I read this post earlier on youmoz, to be honest I hate free blog hosts with a passion when it comes to making money, this is from a blogger’s perspective, to make big money online you need to be unique and stand out from others, isn’t that the whole point?
Uniqueness
Think about it, would you click through from a site called awesomebaseballstuff.blogspot.com ?
No. Anyone that’s been online for 2 years at most, would know to stay way from those kind of sites, it’s mostly spam with overcrowding ads, the potential affiliate commissions (users) are very aware of this.
Spam/Dup-content
Now, let’s say you’re hosting a blog on blogspot, which I consider the biggest spam network, first of all 70% of the traffic you get would probably be from within the blogspot and I can assure you that the whole lot of that traffic would not get you a single affiliate sale and potential customers already know not to go to free hosted sites for unique information/products.
Monetization
This is what turned me off from free hosts in the first place, okay, let’s say you’re selling a product worth 140$ , it’s an ebook or some kind of an affiliate thing, put yourself in the user’s shoes, would you buy something worth 140$ from someone who can’t even afford to have his/her’s own site to promote that product in the first place?
And if you want to monetize with ads, then it’s even worst, usually blogspot blogs have tons and tons of ads and compared to the content the percentage looks like 60% ads and 40% content. The common ad placement on free blog hosts is already known by users, how many times could you possible fool them? seriously.
Pagerank/Strength
Imagine hosting your unique/useful content on a network that has tons of spam and is known to have alot of those cheap sites that you try ever so hard to avoid, do you really think your content would show up in top serps being on the same host as tons of other spammers?
As for PR, yea you just might get a good pagerank going on but what is it worth?
There was a time where blogspot domains used to sell for 500-1000$ but that time is gone now, now you if you have a really strong pr blog on blogspot, it wouldn’t sell for much, you might even get ripped of on its sale.
Basic Identity
Who are you? You know who you are, but do other people get a chance to know you?
Let’s say you have this really unique name in mind for your new site, it’s already taken on blogspot. Now you have to resort to adding additional words to your already useful and unique name, which would make it really corny and really obvious for people to notice it as spam.
Unique name : FreeBlogTips : taken
Second try : DailyFreeBlogTips : crap, taken..
Third try : DailyFreeBlogTipsToday : big maybe or your only choice, do you really want your blog at : dailyfreeblogtipstoday.blogspot.com ?
Creativity/Design
Let’s take blogspot for example, yea you have a choice of alot of themes but do they give you all the freedom you need? no.
The freedom I get with wordpress and having my own host, gives me the oppurtunity to control every aspect of my blog’s design, that’s one of the reasons of my success.
Add ons
After a certain amount of success, you would definitely want to add some kind of tool or sub-site to it, like I have a gallery, and the tools in the resources section, how can you do that on a free host?
Think ahead, make sure you make the right choice before you put in all the effort.
September 12th, 2008 at 4:30 am
good points these. and as my blog’s on blogger, i can especially relate to the relative lack of themes, and add ons, as well as monetization challenges. ah well. cheap me.
September 12th, 2008 at 6:20 am
You missed one. If someone is tried of blogging, you sell the blog and get your money, but you cannot see a free host blog.
September 12th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Great post with valuable information. I was told that there are successful bloggers that host there blog using blogger blogs. Thats why I have continued to use blogger but I am just about ready to get my own domain and host. How do I go about doing that?
September 12th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
You have pretty much listed all points in ur article. The most important one for me, is the ease of mind that my blog is safe on the net and its not gonna go down or become slow because of other idiots on the free server…
September 14th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
its good to get your own domain and hosting if you want a good result/success for your blog. free blog hosting such as *.blogspot.com or *.wordpress.com now has too many spam blogs… even google knows about it.
thanks for the nice tips anyway.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:05 am
I agree, if you want to be noticed you need your own identity, but for a new comer, it would be a good place to try out blogging before getting into it seriously.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I definitely prefer to have my own domains and make a point of telling others that as well.
I just don’t like the lack of control on free hosts, it’s just too easy for them to shut you down.
I had a blog at blogspot some time ago and recently decided to add a few posts to that blog. Well I received an email from them saying my site looked like it might be automated and they were going to shut it down. After having a human review the site they changed their mind, but that just how fast it can be gone.
Take the time to get your own domain hosted.
September 17th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
I have several hosted domains, but the rest of my blogs goes to Blogger. They are ugly, but I love it because people click on AdSense more often
September 19th, 2008 at 7:06 am
I’m looking to start up a blog and many of these issues I hadn’t considered. That’s why I’ve been trying to do some reading on these topics especially when it comes to spam. One of my friends runs a blog and says that he gets hit pretty often with a lot of spam traffic. He has filters in place but still gets quite a bit. Thanks for posting this. Definitely worth the read!
Phil
September 27th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I finally got my own domain now. It looks a lot better now but I am still hosting with blogger though. Great post and straightforward.
September 29th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
You forgot one big one. You work so hard for such a long amount of time. Then BAM! Your blog is deleted by the wordpress, or blogger, or livejournal in a huge server wipeout. And they “apologize for the inconvenience”. Never happened to me, just saying.
October 5th, 2008 at 5:31 am
Great post. With all great hosting companies out there I’m not sure why anyone would trust all there hart work to a free hosting service. I have one website with olm their personal hosting is only $6.95 per month and my site has never went down. My other site is with godaddy and so far they have been great.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I think it depend on the program we join, I believe. we don’t need apid domain to make money on TLa,
linksmile et cetera …
Yes we need paid, interesting paid domain to join adsense … paid short interesting domain need to get loyal reader ..
July 13th, 2009 at 10:06 am
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