testing the water first, but I have actually moved a blog after about 6 months and it was a major headache at the time ! For the sake of less than a packet of cigs, I would rather start as I hope to go on ! Self Hosted gets my vote