If you are serious about blogging, consider branding it.   Branding starts with getting your own domain name and having all the rights of owning your blog without limit. 

Being a website designer and developer, I myself started as a blogger, fooling around with blogspot and wordpress.com hosted websites.  Due to their limitations against the expansion of my blogging tool needs, I ended up hosting my own website using self-hosted wordpress.  When I became more knowledgeable in the internet coding playground, I jumped to Drupal CMS, where my blog site is currently based upon.  But drupal is mostly for advanced users.  For bloggers and even entrepreneurs who do not want to involve complicated coding for their website while getting extraordinary features, self-hosted WordPress is my best recommendation.  The following are 12 reasons why you need to consider self-hosted wordpress for your blog and even online store:

1… Page loads faster. Do you know that in most cases, blogger hosted websites load painfully slower than self-hosted websites?  Because heavily styled blogs has their header image saved in HTML, which downloads each time your blog is loaded.  Unlike wordpress CMS, your header image can be saved in external file so that it is cached and downloads only once each time your visitor visits your blog. As a blog reader and avid follower to many, I open several blogs at a time in my browser, and found out that blogspot hosted websites that are very attractive yet heavily designed with images cause my browser to shut down, giving me a hard time to revisit them.
 
2… With blogspot and wordpress.com hosted blog, you do not really own your blog space. Blogger is owned by google, WP by wordpress.com.  On one hand, anyone’s blog at blogger is subject to deletion should they think it is spammy.  I had my blog deleted once by them.  Luckily, it did not contain that much significant content.  I have heard from some people fighting over google having deleted their blogs prior to their knowledge.  To know more about this, google this line: my blogger blog deleted.
 
3… WordPress.com hosted blogs (ex., myblog.wordpress.com) does not allow you to add scripts for adsense, facebook, and any other monetizing ad and/or social network scripts.  Their styling and templates are also very limited. You also have to agree to accept their forced advertisement in your website.
 
4… Both free-hosted blogspot and wordpress limit your will to establish your own online store.  Blogspot and free wordpress (ex., myblog.wordpress.com) offer limited plugins, and eliminate the branding of your product.  If you have products at etsy and blog about it too, why not provide yourself a domain name where you can establish your own online store without competing from any other etsy products, and provide your store unlimited blog pages?  Branding is very essential in business, which is also more inviting to new customers/visitors.
 

AVAILING THE POWER OF SELF-HOSTED WORDPRESS

 
5… Self-hosted WordPress allows you to control your blog 100%, and is equipped with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools that would significantly find your blog in the web world.  Unlike Blogger and wordpress hosted blogs, self-hosted WordPress gives you more options to optimize your blog to become more search-engine friendly.
 
6… Self-hosted WordPress adds more features to your blog such as Forum, Shopping tools (if you are selling online) that are FREE plugins.  Yes, they offer hundreds of FREE plugins that will make your weblog extraordinary.

Figure 1.  Installing plugin for social networking such as Forum for your website

Figure 2.  Easy install plugin for establishing an online store.

Figure 3.  Installing plugins for social network functionality.

7… Change the look of your website easy, or choose from hundreds of free templates.  Self-hosted WordPress offers you hundreds of attractive FREE templates that are easy to edit, most often without the involvement of HTML knowledge.

Figure 4. Easy to choose template style and install.

Figure 5.  Hundreds/almost endless of editable templates to choose from.

8… Easy to edit drag and drop widgets.  WordPress has perhaps the easiest drag and drop widget tools, and their page load for the dashboard is faster compared to blogger.

Figure 6.  Easy to edit/create drag and drop widgets

 
9… Organize your category easy. Unlike blogger that uses label as your category, WordPress allows you to create a real category and organize them with total ease and freedom.

Figure 7.  Creating category

Figure 8.  Category can also be added on the page where you are adding post or page.  This allows you to categorize right away each content you are currently creating.

10… WordPress allows you to create your own personalized contact form through their plugin.  Now isn’t this cool?

 
 

11… WordPress also lets you set-up pages easy such as About page; Contact page; etc. that automatically appears on your header section.
 
12… Create beautiful gallery in your website from each of your post, is a new feature that self-hosted WP automatically provided.  Awesome!
 
There is much, much more to enjoy using self-hosted WP.  It is beautifully addictive and enriching. 

Now, are you willing to switch to self-hosted Wordpress and unleash your blogging power and 100% freedom to monetize and stylize your blog/website with ease?

The Offer

 
            1… Log in to your blogger account
            2… Under SETTINGS, click Other
            3… On the top you will see EXPORT BLOG link.  Click it and download.
            4… Login to your new self-hosted WordPress website
            5… On the left side, click TOOLS, then click IMPORT.
            6… Choose appropriate plugin to import your downloaded blog file.
 
If you subscribed to one of our webhosting plans and need further assistance regarding WP installation and transfer of your files and/or to operate your own WordPress account, please email us.  We will assist you free of charge.
 
Have fun formatting!
 
P.S. We are giving away FREE custom blog button with the following sizes (in pixels): 125x125; 150x150; and 250x250 or custom social networks button to my first 10 self-hosted WordPress subscribers.  First come, first served!