Hi first off this is a great forum so much information I'm gald i found it If you planned on having a successful high traffic blog would you use free software like blogger? The reason i ask is money is tight so I really dont want to invest in hosting yet unless i have to. Is there any real successful blogs that are on blogger or any free services that you know of? I'm not talking about the free software like wordpress, I mean free as in hosted like blogger. Thanks
With free host you can wake one morning and see that you lost everything. Recently blogger (better say Google) deleted some blogs, because they were spammy (by their merit).
There's a difference between a free host and free software Even with blogger you can self host but you still don't control the mechanism to edit and maintain your "intellectual property" If it's worth anything to you then pay for the hosting use WordPress or MoveableType and get over it.
The problem with free hosting is once you start using it, you'll have trouble moving your blog somewhere else. If you manage to establish yourself, all the backlinks are going to go to blogger. So if you 'outgrow' the free service, you'll have to work hard to re-establish yourself somewhere else. Not impossible, but worth avoiding if you can.
Domain and hosting are cheap nowadays, I see no reason why you couldn't afford it. I mean, you could get hosting for as lost as 2.95 a month.
Most definatley, the amount of storage and bandwidth required for a blog is extremely minimal. Hell, for around a dollar you can get a basic hosting package that would serve you well, at least until you start growing. Once you start doing this typical hosting providers offer nice step programs to help grow with you. And by doing this you will avoid the link problem as miked mentioned.