Why Owning Your Own Blog Is Important
There is a lot of discussion around Squidoo about blogging and as a result many people have been starting their own blogs. Lots of these have been on site hosted by other people (commonly referred to as WPMU or WordPress Multi User). I have never been a great fan of hosting any of my blogs at WPMU set ups for a variety of reasons. That is not to say that there aren’t benefits in terms of learning the ropes but I think these are outweighed by many other considerations.
Here’s why I would always go first and foremost with having my own blog:
Control – You don’t have to be a control freak to want to have complete control over your blog. Your blog is part of your business and it makes sense to want to be able to design it, modify it and access it when and where you want to. Hosting it yourself ensures you have this control.
And this control over your blog means you can create a website that is 100% unique. You can focus on highlighting your brand personality and creating a strong image in your industry.
2. You can choose your own domain name. This is also closely related to the control issue. When you’re hosting your website on a blogging platform, for example http://yourdomainname.wordpress.com, your domain name has two unique challenges.
The first is that your blogging host may deny your domain name for myriad reasons and the other is that your audience has to remember your domain name plus your hosting site. They have to type the entire thing into their browser. If you host your blog yourself both of those challenges disappear.
Hosting your blog yourself means your audience won’t have to remember a long domain name and you can choose any URL you want.
3. Promotion. Platforms restrict what you can do on your blog. Many don’t allow affiliate promotions and they don’t allow you to sell ad space or participate in PPC to make money. Host it yourself and you can sell or promote whatever you want on your blog.
4. Security. Blogs are hacked, often. And while security generally isn’t an issue if your blog is attacked you need to be able to get onto the blog and clean things up. If your blog is hosted by someone else, you can lose information or be locked out of your account and that is perhaps the worst thing that can happen to a blog owner – again, it all boils down to having 100% control over your business.
5. SEO. Do you want to drive traffic to your blog or to the platform? If you want linking to boost your SEO then you must host your blog yourself. Otherwise you’re just improving the popularity of your host.
Finally, your image is affected if you don’t own your blog. You’ll have long email extensions that include the domain of your host. And hosting it yourself just looks more professional.
For more information on hosting, choosing the right domain name and how to find a profitable blogging niche visit Easy Blogging Guide.
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