The question whether to use a free blog platform or a self-hosted one may have been lingered in your mind before you started blogging. Well, it depends on why you blog. Some blog for money, some blog for fun, some blog to share and some blog for all the above. Me? Let’s just say that I just blog for fun and use it as a way to escape from reality. Maybe it sounds foolish to you but what the heck? I don’t bother people, so I guess that’s okay.
For those who wish to monetize your blog using a free platform then Blogspot is the answer. You can pratically take charge of the HTML and edit it as you wish. You can monetize it with Adsense (blog has to be in English of course), Bidvertiser, Nuffnang and other type of advertisement. With good content, SEO techniques and blog marketing, you can start to earn on your niche blog. This is also a good training ground for bloggers to enhance knowledge before actually start investing in self-hosted blog and adword.
WordPress.com on the other hand is not designed for monetization. Nevertheless, you can learn a few features on blog customization before you actually spend to get your own domain and host the infamous WordPress.org blog. The dashboard features are excellent and built-in with a blog stat for you to monitor your traffic and comments coming into your blog. Unlike Blogspot, you do not have to login to Google Analytics to do all that.
There is no right or wrong answer to this as really depends on you. Many may advised you to go straight to self-hosted blog where you can reap the benefit of SEO, page ranking and attract advertiser easier than free blogs. The decision is entirely yours but make sure you make a well-informed decision and not just do it because people ask you to.. Happy blogging!!
Tags: Adsense, Blogspot, monetization, self-hosted, SEO, Wordpress.com, Wordpress.org
