What is a free hosted blog?

Free blog hosting are the ones that most people turn to when they want to give blogging a try. Common ones include Blogger, Tumblr, Wix, WordPress.com, Medium, and more. You sign up for a free account and then can start blogging. Sounds great, right? Not so fast. Let’s take a closer look…

What are the advantages of a free blog host?

These blogs are nice if you are early on in your blogging career and want something that is free and easy to use. Tumblr especially has other advantages like being able to re-blog other people’s posts. Each of these sites does have its own advantages and will work well for some people. However, their limitations far outweigh their benefits.

Why do free blogging sites fall short?

If you want to grow a blog or a website to make money or grow a business, then you need your own domain name and self-hosted blog. The main reasons for this include: You don’t have full control. Most free blogs don’t allow you to add new features to your site like online stores, forums, membership features, and more. Sometimes they do offer advanced features, but they have expensive monthly fees. But with a self-hosted WordPress blog, you can use plugins to easily add new features to your site. You often don’t own it. The biggest drawback for us is that you don’t really own your blog – the provider does. Why would you want to spend years building up an asset that you don’t fully own or control? That’s a deal-breaker for us, especially if you can’t migrate your content to another blogging platform. Not as good for Google rankings. It’s well known that Google doesn’t give as much weight to free blogs on their search results. Why? Because they don’t consider them as authoritative. By hosting your own blog with your own domain name, you’re signaling to Google that you mean business. Plus, a custom domain name makes your blog look professional. Limited design options. On a self-hosted blog, you can upload your own themes, hire designers to create a custom theme, and more. You can tweak the layout and change the total look and feel—the customization options are endless. With a free blog, it’s often not customizable. You’re normally stuck with whatever the free blog host offers, which means that your blog will look like a lot of others. Bad for branding. Something a lot of people don’t realize is how important it is to have your own domain name. This is very important for building up your brand over the years. That being said, there are a lot of bloggers out there who love their free host. And while we don’t think they’re the optimal solution, we do admit that they’re fine if you’re blogging as a hobby.

Are there any disadvantages to a self-hosting?

The main disadvantage is that you have a little bit of a steeper learning curve because you have to install the blog yourself. This only takes a few clicks nowadays, but managing your own self-hosted blog is a little bit more robust than opting for a free option.

What are the costs of a self-hosted blog?

The beauty of this is that it is really, really cheap to host your own blog. All you need is a domain name and a hosting package from Bluehost for $1.99 a month. This is a special discounted rate Bluehost has given Blog Tyrant readers. There are some added extras that you can include if you like, but the basic annual cost is very affordable.

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