I read that you can use wordpress.com or blogger to create a "standalone" website instead of paying for a webhost like hostgator. Has anyone tried using them to create an affiliate marketing website? or is there any downside of using such platforms?
In my below signature i'm using wordpress.com. However you can't put adsense and add Seo plugins. I'll probably go to self-hosting when I gain more traffic.
The biggest down-side is that you can't customize them as much as a stand-alone wordpress blog. They are also inferior interms of SEO due to the immense flexibility of wordpress blogs.
I would just go with self hosted Wordpress. Too many limitations by using someone else's platform. Wordpress doesn't allow adsense. Both are limited to what you can control, edit or add on. Just install your own.
wordpress.com doesn't allow Adsense and affiliate links. And it's to easy on Blogger to have your blog reported as spam and get deleted.
Wordpress is a pretty good platform for blog building, since it's free to download and easy to use. It's suitable for newbie. However, Wordpress also have some downsides, such as weak security and lack of Enterprise Features. Thus, Wordpress may be not the appropriate choice when you need a business site.
Wordpress can be as secure as you want it to be, and there are plenty of features available. More than any other platform. I don't know what you mean by lack of enterprise features. That makes no sense.
I agree. Wordpress isn't weak. Some of the biggest companies out there use it & there are plenty of other people that have never had any issue with it.
I don't understand why people who plan to blog for long term, still choose wordpress.com free blog. I mean when you build backlinks so hard, those backlinks will be gone once you move your site to a selfhosted one (or even worse, your blog is suspended) In my opinion, go with selfhosted wordpress straight, since you can pay a hosting cost with the price of a bottle of coke per month. (if you use USD or Euro).
Wordpress.com has no plug-ins and adsense will not work either in this platform. Go for self-hosted Wordpress like everybody said.
Wordpress is very good option for blogging software. You just need to go with self hosted option and then you can see the freedom of using a nice blogging sofwtare. there are 100 and 100 people working to make wordpress more useful and easy to use. It does have lot of extra plugins which you can use to get most of it.