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.
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
Your own domain and hosting is the real deal and I think the only was to go if you're serious.
No one takes free hosted domains serious.
I have a website that's 2 years old but practically don't update the contents. Is it a good idea to convert it into a blog so that I can add contents easily? I'm not techie enough to know about uploading through ftp etc.. Your suggestions please.
That is probably not a bad idea and if you already have a domain and hosting, it wouldn't be too expensive to get someone to help you convert to say wordpress, which is fairly easy to use even for a non tech person.
Just make sure you have all the content and then add it to the blog platform once its up and running.
You can install a nice theme and find plug ins for wordpress and if you are willing to spend a little time browsing around and testing things, it's not that hard I don't think.
You can sign up at wordpress and play around with a free hosted blog from them for a while to see if you think you can handle it, before making a decision
WordPress is bigger, better, more bad tail, etc. However ... I wanted something with no maintenance, zero worry, reflinks allowed, etc. Which is why I migrated from WordPress to Google's blogpost a few months ago. It has been a bliss for personal usage. However if you are blogging to make money? Blogpost will be a b*tch.
And WordPress rules.
It is a good thing to use your own blog if you are looking to do something serious. However, if you are just doing it for fun, you are probably better off with a free blog.
At first practice free blogging from WordPress and blogspot sites. Excel yourself in writing skill and gaining enough knowledge about the topic you are starting by. Then go for paid hosting. Once you start you will gain confidence, and can earn enough money though it. Google is needy for unique contents, due to the penguin attack these days. Websites are getting penalized. So blog writing,uploading, earning is no doubt a great work!
eJobsJunction.com
I started out in blogger but later on moved to wordpress. Wordpress has a very friendly interface and awesome plug-ins which makes blogging more fun and easy however if you only plan to blog for personal reasons then I don't think wordpress is necessary.
Wordpress is perfect for professional business websites and blogger can be enough for a personal blog IMO. Both can be free so I won't mention anything about price or whatsoever.