Blog Building: What Setup Is Right For Me?

What is the purpose of your blog? This is an important question to answer.

Are you blogging because you’re passionate about something and need a platform to express that passion and motivate others to join you? Is your blog a journal for personal pleasure? A way to promote an existing business? Or are you starting a blog because you’ve heard they’re a great way to make money?

The answer to these questions can help you decide the best hosting solution for starting your blog.

If you’re blogging for personal pleasure or for writing about your passion and don’t expect to have a focus on making money, one of the free blogging platforms, like Blogger.com or WordPress.com, is a good place to start.

If you’re starting your blog to promote an existing business, to generate income, or if you prefer to have complete control over your blog right from the start, a self-hosted solution would be the better option.

When making this decision, be sure to think about the long-term focus of your blog, not just your current plans. Once your blog is established and indexed in the search engines, changing the setup can be difficult and quite costly in terms of traffic and search ranking.

For anything but a personal pleasure blog, I recommend that you purchase a domain name and choose the self-hosted option. It will require a bit more effort and expense up front, but it’s not as difficult or costly as it seems and the effort will pay off in the long run. You’ll have much more flexibility and plenty of room to grow in whatever direction your blog should take you in the future.

Have you decided to go with the self-hosted option? Great! Next step… Choosing the right Domain name.