Hey folks, thanks for looking. Wish to start a niche blog, had a few questions My main issues are: 1. Wordpress or blogspot or some other app? Which is better in terms of customization/flexibility/ease-of-use? Which is better in terms of ability to monetize from various streams of income (adsense adbrite affiliates etc)? Which is easier to move to my own hosting later... Which is easier to promote/SEO (Blogspot get indexed by google automatically right?) 2. My own hosting and domain, now or later? What are the benifits of hosting on own server? I don't have the means to spend $10 a month right now, but will it be easy to transfer the blog/traffic once it hits off? What if I simply buy a domain and foreward to the free blog, does that defeat the purpose? 3. Finally, how does one promote a blogs, plain old SEO? or something else? All help appreciated
Personally, I would get your own domain, and use wordpress or another good blogging platform. You can also get a free blog at wordpress.com, and pay later. Either way, I would stay away from blogger. Promote through SEO, commenting on others blogs, forum signatures.
I trust in Wordpress. There are a lot of themes (http:// themes.wordpress.net/) and it is very customizable.
thanks for all the help everyone... what are the advantages of getting own hosting? which is easier to monetize (WP or blogger) which is easier to build traffic to? and finally why stay would you stay away from blogger jestep, why would you stay awayfrom blogger.. thx again
With wordpress, if you host your own blog, you can put yahoo ads in your rss feed cant do that with blogger.
I think blogger is better. It is a service of google. And so the marketing is easier. What do you say ??
There are countless instances of blogger deleting blogs which fit their (sometimes, or quite often, depending on whom you ask) definition of spam. If you have your own domain, your own hosting, your own blog, it can't be deleted.
I am using WP from 3-4yrs. Started with blogger then switched to wp. For start if you very very new to blogging, no money to spend, dont want to make a very big commerial blog, blogger is for you. You can switch to WP anytime, wordpress default import system can allow you to import all your from blogger.
I'd go wordpress to start with your own domain and hosting if you can afford it. Save yourself trouble later on when moving or switching. You figure you can register a domain for about $9/yr and then get a small hosting account for $15/yr and you'd be all set with free wordpress.
Thanks for all the great advice... one of the biggest probblems was that Ive been paying way too much for hosting my other sites, without realizing that prices go much lower.... i think ill start off with WP and a cheap host+good domain... and will have to work on SEO from there.... anymore advice anyone?
Sorry about that. I missed your reply. I have used blogger for a few personal blogs, and after a while the lack of features drove me away from it. Blogger isn't easy to do a lot of customizations on. The comments function is terrible, which is a huge part of blogging. There is just a huge lack of features with blogger, even if you are using your own domain. With something like wordpress, you have access to thousands of high quality, well developed plugins and designs. The designs aren't any easier to customize for someone with limited programming experience, but there are so many more available that are so much better made. You can pretty much do anything with a wordpress blog. We run a company LAN with wordpress, and it works perfectly. Whatever you can think of, it is probably possible with wordpress, but unlikely possible with blogger. The other thing, is that if you do plan to use SEO on your blog, you should definitely start with something you are going to stick with. Blogger can be imported into wordpress or another blog platform later on, but redirecting the individual pages from the old blog to the new can be anywhere from difficult to impossible.