Why Hosting Your Own Blog is So Important

When you first start blogging you might wonder if you need to spend the money and host it yourself or if you can just get a free blog from wordpress or blogger.  Don’t.  Always, always, host it yourself.  Here’s why
Many of the free blogging platforms won’t let your own ads, promote affiliate products or drive traffic to your blog via PPC.  That’s means it will be harder for you to make money directly from your blog.  Which maybe isn’t your goal if you just want to share your life story or promote your services.  But at some point you might re-think it.  Start smart from the beginning.
Using your own domain name will make it shorter and easier to remember.  If not you will wind up with something like this: http://www.mycoolsite.com.wordpress.com vs the short and sweet www.mycoolsite.com.  Which would you rather type in – which would your customers and visitors?
Also, at any time if your blog hosted on blogger or wordpress could be taken down and removed – for any reason – ok so you they probably think you violated some terms and conditions.  Maybe you did, maybe you did – but the last thing you want is for your blog to disappear.  That doesn’t happen when your blog is your own.
And of course, probably the best reason to host your own blog – as you blog you’re building up content on your site that points to you.  This is good for SEO or Search Engine Optimization.  SEO basically means that your blog is well designed, set up and written to be found by search engines.  So when someone goes to a search engine and types in a question or a topic that relates to your blog, the search engine will process your content and present one of your pages in the (hopefully) top search results.  This is a lot easier to do when your content is on your own domain.  You will be able to build the authority and traffic of your blog.  If you’re hosting on a blog extension, well you’ll just be promoting them.
And finally, hosting your own blog just looks more professional. It says you have invested time and money in your blog and business and that you’re ready to be taken seriously.

Why You Should Choose the Best Web Host for Your Blog

A web host has servers that hold the files of your site or blog. When people type in your domain on their internet browsers, your web host pulls your files and shows your site to your visitor.

When you choose a web host, take time to review their hosting packages and gauge their customer support. Look for a reliable web host that offers the most value for money.

Here’s why…

When I was setting up my first site, I bought a hosting package that gave me about 150 MB of web space and 4,000 MB of bandwidth. I thought I was getting a good deal at only $4 per month.

Being a newbie, I had no idea how small 150MB was nor did I care about the bandwidth. Before long I was paying additional fees for my webspace to be upgraded. Later on, when I wanted to have another blog, I was paying additional fees to have another domain added to my account.

By this time, I already knew I needed to get a new web host, something that had everything I needed all in. Still I stuck with my web host because I didn’t want to go through the hassle of transferring files and I wasn’t even sure how it was done.

And then my site went down. First for a few minutes, then for a few hours, then for a few days a week.

That was the last straw. I googled like crazy to find a reliable web host, I learned how to transfer the site myself and I finally made the leap.

It was the best decision I ever made.

Lesson learned: If you want to give your sites a big boost, start it right and get a reliable web host.

Five things to look for in a reliable web host

Most web hosting providers offer different plans suited for beginner bloggers as well as big time businesses. When choosing a web hosting plan, consider the following factors:

Disk Space – This determines the amount of files you can upload to your site or blog, such as text content, images, and videos. The higher the disk space, the better. The top web hosts often offer unlimited disk space even at their lowest plans. If you’re not sure how much disk space you need for your site, it’s best to go unlimited.
Bandwidth – This determines how much traffic your web host will allow your site to handle at any given time. If you anticipate a high volume of visitors or you plan to offer downloads from your site, always go for the higher bandwidth. You can try computing how much bandwidth you need, or you can simply go for unlimited bandwidth.
Uptime – This determines how often your site will be accessible to your site visitors. This is a huge measure of reliability for me. Remember, downtime means lost visitors and, if you’re a business, lost sales. Ideally, you would want a web host that offers 100 percent uptime. Otherwise, go for the one who offers the highest uptime rate.
Scripts – Most web hosts now offer scripts that make it easy for you to install a blog, ecommerce or mailing list platform in a few clicks. Since I was already using WordPress, I only needed Fantastico which is one of the more widely used installation scripts for WordPress.
Customer support – Look for a web hosting provider that has 24 – hour customer support via live chat. Glitches can happen any time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week so you’d want to have constant access to a tech support staff who can help you figure out site issues and solve them.