Many have realized that blogging is a good source of income, either part-time or full-time. Even business owners have recognized the importance of having a blog to further promote their products and services on the internet.
However, newbies asked me a hundred times or more: Can I make enough money using free blogging platforms.
Yes, you can but I don’t fully recommend.
Credits: http://spillspace.com
Advantages of Free Blogs
1. You don’t have to pay anything. It’s absolutely free.
2. Anyone can make their blogs using free platforms like blogger or wordpress.com. As long as you have an email address you can sign-up.
Just go to blogger.com or wordpress.com and specify username/blogname.
For example:
ronaldredito.wordpress.com
http://batangasbeach.blogspot.com/
After choosing the username, you are done. You can now start blogging.
However, if you will notice ronaldredito.wordpress.com is now suspended.
Disadvantages of Free Blogs
1. Because it is free, you don’t have full control over your blog. It can easily be suspended or taken down anytime without due notice just like what happened to Ronaldredito.wordpress.com You should read their Terms of Services http://en.wordpress.com/tos/
2. The free wordpress.com platform does not permit advertising, therefore you cannot monetize your blog (which is supposed to be your goal: to make money online).
3. You have limited control on customization of your blog. Unlike the self-hosted/paid blogs, you can customize the way you want your blog/website to look.
On free blog platforms, you cannot install helpful plugins which can help boost search engine optimization that can lead to more traffic/visitors to your site.
4. No one wants to advertise with blogs using FREE platforms. (If the owner cannot even buy own domain and hosting, why should an advertiser trust the blog?
Obviously the disadvantages outnumbered the advantages. So why waste your time using free blogs?
My recommendation is to have a self-hosted domain if you are really serious in blogging to make money online. You should start RIGHT from the very beginning in order for you to save time and energy. You don’t need to do trial and error because this is already proven by me and other successful bloggers in the industry.
But still, let me show you the disadvantages and advantages of having a paid hosting/ self-hosted blog.
Disadvantages
1. It requires fees. Professional blogs requires two things: domain name and web hosting. Domain name ranges from 7-12USD per year while web hosting costs 6.95USD per month (if you are from the Philippines, just compute it with the current exchange rate). Normally, newbies are hesitant to shell out expenses but like any business you need capital. If you are serious, you need to treat it as an investment.
Advantages:
1. You have full control over your blog. As long as you abide by the rules (you don’t engage in prohibited practices) no one can suspend you blog or website.
2. You have a more professional domain name/URL. For example: You can take ronaldredito.com NOT ronaldredito.wordpress.com
3. You can customize the way you want your blog/website to look. You can install themes of templates which is suited for your blog, product or service. You can install plugins important to drive traffic to your website.
4. You can place any advertising in you blog. (Check my post about my Adsense earnings). You can place different income streams in your blog.
5. You can create your own email. (For example: admin@ronaldredito.com)
6. You can upload more content to your websites such as pdf files, video and audio files, depending on the limit of your hosting account.
7. Using this reliable and quality web host (CLICK HERE), you can host unlimited numbers of domains/websites in one, single account.
Conclusion
If you want to make money blogging, you need to have full control over your domain. You can only do that if you buy your own domain name and reliable web hosting.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
When you started earning through blogging, did you subscribe for a domain and web hosting company right away? If wordpress does not permit advertising, does blogspot do?
I have started my blog at blogger.com and having an adsense account is very hard, i’ve been rejected for several times. Is there any problem not being approved by adsense? Can you please help me, i have also seen other people at youtube making tricks on how to be approved at google adsense but im just wondering if it will work or not. As i have seen your video and a Filipino aswell maybe you can give me a good advise on how to be approved by google adsense. Thanks please reply as soon as you can..
how can i transfer my blogposts from blogger.com to my new domain if ever po?