Cheapskates And Ugly Bloggers Who Refuse To Buy Hosting

After ‘running’ around the blogosphere, there is one recurring element that never ceases to amaze me…

The majority of bloggers I’ve seen are STILL USING a free blog platform like Blogspot or Wordpress!

In my opinion, building your blog on someone else’s (free) hosting is like giving away the keys to your personal safe to your LANDLORD!

Most successful bloggers use self-hosted Wordpress (this means, getting your own cheap web hosting to host your blog with Wordpress as your blog platform, instead of hosting it on a free Wordpress platform and you get an ugly domain name like http://xxxxxxxx.wordpress.com)

Although it is not a crime to host your blog on other people’s hosting or a free hosting (Granted… most people are ignorant on HOW to get their own hosting), it is still a bad business decision to save a couple of dollars for the following reasons:

1. Spam filters do not discriminate. Like inquisitorial agents, they ruthlessly hunt down bloggers who are suspected of ’spam heresy’! In other words any content they detect that ’seemingly’ looks like spam, will be hunted down and burned at the stake - no questions asked. It doesn’t care if you are a beggar or the king of a small island. The former prime minister of Malaysia has a blog hosted on Blogger and even HIS blog is flagged! Now tell me… Google supposedly has the most powerful minds on the planet working for the organization - don’t tell me that there isn’t at least ONE staff there who knows who the former PM of Malaysia is? Go figure…

2. Their designs are really UGLY. Let’s face it. When you visit someone’s blog for the first time, what is your first impression? I can spot a ‘cookie cutter’ Blogspot or free Wordpress blog theme a mile away. Unless his or her content is cutting edge, I would never consider visiting that blog again. And even if it does, it still leaves a bad after taste because of the blog theme. Free blog platforms give you very little leverage in terms of blog and theme customization. It’s like getting a huge wardrobe of free clothes… but every one of them looking the same.

3. You don’t get the chance to make much money from it either. Free Wordpress has a strict policy against promoting affiliate programs. You can try your luck with Blogspot, but imagine yourself building an entire business there, and one day, Whoops! Spam ALERT! There goes your ‘rice bowl’ (income). Either way, it’s risky business - trying to save $8 on a domain and $5 a month on hosting where you could be losing hundreds or even thousands of dollars in residual sales and your blog could be wiped out overnight.

4. The domain name is so UNPROFESSIONAL. Which is more credible? JohnSmith.com or JohnSmith997.wordpress.com? Unless you are creating a blog for fun, it would be crazy to print that website on your name card, hand it to someone else and to tell them that that web site is where you build your business. Really… get your own hosting AND your own domain name to avoid looking like an unprofessional idiot.

5. House moving difficulties. After building your blog for a year or two, when you finally decide to move to a ‘proper’ blog, you lose your page rank, search engine rankings and even your traffic. So if you plan to start off the right foot, don’t start with a free hosted blog… it is not worthwhile to start all over again!

Buying Reseller Hosting and even Dedicated Servers is NOT an expensive investment! And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how to register your domain name and host it yourself! Hostdime is a good place to start as it has great web hosting options that offer dedicated servers, shared servers, reseller hosting and good managed web hosting options for any budget. At the end of the day, it just isn’t worth it… saving those few bucks at the expense of business and personal image.