It really comes down to what you will be using your blog for really and there are pros and cons for both options. Serious bloggers, pro bloggers, business bloggers will always recommend going with a self hosted blog. If you are aiming to blog in any commercial sense, even if you don’t want to host your own pages right away, you will probably want to do so later on and then you are faced with the hassles of switching your free blog over. Consider all of your promotion, current readers, traffic, paid advertisements, incoming links and so on, and you start to realize why you might be better of starting out as you mean to go on.

So, what are the pros and cons of the two choices?

Self hosted Blogs – The Upside

You will have total control of the design/look/theme of your blog. Your blog will be hosted under a domain name of your own choosing. It’s more professional all round. You will have far more ways to monetize your blog available to you – you own the design and content with no restrictions. You can use a wide variety of plugins or add-ons that would be unavailable to you on a free platform.

Self hosted Blogs – The Downside

Requires some investment on your part – the cost of a domain and hosting fees. You will need to install the blog yourself (pretty easy actually, even for the non technical) There are plenty of sites online that can help you and if you choose a hosting company with C-Panel and Fantastico all it takes is a few clicks to do a basic install of WordPress. (For more on C-Panel visit here)

Clarification on WordPress – WordPress.com is the free blogging platform and WordPress.org is free software that a customer installs on their own host/domain

FREE Blogs The Upside

Well,there is absolutely no cost! Easy to set up, it takes only a few minutes to sign up and start writing. No domain needed (although you can have a free blog and use domain forwarding)

FREE Blogs The Downside:

Far less scope for customization. Sub-Domain address – for example yourblogname.wordpress.com (using a free WP blog) Serious limitations on monetizing and paid to blog opportunities. (WP will not allow any contextual ads nor any sponsored posting for example, and no Javascript on your site either). Blogger is more relaxed but still limiting compared to owning your own blog. A lot of the companies who pay bloggers to post will insist on a self hosted blog. Free blogging looks less professional, so if you are trying to start an authority site, it’s a handicap straight away.

Ultimately it all comes down to what your aiming to achieve If you are serious about blogging as any kind of commercial venture, then self hosted would be the way to go. Not only will you want the control and customization options, you need to look like a professional and to be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with your blogging peers.

If, on the other hand, you are a “hobby” blogger or just want an online journal then a free blog may be the way to go!

We’ve given details below of the two most well known blogging platforms but there are of course many many more out there. As with so many things in life, different strokes for different folks. There was an interesting post a while back on Pro Blogger entitled ‘Which Blogging Platform Do You Use‘ that you might like to check out for some comments about many varied platforms such as Joomla, drupal, Typepad, Moveable Type and others.

Getting Started With Your Self Hosted Blog-

Choose and register your own domain name (see our main pages for some places to start)
Find a host who offers C-Panel and Fantastico if you can. This will allow for a very simple installation of WordPress (If you choose not to go this route you can download wordpress at www.wordpress.org). There are alternatives to WordPress but if you are a beginner it’s still a good choice.

Getting Started With A Free Blog-

go to www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com and sign up for a free account and follow the on screen instructions.

That’s it – happy blogging.