BizFractals

When you go for a new blog, should you go for a free software, or a hosted one? Of course it depends on your current budget. You would have to pay for monthly hosting and for the yearly domain renewal charges if you go for the paid option. With hosting going pretty cheap (typically around $3 - $5 per month for a smaller package) and a yearly dot com domain which goes for $10 per year, if your budget can include that, it is pretty good. But I am not saying that going for a free bloghost is a bad option - it does have its good and bad things.

First, the good things.

1) It’s free - Or atleast cheap to run. Typepad’s basic package is $4.95 per month, under which you get a 100MB disk space and 2GB bandwidth, along with other features like unlimited photo albums, ecommerce tool integration, etc. Others like blogger.com and wordpress.org are free, and you get unlimited blogs with templates and customizable options.

2) Easy install and management - Your blog gets set up within a few clicks and a couple of online forms filled up. Most of them work with the best user-friendly interfaces to install and manage your blog. With blogger and wordpress, you get your own dashboard which you can manage and customize individually. Also you get a lot of customization options with in-build templates to modify the looks of your blog and also monetize it.

3) No software management headaches - Recently there was a security threat to wordpress hosts (self hosted ones) against which StopBadware.org and Google teamed up. If you have come across some google searches at some sites saying “This site may harm your computer”, that was the case. There was a vulnerability that was hacked into by someone who posted a link to a malware on the blog. (I got hit too on one of my blogs, but got it cleared later). Sites which were hit were marked with the warning above on Google searches. This was fixed in the latest Wordpress versions, but most of the people who hasn’t upgraded to the latest are still losing a part of their traffic. I’m not scaring you with this, thought it was worth mentioning. We cannot be too sure everytime, but this is one good thing about the free platforms like Blogger and Wordpress - they keep themselves and their blogs updated.

4) Quick indexing in Search Engines - Most of the good free blogging platforms have good pageranks already. If your blogging platform has a good pagerank, chances are that your content will also be picked up and indexed very quickly, compared to a self-hosted blog.

Now, the not-so-good things.

1) Limited configuration abilities - I have practically killed myself getting a blogger blog look the way I want it to. With wordpress, I found the self hosted version was much much more configurable than the free version. We have the option to edit the content in these, but these options are very much limited. Of course, they improve over time. Blogger is not what it used to be earlier, and has improved much in configurability. But I still can’t part with many options that I can easily set up in my own self-hosted version. You can play around with blogger.com and wordpress.org a bit, see if you like them (or they like you). If not, well, you know what I mean.

2) Subdomain names - Imagine living in a house as a paying guest. You have your own space, your own room, but someone else’s terms. Of course blogger and wordpress won’t shove another blog into your blog unlike your landlord, but if you want to start your own business using a blog, it is suggested that you have your own identity such as http://www.someone.com than http://www.someone.blogspot.com or http://www.someone.wordpress.com. While this is not a limitation to being successful in your business, having your own domain name gives you a more professional look. Besides, it removes the overhead of moving to your own space later, such as diverting your current traffic to your new domain, etc. As I said above, when you plan to move from a free to a paid option, money would be the least of your worries.

3) Design limitations - Free blogging platform give you free templates. These are beautiful templates of various categories where your business might fall into, and mostly enough to kick start your blog. But these are designs which will be used by one too many free bloggers, and it won’t give that “uniqueness” to your blog that you want. You can still edit the templates (in the case of blogger.com), but then you need to be technically savvy atleast to understand CSS and HTML, or you need to know someone who is good with them.

4) Not easy to move to self hosted blog - Suppose you grow big on your blog, and then decide to move to your own domain name and space. You would be able to easily, if not with some professional help, move your content and pages to your new webspace and domain. The trouble will be when you will have to retain your current traffic and readers. Also, if you have a good pagerank, you might need to take a trip down the ladder and back up again, which can take a lot of time. It’s not impossible to do - but it takes a lot of time and sweating.

I’m not saying that putting your blog on a free provider is going to bust you. It is only that a couple of things mentioned above, like moving your site to your own domain name etc, will not be easy. But keep in mind that there are many bloggers out there who use a free blog to make money monthly without having to pay a single dime for domain name or hosting. It is only a matter of choosing the right topics and using the right resources in the best ways possible (and a matter of some patience) to get your site visible. If people see your site and like it, you’ll be counting green, free or paid!