Would a hosting wordpress blog/website be better or should I just stick to the free blogger?

If you're just messing around, you could use free. But if you seriously trying to build something stable, then go hosted.

If you have the money, of course you should go for the paid hosting. If you don't then do what most bloggers/site owners do.

They start with free platform blog sites likea squidoo, hubpages, blogger, blog, wordpress, edublogs etc. There are tons of them. Then they slowly build the blog up by creating their good content. Eventually visitors will come in and the website will build some audience that will keep coming back for new content. Then, it'll start earning money (a lot of ways, ads, adsense etc). After a while and when they have some money, that's the time they transfer to a paid hosting.

you should try. You wont loose anything anyways since its free platform.

Well you might lose your content, so make sure you back everything up on these free platforms because they can pull the plug on you at any time. I lost a blogger blog with lots of great content on it after 2 years of building, and Google never even bothered to get back with me with a reason why. I don't trust free platforms at all especially after that. But you can start on it but just remember to back up all your content. Also make sure you know the terms of each site and know if you will still own all the rights to your content before you publish it on a particular platform.

There are a few reasons why would certain platforms delete your blog pages and here are a few that I can think off:
1. your content is copy pasted from another source
2. you are linking to low quality sites and vice versa
3. your blog is full of ads instead of content
4. your content is from spinned articles
5. your content violates their TOS
6. your content is obviously made for links
7. your content is crap
8. your content is not worthy to be shown in public
9. your content is too old
10. your blog hasn't been touched for quite some time.


If the OP doesn't do any of that, I'm sure that no free platform will ever delete his blogs.

Yeah in a perfect world perhaps. But Google has been known to make false errors in getting rid of legitimate quality blogs for no reason at all. My blogspot was up for 2 years and bothering no one and helping many. If it was that abd it would have been axed way earlier. I even had advertisers willing to pay me hundreds of dollars for advertising on my little free blog, that's how good it was.

But then it was axed out of the blue with some automated message that Google will review my blog and get back with me. News: They never did. Furthermore, not only did they no get back with me, but if they did see some small issue then they could have at least giving me a warning to fix it - or at least given me a forewarning to give me time to remove my content. But they did none of that because they're too big to give a F.

I'm not the only one who has experienced this, just search online and you'll find many horror stories.

Some lose their free sites for legitimate reasons and some for no good reason. So like I warned BACK UP YOU CONTENT if you are to use any free platform because there is no guarantee.

This post has been edited by multimastery: Aug 9 2011, 09:52 AM

Free Blogging Web Site, The Advantages And Disadvantages

Starting a blogging journey for the first time, sometimes make the first time bloggers confuse what blogging platform that they should use. Learning how to blog with free blogging web site is a
great way to get started in the blogosphere. First time bloggers do not have to spend money for domain and web hosting.

There are many popular free blogging websites, like blogger or blogspot.com from Google, WordPress, Multiply, etc. All we need is create and we can start your blogging journey. You don’t have to face few things to set up your blog, like cPanel. For paid blogging web site you need to set up your blog from cPanel.
There are few advantages and disadvantage by using free blogging web site.
Advantages:

Free, you don’t have to pay anything for you blog. Domain, web hosting and themes are free. All you have to do is create contents and promote your blog.
No Risk, you don’t have to worry about the risk if your blog crush or down.
Network. Free blogging web site automatically become a member of the provider, if you are using blogger or blogspot then you’ll become a member from blogspot community. And it is said that Google love to crawl blogspot.com blog to find up dates. So using blogspot.com will give you more change to get index by Google.

Disadvantages.

Rules. You have to follow the free blogging website provider rules. Blogspot or wordpress have rules that you must follow. They always monitoring every web site that using their service. You’ll get banned if you broke the rules. Its already happened and will continue this way.
Contents. All your blog contents is not belong to you, it be long to the provider properties.
Optimization. You can’t full optimizing your free web site because of few limitation. If you are using wordpress for your blog, you can use plugin to help you optimizing your blog and use premium theme.
Advertiser. No one like to advertise at free blogging website. Advertiser think that the owner not to serious the his/her blogging activities.

Free blogging website always the right choice if we want to learn how to blog and not sure if you will continue your blogging journey. Blogging need commitments, time and effort. After you really sure that blogging is your choice I suggest you to buy a domain and contact a web hosting company, buy theme, etc for your blog icon wink Free Blogging Web Site, The Advantages And Disadvantages Happy Blogging.

Hello,

It is a good idea to use a blog to make money online, but takes a lot of work and effort.
You need to be constantly updating and uploading good content that interest the online readers.
If you are full of good stories, content and ready to put in the work then start your own blog.

ITS NOT EASY THOUGH!


ATTENTION: Beginners And Newcomers....

ONE PAGE WEBSITE IS ALL YOU NEED TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE. no joke guys.
You do not have to have a very fancy website with lots of pages, one page is enough! These websites are called SQUEEZE PAGES.

Many online business fail because of many reasons..
The main reason is, They Sell Your Product To Your Costumers Immediately... WRONG!

GOLDEN RULE
BUILD A LIST!!!!!!

You have a Squeeze page, you drive traffic to it, and your customer will sign up for FREE!
That is achieved by giving something FREE to your customers. They will want to sign up for the FREE gift.
Then your provide your product to your customers.

CHANGE THE WAY OF THINKING!!!

Ask yourself, "How Can I Provide More VALUE"
not, "How Can I Sell To My Customers"




Hope that was helpful

It should be fairly obvious that if you just want to do some blogging for fun, that you won't really need anything other than a freely hosted Blogspot. However, as aforementioned, should you want to do something serious and possibly try to make some money or earn any kind of living, you'll need to spend some money and invest first.

johnywalter mentioned some legitimate reasons that you'll want to avoid.

Wordpress is good. You can add many awesome plugins to it. And it's really make you money.

Yes, a blog allows your customers to engage in your website. This ecourages them to keep returning to your website.

Start off with Blogger to gain experience, but WordPress is much more professional looking in my opinion.

Wordpress does offer good features but you will need to get a good host to be able to use a full powered wordpress blog! I hope this helps.

If you are new to blogging, I would start off using free platforms. However if you are serious about starting a blog to make money, go for the self hosted blogs such as wordpress.org. Free platforms limit you to specifics and can cancel your blog at anytime. Self hosted blogs give you more freedom with content and honesty. You might want to consider doing a regular website as well if you plan on starting an e-business.

It is easier to rank higher if you own the domain, but using free blogs is good for link wheels/pyramids