I wanted to start a new blog and was wondering if there are any benefits to hosting your own blog vs use Wordpress or Blogspot to host it? Do you have the potential to market your blog better with one or the other? Make more cash on advertising on one or the other? Thanks for the advice...
I think advertisers take you more seriously if you have your own domain. On WordPress.com-- you cannot run paid ads. If the blog is for business-- it helps with the overall promotion of your business site and attracts more visitors through search engines because of the dynamic nature of the blog. Q...
Self hosting is the best way to go.. How would you like to see a super long url from your friend and trying to write it down! Ugh.. that would bug the mess out of me. Buy a domain at name.com great prices and they always have a sell. Then get hosting with hostgater ( first month only 1 cent! ) and test it out! It's so much fun with your own URL.. It's like finding $20 in your pants... after washing them
A dot com domain is the best thing a blog can have for branding purposes. People won't remember blahblah.bloghost.com - they'll remember blahblah.com. This is the case with me - 15% of my visitors come directly to my site because its name is easily rememberable and pretty unique (imo). In addition, self-hosted Wordpress gives you so many more options than anything else out there and there was recently an excellent updated to the software. I highly recommend it.
JUST FYI: You can get hosting on ebay for like $5-$10 a year. So if you are planning on actually making money with your blog it'll cost you $20 to start up