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Host Your Blog - The advantages and disadvantages
By Mike | August 8, 2008
There are three main advantages to hosting your own blog.
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You own it
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Can be optimized better
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Can add other items to improve your process
There are also a couple disadvantages.
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It does have a monetary cost
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Need a bit of technical ability
Now lets get into the details.
You own it
This is probably the biggest advantage. As long as you pay for your hosting and domain no one can take your blog away. This is a very real problem using sites like WordPress.com and Blogger.
There are numerous examples of people having their blogs deleted because of excessive promotion and other reasons.
Can be optimized better
If you are using WordPress there are numerous themes that can be used that allow you to improve the look and feel of your site. The better and more reader friendly your site is the more likely people will stick around to read your content.
There are many plugins that will allow you to make your blog more search engine friendly. There are also many other items that these plugins add that allow for more flexibility.
If you are hosting your own blog there is also a lot more customization you can easily do to improve it.
Can add other items to improve your process
If you have your own hosting you can add additional pages for your sign up process. You can add and host some of the resell rights products that are probably collecting dust on your hard drive.
You can add special download pages and host a gift for signing up to your update list. All of these can help increase the number of visitors to your blog.
The disadvantages
Cost
You do need to spend a few dollars to host your own blog. You will need to buy a domain (less than $10) and a hosting account. You can get a hosting account that will host multiple blogs for less than $100 a year at Zoot Host.
Need some technical ability
The other disadvantage is that you do need to have a small bit of technical ability. You will need to understand how to use an FTP client and occasionally you will need to do a small bit of editing.
Summary
If you weigh the advantages versus the disadvantages in this Old Bald Guy’s opinion you really do need to be hosting your own WordPress blog. The cost is easily offset by the advantages.
Now if you are just doing a personal blog like the one I do for my granddaughter then you won’t need to host it yourself (although I do) but any site that is for profit I want to host my self.
This does not mean that I won’t continue to use free sites as part of my traffic and SEO efforts. Sites like Squidoo, Hub Pages, Wet Paint and WordPress.com are vital to my overall strategy but the major sites need to be on properties I own.
That’s my opinion and I would love to hear yours. Leave your comments and questions below.
Mike Paetzold
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