Hello everyone. Anyone who knows me around here knows
I author a blog, a WordPress blog to be more specific.
One of the things I see people
always looking for is FREE. Everyone wants something for free, even if the normal cost is relatively low. We really need to get past this.
If you're looking to start a blog, you really shouldn't use a free Blogger or WordPress account - go hosted. I understand what it's like if you're low on funds, been there done that. But keep in mind monthly web hosting usually breaks down to about 1 Java Chip latte from Starbucks a month.
That's a cheap price to pay for something so important.
Why You Shouldn't Go Free:
I could list a
number of drawbacks to free web hosting, but for blogs, let me just illustrate one example.
Let's say you decide to get a free WordPress blogging account over at WordPress.com and use that until you think you're ready for a real account. Heck, you don't even know if you want to blog or not, so you're just testing it with a free account.
Ok. Point taken. However, most web hosting companies come with a money-back guarantee and many of them you can cancel your hosting account at any time.
So there's no need to worry about being out a lot of money.
Next,
and this is the biggest point I'll make, when you decide to transfer over to a real hosting account (i.e. paid), you're going to lose all the momentum you've built for yourself.
Let's say you spend a year writing a bunch of blog posts and manage to attract many links, create a name for yourself, and even managed to get a few articles go viral and linked on
Digg,
StumbleUpon, etc.
Now one day you decide to graduate up to a hosted blog account. Guess what? Not only are you going to have a lot of fun transferring your blog's 100+ blog posts to a new account, you're also starting from square 1 . . . all over again.
I've been blogging for less than a year and have a few search terms which get me to the top of Google. I couldn't imagine transferring to a new domain name. I'd lose all I've built up.
All those links I've spent so much time in getting to point to my site - GONE!
Does a free blogging account still sound good?