Why Self-hosting your blog is a good idea. Since I am a blogger, I like reading other people’s 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 a 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 get 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 and Shareasale require you to have a website to be accepted into the program. Shareasale wants 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 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, a link checker to check for dead links i.e. links that are not working.
9. Unlimited Amount of Pages (WordPress)
You can also add an 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 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 AxioBlog.com. 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.