I’m writing this post as a way answer the popular question: which is better self hosted wordpress blog or free blogs created on Blogger.com, WordPress.com. If you are new to blogging and want to start a new blog, I would suggest you to create a free blog on blogger.com or wordpress.com and once you get some level of confidence in using them, switch to the self hosted domain on WordPress. I have created blogs on both blogger as well as on WordPress.
Here are top 10 reasons why self hosted wordpress blog is better than free blogs that are created on blogger.com or any other free blog creation websites:
1. Full Control over your blog
Blogger.com is owned by Google and they can delete your blog without any prior warning if some people report your blog as spam even if there is no spam element in your blog and the same thing applies to blogs that we create on WordPress.com. I have seen this thing happening with lots of bloggers. So I would suggest you to go for self hosted WordPress blog where you will have your own domain name and thus full control over your blog.
2. Adsense Approval
No doubt every blogger want to make money from their blogs. And when we think about making money with a blog, the first thing that came to our minds is that’s Google Adsense. These days, it becomes difficult to get an Adsense approved with free blogs created on Blogger.com. Your chances of getting approval from Google Adsense are huge if you have your blog hosted on your own domain and have email associated with that domain.
3. Blog Selling Options
You will be going against Blogger terms of service if you happen to sell your blogger blog. As per Blogger TOS:
No Resale of the Service. Unless expressly authorized in writing by Google, you agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade, resell or exploit for any commercial purposes (a) any portion of the Service, (b) use of the Service, or (c) access to the Service.
But if you have a self hosted blog, you can sell it and by doing so, you will not be doing anything against Google policies.
4. Professional Approach towards Blogging
No doubt, blogger is still one of most used CMS with WordPress. Blogger is surely a bless if you are new to blogging and want to learn the basics about blogging and how to write content and post on blogs.
But if you are aiming at doing blogging with a serious note, I would recommend going for self hosted wordpress blogs. With WordPress, you will have your own domain, full control over your website, content and can use lots of themes, plugins and tools available for wordpress blogs.
5. Guest Blogging Options
You cannot create authors, contributors or admin and give them some level of access or full access to your blogs. So guest blogging, multiple authors’ kind of facilities are not available on blogger blogs. But with wordpress, you can create users, authors and admin and give them specific permissions. I himself have been a guest writer on some of self hosted wordpress blogs where I have an account created. I simply go and submit my guest post for approval. Owner of the blog simply go through my guest posts and he decides whether to publish my guest posts on his blog or not. So guest blogging and lots of security options are available with self hosted wordpress blogs.
6. Plugins and Gadgets
‘Plugins’ is also one of the biggest reasons why lots of bloggers are moving from blogger to wordpress. There are lots of plugins available for each task in wordpress that you image for your blog. In blogger, gadgets serve the same purpose what plugins does in WordPress. But there are very few gadgets available on blogger compared to huge list of plugins available on WordPress.
7. Theme Options
There is a big collection of themes available on internet for WordPress blogs while there are very few templates (themes) available for blogger blogs. And some of blogger themes are originally converted from wordpress themes. You will not be doing any level of compromise while choosing a theme for your wordpress blog as there are themes available for every occasion, business with seo features, good navigation and lots of customization options. And if you want to design your blog as per your requirements, you can do so with Thesis Theme which will help you create an seo friendly theme for your self hosted wordpress blog.
8. Better SEO
There is no doubt, ultimate target that every blogger has is lots of traffic on their blogs whether they are working on free blogger blogs or self hosted blogs. With Self hosted wordpress, there are lots of plugins available like All in One Seo, Automatic Google XML Sitemap generator, Seo Title Tags etc that makes optimizing a blog quite easily from search engines prospective.
9. Your own domain and email address
When you choose a self hosted wordpress blog, you will have your own domain name and email address associated with that domain. Having a full domain is much better than working on a sub-domain on blogger or wordpress. And you will be leaving a positive image in peoples mind when you communicate with an email address associated with your own domain name.
10. FTP account Facility
When you buy hosting for your wordpress blog, you will have dedicated FTP account associated with your blog that you can use for downloading and uploading purpose on your blog. And blogger is dropping FTP facilely from its blogger users.
Moving to a self hosted wordpress blog will ask you for domain registration and web hosting cost. I would recommend you try Hostgator premium wordpress blog hosting for hosting your wordpress based blog.
Many of you might holds different views about blogger free blogs and self hosted wordpress blogs. Feel free to share your thoughts on these in the comments section.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Self hosted blog is anytime better than shared one. The most important thing is bloggers work like slave under shared blogs, nice article.
With free blogs, we are giving our valuable time to a sub-domain only on which we don’t have any control and can be deleted by the hosting provider any time under certain circumstances
This is a very good Article you have written there This is so True why are many option yet made available if you self hosted wordpress blog i might switch someday but i am currently using blogger with domain addon if i switch i lose my search engine links
on free blogs you can’t control your blog fully. and they can close your blog anytime by accusing of spaming etc .Nice article. Very informative
You are right. Recently I have faced this problem. Without any prior notice blogger delete my blog and even my gmail account has been disabled. I dont know why It happened to me ? Because as far I can remember I did not do any type of guilty.
self hosted blog is the best way to make money online.And it your own kingdom and your rules.
Yeah very true.
I even got my gmail account deleted without any prior notice and when I tried contacting gmail team, no response from them. Due to deletion of that gmail account, I lost lots of important business contacts.
Thanks for the valuable information…..
as a newbie this article is very healpful.
thanks
There is enough of free hosting companies to host your blogs for free. No ads. Try it. You will find it. It is enough for hobbies. But if you want to make money with your blog and go professional you will need paid hosting.
I found your article very interesting, and I am interested to put this article on my blog:). if you still have another article about adsense? maybe we can exchange articles
Every point of yours listed above has some error and some are just completely wrong. Between custom domain Blogger blogs, coding available to add widgets and such, SEO techniques available, and so many more items Blogger can be better than WP. I mean, you talk about the availability of your own domain and email address…you can have the same…the SAME features with Blogger. I do.
Just a few minutes ago I did a search for “conservative economic blog”. There were 2 Blogger blogs listed in the 2nd and 3rd positions on the first page. There was 1 WP.com blog shown at the bottom of the page. I did another search for “fine art photography blog”. The 5th listing on the first page and the bottom listing were Blogger sites. There was no WP.com site on the first page.
You may still prefer WP but if you are going to write an article like this do some homework and you will get more accurate results.
Self-hosted blog means you are the boss of your kingdom and hence far better than shared blogs.
Yes I agree a self hosted Blog is better then a free service Blog. A person gets more exposure when Blogging on a self hosted Blog
Ah, but the point you miss is that blogger, wordpress, and livejournal already have top alexa rank and also are readily searched by google – not to mention auto-ping, just like your own-hosted version.
The trick would be to post (varied) content to remote blogs such as these with backlinks to your own blog and the full content. Your affiliate links, etc. would be on your own blog, so you don’t violate terms of services (even though blogger doesn’t mind, and most of the time, livejournal doesn’t either.)
Your blog-domain is increased in SEO by having these other sites link to yours. Of course, you use a remote-blogging program like Windows Live Writer, or simply the ScribeFire plug-in for Firefox. Makes everything simple.
I like the idea of professional approach towards blogging. This elevates the quality of what was used to be personal blogging to study a more professional approach towards publishing their ideas.
For some who want to make money out of it, they have to know that having a self hosted Wordpress blog is the way to go. They may have to shell out some amount. But of course, they have more freedom to go with what they want to do with their blogs and not be in the mercy of those providers because of any noted violation as per their TOS.
Cheers,
Dave